I am all fired up at present. It is 5 months until we open a biennial exhibition. I meet up from time to time with other itinerant photographers and we show our work in a public exhibition and it is all go at present preparing advertising material.

Talking of exhibitions, I have struggled to get my head around the new style Guardian and Observer as I don’t know where by favourite bits are yet but Photography found its way into the normal bit I think, with Sean O’Hagan reviewing the Gursky show at the Hayward.

Now then, for years, more years than I care to recall, I had thought of myself as a ‘photographer’ until I went into the Hayward in 1996 to see what all the fuss was about with Mapplethorpe. I was in awe of the quality of the prints and left deflated at my own attempts to make images. I de-classified myself as a photographer on leaving that show.

I was determined to re-learn with a view to becoming better and so it came to pass that by accident of an downturn in the economy, and the scurrilous action of cancelling SME contracts in Central Government, that I went to university studied for an Honours in Photography. I now believe my work is worthy of me using the title Photographer.

Anyway, after thawing out from the early morning large format shoot yesterday, then watching the day descend into murk, sleet and gloom, I was again heartened to see a bright weather window that would get me out reconnoitring viewpoints for my emerging ‘Backside’ series. Somehow I ended up at at Felixstowe and visited Levington, Manningtree and The Strand along the way. It is not often that there an empty berth at the deep water terminal at Landguard but the penny dropped when I got out of the car that this was where that reptilian Minister for Transport broke ground last week for an extended container park.  Another penny dropped with the stacked containers and compressed parking of the cranes. This was almost a collage of gurskyisms (made up word) but without a single bit of digital retouching devilry.

And another penny dropped. I have only ever seen one Gursky in the flesh so to speak and that was a Bahrain Grand Prix image where the track is rehashed and I realised that this is what this current Government seems to constantly do to us, copy, duplicate and paste stuff so that we have lost all touch with reality, and they have no idea with what they started with either.

I am hoping to see the Gurksy show regardless of the digital jiggery pokery. Now this image is natural, nothing added, two dust spots removed though – a form of jiggery pokery I admit but everything is as it was.