30 Days of Biking

One of my finds from last year's 30 Days of Biking challenge. I'd have ridden this trail at some point, I suppose, but thanks to the challenge, I got around to it more quickly.

Last year, I participated in a fun little event called "30 Days of Biking". The essentials of this are that you pledge to ride every day of the month (in a month with 30 days in, naturally), record your rides (at the time, this happened on Daily Mile, and was one of the reasons I have an account there), and tweet/blog/flickr/whatever about them as the mood took you.

I confess, it's a fairly easy challenge to do if you ride in to work every day - as I already had a habit of riding on Sundays, I just had to figure out how to justify/fit in a ride on Saturday.

From the year I did the "Photo a Day" Challenge on film - it's like riding fixed, for photographers.

This year, 30 Days of Biking takes place in April - it's bigger, with a fair amount of social media buzz going on around it. Predictably, the naysayers have popped up too, to ask what the point is, to deride the idea that anyone *wouldn't* ride every day anyway, why it's not held in a "harder" month, and so on.

So what is the point of 30 Days of Biking?

Yellow - a shot I'd taken lots of times, in lots of formats - all you need is the weather.

Let me offer an analogy. Back when I had more time for it, I was a keen photographer, and one of the things I used to participate in was a "Photo a Day" challenge in July. Now I was purely a hobbyist, and no one was stood over me demanding my day's output - any pressure was solely self imposed. I have to confess that some days were easy - I was already at an interesting location, or I had my shot for the day planned - this building (above) for example, was a picture I'd rehearsed, and simply went back to take.

"World of My Garden" became a recurring theme on days when inspiration failed.

But the interesting days were the ones where my plans fell apart, or were non-existent to start with. And it was here that I felt the pressure of the challenge, and from that produced some of my better pictures (in my opinion, that is).

My daughter in "Why Princesses Wear Crowns" still one of my favourite pictures, and one I'd never have taken if not for the photo a day challenge.

I think that's what 30 days of biking has to offer to you - it'll be easy to ride on the days that you planned to, or do ride on already. Some of those rides may turn out better than you thought, like the planned pictures I had did (sometimes) in my photo challenge. But what will you do on the days you'd not normally ride? That recovery ride you know is a good idea, but somehow never get around to? Trying to do more errands with the bike, instead of using the car? Trying a commute, if you don't already? One day, you could point your bike in a direction, and simply see where it takes you.

In my case, I rode errands on the Brompton and released the Surly Long Haul Trucker from commuting duty to explore the local trails too rough for the SCR2.0 to handle. Generally, my experience of 30 Days of Biking was that it quickly turned a sense of having to ride (to satisfy the challenge's requirements) into having fun, exploring new places, and generally getting more out of my cycling.

If you already ride every day, your rides could inspire others, or give them some idea of what kind of things to do if they're running out of ideas. If you don't, you could find that the challenge is the inspiration you needed to try different sorts of riding, head for that trail, or that route you always wanted to, but somehow never get around to.

If you want to know more, Road.cc has an article here, and the UK 30 Days of biking facebook page is here.

Posted via email from monkeyphoto's posterous

NUMBER ONE

It's not often I can make that claim, but this photograph of mine;

 

Is A WINNER. It's number one in Google searches for "Monkey 6880". Whilst this is undeniably a small category, I shall now claim to be an SEO EXPERT, social marketing guru, and all that other guff people decide they are on (what seems to me to be) slimmer justification than this.

If you're interested in the other pictures from this trip, they're here, along with some explanation of what I was doing in the engine shed.

Posted via email from monkeyphoto's posterous

Hipstamatic

Y is for Yellow, originally uploaded by John the Monkey.

Back when I still accounted myself a photographer, one of the joys of the hobby was taking expired film, and running it through an old camera.



It's a joy, because, as with film photography in general, you don't know quite what will emerge at the end. (As an aside, the uncertainty is slightly overstated, with "fresh" film, you can largely predict the way it handles colour and tone, although you can't instantly review all that and change what you do on the spot).

I once tore a film inside a Minolta A5 - then exposed it to light by opening the camera back, so I processed it in the wrong chemicals for practice, and some of the results were very pleasing. Although at the time, I'd fully expected to get a blank roll from it.

Even then, there were plug ins, and programs that would take a digital shot and ape the look of expired films, and clunky "toy" cameras. And of course now, we have the ironically titled "Hipstamatic" for iPhones, that seems to ape a sort of cross processed, Holga-esque idiom, whilst similarly missing the point as the photoshop "film look" plugins did.

If you like hipstamatic, why not pick up an old 35mm camera, and some cheap film and try the real thing? The results might surprise you.

