My Thirtieth Week as a Budding Author

“Never work with children or animals”, so spake William Claude Dukenfield and I would agree with half of that statement. At the moment I’m not really a big fan of animals given that one of them has decided that my lawn is far too flat. So he has constructed lots of little tumuli all over the garden to give it a bit more character. I’ve tried every single humane mole deterrent there is, he loves the lot of them. I’ve even tried an inhumane approach, hovering over his little hole with my son’s baseball bat waiting for him to pop up. But he’s a hardy little bugger and took my wooden kisses to be a sign of affection.

This mole has clearly tarnished me as I now have no desire whatsoever to work with animals only an increased appetite for eating them. As for children, William Claude (or WC Fields to friends) was completely wrong as I’ve been working with my kids and reckon I’ve hit a goldmine. 

Jake (13), Holly (12) and I spent this week taking photos of the Greenwich Meridian ride I undertook in February. Or, being a bit more specific, we contravened every single health and safety advisory imaginable in order to get the shots in the can. You see, taking photos on any English road is always going to be fraught with danger. Mainly down to the fact that they are primarily used by motorists who are late for something. A professional photographer would have told me to “Sod off” after being buzzed for the thousandth time, but when Dad says “Stand there with the camera, you’ll be fine” the innocent trust of childhood kicks in truly believing that he will protect you from the nasty cars.

We kicked off at Peacehaven, more specifically the monument that marks the beginning of the Greenwich Meridian on UK soil. Jake and Holly faffed about with cameras whilst I lycra’d up and sucked in my stomach. The first photo went well, I rode towards the camera and promptly fell off the bike. Jake proved that he has no future in the media by laughing, instead of capturing the moment and uploading to Facebook for all to see. A quick dusting off and the photo session continued with the two of them choosing their angles and messing about with polarizing filters and apertures. The results were brilliant. Here’s a nice picture that Jake took while we were trying a few ideas out. I like the movement and composition, all his own work

About thirty pictures later Holly pointed left and said “Hang on Dad, that’s the sea isn’t it” and very quickly I discovered one of the differences between working with children and professional photographers.

The next day we moved north and attempted our first “hill session”. Taking photos of cyclists on hills is bloody hard. It is incredibly difficult to give a proper sense of steepness, especially in the UK where our hills tend to be short, sharp and surrounded by annoying interferences such as trees and hedges. Our first attempt wasn’t really doing it for me as the zoom foreshortened the road and the kids were finding it hard to focus on the cyclist. Also, the light was variable with the sun fading behind ever thickening cloud.

We scratched our heads for a while until a candidate shot was spotted. Looking down the leafy avenue we espied a patch of light. We conferred and decided to use the light for a bit of drama, the idea being that the contrast in light/dark road would accentuate the hill. How many Dads have conversations like that with their kids? I nearly cried a little as the “grownupness” of our dialogue struck me. Normally conversation between us goes something like this:-

Me - “Holly, can you please tidy your room”

Holly - makes noise like compressed air being forced between two wet sealions having a cuddle

The shot below gives you an idea of what we were trying to achieve. There’s a better one, but I’m saving that for the book.

Flushed with our success on the hill we sped into the centre of London. Our objective a shot that includes me, my bike and the Greenwich Observatory. In hindsight, a better plan would have been to look at the calendar and avoid the weekend. I hadn’t realised that every Saturday Italians commute from Rome to London for a nice days perambulation around Greenwich Park. Actually, they don’t perambulate around the park. What they do is take photos of each other with the Greenwich Observatory sign in the background. I am convinced that it means something rude in Italian, as hordes of them lined up to get that special shot.

Holly and I stood for nearly twenty minutes whilst parties of Italians pushed their way past. They lined up Granddad and snapped away, then lined up Grandma, then Auntie Corleone closely followed by Giuseppe, Annamaria and little Roberto. We’d take a step forward, but they weren’t done. They hadn’t got Grandma, Roberto and not Annamaria, or Auntie looking serious followed by Auntie coyly lifting her left leg. It was a nightmare, I nearly said something along the lines of “Please please please, can we just take one shot of the bike going past the sign then the place is yours”. But we were too polite. Well, I was, Holly gave them a very long hard twelve year old stare which had “F**k off” written all over it.

The photo taken below has been cropped to remove Italians. 

Our days continued in a similar vein and as the kids became more confident with the camera they began to experiment. This was really pleasing to see and Holly came up with the snap below which I really like.

Jake also took a few crackers, this isn’t one of them. We call it the “Why Dad shouldn’t ever wear lycra” picture. If Jeremy Clarkson ever needs a shot to convince others that cycling is bad for you, then we have it right here.

All in all a very successful few days. The kids worked really hard to take the shots I was after and we had some great Dad/son/daughter bonding to boot. I could write pages and pages about the B&B experiences as well but I’ve run out of time, let’s leave you with a few highlights instead:-

• Newhaven - sorry, struggling for a highlight there
• Cheshunt - a hotel, with crap overpriced food, a failed booking that required Jake and Holly to share a bed and a swimming pool filled with chlorine diluted with a bit of water
• Long Sutton - An apartment above an undertakers, irrationally, I hardly slept a wink..I didn’t dare tell the kids about the undertakers.
• Louth - two nights in an American Diner themed pub, great staff but the neighbours hold discos at 4am on Mondays

This is posted early as I’m off to do some stuff for a few weeks. Normal service will be resumed later next month, if there’s still anyone out there reading it that is.

Dave

28th July 2011

WEEK 33 >>>>>>