CLARK

Week 75 - ON AND OFF

PRE-2020 BACKSTAGE RIDER

  • 20 lines of coke

  • 15 spliffs

  • 5 bottles of Jack Daniels

  • 4 cases of bear

  • 2 fireman’s buckets filled with red and blue M&M’s

POST-2020 BACKSTAGE RIDER

  • Lots of Covid tests

  • 2 packs of face masks

  • 10 bottles Hand sanitiser

It felt good to be on my way to photograph real live musicians again. I had 5 concerts to shoot during the second half of 2021 but they didn't feel anything like normal or the way they used to be. This was the first concert of the year by The Scottish National Jazz Orchestra and it kinda did feel like it used to....until I got there!

The orchestra had played the night before, but I was joining them on the second of three nights. One musician had already dropped out at the rehearsal stage after testing positive for Covid 19. But it was only 4pm the day after the first concert and two more musicians had tested positive. Once again deps were found and the gig was going ahead. The beauty of jazz musicians of this calibre is that they can sightread what's put in front of them.

As restrictions are being lifted, and in some parts of the country being scrapped altogether, I've been seeing first-hand that things are worse than ever out there. People are not bothering with masks more and more, even though, unlike England, we have not had the mad government instructions that all restrictions are over. Do what you like. Tounge kiss as many strangers as you feel is appropriate.

Day 3: I'm editing the pictures from the night before when I get an email to say that this evening's performance has been cancelled.

Guests Joe Locke (vibraphonist) and Kenny Washington (vocalist) flew in from the US to perform with The SNJO. Months of writing arrangements for Joe, concerts postponed from 2020, and in the end, the plug had to be pulled due to Covid. It's only going to get worse in my opinion!

The music was brilliantly arranged by Joe Locke and the musicians played flawlessly as always!

This was an amazing start to the year for The SNJO which was cut short. I hope this project can be resumed at a later date!

ALL SHOT WITH THE X-PRO2 & THE 50/2 (75mm FF equivalent)

One of Fuji’s most underrated lenses!

Week 50 - Optimistic Pessimist

BY DEREK CLARK

My Dad had a lens cleaner back in the late '70s ( or was it the early '80s?) which had the following printed on it.

You can't be optimistic with a misty optic.

I've been finding each week of this project starts with optimism. A new week, a new lens (focal length at least) and what looks like a fair amount of time to get some decent pictures. That optimism is always short-lived as the days fly by and the wind and the rain just don't let up.

The UK got bashed with Storm Dudley and Storm Eunice this week, but around the central belt where we live, we missed the really harsh weather and just got the usual high winds and rain. As I write this, I can hear garden furniture blowing around outside and the sound of the wind howling all around the house.

My son is studying guitar, bass, and music technology at school. This week the Ebay fairies took three guitars away, which gave us some extra space. That space was quickly filled by a new bass guitar. But he's a happy chappie with his new axe!

It's time to switch the 50mm (FF equivalent) on my X-Pro2 to the 75mm for the last week of February

ALL SHOT ON X-PRO2 With THE 35/2 (50mm full frame)

Week 35 - Two Odd Shoes

BY DEREK CLARK

This week in Scotland, we had about three hours of sunshine and the rest was rain, rain and more rain. I Managed to take a short walk with my X100F, which is nice to still be using, even though I have the V.

Stepping out of the car, I remember once more that my AirPods are still missing in action somewhere in the Edinburgh area after I mislaid them while shooting a jazz concert. I have headphones in the car, but it’s around this point I start cursing Apple and its infinite wisdom in removing the 3.5mm headphone socket. There just isn’t room for it they said, yet my iPod Nano was around 8x smaller and half the thickness. Just admit that it’s all about selling AirPods multiple times to people like me that keep losing them!

Anyway…I digress.

My observation on my short walk is this.

The photographic muscle is like any other; you must exercise it or it will go flabby and fail. Most of us know this and have done for some time, but what I have come to realise is that you can’t exercise one muscle and expect all the others to tone up too. Likewise, you can’t shoot Landscape and become a great portrait photographer.

