Like a Leica

For the past few months I've kept an extra camera slung over my shoulder alongside my go-to kit.  It's a Zorki 4K; a Russian rangefinder that I stumbled across in a vintage store at a price that made it good value as a bookend, let alone a functioning camera.  The Zorki 4K is a soviet-era copy of the Leica II produced by the KMZ factory (Krasnogorsk Mekanicheski Zavod, which translates as "Krasnogorst Mechanical Factory"), and even takes Leica L-mount lenses although it comes with the acclaimed Jupiter-8 50mm f/2 lens (a Zeiss-Sonnar clone).  It was introduced in 1973 as a successor to the Zorki 4 which had been produced since 1956 (featuring improvements such as a modern film advance lever rather than a knurled metal knob), and was widely exported to the west until production ceased in 1978.  The camera is fully manual and has no light meter, so I've been making a best guess every time I've used it over this past spring.  As was to be expected, a few of the frames from that first roll of film were slightly over-exposed although I think that might partially be down to it being quite difficult to accurately set the shutter speed on my camera (you have to lift a small knob, twist it to match the desired shutter speed and let it fall into place, which mine doesn't always do particularly convincingly), however I'm pleased with the sharpness of the photographs that I did expose correctly.  Below you'll find a selection of the best of those photographs from the first film through my Russian-rip-off-rangefinder.  I hope that you like them.

Smells Like September

I stepped out of my car into the sunshine at Sennen this morning and it smelt like September.  I mean, I had a real definite waft of the smell of September hit me, and it hit me like some sort of catnip.  I got so excited.  I don't know what that smell was…  the ozoney smell from the breaking waves of the small groundswell?  Cold sand and a warmer ocean?  Warm surf wax?  Coffee?  I couldn't place my finger on it but it was a clear aroma and it made me realise that it was September 1st.  It was an instant reminder of the beaches when schools are back in and work slows down for everyone who works a seasonal job, dawn surfs that aren't still "last night" as they can be in midsummer, bare feet on cold sand, French boardwalks over the sand dunes, Portuguese custard tarts and hurricane swells.  Oh!  September, how I've missed you so.  

Coffee Teaser...

Today was finals day at the UK Barista Championship and the last day of the London Coffee Festival, so it seems like an appropriate opportunity to put out a teaser image from a shoot that I did with the guys down at Origin Coffee a while back. 

Personally, coffee is a day-off drink.  Making good coffee takes a little more effort than simply throwing a bag in a mug and pouring over hot water and milk, and I struggle to find the time or energy when I'm half asleep and in a hurry to get going as I am on most work mornings.  So I save it for my days off when I can immerse myself in the process of grinding beans, weighing out my ratios (theres a science to good coffee) and allowing the elements to brew for just long enough.  Don't go thinking I'm a coffee snob; I've enjoyed crunching on the grinds at the bottom of a cup of Bali-Coffee and often rely on service station offerings to get me through long drives in the middle of the night.  But I've spent enough time being paid to make coffee in the past that I know the value of following a process and being patient.  Origin Coffee are an independent coffee roasters based here in Cornwall who supply some of the more discerning restaurants and independent coffee shops across the country.  My friend Dave works there as the Barista Trainer, travelling around sharing his knowledge and obsessive scientific approach to hot caffeinated drinks, so I went to work with him one day to photograph what he does and skulk around the roastery taking photos of hessian sacks full of beans and enjoying the smell.  We've since put together an article detailing how to make the best coffee in the comfort of your own kitchen, without the need for a cardboard cup or paper money, which hopefully will see the light of day at some point fairly soon.  When it does, I'll post up a load more pictures...

"Sunshine Sunday" Criteria

Kamchatka Peninsula, Russia.  By Chris Burkard for Surfer Magazine.

Today is "Sunshine Sunday" in the UK, the day when travel agents and tour operators prepare for around two million Brits to look for the light at the end of the wintery tunnel and book their summer holidays.  Maybe you're planning 2013's movements today also, and looking forward to the waves yet to come?
  
Trips, projects, expeditions, adventures - call them what you will (although if we're being picky, you can't plan adventures, they're what happens when a trip or expedition goes wrong), many of us populate our daydreams with these and while away the boredom of long, lonely drives or any other mind-numbing downtime planning and scheming.
This year I'm setting myself some criteria for the projects on my to-do list.  Each trip, if at all possible, has to fall into one of the following two categories:

• An ordinary trip done in an interesting way.
• An interesting trip done in an ordinary way.

