Slow

A meditation on the “Slow” sign

Much of my photography is made whilst out cycling on the country lanes around the UK. As I ride along I have plenty of time to look around me, perhaps to decide what I might photograph next or just to observe my surroundings.

One thing I notice are the “Slow” signs painted on the road.

They are possibly the most commonly painted signs on UK roads. Others can be destinations or warnings that you are travelling past a school or a hospital. The “Slow” sign usually precedes a potential hazard such as a bend, a blind summit or a hidden dip. Typically it will cover the width of the lane it applies to – on a narrow country road where I do most of my cycling this can be the entire carriageway. If the hazard is in both directions then two “Slow” signs appear in either direction facing each other.

For a cycling photographer the “Slow” sign is a great way to remind me that I should pause and look around me.

Here are a few of the photographs I have taken of “Slow” signs, the repetition of the message turning the images into a kind of meditation. One of the signs is handmade, another fades away and one of them appears to have been painted in triplicate, as if whoever painted it wasn’t quite sure where to put it.

I hope you like the photographs – click on each to view a larger version. And if you are interested in finding out a little bit the history of road signs, scroll down.

Image gallery image
Image gallery image
Image gallery image
Image gallery image
Image gallery image
Image gallery image

Road signs – a very short history

Once I started noticing “Slow” signs painted on the road I thought I should do a little bit of research about them. They are mundane objects which we tend to ignore but like everything they have a history.

Sadly I haven’t been able to find out when the first “Slow” sign was painted but I have discovered when the first road markings were painted. These would have been in 1911 in Michigan, USA. Edward N Hines, a cyclist and a member of the local county board of roads in an age when most roads in the US and elsewhere were tracks, is said to have come up with the idea when he saw a leaky milk cart leaving a trail of milk down the road. This gave him the idea to paint lines along the middle of the road to separate traffic travelling in opposite directions. Central lines arrived in the UK in 1918.

If you are interested in knowing more check out this video on Youtube from the History Guy. It’s from a US perspective but shows how even the mundane and overlooked can be fascinating.

Today road markings are painted using thermoplastic paint heated to 200 degrees celsius and coated with reflective powder after application. The paint takes about five minutes to dry.

As a part of the research for this blog and, in the interests of slowing down, I watched several videos on Youtube of people painting road signs. I literally watched paint dry. It was actually quite relaxing which is very much in keeping with the theme of “Slow”.

Journal

A short while ago I wrote about my attempts to take a photograph a day during 2023. I am continuing to fail at it but one of the reasons for trying is because I wanted to think more about my photography and why I take photographs. I did not want to take a photograph everyday for the sake of taking a photograph; I wanted to do it for a reason.

One of the methods I have used to help me with this is to keep a journal of the photographs I take each day. When I take a photograph I print a copy of it out and paste it into a notebook alongside a few comments about the photograph – why I took the photograph, how I felt at the time and so on.

The act of photography slows down.

This grounds me in the process of making the photograph and slows the act of photography down. There is now much more to it than simply seeing something and photographing it. I have to put paper in the printer, turn it on, make a print, stick into the notebook and then write a few comments about it. It becomes a bigger deal to take the photograph and so it makes me think more about what and why I am photographing.

I am more engaged with the subject

The journal can also be useful in helping me engage with my subject. For some of the photographs I will go away and do some research on the subject to include in the journal. This adds to my understanding of what I am trying to photograph and hopefully makes me see it more than just an interesting object.

The photograph becomes physical

Printing the photographs makes the image physical. Too often most of our photographs never see the light of day. They hide in the darkness on our phone or in some cloud or other we barely have any knowledge of. We might share them with a few people but ultimately they are just so many pixels floating in space. A photographic print is an object in itself; making a print makes us think about the image and the process of photography.

Keeping a journal is also a physical act and it provides a record; sometimes I will browse through the photographs in one of the journals I have put together and recall where I was at the time. It helps me relive the moment and can act as an inspiration for more photographs.

If you are stuck for photographic ideas perhaps keeping a journal might help. I have been trying to do it once a day but perhaps you could back through your old photographs and include them in a journal on a specific subject? Whatever you decide I would recommend giving it a go!

