Northumberland- a blast from the past!

Memory is serendipity. The last post was on Hogwarts, and that got me thinking to Alnwick castle, to Northumberland, where we went on holiday many years ago. And that brought memories flooding back. What a place! Big empty space – lots of room to breathe. I loved it.

Bamburgh, big, deserted, sands.

This is where the family split themselves laughing as I got caught by a wave – a big one, soaked me, too intent on my Bronica to notice the tide; where the kids were scared to venture out in the open top boat until we got to the Farne Islands – surrounded by puffins in the air and seals in the water; and where we visited the Poison Garden in the castle, where every plant can kill you…

puffin on the run

This place is wild & deserted, not so easy anymore in the UK. Sit on this bench and you can still imagine the Vikings storming the beach. Might not hang around for long if they did….!

My keenest memory is of dawn at Dunstanburgh castle. My first truly photographic moment. I knew the photo I wanted to take, and had got up early to catch it. And blow me down, there were two people on the beach already when I got there. The cheek! I marched up next to them, set up the tripod and claimed the spot. Then I started to recognise one of the interlopers. Bloody hell, I’d barged in on no other photographic guru than Joe Cornish, and I’d virtually shoved him out of the way….! Too late, the beach and the snap was mine.

Dunstanburgh, at dawn.

(I’ve met Joe since. He doesn’t remember me, but I remember him…) Swiftly, I moved elsewhere…

Holy Island

But what of the family? They remember none of this. They remember running on beaches, laughing together. And these are surely the more important moments. They will mean nothing to anyone else, but they mean everything to me. Northumberland – fotos, fun and laughter.

(My 101st post. Thanks for reading. Hope you’re enjoyed them. Tom)

Hogwarts iphoneography

Time to test myself – can I take a photograph without the beast cameras, the A99 or the Leica? What happens if I fall back on the iPhone? Will I end up with a series of snappy snaps, or some keepers for the blog? So this weekend I deliberately put the high tech away, and charge up my phone (good job I did, the battery life is rubbish!)

I needed some wizardry, so Hogwarts was the right place to come. And what a place! It really is for all the family – the kids are obsessed with the story, and the adults find the transformation of the sets into the film quite, well, magical…

in the Great Hall

Gryffindor common room

Of course, as we delve deeper into the stories of the 7 books, 8 films (OMG, so many!?!?) the kids raise the inevitable question of which characters we family members best represent. Given that I have a boy and a girl, the kids’ choices are pretty obvious…

Immy naturally sees herself as Hermione

Did Hermione wear a wig?!

Charles would like to be a Harry figure (although he could easily be a Weasley…)

Weasley jokes

Mrs P chooses Bellatrix Lestrange as her alter ego. Now that does worry me slightly, although it means she gets to wear leather and lace…

Bellatrix costume

And then the family vote on me. I don’t really stand a chance, and get nominated for He Who Should Not Be Named. Quite unfair I think, given that I don’t instil fear in anyone. I have a suspicion they’re basing their choice on Voldemort’s lack of hair…

Tom Riddle’s tomb stone

I guess I’m glad they don’t make me a death eater.

The attention to detail in the costumes and the models is quite amazing.

Pink is the colour

Ministry of Magic

Godrick’s Hollow

monsters everywhere!

The best character in the books is the school – and here we find out how they bring it to life in the films, via green screens and this huge model. Amazing.

Hogwart’s itself!

Clearly I need to get myself a wand (unicorn and blackthorn would be my choice) and get myself back to the real world…

1 wand for everyone involved in making the films = 17,000 in total!

Oh, and the camera…? Well, what do you think? S’pose it’s ok for a point/shoot, but for sheer pleasure of making a photo, give me my Leica any day!

Spring is sprung, at last

At last, the blackthorn is in full bloom! One of the sights of spring. This year it’s late, of course, but better late then never.

Blackthorn in all its splendour

I’ve been to take photographs in this spot every year for the last decade or so. It’s become a ritual. Part of my spring.

against the light

Early morning is best. The dew is still on the grass, occasionally still frost. But the sun lights up the bushes and they glow.

detail

The flowers have a delicate scent, again, best experienced on a bright early Sunday morning.

vanishing point

The dog walkers were out in force this morning. Even in some pretty remote fields I was bumping into people frequently. Everybody is so relieved that the weather is finally improving – a chance to get out into the fresh air.

gap in the hedgerow

detail

Even so, hang around too long and the inevitable happens. Mind you, a shower makes for a good photograph!

caught by the storm

New York Faces

People pictures. Why do we take them? To capture the moment of course. A 60th of a second pinpoints a memory. Last week I posted images of New York cityscapes. This week NY figures and faces. New memories.