Rememberance of Beers Past

Or things I wish I was Doing, I suppose.



Cheadle Hulme.



Prague.



Heald Green.



Rouen.



Wheelock.

STUFFE

ME


I've managed to get around to sorting out some photographs (from 2007!) - if you're interested, there are four more "new" ones in my flickr stream.

THE ENVIRONMENT
Or at least, that's HIS excuse. This comic from The System also features one of the neatest ways of representing pant-lessness iconographically I've seen.


BARBIE BARBIE
I knew about Plastic Peloton People, but somehow Barbie Barbie had entirely passed me by. It's

"a photo-comic inspired by cyclist Heinrich Haussler--nicknamed "Barbie"--featuring him, other members of the pro peloton, and Barbie doll herself. I created Barbie Barbie to help get through the last cycling off-season, and continue to produce episodes, although less frequently, now that the season is back in gear."

THE RAS
There's details of the first stage results of Ireland's FBD Ras over at Cycling Weekly, there are no second stage results because of a collision between riders and a jeep pulling onto the course which resulted in the stage being neutralised. The Ras' own site is here, including galleries from the current and previous editions, and a nice section "Stories of the Ras".

I'd also highly recommend Jack Thurston's Bikeshow programme about the Ras, which is here.

PSYCH COMMUTER BAG
Reviewed by bikecommuters.com, the Psych commuter bag is a different take on the frame bag. It's interesting, but is any solution for commuting luggage more elegant that Brooks + Carradice? I'm also fairly certain that my knees would rub the Psych bag and that would drive me crazy. I'm very jealous of the organiser pockets inside though, one of the few things I'd add to my Lowsaddle longflap, given the chance.

JAMES HINDLE
Drawn.ca featured "Little Wolves" on its site recently - click through to James' site and you can read his other stories - "Unsettled" in particular is a fantastic series.

JEALOUSY

"The Dirty Kanza takes place in a few weeks down in Emporia, Kansas. It is a 200-mile gravel grinder through an area called the Flint Hills. We're sending the Dirty Six...plus Lucky Seven...to take it on.

Each of these guys has his own motivations, and his own fears, for this event. Today they introduce themselves, their goals for the DK 200."

Which is all very interesting - however, what made me green with envy was the look at the setups the "Dirty Six" are riding - lovely stuff, the article is here, and the droolmaking pics begin down the page.

STUFFE

One panel from "One Day in July"

ONE DAY IN JULY
This piece will be in Rouleur 18, and is the work of Richard Mitchelson (find his blog here). It's a wonderful piece, and I love the way the panel reproduced here captures the colour and motion of the race. Richard continues to make Rouleur an essential purchase every time I decide I'm going to skip an issue, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the rest of "One Day in July".

BICYCLE PORTRAITS SOUTH AFRICA
Covered on Urban Velo, "Bicycle Portraits South Africa" is the project of photographer Stan Engelbrecht and Nic Grobler. They've taken pictures of their fellow south African bike commuters with their rides, and hope to finance a book of the portraits via Kickstarter. As ever with this sort of work,a large part of the interest for me is in how the subjects choose to present themselves. You can see the photographs, and sign up to support the publication if you wish here.

VELO CLUB DON LOGAN
How can you not Rofl at this?

"I conjured my inner Belgian. Perhaps Filip Meirhaeghe (on or off the juice) or Bart Bretjens? (No, Bart's Dutch.) Tornado Tom on the cobbles or maybe even late-era Eddy? Alas, my inner Belgian would appear to have been standing on the first climb at Houffalize, eating frites, drinking beer and abusing other riders..."

From a race report in parts beginning with part one here.

GIRO D'ITALIA
Cosmo at Cyclocosm continues to bring it with his commentary - he looks over the momentous stage 11 in this post.

"I’ve heard riders complain about conditions before, but never in the terms that came up yesterday. The train of haggard human wreckage that trickled across the finish line on Stage 11 was enough, at least for a few hours, to inspire faith in clean bike racing."

THINGS I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SEE WRITTEN DOWN
From the Velo Orange Blog;

"I think white Pasela these tires look really cool, especially if you ride in a Panama hat."

FLOYD
I'm still getting my head around all this.

There's a good round up at the Cozy Beehive blog of the story so far, and the Velocast have recorded a special edition of their podcast covering the revelations so far. I'd recommend both.

STUFFE

INFOGRAPHICS/BICYCLES
From Flowing Data, one of my favourite infographic and data visualisation blogs comes this round up of Good Magazine's Neighbourhood Infographics competition. The winning infographic is about biking in Minneapolis - I particularly like the "Sightings" of different sorts of cycle.

