The Herding of Cats
Dave and Lee were both peering into dusty looking bags, brows furrowed, pulling out metallic black objects with bits of glass on them. These, I explained to them, were cameras. Their cameras in fact. “Do you remember cameras?” I asked. It was the pair of them that dragged me into this hobby. They looked a bit confused at this question and carried on talking about the football season that by now was all but finished for another year. “Would Ollie Watkins leave the Villa Lee? Apparently he’s a boyhood Arsenal fan and the Gunners desperately need to beef up their striking options.” Lee decided not to be too worried about the prospect of his team’s centre forward leaving for pastures new in the summer. “What’s this thing again?” “It’s a camera. You bought it on eBay, remember? What have you got now? Ooh a Pentax. You haven’t had a Pentax before have you?”
Getting these two to make themselves available at the same time and come out to play for an evening used to be so simple. Ten years ago, we’d be racing home from work, piling into Lee’s trusty old red Renault Kangoo (or Kenneth as he fondly called him), and pottering off to the coast for sunset, where Lee and I would usually end up pitching our tripods on the same square yard of rock in front of the lighthouse or whatever, and Dave, fine art degree at Liverpool Polytechnic and all, would ignore the obvious subject and wander off to do something interestingly creative with a thicket of brambles or a patch of nuclear green gunge in the shallows. If we were statistical samples, Dave would pretty much always be the outlier, and he’d usually produce what Lee and I would grudgingly concede was the shot of the night.
Nowadays, these gatherings have become almost as impossible as herding cats. Whenever I would attempt to wake up the Whatsapp group, one would be responsive and make appropriate noises while the other would remain electronically taciturn and a general sense of inertia would crawl across the entire enterprise once again. They’d take turns at being Mr Positive and Mr Ignoramus and I’d give up and go out on my own. Over the past three or four years these regular outings had almost all but died, replaced by flurries of shutter activity on the occasional residential field trip outside the county. The team at Morrison’s Cafe in Buxton are still counting the profits from our visit to the Peak District last May. Even now, we had one planned for Dartmoor in a couple of weeks, but Dave’s employers have decided to launch two new products at once, despite being short of key personnel, and he’s had to bail on the month entirely. So now we’re hoping to go at the start of September, when the colours should be a bit more interesting, and just before I head to Sweden for another photography jolly. It’s a busy old life you know.
But on Monday there was a pleasing sense of enthusiasm as the pair of them arrived and piled into my car - Kenneth is sadly long gone - for the short trip to Godrevy. Maybe we’d go down to Porth Nanven in a month or so when the white nights are here, we agreed. The field car park was open until nine, so we pulled up in front of the sea, where we sat, catching up with each other’s news. I wondered whether either of them would take the next step and actually get out of the car before it was time to go to the pub. Eventually we descended the steps down to the rocks to the right of the beach, where the tide was full. Late April is a good time to take a shot here when the sea is all over the foreground and the sun is creeping into the left hand side of the frame. But not so much when there are people everywhere. We moved on to where I really wanted to go this evening. The scramble down the cliff. “Remember that time we came down here when there was an amazing sunset?” “Yes, that was the first time we found this spot. Got some great shots that night but I deleted all my raw files afterwards.” That was ten years ago in fact. I don’t delete raw files anymore - not unless they’re complete duds.
An hour later, in time honoured fashion, Lee and I were standing on the same patch of rock taking more or less exactly the same shot, while Dave was a hundred yards to our left, facing in the opposite direction and shooting the sea moving in and out of a deep gully, although he’d forgotten his step up ring and couldn’t use his filters. “Do either of you by any chance have a 67-72?” We didn’t, but we each agreed that we might have one lying around somewhere at home, which wasn’t much use now. All was well in the world - well except for Dave not having brought all of his kit with him. He says he hasn’t got anything worth sharing, while Lee declared he was going to take another look. He at least must have an image to post here. He was standing in the same place as me, using the same filters. As for Dave, he’ll suddenly decide he’s got a masterpiece after all. We’re used to this reticence in demonstrating his genius in the editing suite. We await with bated breath. Will either of them post an image for the first time in forever?
It was time for the pub, three pints of Sea Fury and the customary appraisal of one another’s images from the evening. Dave left his camera in the car. He’s obviously still warming up. At least we were all out together again. That’s the best thing about it. A jolly boy’s outing to Godrevy on a beautiful spring evening with the entire summer ahead of us, and the prospect of more to follow soon.