Fenlands

The Fenlands in Cambridgeshire are some of my favourite places to cycle.

What always draws me back to the area time and again is the sky. Nothing grows taller than the trees (or Ely Cathedral) so the overhead panaroma is almost uninterrupted.

Here are a few of the photographs I have taken over the last few years on different cycle rides.

You can view more of my photographs on my Clickasnap profile:

https://bit.ly/Clickasnap-Fens

A photo a day

Throughout 2023 I have been trying an experiment – to take a photograph every single day. We are halfway through the year so how am I getting on? You can view the results so far here . And I thought now would be a good to time to reflect on the experience. Is it a worthwhile exercise and how can it help my photography?

The first thing I have to say is that I have failed. I have not always been able to take a photograph every single day; sometimes something has got in the way or I have quite simply forgotten. But it doesn’t matter. This is a personal exercise and so I am not going to beat myself up for missing the odd day.

There are a number of advantages to at least attempting it.

It has given me a moment to pause almost everyday and just look around me; it’s so easy to plough on head down without looking up but sometimes it can be good to stop to see where you are (literally and figuratively).

It has made me pay more attention to the world around me and I tend to look up and down to see what there might be so images have included blossom on the ground and the clouds scudding overhead.

Finally I feel it is honing my photographic skills, making me think of how to create interesting images out of the mundane.

From my experience, here are a few ideas on how to approach taking a photograph a day (and maybe I will follow this advice myself!)

Spend time looking

This process is all about observing, seeing how the light and shadow falls, the relationship of your subject with other objects. Give yourself time to do that.

Some questions that might help: Why did you pause to look at it? What drew you to it and why do you want to photograph it? How would you photograph it to convey all you have seen and felt about the appearance of the object and your response to it?

Experiment

You can choose a set time of day to take the image or just wait until your eye is caught by something you want to capture. Whatever works for you. You don’t need to set any rules although you might discover there is a certain time of day when it is easier to take the photographs, maybe at lunch break or at the end of the day.

Look to the mundane.

We don’t all live in dramatic landscapes. I live in London with a view of a typical side street out the front door. This is an exercise in observing, noticing things you might take for granted. Take a look around your kitchen, maybe check out what you’re having for breakfast. How about the mug you drink your coffee from?

What do you plan to do with the images?

Think what happens to the images afterwards although you don’t have to do anything! This is a personal process. The act of taking the photograph, observing and recording, might be enough for you. You may want to take it further, though; perhaps to save the images and look them later, reflect on the moment you took the image. One thing I have been experimenting with is keeping a journal, printing a photo each day and writing a few comments about it (more about this in a later blog).

Photograph because you want to photograph

Finally, the key thing is to photograph because you want to. Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day! Just pick it up again another day. To answer my question from the beginning I think it is a worthwhile experiment to help inspire me take photographs and it is one that I intend to continue albeit in my own erratic way. I would love to hear other people’s experiences. Please add them in the comments below or contact me direct.

Tripod

Today I praise the humble tripod.

For many amateur and hobbyist photographers a tripod can come well down the list of objects they would like to take with them. It’s something else to have to carry (and something heavy); it’s a faff to set up and you may need to contort yourself to be able to look through the viewfinder (although if your camera has a flip out digital display that can make life easier). And it can make taking photographs a slower and more complicated process.

However if you don’t use a tripod at the moment but you would like to use your photography in a mindful way you should consider doing so precisely because it is slower and does complicate the process.

Quite simply, using a tripod will make you slow down.

As you set up the tripod you will become more engaged in the process of taking or, if you like, making photographs. It will be less of a case of noticing your subject, raising your camera, checking the settings (usually already done for you by the camera) firing the shutter and moving on.

Instead, as you set your tripod up you can take the time to explore your subject more thoroughly and, because a tripod can be a pain to have to move, you will probably spend more time in one area. All the photographs in this post, for example, were taken around a small pond in Epping Forest. Initially I was attracted to the yellow flowers but as I set the tripod up I was drawn to other details such as the strong green shapes of the leaves and the darkness of the water. I may not have noticed all these other details if I had taken the image handheld and walked on.