PHOTOGRAPHY
From Brendadada out of off of Twitter, this amazing set of wedding photos shot on 35mm film.

Link on Fredmiranda Forums

I used to love using Black and white film, and although I've shot the occasional "Once in a lifetime" set using it, I don't think I'd have the bottle to do something as high stakes as a wedding. shows how digital has spoiled us, I guess.

PHONES
Get better battery life from your N97 Mini. Smartphones EAT batteries - especially if you're using the GPS to track your rides, the internet to faff about on twitter, &c This article gives you a little checklist of things you can do to prolong battery life.

Also, if you have an S60 Phone, want to use GPS to track running, cycling, walking, ski-ing (you get the idea) and don't yet have Nokia's Sports Tracker, you should grab it.

The new release on SymbianTweet's site.

Sportstracker for 3rd Edition Devices.

The last Beta Labs 5th Edition Release.

BIKE LIGHTS
Ok, it's a bit early to start thinking about this in this hemisphere, but Treadly & Me has written a good article on bike lights that you can read here.

LOVELY BIKES
Bicycle Design has this, pointing you towards the Tyrell company and their rather nice looking road bike. The frame is based on the slant frame of their 20" mini velo frames. It makes for a striking looking bike.

Tyrell Bikes.

SKETCHING/INSPIRATION
From Drawn! comes this idea - take your favourite book, turn to p.100, draw it.

The original article has what more talented people than I have done with the idea. I'll try to get my head around it and post what I come up with.

Signs

Signs, originally uploaded by John the Monkey.

This assemblage of trackside stuff (sorry, I don't know the correct terminology) caught my eye on the way out of the workshops, and I thought it worthy of a photo.

I like the tones, and the shapes very much, and although the colours were nicely rusty, I think the B&W treatment via Ilford HP5+ suits it (good job too, as this is the only shot I took). This shot also marks a return to metered exposure, as it was taken after the shot of 6880's cab (below).


6880, originally uploaded by John the Monkey.

This shot shows the cab of 6880, Betton Grange. This is an unusual project, as so far as I understand, this loco never existed. None of the Great Western "Grange" class locomotives escaped the cutters torch. So the 6880 society is building this Grange class engine as a new build - you can find more information here. (Note that their website is undergoing some work, so not all linked content exists - their "About Us" page, which I've linked to here, does though).


Pro Patria, originally uploaded by John the Monkey.

Sometimes, it's nice to be reminded of a simple thing's virtue - this was shot with the 50mm f/1.8 AF-N. Not bad for £60 worth of second hand lens.

Llangollen seems to be popular with riders of scooters and motorcycles alike, and this patriotically decorated Lambretta caught my eye.


Museum, originally uploaded by John the Monkey.

Lastly, here's something from along the canal towpath, another view of the Llangollen Motor Museum's fuel tank, advertising their presence to the traveller.

More Parr

The Best Side, originally uploaded by John the Monkey.

Those of you who read the Magnum Blog have probably seen this already, but Martin Parr has a piece on there musing on our need to be photographed.

"These days, people photograph one another so prolifically and with such enthusiasm that I often wonder whether they actually look at any of the things they are visiting."

The photos illustrating the article are far better than those illustrating mine too.

How's it Look?, originally uploaded by John the Monkey.

Some Context

The Notice

There is something of a story behind this set of shots, so rather than write it in the descriptions on flickr, I thought I'd offer it here. I have an uneasy relationship with context in photography (which I'll hopefully expand on at some point on these very pages) and won't force you to see the shots with back story if you don't want to.

Some time ago, my Father purchased shares issued by the Llangollen Great Western Railway Group in the resoration of a steam locomotive.


5532

This very locomotive, in fact, No. 5532. It's currently in the process of restoration, and one of the things the Railway Society does from time to time is hold an open day for shareholders to see the progress so far. These are guided by the volunteers carrying out the work. Dad was kind enough to invite me along to this one, and I had the chance to take some pictures as we were shown the engine and workshop.

The workshop itself was tremendously impressive, as was the dedication and hard work put in by the volunteers.

The light was less so, with my meter indicating speeds of between 1/15s and (rarely) 1/125s, this with my Vivitar Series One lens wide open at f/2.8! (I'd chosen to use a zoom because some places in the workshop are dangerous, so the old prime + shoeleather zoom technique would have been inadvisable).

I put my faith in the exposure latitude of HP5+ and shot at a constant 1/125s to try and ensure sharpness. In development, I gave the film a one stop push to 800 in Ilfotec DD-X, hoping it wouldn't affect the stuff shot on meter for 400ISO too badly, and would lift the underexposed shots sufficiently to make them usable. It seems to have worked out pretty well.