This might be obvious, but for me, being out on the street with nothing but the F felt both liberating and odd. It felt like wearing a running shoe on one foot and a hiking boot on the other. I had swapped my X-T4 for the 100F for this brief amount of time and I welcomed the change, but I was learning to walk again. To see the way I used to see. To feel the way used to feel…about photography.

ALL SHOT ON X100F - 23mmf2 (35mm FULL FRAME)

Week 28 - The Dream

BY DEREK CLARK

Last night I dreamed I was a cleaner in a massive posh house. I kept falling asleep exhausted, but each time I woke up, the house was messier and the owners were due back any minute. I would rush around picking things up but get nowhere. Kids parties would take place while I was asleep and I would wake to balloons, cake and toys everywhere. The house would also get bigger every time I attempted to clean it. Rooms would lead to other rooms, which would then lead to more rooms, causing total disorientation.

I think the dream might be something to do with being on a never-ending conveyor belt of shooting and editing, with shots often coming in faster than I can edit them.

I came across these miniature canons in a completely empty house this week.

This week I had 5 photography shoots and 9 videos shoots, which forced me to work on Sunday. I spent 11 hours on Saturday fitting a new floor in my mum's kitchen with my brother and my son. I had a total of 30 minutes to wander during daylight hours this week to take personal pictures for this project. It poured with rain. Am I making excuses for my poor performance here? Absolutely!

This (horizontal, but intact) office is all that is left of a 4x4 centre that rebuilt one of my old Land Rovers on a new chassis. Loved it!

On Thursday night, I did my first live talk to a photography club since 2019. During that (pandemic) time I did do one on Zoom, but it’s not the same as being in the room with your audience. But I won’t lie, it felt more than a little to be out in public again in a social setting.

Removing splinters (known in Scotland as skelfs) from my hands with my X-Pro2 under my chin, on a self timer.

ALL SHOT ON X-PRO2 & 18/2 (28mm full frame)

Derek's Letter of Intent

Mechanics cars tend to be in dire need of repair. Who wants to fix their own car after spending all day fixing other peoples cars in the freezing cold of winter?

This is where I find myself. I spend Monday to Friday every week either shooting pictures and video or editing them (all for other people). Weekends are mostly free with the family, but picking up a camera to shoot personal stuff doesn’t enter my mind much these days. Worse than that, the thought of having to edit any personal pictures, after spending too many hours in front of computer screens doesn’t exactly thrill me.

I miss photography for the sheer pleasure of it! I miss the challenges we used to set as a group here at Kage. We always produced when we had deadlines, themes, and quite often limitations. These haven’t been happening for a while now and we have grinded to a halt.

My two favourite cameras (of all time) are the X-Pro2 and the X100V. My favourite lenses to shoot personal work is the Fujicron’s (X-series has always been about small size for me). So my self imposed limitations for this project will be the following:

Week 1 - 28mm (full-frame) using the X-Pro2 & 18/2

Week 2 - 35mm (full-frame) using the X100V (possibly the X100F too)

Week 3 - 50mm (full-frame) using the X-Pro2 & 35/2

Week 4 - 75mm (full-frame) using the X-Pro2 & 50/2

Having just bought a new Nord Wave 2 synthesiser and been blown away by the quality of the sound it can create, I would love to incorporate some music in some way. But this is just hope and at the end of the day, I probably won’t have time. We’ll see.

As for what I will shoot…I have no idea at this point. It might just be a series of random snapshots in the end, but it will be February 2022

Good luck to my fellow Kage members. Good luck to all that are struggling.

Derek Clark

January 30th 2022

North Coast 500 | Scotland Road Trip

In-camera pano shot on the X100V with the camera in the portrait orientation.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY DEREK CLARK

The road trip. It fires up a romantic notion in most of us; fuelled by everything from car commercials, old films of Route 66, and even childhood holidays from a time before every trip had to begin with a plane ticket. I started to get the urge for a road trip when I bought my fourth Land Rover, just a couple of months before COVID 19 appeared on the scene. This was obviously put on hold for the past 18 months, but with a reluctance to sit on a plane for multiple hours, the road trip became the best option. Not only that, after the various lockdowns during the pandemic, the urge to just hit the road and be free was pretty overwhelming.