The Herding of Cats
Dave and Lee were both peering into dusty looking bags, brows furrowed, pulling out metallic black objects with bits of glass on them. These, I explained to them, were cameras. Their cameras in fact. “Do you remember cameras?” I asked. It was the pair of them that dragged me into this hobby. They looked a bit confused at this question and carried on talking about the football season that by now was all but finished for another year. “Would Ollie Watkins leave the Villa Lee? Apparently he’s a boyhood Arsenal fan and the Gunners desperately need to beef up their striking options.” Lee decided not to be too worried about the prospect of his team’s centre forward leaving for pastures new in the summer. “What’s this thing again?” “It’s a camera. You bought it on eBay, remember? What have you got now? Ooh a Pentax. You haven’t had a Pentax before have you?”
Getting these two to make themselves available at the same time and come out to play for an evening used to be so simple. Ten years ago, we’d be racing home from work, piling into Lee’s trusty old red Renault Kangoo (or Kenneth as he fondly called him), and pottering off to the coast for sunset, where Lee and I would usually end up pitching our tripods on the same square yard of rock in front of the lighthouse or whatever, and Dave, fine art degree at Liverpool Polytechnic and all, would ignore the obvious subject and wander off to do something interestingly creative with a thicket of brambles or a patch of nuclear green gunge in the shallows. If we were statistical samples, Dave would pretty much always be the outlier, and he’d usually produce what Lee and I would grudgingly concede was the shot of the night.
Nowadays, these gatherings have become almost as impossible as herding cats. Whenever I would attempt to wake up the Whatsapp group, one would be responsive and make appropriate noises while the other would remain electronically taciturn and a general sense of inertia would crawl across the entire enterprise once again. They’d take turns at being Mr Positive and Mr Ignoramus and I’d give up and go out on my own. Over the past three or four years these regular outings had almost all but died, replaced by flurries of shutter activity on the occasional residential field trip outside the county. The team at Morrison’s Cafe in Buxton are still counting the profits from our visit to the Peak District last May. Even now, we had one planned for Dartmoor in a couple of weeks, but Dave’s employers have decided to launch two new products at once, despite being short of key personnel, and he’s had to bail on the month entirely. So now we’re hoping to go at the start of September, when the colours should be a bit more interesting, and just before I head to Sweden for another photography jolly. It’s a busy old life you know.
But on Monday there was a pleasing sense of enthusiasm as the pair of them arrived and piled into my car - Kenneth is sadly long gone - for the short trip to Godrevy. Maybe we’d go down to Porth Nanven in a month or so when the white nights are here, we agreed. The field car park was open until nine, so we pulled up in front of the sea, where we sat, catching up with each other’s news. I wondered whether either of them would take the next step and actually get out of the car before it was time to go to the pub. Eventually we descended the steps down to the rocks to the right of the beach, where the tide was full. Late April is a good time to take a shot here when the sea is all over the foreground and the sun is creeping into the left hand side of the frame. But not so much when there are people everywhere. We moved on to where I really wanted to go this evening. The scramble down the cliff. “Remember that time we came down here when there was an amazing sunset?” “Yes, that was the first time we found this spot. Got some great shots that night but I deleted all my raw files afterwards.” That was ten years ago in fact. I don’t delete raw files anymore - not unless they’re complete duds.
An hour later, in time honoured fashion, Lee and I were standing on the same patch of rock taking more or less exactly the same shot, while Dave was a hundred yards to our left, facing in the opposite direction and shooting the sea moving in and out of a deep gully, although he’d forgotten his step up ring and couldn’t use his filters. “Do either of you by any chance have a 67-72?” We didn’t, but we each agreed that we might have one lying around somewhere at home, which wasn’t much use now. All was well in the world - well except for Dave not having brought all of his kit with him. He says he hasn’t got anything worth sharing, while Lee declared he was going to take another look. He at least must have an image to post here. He was standing in the same place as me, using the same filters. As for Dave, he’ll suddenly decide he’s got a masterpiece after all. We’re used to this reticence in demonstrating his genius in the editing suite. We await with bated breath. Will either of them post an image for the first time in forever?
It was time for the pub, three pints of Sea Fury and the customary appraisal of one another’s images from the evening. Dave left his camera in the car. He’s obviously still warming up. At least we were all out together again. That’s the best thing about it. A jolly boy’s outing to Godrevy on a beautiful spring evening with the entire summer ahead of us, and the prospect of more to follow soon.