Alas...

This is another one from Hastings. On the last day we were there we walked through the woods to visit the nearest neighbours, seeing this tree skull (seemingly very realistic) on the way. Not sure what it was doing there, except as a prelude to the classical study of English eccentricity you would find upon going further towards the house. The lady of the house was just about to leave as we got there - to a friend's 60th birthday party which was apparently going to involve a pub crawl followed by a round of crazy golf, and possibly some "headbanger" music at a club. Oh, and this entire program of activities was to be undertaken in medieval costume, for some reason destined to remain obscure. Rock on.

Sound Mirrors

I've just updated the Dungeness gallery on my site - the project is proceeding quite well, but since the idea was to document "the people and landscape" of Dungeness and it's still almost human-free there's obviously work left to be done. Contacting people you've never met to say "would you mind if I came and photographed you?" is a strange business, and so far I've had two outright refusals and one chap who would have been perfect for the project completely failing to reply to my requests... Still got a few avenues to pursue for my next visit though.

The picture above is part of the project that I did finally manage to (at least partially) achieve though - the sound mirrors were built at Dungeness in the inter-war years as a means of detecting the sounds of approaching aircraft - they were never that successful, and radar came along soon after, so they've been sitting there blankly scanning the Kent skies for seventy odd years. They're not that easy to find on their island in a disused quarry, and due to vandalism access is only now possible via a locked swing bridge, and only with the permission (which seems impossible to obtain) of the quarry owners. So, the photos I took were from the closest point you can get to them on public land - I'd have loved to be able to get closer, but this is the best I can do for now.

Springtime

This seemed like a good image to start off with - taken a couple of weeks ago whilst I was staying at the Poliakoff family's cottage near Hastings to work on the Dungeness project. Note the carpet of wood anemones and the ultra-retro 1970s Canonet rangefinder sported by the ever delightful Ellen.

The main purpose of this blog is to keep updates on additions to the web gallery, but also to keep track of whatever else I'm getting up to photographically... we'll see how things go...