The North Coast 500 is one of the worlds most beautiful and epic road trips. Starting and ending in Scotland’s most northerly city of Inverness. The choice of going clockwise or anti-clockwise is up to the driver, but we opted for the latter, travelling up the east coast fairly quickly, then slowing down to take in the epic rugged landscape along the extreme north coast and then back down the west coast. We camped, we stayed in hotels and we stayed in hostels. Wild camping is legal in Scotland and usually better than any campsite when it comes to pitching the tent in a great spot.

For a full week, I had no urge to pick up my phone and look at any of the garbage it’s connected to. The battery went flat and I couldn’t have cared less. I took an iPad and didn’t use it once. I took my kindle but didn’t read a single page. There was nothing but driving, photography, setting up camp, cooking and sleeping. It was just what I needed and just what I’ve been craving ever since.

The highlight of the North Coast 500 is the road leading to a remote village called Applecross. The road is called Bealach Na Ba and as far as I know is the highest road in the UK. A sign at the start of the road alerts drivers that it’s not suitable for large vehicles, caravans, motorhomes, or learner drivers. It has gradients of 1 in 5 and has hairpin bends. It doesn’t mention the vertical drops if you veer off the road, but you soon find that out.

We clocked up over a thousand miles on our 500-mile road trip, including the drive to Inverness and back. But we’re already planning our next road trip, but first, we need to get a roof rack to give us more space inside.

SHOT WITH FUJIFILM X100V, WCX100, X-PRO2, 18mm F2, LENSBABY COMPOSER PRO & EDGE 50 OPTIC

Negative 25

Clue number 1: A curved piece of…some kind of…part of a thing

Clue number 1: A curved piece of…some kind of…part of a thing

PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY DEREK CLARK

As soon as I looked at the picture of the thumb in Patrick’s last essay, I was reminded of the movie ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty’, directed and starring Ben Stiller. In the movie, Stiller’s character goes in search of a missing negative (number 25) that is to be used on the final cover of Life Magazine. It’s a great film and self worth seeing; especially if you are a photographer.

From New Monuments by Patrick La Roque

From New Monuments by Patrick La Roque

One of my favourite shots in the movie is when Walter walks away from the camera, but the focus stays fixed.

One of my favourite shots in the movie is when Walter walks away from the camera, but the focus stays fixed.

Clue number 2: The Thumb

Clue number 2: The Thumb

I remember watching Walter Mitty (more than once), a few years after it was released, and at a time when a few of the themes in the movie struck a chord in me. The mixture of the film and the soundtrack had an alluring effect, which was a bit depressing at the time.

It’s easy to get sucked into the idea that everyone is moving forward and succeeding, while you are either stuck where you are or feel like you are going backwards. This is especially true in the Facecloth, Instasham, and all the other antisocial media platforms out there.

These days, I no longer have time for social media, nor care who is moving forward or backward (if there’s even such a thing). I’m too busy working, burning through gigabytes of pictures and video three or four days a week and struggling to keep up with the editing the rest of the week. Be careful what you wish for! One minute you’re feeling bad about not having the work and the next you’re overwhelmed by it. One minute all you’re doing is personal work and the next you are struggling to find the time to do any personal work at all.

If there is one sure thing, it’s that nothing stays the same forever. Just make the best of where you’re at at this moment, because a change is gonna come whether you like it or not.

Get vaccinated. Grow a little tail, and wag it daily!

25 is missing

25 is missing

The spoiler

The spoiler

Not actually the motto of Life Magazine

Not actually the motto of Life Magazine

Death By 74 Cuts

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PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY DEREK CLARK

I chose this picture by Patrick La Roque from his essay Puddles Are Windows and Fissures are Roads to use as my theme. I almost chose dogs, as I can see two dogs in the top left corner, but in the end I chose differently. The converging lines in that same corner reminded me of roads, and the top of the picture feels like decay. Possibly converging lines cutting through the underdogs?

Death By 74 CUTS

The city of Glasgow, like a lot of highly populated places, is going through constant change. The always present cranes across the city skyscrape erect building after building, rubbing out the old and redrawing the new. But this only makes the places that are being left behind stand out; a slow painful demise. Tradeston is one such place, an industrial area that has been neglected for years. Decades of decay joined with decades of graffiti and vandalism.

