On Location: Hay Winter Festival 2014

Regular readers of my irregular blog will know that I went to the Hay Winter Festival last year, and enjoyed it so much that I promised I would go back.  So I did.  As in 2013, the festival included a number of events and seminars as well as a packed food festival on Saturday, and 'Hay Does Vintage' on Sunday.

Last year I took my tiny Romahome R10, and this year I took my new van, the bigger but still compact Hillside Birchover.  Handily sized for parking in the Oxford Road car park where Powys Council allows motorhome parking for 1 night in 7.  Great for attending Hay Festivals!  If you do go in a campervan, the spaces right at the bottom are the flattest.

Hay on Wye is an interesting town of narrow twisty streets and interesting shops.  Not just bookshops!  The Festival takes place in various venues across the town, but the main food and vintage festivals are centred in the Market Place in or near the large marquee.

By lunchtime on Saturday the food festival was extremely busy with very little room to move, but there were still plenty of tasty treats on show to reward those who patiently weaved their way through the crowds.  Wonderful smells from pies and soups stimulated the appetite!

Delicious savoury muffins.

Locally made salsas.

Once stocked up with far too many delicious items, I set off through the town to enjoy some of the pretty local galleries, and explore some of the antique and vintage shops. The result of this was several handmade porcelain stars and hearts, and some camper van sized Christmas bunting.  Before long the van was looking very festive!

Sunday dawned fine and clear, and the food festival stalls of the previous day had been replaced by those of "Hay Does Vintage'.   

Pretty Vintage Items in the Old Electric Shop

The Cutest Booties in the Old Electric Shop!

Hay on Wye is famous as a fantastic place for anyone who loves books, but there's much more to see and do here.  This little town is a gem of a place for small specialist shops too.  There's a particularly nice stationers, and several galleries with items of all sorts and a wide price range.  Highly recommended for a weekend visit.

East Kirkby 3 Lancs (er... 1 Lanc) Event 2 Sept 14

Despite the lack of Lancasters, the team at Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre still put on a great day.  We had:

Just Jane, the resident Lancaster, doing two brilliant taxy runs and drawing in the crowds even without her cousins from Canada and Conningsby...

Yes, those engines are noisy!

There were model aircraft - including a Lancaster!  

So we had one flying Lancaster, if not quite the right size...

There was swing dancing in the hanger!

There were interesting things to see outside.  

(Lots of commercial stands too, including the very busy Canadian Lancaster Tour Trailer.)

There were re-enactors.

Who helped Sean with a very interesting talk on wartime kit and ordnance...

... which kept a large crowd attentive right through.

It seemed appropriate too in a rather ironic way, that Dakota 'Drag em Oot' was sitting outside the hanger having engine work done!

In short, an excellent day and as ever a credit to all the hard work by the team at East Kirkby, especially given they must have been as disappointed as the rest of us with the cancellations of the flying aircraft.

Thank you, LAHC, for another great day.  Wish I could be there on Sunday when I very much hope that the much planned for fly past of the two airworthy Lancasters takes place.  Even though I will be trying not to be too jealous!

Learning to Look After Bells

Faringdon's 'Five'

I’ve recently been appointed as ‘steeple keeper’ for All Saints, Faringdon.  (A rather ironic title, since All Saints is famous for it’s LACK of a steeple!)  This means I’m responsible for making sure that the bells there are kept in good order.  I’ve learned a lot about bells this year, being heavily involved in a very hands on way with the major maintenance work on Hinton Waldrist’s bells, but there were still several things which I didn’t know much about.

So on a rather dismal May evening I joined a group of other eager learners for a Tower Maintenance Course at Shellingford, Oxon.  The only tower in our branch which in fact DOES have a steeple.  It also has a mixed ring of six bells, four in a wooden frame, and two in a steel one below, with a mixed set of headstocks/canons and fixings.  So a useful tower to use for a course like this.

You might expect that we all immediately climbed up into the belfry, but no.  We started off with a discussion on the tidiness and safety of the ringing chamber below.  This ranged from discussing trip hazards – which in Faringdon include a huge beam across the entire ringing chamber, to light sources and switches, fire extinguishers and dangerous spiders – of the rope holding kind rather than the scuttling kind.I had not actually considered before just how dangerous it could be if someone accidentally turned off the light switch outside a ringing chamber, and plunged the entire room into darkness.  

