On The Road with Vicky Lamburn

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/sussex/7249135.stm

So some clever sod thought they would cause a huge fire just for a laugh or because they are a sad wanker with nothing better to do.

Get a fucking life and grow up. Be thankful that the fire you caused didn’t hurt anyone or that any one you love and care for deeply (even though you’re “far too ‘ard and cool” to admit that) wasn’t involved in an fire made all the more worse because you were being a dick on the sea front diverting important emergency services.

Seriously, what is fucking wrong with some people?

Oddly enough the two things I wish to write about are interlinked by one word. Zen. I’m sure most people will have come across it or heard of it, some may even think of Zen Buddhism but that isn’t the scope of this post. Instead I start with a ‘definition’ from Wikipedia which is quite nicely put:

Zen. ‘emphasis on mindful acceptance of the present moment, spontaneous action, and letting go of self-conscious, judgmental thinking‘

The two things are something I watched today and Zenwalk – a Linux distribution. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve had a right busy week me. It started on Saturday which I will go onto, then Sunday I put together my new wardrobe. On Monday and Tuesday I roamed the seafront with my camera snapping with glee and painted two walls of four of my front room which is good progress. Last night admittedly I was creamed* and tonight I have just sat about watching telly and cleaning up. And now to update my blog.

If you’ve been living under a rock, or just generally not heard any news – you might be aware of a ship called the Ice Prince that sunk off the Dorset coast shedding a lot of its cargo of timber. Long and short of it is that a wood slick was heading east for the English coastline and it so happens that my dear town of Worthing with its five miles of coastline was hit the ‘hardest’ with timber stretching as far as the eye can see and further still.

I had a bit of a ‘heads up’ on this as I put the press release out on the worthing.gov.uk website on Friday (not that I’d be the only one to know of course even at that stage) so I duly headed off down to the seafront Saturday morning. Took a number of snaps before the wood really came in. You only have to do a search on Flickr for Worthing and order it by most recent to see that practically every photo for nearly a week has been of the ‘wood slick’ for photos tagged with Worthing.

As such I got this shot of the pier and a few planks (no not me) that were starting to come in early on Saturday before the beach was closed and well the scenes you can see from Flickr occurred:

Taken on the EOS 3 with XP2 at ISO 400 and the EF 50mm f/1.8 II. Worthing Pier is in the background. I also got rather wet taking this photo. My bottom for one (bending down to angle the tripod’s elevation) and feet the other (my trainers I was wearing have one or fifteen holes…)

A deserted house on the foreshore at West Worthing. This one took a while for me to get right by which time I had it framed and the gate just right (which I didn’t move… Just worked it as-is) an estate agent said to me “You need a hand there?” — I said no no, just taking photos. He thought I was interested in the property (which I was but not to buy) and explained the problem with squatters.

Again taken with the EF 50mm (great lens for the money – nothing basically.)

And finally a Holga-esque inspired homeage to a photo in January ’08’s Black & White Photography magazine:

Worthing Palms

This came out much better than expected. Again the EF 50mm at work. (Eschewed the wide angle the past couple of days.) The light was fading fast but this was a cracking sunset on the foreshore at Worthing and the palms so still in the winter sun with a striking shadow just caught me whilst everyone was fixated on the washed in wood. This was probably taken with a slow 1/10th sec shutter speed if I remember rightly and it was a dead difficult job to get enough DOF while keeping the camera steady (caught without my tripod as I was walking home from work) — in the end the slight blur has given it a fantastic quality. This has been blown up to 16 x 12 and I am pleased as punch with it. For the living room no less.

---

So there you go. All shot with Ilford XP2 Super 400 C41 process B&W 135 film on Canon EOS 3 with EF 50mm f1.8 II lens. The XPS film does induce some grain but it gives a bit of quirky character I find in these. A very enjoyable and creative week photographically.

Check out my Flickr page for more shots and a growing catalogue!

With the recent 2,000 tonnes of timber that washed ashore on Worthing beach (which I went down to see on Saturday as I live in Worthing) the BBC have been reporting the situation.

However they’ve gone and got EAST and WEST Sussex around the wrong way. Apparently WEST Sussex is on the east….

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7199667.stm