Face of NY

I know they’re just snappy snaps, moments when the family indulges me and my camera, or doesn’t notice that I’m pointing it in their direction, again.

the wannabe actress

all round dude, who’s stolen my hat, again…

happy grandparents

for once, I’m in this one – feels strange….!

tourists in NYC

I did try to do some abstracty shots of the real locals – but to do this sort of photography justice takes time and patience, and works better when the rest of the family isn’t groaning in impatience when I pull out the camera…

Bubble man

shoppers in the apple store

New York Face

New York Figures

NY hot lips, I just couldn’t resist…

I was here as a kid, 35 years ago with my parents. We did the same things, we climbed the towers to look at the views. Powerful memories that mean much to me. There are some photos, but not many. Film photography didn’t lend itself to the ubiquitous click click of the modern age. In effect there are more memories being created now than ever before. The kids aren’t bothered about these shots now, but maybe they will be in 35 years from now….

What a view!

Lucky kids, admiring the view

Rockefeller Centre – while they do this, we drink cocktails!

New York dudette

So here’s to the modern photographic process and its ability to make memories. On the whole, it’s gotta be a good thing!

New York Mama

If you liked this post, check out: New York, no bruised Apple here… or the other US posts – click on the archive on the right hand side. Enjoy!

New York – no bruised Apple here…

November ’12: Mrs P was all set to run the New York marathon. So it felt only right that we should all get on a plane and go and support her. After all, that’s what families do…. – that’s our excuse anyway, so off we went to the Big Apple. Hurray!

Manhattan skyline

However, Hurricane Sandy had other ideas about 15,000 x 26 milers, and got in the week before the race to smack the city black and blue.

Limp crane

don’t look up…

New Jersey devastation

but blimey, it’s still a good looking cityscape!

The mayor couldn’t make up his mind: first the race was still on, then finally it was off. The right decision too – far too many people still without power to divert all that manpower into directing a race. But Mrs P wasn’t too concerned. That left more time on 5th Av and Madison…

Spent far too much time (money) here

What was really impressive was how welcoming the locals were! No matter that they had to walk or bike in to their jobs in the city – the Subway was still flooded – they weren’t complaining, not to the tourists anyway. “We need you, welcome! Wall Street ain’t functioning, you’re our only income. Don’t stay away, don’t feel you shouldn’t enjoy yourselves. Spend those dollars, you are our lifeblood!!!” That’s pretty much a direct quotation from our Circle Line guide, who kept up the patter all way round Manhattan peninsula.

peekaboo!

Steichen homage

Modernism at its best

Rockefeller Doorway

The Chrysler building is my favourite. Iconic in a city full of icons. (Someone tell me – how do I get permission to go up to take a picture of the griffin/gargoyles from close up? A photographic dream of mine! Seriously – how do I achieve this…?)

A beauty!

Unmistakeable

Compare and contrast…

Central Park should have been the climax of the marathon, and a glorious setting it would have been too. As soon as the sun shone, so did the park, resplendent in its autumn (fall!) colours (colors!!)

Classic view of the park

Another classic view of the park

And another classic view of the park…!

So, a big thank you to the Big Apple for the marvellous welcome you gave us. We forgive the over-abundance of flags and the misspelling of the English language. Can’t wait to come back, although I think I shall confiscate Mrs P’s credit card before she hits the shops again….

Central Station

Another classic – every which way you look!

Larger than life.

(Next week – NY portraits, because as you can see from these pix here, the city was deserted…)

Close shave in the Dolomites…

Feb half term is the annual family skiing holiday. A week of fun and adventure. Stories that we will talk about forever.

Sun and snow

It all started at the airport. You know what SqueezyJet check in is like. Well, our group was 12 in total and the others had already been in line for 45 minutes by the time the Peck foursome turns up. Of course, we go to greet our companions, and somehow manage to jump the whole queue. Much dark muttering amongst the early morning seething mass. How to antagonise the Brits – jump a queue…

The kids are getting good!

Free the mountain!

Charles and skiing have clicked. One private lesson for a couple of hours and he’s accelerated so fast I can’t keep up with him anymore. He announces “I’m a responsible skier” at lunch, and promptly smacks into his Mum, wiping her out in the afternoon.  Blimey he goes fast – the confidence of youth!

I think he’s contemplating the perfect line…

Ah, to be young again…

Charles and fans

The girls are rocking the ski school. 3 girls, and 3 champions, all winning trophies in their respective classes (phew! what would have happened if 2 won, and 1 didn’t…?)

Champions

Looking cool on the slopes

Felix is chief mischief maker for the week, principally by refusing to ski. Mind you, he is only 3. His parents keep on dancing.

Felix, almost skiing.

Swinging to the umpah music

A week’s fun in the Dolomites, and then, out of the blue, near disaster. Our transfer bus back to the airport gets hit by an avalanche at the top of the pass. The bus slews round and halts. We’re at the edge of the avalanche. Had we been 50 yards further on …., it doesn’t bear thinking about. We’re stuck until the snow plough can dig us out. We miss the plane. But no matter. We know we’ve been incredibly lucky.