Spider

So, in YOUR tower: Do you have secondary lighting?  Emergency lighting?  Are your light switches marked, and at a level they can't accidentally be switched off?  Is your spider located in such a way as to ensure it can't hit anyone on the head?

Moving up into the belfry itself, before looking at the bells themselves we were reminded to check the condition of the floor and not to trust it’s strength unless you know it’s sound to bear weight!  And also to check the supporting beams of the frame where they meet the wall.  If there is rot in wood, or if the mortar around a metal beam is flaking or cracking, it needs attention, and that is unlikely to be something which can be done by an ‘in-tower’ level of expertise.  This type of job is likely to need to be assessed by a specialist.

Here I am going to add a little piece which I learned through what could have been a very nasty experience indeed.  Let’s just say that feeling the ladder I was on coming away from the wall was an experience I don’t wish to repeat...  Regularly check the condition and fixings of your ladder/s, steps and traps. 

At a basic level, keeping the floor, frame and bells reasonably clean not only looks nicer but makes looking after the bells much easier and less dirty since in many towers you will be lying on the floor to do some jobs, or clambering across the frame!

Once you’ve actually made it to your bells(!), there are a whole list of things to check:

The bell itself

Rope wear - general wear, wear caused by the pulleys, wear at the garter hole on the wheel

Wheels - damage, bowing, alignment

Stays - cracked, mis-fitted, loose bolts or stay

Headstock/canon fixings - is the bell loose?! If it appears to be, is the bell loose on the headstock, or is the headstock loose on the wheel?

Bearings - is there oil/grease coming from these?

Sliders - are these in good order?

Pulleys - are they running freely? Do the ropes run through them easily?

Clappers - are they tightly fitted? Are they out of true? Is the bell odd struck?

So, there are quite a few things to be aware of, and it is useful to have a checklist to work through.

We also looked at checking the frame – especially for wooden frames, where we discussed the importance of making any adjustments by small increments, across the entire section or frame, so as not to end up pulling the entire frame out of alignment!  So for example, if four bolts need tightening, go round them turning each a quarter turn at a time in sequence, rather than tightening one bolt as hard as possible, and then doing the same to the next.

All in all, this was a fascinating course, and well worth taking an evening to do.  There will be a 'part 2' at some stage, when I take another session to learn about removing, adjusting, splicing, and re-fitting ropes and replacing stays.

I whole-heartedly recommend that all towers send at least one of their band on a Tower Maintenance Course.

The course I did was organised via the Vale of White Horse branch of the Oxford Diocesan Guild.  If you're interested in attending a similar course in this guild please contact Tony Crabtree on 01793 784064, or you can email via the ODG website.  Click on the Ringing Master contact.

Shrivenham's Treble

What does the word 'Heritage' mean to you?

For me it's keeping history alive, real and relevant. So three cheers to those who:

restore vintage cars...

keep ancient buildings beautiful...

keep historic bells ringing...

make museums interesting...

look after classic aircraft...

protect our coastlines...

...and countryside...

THANK YOU.

On Location: East Kirkby – Large Model Association Show

Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre is the home of the Avro Lancaster Just Jane, which has featured on my blog before.  I am a big fan of ‘living history’, and have always liked historic aircraft, so it wasn’t a big step to my becoming a supporter of Just Jane.  The LAHC is well worth visiting at any time, but I also keep an eye out for the regular events that take place there.  This trip was to visit while the Large Model Association show was on, so I packed up ‘Tonks’ the tiny campervan and headed northeast.

I discovered that ‘large’ is designated by weight, not size, but some of the models were massive.  There were at least two that were apparently half scale!  That is a pretty serious bit of kit to be flying, and it’s unsurprising that large model aircraft come under the scrutiny of the Civil Aviation Authority.  These are not the kind of toys you mess about with in your garden but serious machines which can do real damage if things go wrong.  Models weighing more than 20kg must be inspected on behalf of the CAA before they can fly.  The inspection process includes the build as well as flight-testing, and all must be approved before permission is granted to fly in public.  Oh, and the build can take a long time.  