You also become a part of your environment when you use a tripod. It may not be as flexible as handholding the camera but you are likely to spend more time finessing the image – what needs to be in the frame and what needs to be left out? Where should your subject be in the image? Sometimes all this may be an act of compromise depending upon the surface you are working on and how much space there is – can you put your tripod where you want to or do you have think about a slightly different image? As you work this out you become aware of your surroundings. In the case of these photographs I needed to be aware of the soggy ground near the edge of the pond. It was then that I saw the reflections in the dark water.

Once you have the tripod set up and the camera positioned as you would like it put the shutter release on a timer. This will help any vibrations caused as you press the release to die down and stabilise your camera but I use it for a different purpose. Most cameras have a two second or ten second delay – two seconds should be enough but sometimes I put it on ten. The delay also interrupts the immediacy of taking the photograph. Once you have fired the shutter step back from the camera until the image is made.

Using a tripod is helpful if you are going to be taking photographs with longer exposures or where you need the image to be pin sharp but it can also help you slow down and think about your subject. If you are using it for this purpose it does not even need to be the most robust or expensive – as long as it can securely hold your camera steady for the duration of the composition and making the image. So why not invest in a tripod and take it out with you when you next go photographing?

The photographs in this post are available for sale as prints and in other formats.

Click here to find out more.

Holidaying at home

I am always looking for ways to try and encourage me to take more photographs. Sometimes it’s a simple question of going somewhere new, maybe on holiday. Everything is novel and exciting when you are on holiday and you see everything with fresh eyes.

How can you replicate that excitement when you are not on holiday? How can you bring those fresh eyes home with you?

One way to do this is to think like you’re on holiday when you are back at home. This isn’t about holidaying at home; a lot of us probably experienced that rather too much during the pandemic. And I certainly don’t mean heading to the supermarket in your swimwear!

What I am thinking about is trying to look at your photography in a different way, perhaps by simply switching genres. I live in an urban setting so when I go out to take pictures locally they are usually street photography or photographs of buildings. I spend my time looking out for people and architecture.

If I switch genres perhaps I will start seeing the familiar in a different light.

So I thought I would try landscape photography. Most of the photographs I take in this style are usually out in the countryside or at the seaside but there is a branch of urban photography and this is what I decided to explore recently to see how it could make me look at my local neighbourhood in a different way and with fresh eyes, as if I were on holiday.

When I am on holiday I explore; I go down one road, stop, turn around and look back, then I head down some alleyway to see what might be at the end of it. I will look up and down, climbing high or getting down as low as possible, even getting down on the ground, to look at things from a different angle.

One afternoon I turned right out of my front door and went to try photographing as if I were on holiday.

So here are my holiday snaps 🙂

A view of a solitary dandelion in parkland next to the Holloway Road, London. A red double decker bus is in the background. Used to illustrate blog psot "Holidaying at home" to suggest ways to inspire yourself to take photographs in your local area.
Different point of view – Whittington Park. A view of the Holloway Road across a dandelion!
A black and white image of steps taken from a low viewpoint. A bus stop with passengers standing at it can be seen in the background. Used to illustrate blog psot "Holidaying at home" to suggest ways to inspire yourself to take photographs in your local area.
Getting down low – Tollhouse Way. This is taken at the bottom of Archway and I was attracted by the curves of the paving. The only way to take it though was to get down on the ground.
Looking up at a set of lights and a tower block at Archway, North London. Used to illustrate blog psot "Holidaying at home" to suggest ways to inspire yourself to take photographs in your local area.
Looking up – Archway Tower. When taking photographs it is very easy to forget to look up.
Looking down through the railings of Archway bridge showing the traffic on Archway Road and much further away the office towers in the City of London. Used to illustrate blog psot "Holidaying at home" to suggest ways to inspire yourself to take photographs in your local area.
Looking down – Archway Bridge. Finding a high view point such as this one through the railings of Archway Bridge is a great way to look at something in a different perspective.
A view of an urban park with a bank of wildflowers and the sun shining through a tree. It looks almost rural but a block of the flats to the right give the game away. Used to illustrate blog psot "Holidaying at home" to suggest ways to inspire yourself to take photographs in your local area.
Somewhere new – meadow on Archway Road. Take the path less trod and see what you might find. This woodland glen is a few metres from the Archway Road but I had never visited it before.

