Posts in category "Photos"

UK Detour: Day 14, Ullapool

Mike, Liverpool Liz, and Jean-Marc con­sumed a bot­tle of wine each the night we arrived, owing to good spir­its and good friends. The result of this meant our sub­ject was­n’t in top form to be filmed or inter­viewed, so we spent the day loca­tion scout­ing in near­by towns instead. This includ­ed Achiltibuie, which had a post office about the size of my bed­room, open only from 9:00am–12:30pm. Not that Ullapool itself is much big­ger, at around 1200 inhab­i­tants. The air here is won­der­ful.

I got to use Mike’s beau­ti­ful lit­tle Canon EF 35mm f/1.4 L prime, which is a lens I’d nev­er buy for myself, or even con­sid­ered using before because the focal length is between where I like to be. But it’s per­fect for land­scapes and tack sharp.

sunrise

The view from the back porch of Jean-Marc’s rus­tic house, nes­tled on the edge of Ullapool. A great thing to wake up to.

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UK Detour: Day 13, London to Ullapool

Mike ini­tial­ly told me I could stay with him for three days, because he soon had to trav­el to Scotland to film a doc­u­men­tary. Over the phone before I even arrived to meet him, how­ev­er, he sug­gest­ed that I come with him to Scotland to make it the trip of a life­time. I could­n’t say no; to see Scotland has always been a dream of mine. And see­ing as how we used the same pho­to equip­ment, I could give him a hand with his film while cut­ting my teeth on using a lot of gear I’ve yet to afford.

So we loaded up the Range Rover with a ridicu­lous amount of gear, and left by 6am just so we could make it there before too late and to record the tran­si­tion from sun­rise to night. swing­ing by to pick up Liverpool Liz as anoth­er cam­era oper­a­tor before leav­ing. Mike set up his 20D to take a pic­ture every 10 sec­onds, and we made this stop-motion video.

The jour­ney took 13 hours by car, straight up to the north-west coast of Scotland to small town called Ullapool, where his friend Jean-Marc lived, who was also a sub­ject in Mike’s per­son­al project. We made it as far as Inverness before the bat­ter­ies died, which is about 900km (and anoth­er 90km to Ullapool), and took about ten and a half hours. If you watch the GPS in the video, you get a fast-for­ward­ed view of our path through the rain and the Scottish moun­tains.

M&S egg sandwich

This was a pret­ty damn good sand­wich, from a Marks and Spencer road stop. They had a huge selec­tion of types too.

Europe 2010 travel diaries

UK Detour: Day 12, London

By my third day in London, which was essen­tial­ly my last, I was push­ing myself to the lim­it of exhaus­tion. We had to pri­or­i­tize each activ­i­ty, as we there were so many things to do in such a short amount of time.

My impres­sion of London is one of diver­si­ty, his­to­ry, and para­noia. CCTV cam­eras are every­where, thanks to Britain’s dubi­ous dis­tinc­tion of being the most CCTV mon­i­tored coun­try in Europe.

London Night

Rainy London nights.

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UK Detour, Day 11: London

Mike was between jobs, so I got to shad­ow him with­out being too intru­sive. That not only meant I got to check out his favourite haunts, but meet more impor­tant peo­ple in his life.

At one point, I had to with­draw some cash (since Mike had pre­vi­ous­ly lied to me about my cred­it card not work­ing), and it was strange to sud­den­ly find three dif­fer­ent kinds of cur­ren­cy in my wal­let.

men on benches

So close yet so alone.

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UK Detour: Day 10, Chartres to London

On my last day in Rochefort-en-Terre, I receive an e‑mail ask­ing for sup­port for my Wu Wei theme. This isn’t uncom­mon; ear­li­er this year, Wu Wei was cho­sen to be part of the offi­cial WordPress.com repos­i­to­ry, and I’ve been flood­ed with such e‑mails since. What stood out about this one, from a Michael Harvey, was the fact that he was in London, read from my blog that I was in France, and offered to show me around if I hap­pened to be stop­ping by.

I told him it’d be love­ly if I could go, but I’ve no place to stay, as I’d only planned on going to France. On a whim of his own, he offers to let me stay with him, and tells me I’d feel at home as they have two cats.

For a while I turn this idea over in my head, as there’s most cer­tain­ly a risk involved in liv­ing with some­one you’ve nev­er met, least of all whether or not you’d even get along. Eventually, I decide that I could­n’t give up on the chance to see more of Europe. Fate opened a door, and I only had to step through. I could­n’t say no.

And so, armed with a tick­et for the EuroStar and a box of assort­ed mac­a­roons (one of the spe­cial­ties in Chartres) for my new host, I set off for London.

Chartres train station

In Chartres, wait­ing for the train to Paris — Gare Montparnasse.

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