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| 7 November 2004 |
| This was a good weekend. On Friday, my good friend (and photographic genius, and graphic design wizard) Carl Glover came up from London to do some promo shots. We were supposed to go off to some bonfire night party, but after a few beverages waiting for the rest of the band to show up at the restaurant, we realised it was both too dangerous and too late to go driving off into the countryside. But the end result was quite a surprise! |
| Carl had brought a camera and tripod to the restaurant 'just in case' - so when we saw a bunch of trees planted on the roof of an abandoned building (yeah, we couldn't figure that one out either!) he lined us up in the middle of the road, and began taking photos. He told us that because of the poor light, we needed to stand really still for about 8 seconds while the camera was running a long exposure - so we then got the great idea to go just down the road to the roundabout, and stand in the middle of it! The long exposure should make the cars disappear and leave only light trails (but we'll have to wait and see what the end result looks like). Thankfully, we all had decided to meet at mine at 9 in the morning for the originally-scheduled photo shoot, so headed off for a quick pint before last orders (and a few more photos in the pub!), and then home to bed. |
| 9 AM rolled around, and surprisingly, everyone showed up on time, we had a coffee, and wandered off down the road. Now, my original idea was to do some photos up against a wall near my house that was covered with really interesting and artistic graffiti. However, I had not been past this wall in some time, so when we got there, everything had been scrubbed off - much to our disappointment! But Steve quickly suggested that we continue down the road a bit, and end up at one of the bridges over the river, which is always covered with graffiti. It ended up being a much better place, and the ducks left us pretty much alone! Then it was back to pick up the cars and off into the centre of town. |
| Now, at this time of the morning on a Saturday in Oxford, the tourists are usually out en masse, but the students usually haven't surfaced yet - but it was a fairly grey cloudy day, and the tourist numbers are really down this time of year, so we expected it to be fairly clear of people. But what we didn't count on was the French market that had set up on Broad Street - exactly where we were headed! A bit of clever parking later (including Tom's plan of parking his car within eyesight of our location so he could run out and move it if the cops showed up!) we found our alley, discussed what album covers from the '60's we thought it looked like, had another coffee whilst snapping photos. We also decided to take advantage of the market and set up the tripod right in the middle. Got a few strange looks, but people pretty much minded their own business. Spencer had an appointment around midday, so we quickly headed off to the University Park for some 'wilderness' shots. |
| Standing near our selected tree, the women's football team having a match sparked an interesting discussion... We had passed numerous groups of 3 or 4 women jogging throughout the morning, had 3 or 4 boats pass us on the river - crewed only by women - and now the football teams. Where were all the exercising men? Hung over? Lazy? Come on, guys, you're letting the side down! Anyway, we were done, Spence went off, Tom left to rescue his now-out-of-sight car, and Carl, Steve and I headed back to the market to get some of the lovely grilled Toulouse sausages in a baguette we had seen (and smelled) earlier! Of course, being a die-hard food lover, I had to buy some other goods from the market, and ended up with several bags of bread, cheese, mustard, tomatoes, and some cured sausage. I tell you, it made a fantastic lunch after dropping Carl (and his 5 bulky and very heavy bags of equipment) off at the station! |
| We're all looking forward to seeing what the photos look like - and of course we'll be posting them up here as soon as we get them. Now it's off to see a show - some new friends of ours, The Epstein, are playing a gig at the Zodiac tonight, so we're going to show our support! Make sure you go out and see a local band this week, cats... support the new music in your town, no matter where you are in the world! |
| -erik |
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