Other ways you could see your neighbourhood in a different light is perhaps by seeing it at a different time of day – try getting up early or staying out late and seeing what it looks like then.

Or maybe in different weather conditions. We don’t get much snow in London but we did before Christmas 2022. I needed to walk only a few metres out of my front door and the world I knew so well suddenly looked very different.

Photograph of a takeaway food delivery motorcyclist standing outside a restaurant on a snowy night in London. Used to illustrate the City section of gallery
Waiting for an order. A food delivery motorcyclist standing outside a restaurant on a snowy evening in London

So when you are having trouble being inspired to take photographs imagine you are on holiday! And, of course, it’s always worth bearing in mind that the new and exciting for you when you are on holiday is the old and mundane for the people who live there, and there might be people where you live who have just arrived either on holiday or to live there and are seeing your neighbourhood through fresh eyes.

Easter Sunday

At Easter 2023, whilst in Dorset, I went cycling everyday re-visiting old haunts. On Good Friday I cycled over to Moreton reliving a favourite route.

On Easter Sunday I went in search of the spirit of a place.

You can view the route on took on Komoot.

My ride took me to Abbotsbury west of Weymouth. It is the home of the sub-tropical gardens, the swannery and the remains of an old abbey. For me though, it represents one of my earliest bike rides of any distance. The vicar of the church I attended moved to Abbotsbury and on a few occasions me and my brothers with one or two more from his old parish would ride over to visit him and explore his new neighbourhood. The route would have been a twenty mile round trip which was quite a leap for someone who had only just graduated from riding to the end of his own road.

On this ride I was more interested in what I would come upon after I left my own memories of Abbotsbury behind.

I have always had a feel for the sense or spirit of place. I explored this a few times in London with the place where Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s steamship, the Great Eastern, was launched after much difficulty and tragedy; or where up to 100,000 people assembled in support of the Tolpuddle Martyrs who had been prosecuted for trying to campaign for a decent wage. I always have a feeling that those momentous events somehow continue to resonate in some way at the places I had visited.

This Easter Sunday I went in search of places that were more deeply rooted in the past. Unlike the launch site of the Great Eastern or the place of the Tolpuddle Martyrs much less has changed at the three locations I went to visit.

The valley of the stones

Valley of the Stones. The photograph was taken on an earlier visit when snow sharpened the rocks and scrub.

The first place I wanted to visit came after a steep and brutal climb out of Abbotsbury. It is one of those climbs that you are think you nearly down with but then it provides another and sometimes harsher kick. However, getting to the top is worth it. From here you have extensive views across Dorset and as you ride along the top you come past the Valley of Stone.

This was described as “… a mysterious glen among the downs, on whose grassy slopes many huge stones are scattered” by Frederick Treves, the doctor who had looked after Joseph Merrick, the so-called “Elephant Man”. The stones have remained there since the retreat of the Ice Age, mostly scattered in a random fashion although a few have been half-heartedly dragged into stone circles.

Of all the places I visited on Easter Sunday the Valley of Stones perhaps has the deepest roots.

Very often the spirit I am searching for is often of human endeavour or tragedy but, beyond centuries of farming there seems less sense of the human here. Instead there is something much deeper – the way the world itself changed to leave the stones stranded here.

Maiden Castle

After leaving the Valley of Stones I rode past Hardy’s Monument, the memorial to Admiral Hardy who fought at the Battle of Trafalgar and dropped down to the village of Martinstown (or Winterbourne St Martins – it answers to both names). I rode along the river valley until I turned off under the shadow of the next place I wanted to revisit.

Some of the rampants of Maiden Castle

These days the ramparts of Maiden Castle are left to sheep and ramblers but once this would have been the centre of the local population and not the nearby market town of Dorchester.