Snow plough digging us out

Every cloud has a silver lining – in our case we have a day to kill in Venice whilst we wait for the next plane. Nothing like a close shave to make you appreciate the moment! And a family story, to last forever.

Enjoy every day!

Spraypaint arty wildness in Shoreditch

“I need a photograph of the hedgehog in Shoreditch. You can’t miss it, it’s massive…”

Well, I’m not one to turn down a chance to get out the camera, and hey, this is almost a commission! So I head off to Shoreditch and get searching for the ‘hog. But this is Banksy’s back streets, so my eye gets caught by the wonderful graffiti and now I’m firing off shots in all directions…

Black tears

Big nose

Balaclava and shades

It’s like an outdoor art gallery, full of colour, weird perspective and eyes that follow you everywhere. And this all on a dreary Saturday morning with the drizzle mizzling (come on Spring, hurry up!)

I’m watching you…

No, I’M watching you!

These two were hilarious – they stood there for ages reading the sign…

Be useful!

This is of course trendy London. Uber-cool. Not necessarily my most natural haunt, but I do my best to fit in. (Not hard – 10am on a wet morning, the place is still deserted…). Red Indian isn’t feeling the cold however.

Club Row

Naughty, naughty

Grrr

Scrummy Vietnamese lunch at the Boxpark Shoreditch (google it – fantastic idea) as I wait for the rain to clear. But hang on, I’ve forgotten something. What about the ‘hog? Where’s the prickly little blighter gone…? Hang on, What’s that? Aha! O yes, definitely a ‘hog, and blimey, he IS massive. Big as a double decker bus. Well, it is London…

Double decker hedgehog

Jewels too huge to lift…, must be Iceland!

I may have mentioned in an earlier post that Iceland is a pretty wild place. As a result I may have suggested that Mrs P, who is a city girl and likes her creature comforts, would not be hugely amused by cold rain-soaked beaches at dawn. I may even have sighed that “there is nothing for my wife here…” But I would have been wrong. I mean – look at the size of these crystals… diamonds the size of bricks!!!

beach bergs

ice diamond

Now what girl isn’t going to get excited by a such a glittering rock! Isn’t this what girls’ dreams are made of…?

abandoned jewel

just lying there, waiting to be found…

Ok, ok, ok. I know that by the time Mrs P had got a jewel like this on her finger it would have melted away into watery nothingness. Let’s say these icy crystals are simply inspiration. They make me think of Swarovski. The size, the colour, the drama – yes, Swarovski!

definitely Swarovski inspiration

If I were a jeweller, I would get myself out here straight away to have a look at these wild and wacky crystals. Form, texture, colour. All on a black beach, stunning….

icy blue glow

crystallised water

Come on Mrs Swarovski! get out to Iceland and check out the jewels. Even better, why don’t you send me to take a whole series of photos for you of wonderful multicoloured ice, smashed by the waves, smoothed by the sun, gleaming and glittering on a beach. I promise you inspiration, and your resulting jewellery would make Mrs P a very happy woman indeed!

beached ice fish

If you liked this post check out these:

Icelife in Iceland

Hunting the Aurora

Hunting the Aurora in the cold…

So there I am, in Iceland, in January, in the freezing cold, darkest winter gloom, wearing 18 layers and still feeling the blast of the wind. It’s -10. Add wind chill factor it’s somewhere near -20. There’s only one reason why you do this… to see the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights. It’s up there on my top 10 to do before I die. And you know what, Iceland mocks us by being cloudy. It delights in cloud…, and rain…. none of which is conducive to watching the Valkyrie ride the sky!

Bitingly cold!

Only crazies do this, but then I do have my moments… And I’ve teamed up with a group of like-minded photo nuts. We are a mixed bunch. A Spanish guide (in Iceland…) plus a Scot, a South African, an Aussie and a Brit. Sod the night sky – we’re up at dawn to take photos of the windswept view. Bracing!

Sunrise

I should qualify what dawn means here. The sun rises at 10am, gains perhaps 10 degrees of height above the horizon, and sinks at 3.45pm. But the dawn and dusk penumbra last for hours – we’re that far north. And it’s beautiful. Blue turning to pink, slowly. Exquisite.

the ‘main’ road at dawn

This is the road that runs around Iceland. It’s pretty basic. Once Reykjavik is left behind the traffic vanishes. We count – roughly one other car per hour. This is true wilderness. There’s simply no-one here. Except us crazies, searching, hoping for the Aurora. If the mornings are clear, the evenings are sure to be cloud covered. But we don’t give up hope. In the meantime we go to…. waterfalls!

