From Canterbury to Bury St Edmunds in a week. Two hugely important locations in their day.

A week ago today I studied the weather charts and decided that office work could go and wait. I needed to get out and make more work for the series ‘Edgelands’. Storm force winds and rain do not not fit in with the shooting regime or the aesthetics of this series.

It is rare that I go anywhere without a camera of some sort. Last year towards the end of my shooting window for the degree project, I happened upon a nature reserve running alongside the River Lark in Bury St Edmunds. With a resigned sigh, Mr O took up her book and began to read. She always takes a book with her when we go out because she knows I will have concealed a camera about my person. This time it was one of my Trip 35’s. I love using these small rangefinder cameras. So simple. Look, see, compose, shoot. Anyway I was shooting my B&W variant that day and I earmarked the site for my extended series.

A very generous amount of Portra 120 had arrived courtesy of sponsorship by Kodak Alaris the week before so this was an opportunity to start eating into that mountain of emulsion and I’m very pleased with the results. Here are a few edited down from the 48 good negatives that came back from Redwood, a Kodak Prolab yesterday. I never cease to be excited by getting strips of film back from the lab and I have to say I always have more keepers from my medium format film than I ever do from digital. I suppose I cherish the preciousness of the product and I don’t chance things that I do with digital.