I noticed the different coloured glass insulators on a power line near my brother’s house in Joondalup. They had obviously(?) been replaced through time, but with unmatched types that were in stock. The background was a block of flats in Perth W.A. that were illuminated by the sun in way that was dramatic. This of course is a photo that is unrelated to the principal subject. I have filled the blue sky in the original photo of the flats, with the same colour of the building, which is probably not apparent to you. I have distorted the pylon to slant with the rake of the building and enhance the composition. I think the result makes for a very strong and energetic picture.
Concrete Slabs
Walking on the parapet footpath along the Yarmouth beach, one goes under the Britannia Pier. The path slopes up to the Anchor Gardens. The serrated concrete pad (to give pedestrians some grip on the incline) was illuminated by the low lying sun, and worth a photograph. I had a vision, of using the image and contrasting it with a thin blue horizon at the top. One thing led to another, and I finally ended up with this picture which evolved from that simple idea.
James Brett
I took this photo of James as I was leaving the pub. It was the first time I met him. I hope I can say, we went on to be good friends. The legend reads; ‘Some Old Bloke Sitting In A Pub Smoking A Cigar Whilst Reading The Obituaries In The Paper By The Window Holding On To His Glass Of Red Wine At A Table By The Door’. The pub was Micawbers Tavern on Pottergate in 2005. I came up with the idea of describing the scene, and wrote it in one take. Extraordinary picture, extraordinary guy.
Curved
I came across the dramatic shadow being cast by the public seating in Lowestoft, that was overlooking the beach below. I think it was Victorian because of its style. To set the bench against an unusual backdrop, I eventually settled on the beachside promenade in Yarmouth. I am always contrary, and thought by turning the image upside down, it would create a dynamic narrative. I turned up the colour saturation to offset the monochrome seat and shadow. The last thing I did was to put the flared reflection on the armrest.
Crash Chrome Yellow
Whilst eating my sandwich on a bench outside the Yarmouth Council building, I noticed a section of pedestrian protective railings at a road crossing. It looked as if quite a few vehicles had crashed into it! There were two sections, both badly mangled. What was most interesting, was the shadow they cast, like a mirror image due to the bright sunlight. I photographed the two lengths separately, with a view to stitching them together in the computer, but found it difficult, so I just used one. I created the shadow artificially. Just along the road (South DenesRd.) it is an industrial area dealing with the gas fields offshore. In one manufacturing compound was a very large fabricated structure painted yellow. I suppose it was a frame made of box steel. There were gaps through the frame which I have filled in with a flat yellow plane.
In The Hot Seat
Another concoction of disparate items assembled together, which strangely become compatible (eh?). In the background is the vent exhaust and fuselage of a Harrier VTOL jet that is exhibited at the City of Norwich Aviation Museum in Horsham St. Faiths, near the airport. I added the clip fasteners from a mobile cafe that was closed and secured for the night. I can’t remember where I found the discarded chair, but I liked it because of its broken strut (I added the splintering), and how it had been used for spray painting something, hence the blue circle. Imagine sitting in the chair whilst the Harrier was taking off..(geddit?).
Untitled No.55
This is a closeup photograph of an aeroplane from the Aviation Museum at Norwich Airport. It is an Avro RJ85, and the striking thing about the four engined commercial aircraft, was the empty engine housings. They had obviously removed the engines (for spares?), before donating the plane for exhibition. I eventually tilted the wing and had it flying through a corridor of oil storage units, on Main Cross Rd. in Yarmouth – as you do…To complete the composition, I have added the tail plane section of the same airplane.
Untitled No. 49.2
This is a collage of four different flaked paint surfaces. I liked the colours revealed under the worn upper layers of paint. The top three strata were of boats out of the water by the river at Beccles. They were obviously dry docked for refurbishment. The bottom layer is of an old buoy which is a decorative exhibit on the quay at Kings Lynn, by the Customs House. The dilapidated lifebuoy was still on the wall of a derelict and disused Broads National Park building by the bridge at Beccles.
Untitled No.48
It seems as though I have become fixated with distorted Helter-Skelters (Ref:’Fandango’j; this one being a permanent attraction in Cromer on the Promenade. The structure includes the white roof of an indoor gaming machines emporium, which the ride stands above. The dial is something I created from scratch, at the last minute, to compliment the composition and distract the eye… Next to these is the Lady Julian Bridge in Norwich. I had to distort the towers to reflect the flow of the picture. I changed the sky from the slightly hazy to the more interesting…..
Walk Into My Parlour
This is the Ferris wheel on the beach front in Yarmouth. I cut away the spaces between the spokes, which took a very long time! I then looked for a background and eventually found one of the photos I took of the Eastern Edge Complex at Lowestoft. These are newly built beach huts (see ‘Lowestoft Beach Huts’ in the Abstract category). They seemed to give the picture some depth. The top half of the photo was the beach, which I didn’t like. The man walking was good but he was partly hidden by the wheel, so I moved him. I substituted the beach for the plain net curtains in my bedroom, and then ‘swirled’ the image to reflect the curve of the wheel. “Will you walk into my parlour? said the spider to the fly” the famous poem by Mary Hewitt 1829.