The DC3 seen here took around 18 months to complete.

It was a real privilege to see so many large models on display, and of such a variety.  It was also useful to be there early and see some of them while they were still in the hanger where I could get closer to them.  

There were WWII bomber replicas, fittingly considering the location, but also powered gliders (brilliant display flying!), biplanes – including the very lovely Dragon Rapide, fast jets (brilliant display number 2!) and airliners.Sadly the latter didn’t fly on the day, but it looked impressive even on the ground!

In many respects, once the aircraft were in the air and therefore with no points of reference for size, you could hardly tell they were models!  The pilots are extremely skilled, and display their models to their best.  I was interested to discover that, especially with the ‘warbird’ models, the flying itself is scaled appropriately, as well as the aircraft.  This means that models of aircraft which would not have been especially speedy at full size do not whizz about unrealistically in their scaled down forms.

On the Monday the wind was strong and gusty, creating a few interesting landings including one aircraft ending up upside down, and some pilots therefore decided to keep their aircraft on the ground.  There was a still lot of flying though, and all in all it was a very interesting and entertaining day with some beautiful models on display and some very complex flying.

The LMA is a long-standing association with over 800 members.  They have a number of events during the year and more information can be found on their website: www.largemodelassociation.com

The icing on the cake for me though, was the extra special treat of seeing (and hearing) the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s Lancaster ‘City of Lincoln’ overfly ‘Just Jane’.  Wonderful.

The real deal - Just Jane and City of Lincoln

The next event I hope to attend at East Kirkby is Props and Pistons.  Better pack the ear plugs…

Emily Hancock Talks About...

The business of equestrian photography.

When I saw that the RPS's Thames Valley Region was hosting Emily Hancock for one of their Sunday sessions, I was immediately interested.

Her talk was advertised as covering three areas, all of which were of interest:
* Photographing horses
* Running her business
* Gaining her qualifications
So the very reasonable charge of £10, and 3 hours driving, seemed likely to be time and money well spent, and so it proved.

Emily is an engaging speaker, very frank and open.  She ran each section of the day precisely to time, yet still allowing questions from the floor throughout her presentation, unfazed by the regular interruptions.

Emily is one of those fortunate people who discovers their passion in life early - in her case at just 16.  She 'chased an opportunity' early on, although it was partly luck that the photographer she approached to do some work with turned out to be covering royalty at a polo match!  After seeing her work, she was taken on as an assistant, a job she held for two years before setting out alone doing events photography relating to horses. 

Eager to continue learning, she did a year of specialist training, which taught her about business as well as photography.  It changed her game plan, influencing how she prices her work and the level at which she pitches it.  Much of what she was taught related to portrait and wedding photography, so she took these skills and adapted them to her work with horses, establishing a highly successful business with a very recognisable style, being relaxed and informal looking.  The horses typically wear little (but ultra-clean!) tack, and their owners wear clothes which are not 'horsey gear', ranging from jeans to very glamorous dresses, with three changes of clothes often taking place during a shoot.  Some of her equestrian subjects have been well trained enough to be worked entirely free of any tack at all.  Some lovely beach shots of a film-trained horse performing the Spanish Walk gave an impressive example of this.

After talking about her path into the field of equestrian photography, Emily then moved on to talk about how she carries out a shoot.  This covered the very detailed preparation which she carries out on each shoot, and a lot of detail about the actual shooting on the day, including positioning, posing, locations, safety - and suggestions for dealing with tricky/awkward horses! 

The day then moved to talking about the sales process.  For Emily, on-line selling is a no-no.  All her viewings (well, most) take place in her own studio, using a projector and a big screen, with the pictures being presented as a slide show to music.  This means that her clients get the full impact of hi-res images presented large, rather than scrolling through a selection of small images on a PC screen. 

