Lovejoy Meets Line of Duty and Other Stories

Last week was a tale of two halves.  

It was a fairly run-of-the-mill start to the week.  On Tuesday, I took Lotte the cat for her annual health check (I promise it gets better).  We have recently agreed to officially take her on as our cat. 

A brief history of Lotte (pronounced "Lottie").  Her mother lives a few doors down from us and Lotte and her two siblings belong to another family just a two minute walk from our house.  For whatever reason, Lotte was never keen on sharing her space with other non-humans and turned up unannounced at our back door around three years ago, in an apparently ravenous state.  She quickly mounted a charm offensive.  She was hugely affectionate, consumed three sachets of cat food straight off and made herself at home.  We assumed she was lost.

Once her belly was full, she tottered off again into the garden in the direction of the woods, but never seemed very far away.  Being a domestic long haired cat, she looked just a little bedraggled.  We've since discovered that it doesn't take long for that fur to start forming dreadlocks.  

This uncertain situation continued for a week or so until one day, Lotte arrived looking groomed to perfection and sporting a new collar.  The penny dropped.  We realised that this cat had a loving home.  I went on a more determined mission to locate her owner and tracked her down to a property in a neighbouring cul-de-sac.  

I kept in touch with her owner and we would compare notes on Lotte's whereabouts (usually our garden or sunbathing on the roof of the Rover P6).  Between us we tried just about everything to ensure that Lotte went home from time to time. We tried not feeding her or letting her into the house, but as we work from home, we were sitting ducks.  She could see us through the patio doors and would not stop calling until we let her in.

Her owner attempted to keep her in at night but this went down like a lead balloon.  Lotte would howl and scratch until, for the sake of sleep and sanity, the family let her out again.  During the summer months, with the bedroom windows open, it was not unusual for Lotte to suddenly appear in our bedroom in the middle of the night.  To this day, the bedroom window remains her go-to place to attempt to gain access when she fancies a change of scene at 2 am.  If it's closed, she will make herself known by mewing to be allowed entry.  She is a force of nature.

So she has effectively been our cat for the last three years (as much as anyone can "own" a cat), but last summer, she completely severed all ties with her previous owner, when they bought a dog.  Since then, we have fed and groomed her (with her owner's consent) and she now never ventures much further than our garden gate.  

We left the vet's £60.00 lighter and with a scraped car bumper.  I'm not having much luck with the car lately, but this time, I can't blame anyone else.  I reversed into the handrail support on the wheelchair ramp.  Just as well I was also working for part of the week! 

Despite our ever present feline, we do see a lot of birds in the garden.  Fortunately for them, Lotte spends much of her time sleeping in bushes.  She doesn't realise that the bird bath is where it's at.  The blackbirds love to bathe in it and the robins, sparrows and other small birds love drinking from it.  I may be a nature lover, but I do tend to charge up the garden when I see a pigeon anywhere in the vicinity, as they empty the thing whenever they attempt to take a bath (they barely fit!), which then necessitates long trips up the garden with the watering can.  They also love to emulate Jackson Pollock's style of art and decorate everything below their flight path.

The blackbirds continue to titivate their nest and our patio is continually strewn with bits of moss and twigs that they drop en route to their increasingly swanky pad.

Here's the lone pond skater I mentioned in my last post.  You can just about make him out in the centre of this photo.  

The action was confined to the latter part of the week.  Gareth found himself at the centre of an unfolding drama on Thursday.  After carrying out some minor work on the car, he decided to take it for a spin, heading to the very rural and very small Halfpenny Green Airport (now better known as Wolverhampton Business Airport).  

These photographs were taken recently in the surrounding fields where you can see remnants of the RAF's original aerodrome buildings.

The Airport Time Forgot - old portakabin

As he approached the airport car park, he was surprised to see a number of police riot vans and several unmarked cars parked in nearby lanes.  The closer he got, the more vehicular activity there was.  He decided to call into the Antiques Centre on site, but Claire, the business owner, was at this point oblivious to the police activity. 

 As they chatted, yet more police cars and vans arrived, bringing armed police officers and an air of clear and present danger to this tranquil scene.  Gareth counted around a dozen police vehicles and at least 50 armed officers.  Within minutes, two had approached the Antiques Centre and advised Claire to lock herself and the other three occupants (including Gareth) inside as there was a dangerous criminal at large.  It was Lovejoy meets Line of Duty!  

Not Inspector Morse, but close

After 40 minutes in a building without a mobile phone signal, Gareth, somewhat rashly, decided to make a break for it and headed home.  As he left the airport, another police vehicle sped past him and the occupants of the numerous parked were rubber necking - staring at him intently as he drove past.  Mercifully, there was no hot pursuit; they clearly knew who they were looking for.

Bizarrely, there has been no reference to any of this on the local news or in the press.  Should we be worried?  With the airport only being a few short miles away, we've been double checking that our doors are locked and sorry Lotte, but the bedroom window's staying closed for now.

