These days I ask that question a lot and it is not just police that seem to be younger than me, most people are. Not only are the police I have had to deal with of late younger, much younger than me there are very much fewer of them compared to years ago and I’m sure that is not nostalgia talking but one of cutbacks after cutbacks imposed on local services for far too many years. I cannot imagine May being able to rustle up bus loads of police to stem a legitimate strike such as Thatcher did regardless of how despicable those confrontations were, as successive governments in equal measure have eroded public spending with impunity. I would have liked a few extra police resources though in recent months.

I have re-worked some of the latent images I got back from Peak the other week. I’m slowly getting my mojo back from a very disturbed and disturbing Autumn and working with film gives me a sense of grounding that also has an element of permanence albeit still a fragile one compared to storing images on magnetic media.

As I have said before, I re-visit my shoot locations on a regular basis and this was a departure from standard with the Edgelands series in that this was a visit made in the full swing of a British summer and I almost like the images I made in that they are quite, quite different to my normal look and feel. Shot on Kodak Portra 160 downrated to 125, the film has coped admirably with the dynamic range presented to me.

Seeing this red tricycle reminded me of one of my earliest recollections of fly-tipping in a country lane between Maghull and Lydiate in what was Lancashire in the 50s and 60s. Only then it was a red child’s pedal car dumped in a ditch. That car got rescued and found a new lease of life but what of this tricycle and where oh where has the toxic waste battery been dumped?

The very first medium format image I made for the Edgelands series had a Coke can in it, they are everywhere, almost omnipotent in terns of tossed waste. I’m not a big Coke fan, preferring cloudy ginger beer and I hardly ever see those cans tossed at these locations. I’m sure they are, but maybe they are  tossed by a different type of tosser.

One of my post-production issues here has been dealing with the relative pinkness of the concrete foreground but on balance the rest of the image renders more or less as accurately as I can vouch for. Concrete does take on the predominant colour of the sand in the mix. This image has to be one of my favourites from the summer of experimentation. I think I will have to extend this next year.