CDW 2015 – Two Photographers Clerkenwell Design Week 2015

Clerkenwell has been my milieu for many a year, and much has changed since I first arrived, and worked out my RAF leave for a basement photographers’ studio in Hatton Garden. Gamages Department Store was still trading, and seemingly had given rise to much of the trade in the Leather Lane Market. I worked simply for the experience and expenses for six weeks at Francis-Thompson Studios. It was part of Sidney Barton PR Services based in nearby Breams Buildings, Fetter Lane. I had absolutely no idea at that time of the part that this area of working London was to play in my working life.

I left many times – each time I returned there were subtle changes, but its heart kept beating, and the Twentieth Century brought the most extensive changes of all, and now many of the streets I first knew have disappeared, but Clerkenwell Design Week allows visitors to see the spirit of both the old and the new, and the warmth of the place lives on. A few of my past work colleagues still work here and for the past three years I have taken a camera to capture glimpses of both past and present and the quirky, and welcomed the establishment of Zaha Hadid’s Gallery that opened on my first visit to CDW.

On the Wednesday I treated myself to a break from the stresses of moving my home from Caddington to Marston Moretaine to pay a visit this year, and in chatting to a salesman in one of the first places Geoff Dann and I visited, he knew precisely where my new abode was situated, so this is indeed a small world. On a purely personal level both of us visitors were interested in working chairs for the lengthy times spent in front of Mac screens to post-process images from our respective cameras, and Elite had two interesting task chairs, the iSit and the Airflex which we flight-tested and flagged as worth considering.

Another showroom, Mosa held our attention from a background perspective with individual 300 x 900mm tile panels, we then headed to the Farmiloe Building, now seemingly termed the Design Factory, where my interest in cars was tweaked by the main Sponsor this year, Renault. Taking detail shots of this made it feel as if I was transported to Goodwood and the Festival of Speed. An old school that used to house studios for a couple of photographers I knew has become the London office for Zaha Hadid, whose influence could even be seen on the red Renault Concept Car, when you look at her acrylic furniture on display in her gallery, which we later visited. See if you can spot them.

My own interest in the quirky and amusing can also be seen in some of the more random shots taken during the day, such as architectural details, and amusing juxtapositions such as the lone blue Barclays Boris Bike amongst the line of Santander red ones – an omen that Barclays should heed? Our last major call was in Zaha’s Gallery, before a brief visit to another ex-business colleague John Swift of the Colour Company and his wife Annie, Retouchers with whom I worked before setting up ‘SOLUTIONS photographic’– they also are shortly leaving old London Town, but I end my visual trip where I started, at Old Street and the Tools of Change, the cranes. Till the next time, farewell to Clerkenwell; the beating heart of working London.

Illustrious Moored at Greenwich

Deciding to get up early on a Sunday morning to visit London and endeavour to get photographs of an Aircraft Carrier in London may on first sight seem like a good and simple idea; I also planned a route from a main London Tube station, what I failed to take into account was that the Underground does not  get up so bright and early! I arrived to see gates closed and padlocked and a sign beyond showing its opening and an hour and a half after when I had hoped to be at Island Gardens on the Isle of Dogs.

I had not scheduled for bus routes from Old Street, and had come equipped to carry a bus pass and Oyster card, and was also unaware that I had used its credit fully; hardly an auspicious start. Numerous buses also were not in service proper, displaying Rail Replacement on their boards, and life is not enhanced by bus drivers not knowing either English or other destinations or landmarks of other routes. So I used the trip down as overdue exercise and finally joined the DLR at West Ferry, and got out at Island Gardens, and made my way towards the river bank and the entrance to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. It was just beyond there that I caught my first sight of HMS Illustrious – on the far bank beyond the Cutty Sark. It was in London to mark the 70th Anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic.

As I watched, rowers came down from their boathouse with their boats for their morning's workout on the Thames. This gives scale to the size of Illustrious, since they were less than half the distance to this vessel. I watched for a while from this viewpoint, but realised this side of the Thames was less than ideal because of the angle of the sun, so I hurriedly walked beyond the Foot Tunnel entrance, taking a few more glimpses from this bank of the Carrier and other sights, before returning to the DLR station and taking one more stop to Cutty Sark and joining the early visitors to Greenwich, and the station's eponymous Tea Clipper. This also the other end to the Foot Tunnel. At that time I was unaware that there was an opportunity for me to get aboard the Aircraft Carrier, and by the time I learned of this the queue was similar in length to those that had once greeted an opening of an Apple Store or the launch of a new iPhone! I had no desire to wait for several hours in a long phalanx of families for the privilege.

Eventually I returned to the centre of Greenwich and the opportunity to revisit St. Alfege's church which was famous for the grave of Thomas Tallis and the splendid interior architecture featuring a magnificent Trompe l'oeil arched window. Many years ago I had taken black and white photos of the building for some client or other and met the vicar who had been using an air rifle to deter pigeons from nesting atop the pillars of the church's fine portico! To think that back then I had to use additional lighting in the form of expendable flashbulbs and high speed black and white film to record the scene, and now was able to take high quality colour photos handheld!

I made my way to the DLR station and while waiting took some shots of its interior before returning my car near Old Street Tube and was greeted by sunlight on a splendid piece of London architecture, so unpacked the camera once again to record what I saw, before taking the opportunity to have a sip of hot coffee and phone Adam Woolfitt to see if he was in, he was and we had a chat about how he was getting on with some lens reviews and the public beta of Lightroom 5. The front facade of his house was resplendent in the welcome sunshine as were some of his flowers, which I decided were too good to miss as well, before I even entered! I stayed only till the start of the Barcelona Grand Prix, before returning to my car, ostensibly to go home, but it dawned on me there were some other London friends I had not seen for a while. They were more than happy to see me, and we sat and chatted in their garden and I was plied with a tasty sandwich, fruit and drink before the weather changed and the forecast showers arrived. Eventually I took my leave and did finally set off for home and the post processing of the photos I had captured. The end of a most enjoyable sunday in London.