Maiden Castle was an Iron Age settlement occupied from around 800BC to 43AD. At it’s height it was a busy town with buildings laid out in lines along streets suggesting some degree of social order. It also included a number of industries such as textiles and metalworking and in its later days there was even international trade.

The local Durotrige people who lived here were some of the last to hold out against the Roman invasion of 43AD. There may have been a major clash with the invaders on the site as there is evidence of bodies buried with severe wounds.

Maiden Castle was once a bustling town and possibly the site of a bloody battle but now a lonely place.

Culliford Tree

After I left Maiden Castle I headed further east before climbing back over the ridge of hills that cuts Weymouth off from the rest of Dorset. Scattered along its top are a line of ancient burial mounds, the most prominent of which is the one known as Culliford Tree.

Like Maiden Castle, Culliford Tree had once been a busier place. Initially it was a grave used over many centuries for Neolithic and Bronze Age people. Then it became the meeting place for the local Hundred or council to debate and decide on the running of the villages hereabouts.

Nowadays it is a solitary spot standing at a lonely crossroads. Arriving here at the dead of night, in one direction you can make out the welcoming lights of Weymouth but elsewhere the roads drop away into darkness.

Culliford Tree is also know as Cullivers (or Gullivers) Tree or the Music Barrow.

Like many of these lonely places I visited legends have grown around Culliford Tree and it said that if you put your ear to its apex precisely at midday you should hear faery music.

All the pictures included in this blog were taken on earlier visits.

War damage

These photographs were taken of the walls of the Victoria and Albert Museum, Exhibition Road, London. The damage is the result of shrapnel hitting the walls during bombing raids over London in the Second World War.

They are a reminder of the fragility of human society and the recognition that damage like this is disfiguring and destroying buildings today across the world. Worse, it is killing people and forcing the survivors to flee for their lives.

It is a reminder that it can happen anywhere and we should be mindful of our obligations as a part of humanity to reach out and help those in fear of their lives.

Once it was the people living in London. It could be again. Who would we turn to?

St Giles Bicknacre

On a country lane in Essex a few miles south east of Chelmsford a lych gate stands amongst the trees. Behind the lych gate is an almost uniform set of gravestones which reveal a tragic story, but also a story of passion and devoted caring.

The gravestones are the memorials to victims of leprosy who were cared for in a nearby hospital.

Leprosy sounds like it should be from a distant time and place. It feels like a disease from biblical times or in countries far away. However effective treatment was only introduced in the middle of the 20th century and the Hospital & Homes of St. Giles which once stood across the road from this graveyard was established just one hundred years ago specifically to care for sufferers of leprosy.

The hospital was established in 1914 by a group of nuns and alongside the gravestones of the patients there are one or two marking the last resting place of some of their carers as well.

Today the hospital is long gone – although there is still sheltered housing nearby – and the churchyard is now in the care of the Essex Wildlife Trust. It looks like it is still used as a burial site though. When I visited in April 2023 I noticed some new and well-tended gravestones close to the wooden chapel of rest. Some of those graves were for people who had died at far too young an age and, sadly, many of them seemed to be from the same family.

I first came upon the graveyard in the wood when I was exploring the road from my home in London to the St Peter’s Chapel near Bradwell on Sea. The photographs I took on that occasion became a part of the “Riding to the end of the road” project. I returned one afternoon in the spring of 2023; the dots of daffodils around the graves were coming to the end of their season and overhead greenery was just beginning to spring from the branches of the trees.

I still had a long way to cycle – I needed to get back to Shenfield to catch the train back to London but I seemed reluctant to leave this sad but tranquil spot. Somewhere nearby children were playing in some fields and occasionally a vehicle would pass by on the road but otherwise the place was empty save for myself and the birdsong.

I connected with my surroundings in the way I nearly always do – through the viewfinder of my camera, looking out for the details. i focussed in on the blossom on the trese by the chapel, a solitary daffodil standing in a line of crosses, and the lych gate standing alone beneath the trees. There was even the pile of last year’s leaves!

Gradually, gradually I knew I needed to leave this place behind so I returned to my bicycle and, with one final glance, I cycled away.