The Workshop

In closing, I should thank my Dad for inviting me along, the volunteers at Llangollen for their hard work and perhaps Ilford for HP5+ :)

Larger versions of the shots, and development information can be found by clicking the images.

Weekly Competition - Year Two, Week 38

The Gate, originally uploaded by John the Monkey.

One of the things I try to do when I have film processed in time, or a suitable digital shot to hand, is enter the DVD Forums' weekly photography competition. One of the great things about this is the motivation it gives to pick up the camera and go out looking for things to photograph, although with 3 or 4 films still to scan, that motivation doesn't seem to be lacking here at the moment.

This week's entry is the shot above, "The Gate". Over the week that this picture has been voted on, I've warmed to it somewhat. I submitted this because I'd not processed the roll of HP5+ with the shots I had in mind as my first choices on it, my Elitechrome 100 was still at the lab and this was the strongest digital contender.

Whilst the shot has some elements usually to be found in the stuff I shoot (the idea of a landscape, but with things that are not conventionally beautiful in it, and the use of a wide angle to accentuate perspective), when I decided to submit it, this picture was very much a second choice. Perhaps with that in mind, I gave it a bit of a clichéd treatment, with a moody B&W conversion, and even a frame (something I never, ever do).

At the time, and probably blinded by the fact that my first choices were still undeveloped), I saw it as a rather predictable, crowd pleasing picture, although it did end up garnering a third place.

I have to confess that I still don't like it as much as "Pegs or "Path" (or for that matter, other entries that have sunk without trace in the voting, which probably says as much about my eye for a shot as anything else) but I don't actually dislike it anymore.

The picture was taken in Carrog on the other side of the Carrog Bridge. Walking back from the viewpoint you see in the shot, there's a large field that's ideal for sitting by the river and letting the world go by.

My children and neices spent a happy hour skimming stones instead though.

Meaning

Mothers' Day, originally uploaded by John the Monkey.

One of the themes I'm fascinated by in photography is the idea that one can impart knowledge without showing the obvious representations of the idea being communicated.

I took this shot in March, and it's of a simple planter that my daughter made for my wife. They have always been close, but my wife's illness last year seems to have cemented the bond between them in a new way, and invariably the bulk of Katie's creative output is dedicated to her mother.

If this shot conveys anything, I hope it's something of that bond between mother and daughter.

Martin Parr Interview

26th July 2006, taken with Nikon D70, Nikkor 18-70mm

I first encountered Martin Parr through a comment Guy made on this picture, and I've tried self-conciously to incorporate part of his aesthetic to my work with varying degrees of success.

I'd like to point you in the direction of this superb interview/discussion with Martin Parr, which I happened across at Jeorg Colberg's Conscientious (who had in turn found it at What's the Jackanory, who also have a couple of good pieces about the show referred to in the discussion). The file is 44mb, and runs for about 1hr 16minutes - it's well worth listening to the entire thing, as Parr is a very engaging speaker indeed, and seems to have a good handle on the issues around citizen journalism and the democratisation of photography in general.

The photo above, by the way, was taken as part of last year's DVD Forums photograph a day project. My work from it is in the set here. It all looks a bit lightweight, compared to the 365 people, but it felt like a tough month at the time :) I can't help thinking that this July is not far away at all....

Breakfast of Champions

Vivitar 35ES, Fuji Superia 100, Lab Processed

Another shot from the Vivitar 35ES rangefinder.

It doesn't look half bad here, tbh.

Maybe it's time for a truce.

The Vivitar 35ES and I

Vivitar 35ES, Fuji Superia 100, Lab Processed

Perhaps two rolls is too short an acquaintance, but try as I might, I simply can't get on with this little compact rangefinder.

It's not that it's shutter priority, because the automation on my current favourite compact camera (the Canonet QL19 GIII) is shutter priority too, as was the Ricoh 500G, another favourite. It's not that the camera is too big, as I've carried 'round the chunkier Minolta Hi-Matic 7s and Canonet QL19.

I'm not sure what it is, but somehow my composition on this camera turns out "baggy", the contrast from the lens is lacking and the colour rendition seems (to me) to be left in the shade by the crisp reproduction of the other rangfinders I've used.

Which is a shame - because in the hand, this is a nice, solid feeling little camera, and one I was excited to be able to get hold of, having heard great things of it. In fact, one of my flickr contacts (Rueno) used one to great effect.

Maybe I need more time with it, although that's time I could be spending with little miss canonet... :)

Canon Canonet QL19 GIII,
Ilford HP5+
Ilford Ilfotec LC29 (1+29), 9mins @ 20°c, 4 inversions each minute