Once again, preparation plays a big part in the process.  For each viewing her studio is clean, smells nice, has flowers on display, and good coffee on the go.  Emily herself dresses smartly rather than casually.  All these things make a difference to her buy rate.  She always gives her price outline up front, prior to the shoot, so her clients are well aware of the costs of her packages, and therefore arrive with an understanding of what they're likely to be spending.  The cost of the shoot itself (rather than the albums, prints or CDs) is paid up front.

The section of the day devoted to marketing was particularly interesting, and Emily stressed that she is marketing all the time!  Her biggest area for marketing are equestrian events such as The National Dressage Championships, where she usually has a display stand and a 'show offer'.  She pays attention to maintaining her websites Emily Hancock and The Training Barn.  Networking is key, and involves talking to as many people in her area of interest/specialisation as possible.  She uses social media, maintains a database, exhibits her work, and sometimes works in collaboration with others.  She also does some charity work, which can be something like offering a shoot and a single frame as a prize.  Finally, she also does 'roadshows' from time to time, where she may spend a day in a forest or beach location, and offer 1 hours slots to owners and their horses.  Emily talked through all these things in detail, and I made quite a few notes, even though I work in sales and marketing myself!

After over a decade of working in a very established style, Emily is now looking for new challenges.  She is reducing her client commission work, and starting to do more fine art work.  It was this style in which she shot the panel used to obtain her BIPP Fellowship, the first time anyone has gone from no BIPP qualification to Fellowship in one jump, a huge achievement.  Some of these very beautiful images can be seen on the equestrian section of her website.  Prior to the BIPP award, Emily had achieved her RPS Associateship with work from her commission range. It was encouraging that she went through the process of seeking help from mentors during her distinctions work.  She also said that she'd taken time to understand the respective distinctions processes and work out exactly what would be required of her. Something which anyone working towards their distinctions can usefully be reminded to do!

In all, it was a fascinating day, with lots of beautiful photography to illustrate Emily's points.  As someone who worries, I appreciated her comment "If you let your fears get the better of you, you'd never do anything."

When I had a brief chat with her during the lunch break, her advice was to look for opportunities, take advantage of them when they come up, and don't let them disappear.  A mantra she has obviously pursued herself, highly successfully.


'Marketing' slide used with the kind permission of Emily Hancock

Review: Op/Tech Rainsleeve

As foul weather photography is sometimes unavoidable and is anyway often interesting despite the challenges, over time I have acquired three different protective rain covers for my camera gear.  The Op/Tech one is the most basic, but also the most compact, and the cheapest.  (By a VERY large margin.)  Plus it does exactly what it says it will - keeps my camera dry! 

It is made of thin plastic, in a sort of 'almost L' shape - there's the flash version shown left, but I use the non-flash version.  It has a drawstring at one end, and a hole about half way along through which you can fit your viewfinder.  This means you can compose your shots without struggling to see through the plastic.  

The thin plastic means you can use the camera controls from outside or inside the Rainsleeve, but I didn't feel the camera was very secure when I was holding it through the plastic, so kept my arm and hand inside, as Op/Tech in fact appear to recommend.  

This worked especially well for me since I hate neckstraps and usually use wriststraps instead (also from Op/Tech!).  So my camera was secure and I could reach all I needed very easily.  You need to use a lens hood with the Rainsleeve as otherwise the drawstring doesn't sit comfortably at the end of the lens.  The hood also helped keep the rain off the front element of the lens!  I found that I had to loosen the drawstring a little as otherwise zooming the lens was awkward, but it was easy to still keep it tight enough to keep the lens protected.

The thin nature of this cover means that it folds up very small indeed, and can be packed into even the smallest camera bag.  Just be careful to ensure it has no opportunity to get snagged.  With care, they last well.  I have been using one of mine for a couple of years with no nicks or tears in it yet.

Rainsleeves come in pairs.  You can carry a spare, or keep one in each camera bag, as I do.  I had used one of mine previously, but last year it really came into its own when I was photographing a Lancaster from close quarters - in torrential rain.  Other visitors scattered far and wide, but I pulled the Rainsleeve over my camera and kept on shooting.  I finished the day with plenty of photographs, and a dry camera.  (There were a few comments about 'the person with the camera in a plastic bag', but handsome is as handsome does, eh!)