In 2011, the M74 motorway was completed. Although construction started in 1966, the M74 didn’t reach its intended destination until 2011. This monster of a road rises up on stilts as it cuts a path straight through Tradeston, barely revealing what lies beneath to the unsuspecting drivers. But still, I’m drawn to this place, and I will probably return to document it more before it gets torn-down in favour of luxury flats or offices.

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DEFINITION 45 | Looks Like We Made It

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PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY DEREK CLARK

I reached the grand old age of 55 last month. The number in itself is nothing special, but it’s the age that my sister Joyce died of a brain tumour in 2018. Dark humour has always been a part of my family and when I visited Joyce on her birthday, she gave me a rendition of Barry Manilow’s ‘Looks Like We Made It’. She of course meant she had made it to another birthday. She died less than two months later.

There is a naïveté that makes you think these things are more acceptable when someone is older, even just two years older. But as I reached 55, I realised that I feel no different than I did at 53, nor 43 for that matter. My dad passed away in 2019 pretty much of a broken heart, so to say that death is never far away from my thoughts is probably an understatement. I don't know if it's my age or recent events, but I find myself wondering how many more days I have left before I will wake up dead myself. Maybe mid-fifties are the age when these thoughts start to creep into your head more often, but my sister got 55 years, what makes me so special that I would deserve more?

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We took my mum away for a few days in October. It was the first anniversary of my dad's death and we didn't want her all alone and rattling around her house dwelling on it. While we were away, my wife Fe got word that the unit at the care home where she works had cases of Covid19. She knew there was a high risk she would become infected when she went back to work, but she, of course, went in anyway. Because while Joe public is fighting over toilet rolls in supermarket isles, carers, nurses and countless others are putting their lives on the line.

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Four days after she. went back to work, the symptoms started. A trip to the local testing centre confirmed she had the virus. Eleven days of cold and flu symptoms and we thought she was starting to get over it. But then it really hit. She spent the next three days flat on her back, too weak to do anything but be sick. Even now, three weeks on, she still gets tired doing small things. Nine elderly people from her unit passed away from Covid19.

Janel and Fe both had birthdays this month. Janel turned 13 and found the new normal for blowing out candles is not normal at all. I could mention how old Fe is, but I’d rather the candles were stored in the cupboard than in me.

It is almost December, and what should have seemed like a drag of a year has actually flown by in a flash.

So if you're reading this, almost a year into the Covid 19 pandemic, - It looks like you made it too!

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Definition 36 | Libertas Restrictus

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PHOTOGRAPHY AND TEXT BY DEREK CLARK

Anyone who has seen the movie Braveheart will remember the character of William Wallace, played by actor/director Mel Gibson, cry out the word FREEDOM. Although a bit overused since the movie done the rounds, freedom is not something I've taken for granted. The ability to go wherever you like, whenever you like is not something all people in all countries are able to do. So I find the obsession in the 21st-century to obtain fame bizarre and self-destructive. Fame might bring the financial ability to afford to go wherever you like, but the freedom to walk down a busy street unnoticed is true freedom. To go where you like in total anonymity is bliss!

Coronavirus has removed or restricted freedom in 2020 and possibly into 2021. In the beginning, it looked as though lockdown was just a way to get people to stay at home so that the government could change the batteries in all the birds, but there was a shortage of toilet roll, not batteries, so I guess that wasn't true :o)

Freedom for me is to take a train somewhere and to wander for miles with a camera in my hand. Most of my pictures include people. But as a street photographer, I had no one to shoot on the streets, as a music photographer, I had no bands or musicians to photograph. As a musician, I had no audience to play to. Life really did come to a standstill.

But even now, I feel the rust taking hold of my photography and creativity in general. I don't have the time to shoot long enough to allow the brake pads to separate from the disks. There is a feeling of being trapped, fenced-in, and on the outside of where I want or need to be. Parts of the country, including where I live, are seeing increased numbers and more restrictions being re-introduced. So even now, as we move toward October and the long dark winter, there is as much uncertainty as ever. But I’m not ready to paint my face blue and shout FREEDOM. Not just yet.