It has been frenetic this week. After the lows of last week, sitting indoors with a woolly hat on with the heating on – never a good look says Mrs O, I have had to catch up on slipped deliverables for the extended shoot of Edgelands.
One morning spent frozen to the bone and then another anchoring my tripod and wondering whether there was too much weather, and then bliss, sheer bliss. Friday morning dawned and the forecast rain had passed on in the night so it was all 10 sheets of Portra 400 exposed and then off to Redwood to drop them off and collect the negatives that I had been sitting on since 3rd February. The tedious 40mph A12 roadworks when there aren’t any during the day plus economising on fuel usage ( I need as much as I can for getting on location) have made me ration my trips to the lab.I wholly endorse restricted sppeds in roadworks but it does grate when the works only take place at night. I am surprised at how many vehicle drivers are not good at numbers though. I slip into cruise control and rest my right foot, then some idiot speeds past me then sees a bat type camera and jumps in front to slow down to 30. Now that irritates me but I do wonder if the cameras are working especially as the road rage attack by one driver on another car this week has left the police asking for help. If these cameras are active, then every car of a certain make is registered on entering the zone and leaving it. Maybe that is why so many HGVs speed through regardless of the limit?

Enough of this. Onto the images.

An affluent area.

There was a time when we were courting that coming up to Suffolk was like entering a foreign land especially with all the American forces based here. A visit to Woodbridge in the late 1970’s saw me losing my spare set of car keys that were traced back to my last home in Liverpool. I wonder if the police do that these days?
Woodbridge and Ipswich suffered somewhat when RAF Woodbridge and Bentwaters closed up shop. No end of let property was empty and other businesses failed. I don’t know if the Melton end of town was a casualty of troop withdrawal but this huge site was once a flourishing employer. Previously I had made images here mid-morning with more light but the shortly after sunrise shot sums up the forlornness of the place for me.

Another pre-dawn foray to Stowmarket took place on the 15th. Sunday is the only time I can park up just off the clearway but I am torn as to which of these goes into the final edit.

A mid week excursion here produced no leads so I retraced my steps back to Great Blakenham to Paper Mill Lane. This is either a morning or afternoon location. I have only made images here in the afternoon but the incinerator has been calling me to photograph it for a while now. Apparently all of Ipswich’s bagged domestic refuse is burnt to less than a cinder here to generate power. This is a direct result of the introduction of Landfill Tax – a system I helped legislate and design for in the late 1990s. I don’t know what happens to unbagged rubbish such as fly-tipped refuse.

Often when Mrs O and I take a run out to Woodbridge and beyond we take the scenic route through Bealings and that takes us onto the old A12. This road got detrunked in the time I have lived here but for the life of me I cannot remember when but there is a spot on this road that I have been meaning to photograph for many many months and I got around to it this week. The first shoot was medium format only as I considered it too windy for the big ones to come out. All 10 of those won’t be out of the can until next Wednesday.

Obviously I will have to cull some of these images but I have always said since moving up here in 1981 that February on a sunny day is hard to beat in Suffolk.

It turns out that I may have just got this place in time as a Great Crested Newt habitat survey is scheduled to take place here from next week as part of bring power on shore from an off-shore windfarm.

Timing is everything. I have high hopes for the latent large format images.