Taxying in Torrential Rain

Sunshine and (Heavy) Showers

You Can See The Rain On The Turret

For the price, around £6 a pack as I write, these are unbeatable value and could save the day.  I can't recommend them highly enough.  Just make sure that the 'viewfinder hole' is actually over the viewfinder, and not above the camera, otherwise you might find water where you don't want it!

You can buy them in the UK from WEX Photographic, or several other photographic retailers.
They're readily available despite being an American product.


(The Lancaster is 'Just Jane', and can be seen taxying on a regular basis at the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre at East Kirkby.  Very, VERY well worth a visit.)

Product images used by kind permission of Op/Tech USA.

Aiming for an ‘A’ – Part 6. Another Advisory Day.

This ‘path to a distinction’ is turning out to be extremely twisty, and pretty steep.  After two false starts (for the gory details read my earlier Aiming for an 'A' posts!) I hope that it is now ‘third time lucky’. 

 

I have long been interested in history, and my current (version 3) focus for my panel has come from this interest.  In some ways, my interest in bell ringing demonstrates this, as one of the reasons I ring is to carry forward a 400-year-old tradition and keep it alive. 

I’ve been photographing history through shooting our buildings, countryside, vehicles and traditions for years.  So it seemed to be a natural progression to take ‘heritage’ as the theme for my new panel. 

I re-wrote my statement of intent, keeping it short and to the point – just 60 words - and started to put together my pictures.  Although I have lots of photos of heritage items, activities and sites, most of them aren’t good enough for an ‘A’ panel.  After a while I signed up for another Advisory Day, this time at Amersham, on 19 January.  I came to this venue for my 'L' Advisory Day, and I like it.  It's easy to find, easy to park, and open and airy thus avoiding the claustrophobic crush of the RPS HQ at Bath.  And you get proper tea in real cups!  (Thank you, local RPS ladies!)

A few days prior to the Advisory Day I ran into two problems.  One of the prints which I had ordered arrived damaged and I didn’t have time to have it re-done., and I the mounts for two of the images I’d planned to use were the wrong size.  I should have known better than to discover this at this late stage:

Put everything together well before the date, so there is time for corrections or changes!

As always, the Advisory Day itself was interesting because it is fascinating to view other photographers’ work and hear some very knowledgeable comments on it. 

There were quite a few panels reviewed during the day, with an average of 10 minutes per panel.  Several were work in progress panels, so mine was not alone.  Each panel was assessed, and then commented on.  I have learned a lot from listening to what has been said about other people’s panels at the various Advisory and Assessment Days I’ve attended.

There were two panels being assessed for the LRPS which were considered to be at a level for the photographers concerned to submit for the ‘A’.  These were both mono panels, one a very gritty travel panel which was left up for a while to enable everyone to take a good look at it.

The other was a very strong set of street images.

 

As well as many natural history images (there seemed to be quite a few owls photographed!), there were some out of the ordinary panels.  The one which provoked the most ‘rustling’ in the audience was an extremely striking set of HDR processed images taken at steam railways.  I love steam trains, and my dad was a signalman when you still had to pull levers, so I have a connection with the subject and loved the approach, but it certainly created a lot of conversation!

When we finally got to my offering I was relieved to hear my statement of intent seemed to receive a favourable response.  My idea also met with some positive comments, which was encouraging after my earlier abandoned attempts.

Of the 15 images I put up, one was referred to as a ‘so what’ picture, and one was seen as something it wasn’t.   I thought it was obvious what the picture depicted, but clearly I was wrong.  Each image within a panel must stand up for itself and not require explanation, so that was another image which will have to come out.  

I was reminded again, through comments made about my own panel and others, that when submitting for RPS distinctions, you have to think differently than when you are looking at individual images for other purposes.  Some of these images had done very well in other channels, but were dismissed as potential panellists!

Of my 15, there were two pointed out as being my strongest, with another three or four as possibles.  It was useful to see which ones were picked, as it shows the kind of work which was catching the eye of the assessors, and just as importantly, which work wasn’t.  However, it means I have at best about a third of a panel, and a lot of work still to do.