It's that simple.  If it's a trip that's close to home or the sort of thing that's common fodder then I'm going to endeavour to do it in an interesting way, and if it's more of an expedition or exploratory trip then I'll probably have to undertake it by the (most likely stock-standard) ways and means available to me.   

These days, you'll be lucky to find something, anything, that somebody else hasn't done already - but that's no reason not to do it.

The six-wheeled truck used to explore the Kamchatka Peninsula.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Over the past few months I've taken a lot of inspiration from the trips that these images are taken from.  The January issues of Surfer magazine and Surf Europe feature a trip to the Kamchatka peninsula in Russia, a trip that was well documented through various social networking outlets by Chris Burkard and Foster Huntington who had portable solar panels with them to charge their cameras and laptops.   They scored good, fun, cold surf where nobody really expected it, exploring the region in a six-wheeled former Soviet military truck and a helicopter.  There's a great video available to view (it can't be embedded on this blog) through Surfer magazine, here.

Kamchatka campfire.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Around the same time as the Kamchatka trip, Californian pro-surfer Dan Malloy was cycling the length of California with two friends, carrying all of their camping and surfing gear in panniers and on bike trailers.  They travelled slowly, stopping off to surf, visit friends and work stints on organic farms along the coast.  It just so happens, as luck would have it, that Dan's two companions comprised a professional photographer and a videographer.  

Slow is Fast.  Photo by Dan Malloy.

Dan Malloy running out for a surf, the Slow is Fast bicycle trip, California.  Photo by Chris Burkard.

Feeling inspired?  There are so many ways that you can go, do, and experience places and faces these days if you put your mind to it.  Maybe it'll be a staycation with a twist, a micro-adventure in your own backyard.  Or perhaps it'll be a trip which you spend more time researching, planning and preparing for than you actually spend doing it.  Either way, it'll make for a memorable one.  One that you can talk about over a drink in the pub when the days are short this time next year.  An experience that might just set the tone, or the wheels in motion, for the next.

Scott G Toepfer takes brilliant photographs of people having too much fun riding around on motorbikes.  Check out It's Better In The Wind.

A War Within. Living with PTSD.

This week I'm going a little bit "off message" and shifting the focus away from sunny happy surfy stuff, to a much darker, more serious and important issue; that of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

My friend James Allen has just aced his degree in Press and Editorial Photography at University College Falmouth and his final year project has been picked up and shared by a number of top end photography journals, websites and was exhibited in London last week.    James decided to tackle the difficult subject of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which required him to build relationships with sufferers over long periods of time before they were comfortable being photographed and interviewed.  His subjects ranged from former soldiers to victims of domestic violence or people involved in tragic and unforgettable accidents.  Before I pass the baton to James's images and captions, I'll finish on one key statistic that struck me from his work:  More British veterans of the Falklands War and First Gulf War committed suicide than were killed in action.  That's not the Second Gulf War.  Just consider that for a moment then click through to James' website to view the full set of images and accompanying text which explains the issue far more succinctly than it's possible for me to here.

"This body of work aims to empower my subjects, giving them a voice and educating the viewer, thereby reducing the stigma associated with this mental health issue. The images are captioned by text extracted from my interviews so as to allow the viewer to hear their voices, to sense their anger and despair, but also feel hope and new life."

James Allen, June 2012

 “The imagery of Iraq that bombarded my mind was so detailed that I could paint scenes from my mind. I knew the colour of cars, the height of buildings. I could smell the dead people we had shot. I could see the bodies and the thick congealed blood on the floor. It was like a fish had been gutted. I could see the dead Iraqi soldiers, their eyes staring at me, and I was powerless in my dreams to fight back any threat. I was in such a helpless state.”

 “I attempted to commit suicide. My wife found me with a 9mm Glock in my mouth. I was paranoid - I kept arms and ammunition at home and built up a big Arsenal. It wasn’t a fun place to be really, but the culmination of it was that I tried to kill me self. My wife walked through the door as I was about to do the honours. Her face basically stopped me.”