I called Claire on Friday morning and she confirmed that the airport had indeed been put into lockdown on Thursday afternoon (she and her customers being the last to know) and in the absence of any other instructions, technically, Gareth should still be there now!  The police are continuing to look for their "perp." It seems that so far, it remains mission impossible.

It's taken AC-12 10 years and they are still struggling to identify "H".  Halfpenny Green airport was originally called Bobbington Airport, but the name was changed to avoid confusion with RAF Bovingdon in Hertfordshire.  "H" for "Halfpenny Green."  Am I onto something?

I'll leave you with some bright and cheerful weekend images of local rapeseed, including one featuring an incongruous red chair.  Why it's there is yet another mystery.

Have a good week!

Drama Drama Drama!

As I grew into the habit of carrying a camera everywhere (well, perhaps not the supermarket), the first thing I concentrated on was getting to grips with composition. Keep in mind the rule of thirds but always remember, rules are made to be broken. Trust your eye and your gut sometimes and just shoot. Also, it may sound obvious, but don't fall into the trap of thinking that a particular scene will be magically transformed within your camera.  If it looks unremarkable to the naked eye, then the chances are it will make for a dull photograph.

This image on the left, for example, doesn't really adhere to the rule of thirds, but I think...I hope it works.

Very soon after incorporating photography into my daily life, my restless streak kicked in and I became increasingly dissatisfied with the images coming straight out of the camera.   This had nothing to do with exposure, composition or image quality (I was at this point using Auto settings), but I felt they were a little lacklustre. I wanted depth of field, to play with the light, but more than anything, I wanted drama! 

If drama is not already present, then I make some effort to create it, although, as I have said before, light plays a major part in this. A flat white sky has very little to offer. Overcast, cloudy conditions are great, as is morning light, twilight and sunlight casting long shadows.

I think I must be a frustrated stills photographer (in my dreams!), because with pretty much every image, I see - before clicking the shutter button - how I want the finished image to look, or something about the subject speaks to me in some way. Usually, in my head, there will be a cinematic or literary point of reference. Achieving that look however, is another matter and something I strive for every time.  Here are 10 examples of where my mind's eye takes me:-

1.  Tall Trees - Stephen King,
creepy, Scandi dramas

 

2.  Woodland - Blair Witch, Tim Burton

 

 

3. Rural Villages:  Agatha Christie,
any given period drama, 
Withnail & I.

4.  Maize fields - The Bad Seed, Spielberg.

5.  Pampas Grass, White Picket 
Fence - David Lynch.

6.  Ponds - Quite specific this, but

the disturbed woman who drowned in

Cider with Rosie.  Mercifully, I don't insist on a model!

7.  Canals - Peaky Blinders, Young Adam

8. Rural landscapes, rolling hills and valleys - Middle Earth.

9. Churches, Abbeys, large period houses - Omen, Black Narcissus.

10.  Street scenes - I tend to favour black and white in urban settings, so look for shadows, reflections and clean lines; all very film noir. Maybe I'll spot Hitchcock's image reflected in a shop window? It doesn't matter that he shuffled off this mortal coil over 40 years ago!

                                 

So you see? There's a darkness running through my images. Even when photographing the recent snowfall, I was thinking of The Shining or the Coen Brothers' Fargo. What that says about me is probably best left to a psychologist. All I know is, the more punch I can get out of an image, the better. 

Some amateurs like to say that photos shouldn't be edited, but I think you will find that most photographers agree that any given image you see online or in a magazine has been edited to a degree. These adjustments can be subtle - for example adding a little contrast, or increasing the luminance or saturation of certain colours - or big and bold by adding overlays, airbrushing, or introducing/removing objects from a photograph. 

I photoshopped this balloon from one of my photos into the more desirable setting of another of my images.

Executed well, these edits are what elevate a snapshot to art (I'm still trying to get to that point and am inspired by other photographers on Instagram on a daily basis!) 

TOGGER'S TIP FOR MOODY LANDSCAPES: Bring down the exposure and highlights, lift the shadows, increase white a little, play with contrast and clarify.  Re-adjust exposure and highlights to suit.

That said, in the early days, I think I went slightly overboard. I was (well still am) obsessed with dramatic clouds, but now, looking at my early images, all I can see are the halos of over processing. Sometimes less is more. Always have an eye on the detail. Zoom in on an image and double check your edits aren't too obvious.

Avert your gaze!  Too much!!

Finally, to touch briefly on software, for a long time I used a really old version of Paint Shop Pro. Now I pay a monthly subscription to use Lightroom and Photoshop.   However, the free mobile Photoshop App is also extremely useful for editing mobile shots and jpegs. We recently had to upgrade our pc and for a time I was reliant on our ye olde laptop, minus any editing software. I took to emailing myself the jpegs (not RAW images, as I didn't want to overload the laptop - so breaking another rule here).   I would then edit them on my phone.   It worked pretty well in the absence of a suite of editing software. Can you tell this is a jpeg and not a RAW image?   

Drama, smoke and mirrors cover a multitude of sins.