Skogafoss

 

Awesome

 

and cold,…

 

Iceland has very sophisticated weather forecasting systems, including a scale which predicts Aurora activity. The scale goes from 0 (nothing happening) to 9 (New Year’s + Bonfire night + Independence day all rolled into one). As the cloudy week progresses we get a forecast of 7 for Thursday night! Jose (he’s the Spaniard, obviously) is ecstatic – this is virtually unheard of! what a show!! Complete awesomeness in the sky!!! We camp out – till 2 in the morning – freezing our nuts off – only for cloud cover to obscure the show. Foiled again. The Gods are against us.

Iceland’s M25

We decide that as we’re in Iceland, land of sagas, we should tell each other stories to keep our hopes up whilst we wait for the elusive Aurora. The Viking spirit – tall tales and moving memories. We should be telling them around a campfire, but we huddle around a thermos flask of hot coffee under cloudy drizzling skies. Where are those blasted Lights!?

Here are our sagas. I leave you to guess which one is mine…. : the youngster amongst us turns out to be a fully qualified pilot (ok, that rules me out, I’m not young, and not a pilot…), one has cycled across South America communing with shepherds and dogs, one retells a real Viking saga of true love between Tristram and Isolt including ordeals by fire, one has just finished caring for handicapped kids on the ski slopes of Austria, and one lost a scarf only for it to be returned to feet by the sheepdog from the next farm the following day… The Aurora are not impressed and still hide behind clouds. We are cold and desperate.

The view from Skogafoss

the road, the light

Our last night and we are almost defeated. But our indefatigable Spanish guide says we must have one last go. So we drive out into the dark countryside late in the night. The forecast is a 1 (…) but the cloud cover is light. Suddenly the sky glimmers and shimmers… the Valkyrie are riding! A green whiplash slicing the sky. Fumble the tripod, focus in the dark, 30 second exposure and hope for the best. Whiplash slice turns to curtains of green. Valkyrie and Valhalla, the Northern Lights streak the sky! The last night, the last chance, at last, we are blessed by the Norse Goddesses. Now, at last, the cold is forgotten and we stand in awe of the Icelandic sky…

Curtain Aurora

Riding Valkyrie!

If you liked this post, don’t forget to read: Icelife in Iceland

Icelife in Iceland

Modern life vanishes. Two and half hours flying north from London, and the city seems a million miles away. All that ‘stuff’, it’s gone. I’m spending a week living in the land of ice, literally…. Iceland.

Mighty glacier, all powerful

Take a closer look to spot the photographer front right on the spit of land – that’s how awesomely massive this landscape view is – there are two of them:

Dwarfed

Ice, glaciers. mountains, rocks, everything is solid & permanent. Time moves at a different pace – glacially you might say… The slowness of time is echoed by sound – at first it seems there isn’t any. But as ears tune in to the tempo, you hear the cracks of the shifting ice. There may be very little sign of human or animal life, but the ice itself is alive. It’s moving, shifting, living and dying.

Crevasse – highly photogenic, highly dangerous

Ice life starts high up in the mountains. The snow falls again and again, compacts and becomes ice. The weight is so heavy the air is forced out and it turns blue. The mighty glacier moves imperceptibly, sometimes is covered in ash, dirt, rocks. Changes colour. Now the ice is brown, red. Crevasses open up. This is not a place for a Sunday afternoon stroll. Fall in, you’re gone.

Boulder trapped in the black ice

The ice is imperious. Nothing can stand in its way. Rocks! Pah! Picked up to be dumped miles away on the plain. At the face of glacier are ice caves. The ice here is striated and contorted, run through with absorbed dirt. It has become multicoloured.

The cave’s maw

Our guide allows us in. And here, in this most awesome of caves, we see the first signs of ice vulnerability. This cave is not permanent. It will not last the year. The stream hints at the ice’s fate.

That stream began to trickle whilst we stood there…

The life of ice is speeding up. Suddenly, imperceptible movement accelerates. Ice carves into the glacial lagoons.

Icebergs in the lake

Ice transforms from awesome majesty into vulnerable beauty. The colours are more transparent and ephemeral.

The glacier is still defiant here

But it is disintegrating

The more it dies, the more beautiful it becomes

Ice being consumed by snow

Pushed out of the lagoon into the ocean, the ice is now pitilessly attacked by the Atlantic waves. Time is short. Once it swept all before it, now it is small and vulnerable, tossed up on the beach, broken and discarded.

Ice washed ashore

How ironic that ice is at its most beautiful now. It becomes exquisite, jewel-like, Swarowski-esque crystals. One last glisten and sparkle on a black beach before it dies and vanishes for good.

Transient jewelry

And then death

But of course, the ice hasn’t died, it has simply mutated. In the fullness of time it will return as snow, and the cycle will begin again, refreshed.

ice to water to ….