 “I can’t begin to tell you how many soldiers I’ve worked with that have lost everything - wives, partners and even the rights to see their children. Without a doubt, the hardest part of my journey was losing my family. It wasn’t until I lost them I realised I had a serious problem and had to ask for help.”

 “It’s PTSD; you live with something that happened twenty years ago - you still cry about it. You can’t stop, because you’re still not over it. You’re not allowed the space to, because you’re not allowed to talk about it. Even with therapists you start talking about the gory details and they cover their mouths with shock. They’re anxious because they don’t want to hear the really horrid bits. I was seventeen when I went to the doctors to tell him that I’d been raped. He just patted me on the head. It’s shocking.”

“ I think there’s a problem with PTSD because its become a word synonymous with soldiers. People don’t understand that it might be in the domestic sphere as well. It’s the day you realise your totally out of control and that’s the case the next day and the day after that. It’s a repeated pattern; you can’t make yourself or your family safe. And you won’t be safe next year, and at some point you acknowledge that you’re going to be killed, and I don’t know where you go from there. Once you believe that your going to die I don’t know how you can ever believe in anything different. As a consequence I can’t change my behaviour, in that respect it’s probably very similar to a soldier in a war zone because you are scared your going to be killed today. Its fear, I’m just fearful, they used to call it battered wife syndrome.”

 “It was when I was fourteen years old - there was an accident in the back garden involving some petrol near a barbeque. It caught fire and because it was next to my little sister I tried to prevent an accident and threw the bottle away from her ... it ended up hitting a little lad who caught fire from the flames of the petrol. So I chased after him to get him on the ground and roll him around to stop the flames spreading any more ... I jumped on top of him and rolled him around to put out the flames.”

“At first I was depressed because people were blaming me, saying it was my fault - that I’d done it on purpose. I started to experience flashbacks about it - I felt like I was reliving the moment over and over again, seeing certain things. Flames can set me off on a flashback. Just being asleep in the middle of the night I feel like I am reliving it; I can smell the flesh burning and I feel like I’m burning up myself. I see pictures in my mind of what happened.”

A Word Before You Go...

Teak Bridge, Myanmar (formerly Burma)

Zanzibar

Packing antique heat, Ethiopia

Colonial Hangover, Sri Lanka

Samoa

Gorilla, Rwanda

Angkor Wat, Cambodia

Ethiopian Highland Kids

African Sunset

You're in for a treat. A little while back I posted a blog with the ten top travel tips that I've accumulated and have served me well over years of hauling my sorry ass and a surfboard all over this big blue and green marble. I thought that this list was pretty concise and comprehensive, and then I got an e-mail from my friend Yvette which blew my list out of the water. Yvette is one well travelled lady who works in International Development, most recently for the UNHCR in East Africa but before then in South East Asia, and in between travelling for work her hobby is collecting cool passport stamps. In the past she's gifted me with solid gold nuggets of travel wisdom like this:

"Coconuts - the elixir of life, the saviour, the hangover cure, the life-giver. Any time you feel crap, drink a coconut and it will save your life. It's chemically akin to plasma and absorbs faster than h2o. If you need a blood transfusion and you have no blood - hook an IV up to a coconut, I'm 100% serious."

So here I've pulled together a selection of her photos and below for you to log away ready for next time you're getting ready to head off are her additions to the list. I strongly suggest that you take some notes:

"My tips are a bag for your cords and cables. A bag for your bras, undies and socks. Roll. Pillow case for laundry bag. Crappy phone (some countries won't let in smart phones). SARONG. Hard drive or iPad full of movies. EAR PLUGS. Steal the eye mask while you're stealing the blanket - you'll never sleep more soundly. Condoms. Stick your condoms and meds in the fridge. Don't fill your bag, 17kg max. Clothes that make you happy - you'll feel better if you look like yourself. No dark clothes - mozzies breed inside them. Toenail clippers. Notepad and pen fo sho. Board games for those days with no electricity (there will be many) ... backgammon? Social responsibility and a sense of the two way obligations and duties of the traveller. The Do No Harm principle. Norfloxacin - when it hits, you won't want to go to the chemist. A vocabulary that doesn't include the word 'do', or any variation on this, as in: "I did Thailand." A basic history. Courage."

The Good Life

Hay Bale Kiss

Wedding Day Wellingtons

The seed tray of wonder, finding some sunflower seeds for the sunflower growing competition that I am most definitely losing.

"Wouldn't it be nice to take the inspiration for what you're going to wear in the morning from a pheasant; a red hat, iridescent blue scarf and a brown jacket...I might try it"

Sarah won "Most Valued Player" when we built the composting toilet. Nice medal.

Watering the ducks.

The wood shed.

In my head I have three places that I think of whenever I need to feel better about the world: The Eden Project, the Finisterre offices, and my friends Rob and Sarah's little slice of the good life on an organic herb farm in a beautiful corner of Somerset.

They live in a walled garden with a lovingly tended vegetable patch, some apple trees, three Shetland sheep and some chooks and ducks pecking around. I go up to visit them every now and then and try to time it so that I can help out in some way or another to make up for all of the times that I get in their way sticking my camera in their faces. We made a composting toilet last year and a month or so ago I went up to help them move some sheep from their newly planted orchard back to the walled garden for lambing. They feed me home-made bread and soup, eggs from their hens and on my last visit we went foraging for wild garlic and had hedgerow risotto for dinner. I never fail to come away with a smile on my face and a warm fuzzy feeling inside knowing that there are people out there doing the right things for no other reason than because they are the right things to do. Not shouting or making a song and dance about it, or doing it because it's fashionable, Rob and Sarah just live a beautiful and wholesome existence for their own peace of mind and good health.

Inspiring hey, I need to take a leaf out of their book, or off their tree I guess.

We all should.

http://www.organicherbtrading.com/

In Hope...

I like the irony of this image.

I shared a shed with Sam on Oahu one winter a few years ago and I shot this candid one over his shoulder whilst he was flicking through a copy of Monster Children magazine that I'd been carrying around in my bag for months since leaving Australia. The article's entitled "Ten Things I Hate", which contrasts kind of nicely with the ink on his wrist which reads "In Hope".

Glass half full or half empty? You've gotta look at things one way or the other, I liked the way Sam kept a reminder of which way to view things in plain sight all times.

Ten Tips To Take With You

1) Take the airline blanket. It's free like the food right? Warmth, a spare towel, picnic blanket, bunk-bed privacy and surfboard padding are just a few of their many uses.

2) The travel uniform. After a lot of trial and error, I've boiled it down to a combo of a black t-shirt and camo shorts or dark jeans. This get-up'll hide several days worth of travel grime, sweat and spills. The only time this has failed was when I hitched a ride in the back of a builder's truck full of cement dust at midday in Central America, when nothing could've disguised the road on me. Just don't wear white, tie-dye or some 'safari' costume.

3) Take half as much stuff, and a bit more money (twice as much would make a neat sounding phrase, but who's got that much coin?). Whatever it is, you can probably buy it there, and it'll probably be cheaper.

Which leads on to...

4) Go Loco. You don't take food with you right, so why take toiletries when you can buy toothpaste and soap when you arrive. Immerse yourself that little bit more and enhance your experience, and you probably won't get sick either.

5) Flag towel. If you've got to bed down in a hostel, backpackers or any other sort of communal accommodation then get yourself a flag towel. As long as you're at least partially proud of where you're from and it won't get you lynched then this'll avoid you losing your towel from some washing line. They're bulky and heavy so there'll always be a few people who'd rather half-inch one than carry their own, and they're much less likely to take a distinctive towel that's the flag of a country or region that they're not from because it's kind of a give away.

Smart hey.

6) Go Overland. Either when you get there, or even just to get there in the first place. Catch a bus, hop a train, climb aboard the local supply boat or rent a moped. Just don't get in an air-conditioned minibus whatever you do.

7) Say "YES" to everything. Within reason, and using your good judgement of course. Try it: Good things'll happen, opportunities will present themselves and you'll have a much better time.

8) Make memories. Keep a journal, carry a camera or collect your tickets to scrapbook. If your memory is even twice as good as mine then I'll bet that in ten years time you'll have forgotten at least half of the names, faces, places and events that you never thought you would.

9) Take a pen on the plane. You're bound to get handed an immigration or customs form to fill in and there's nothing more annoying than having to ask to borrow one or not getting your mitts on one at all until you're at the desk.

10) Do it all with a SMILE. It's a universal language and makes the world a better place.

But most of all make the most of it, breathe it all in and just get amongst it.

The World's a beautiful place so go see it.