Dear Reader, hullo. Thanks for taking the time out to have a little jolly along with me. I really appreciate you popping in, sorry the biscuits have all gone. I hope you enjoy my latest Photo-Blog, my apologies for the long wait since the previous entry. I hope what follows makes up for the wait 🙏

So, the Blog, hmmmmm. Well, it’s had a bit of a rocky road, minus the chocolate chips. I’ve started it and stopped, restarted and rewritten it. Then shelved it, in disgust, abandoned it to the four winds, coming to rest in the extensive virtual privet hedge I had planted around my mind, you should try one, it’s great if you want to encourage wildlife back into the grounds of your mind palace. Anyway. I then got a bit angsty-emo, feeling sorrowful I came back full of good intentions. Then I felt even worse after re-reading the utter tosh in front of me, blah blah blah, it was sadly trite and unwieldy.  Several versions of this blog lie out there in the Ether; obsolete, desperate, unloved, stewing in the undergrowth of my mind like a vinegary broth. They’re not ready yet and maybe they never will be, maybe they just need to roam free in that virtual deer park out beyond the palace. I think the problem has been a simple one, Me.

When I start writing I’m often crippled with terrible self doubt. I find the pretentious alarms start blaring, like those horrendous air sirens you hear as you slide into the horrors of Silent Hill, my words dragging me hellwards into a banality funk and everything I write just feels off.  I was struggling to believe in what I was saying, it all felt like an exercise in creative vanity, “look at me I know it all”, rather than something real that reflects who and where I am as a “creative” (whatever that means!). Mayhap it’s just a necessary part of my process, ahhhh I dunno…..ho hum ~~shrugs~~

I wrote several long pieces based around how I do street photography. But they were like the 1980s, vain, execrable, overblown indulgent 12 inch remixes of myself. I ended up desperately disliking what I’d written. The photos I loved, but it felt like I was singing my own praises whilst packing in stacks of that Youtuber-esque ‘This is how you do it‘ chunder cheese, oh no no no no no no no no!!!!  It’s not why I write these blogs. I write because I like to talk about what I have been doing, in a laid back, open and accessible way. I love the practice of photography, working on being a more inventive, creative and competent photographer, so I really don’t want these blogs to be exercises in ‘look at how good I am!‘. I’m not that person, so if my Spidey senses starts tingling as I stray into verbose self-aggrandisement I lose interest in finishing it. It’s just not Me, see? My photos aren’t perfect, I’m crap at a lot of techniques, flash makes me nervous, so I really really don’t have all the answers.

Fast forward a few weeks of mentally weathering Lockdown and I sat down again and launched into a statement piece, on so-called ‘Liminal Spaces‘ and photography.  I will probably re-approach it at a later date. It’s a subject that I do want to write about, but I don’t want it to say, oh yeah, I’ve been exploring these meaningful themes as part of my creative blooming, oooooo, clever ain’t I?  Cuz, to be quite honest, I haven’t, but it’s a concept that I’d like to explore and perhaps apply to capturing images of particular spaces in the future. For now though, I’ve left that in-between, lurking in my own dark and dingee liminal spaceyfings.

Throughout the Lockdowns and the brief in-between periods of release, I’ve found myself at odds with myself. I should say that lockdown and the pandemic panic wasn’t the sole reason for this superfluous conflict, but it did bring things to a head. Like a lot of people my mental health has been problematic throughout this period. The inner conflict I’ve been experiencing was more of a creative stress than a mental stress, which if anything has highlighted that I am in much finer mental fettle now than I was at the turn of the year. I’ve been able to address the problem, but it’s just taken a long time to reveal what I needed to find, deep within my sweaty depths waiting for me to see the truth of it. It’s been a bloody long while coming, jeez I’m so flipping slow!

Even this blog is on its multitudinous iteration. I’ve been writing it out, then writing it again, restarting and then I’ve wandered off on laconical tangents that veered away into completely different areas of naval contemplation. It’s taken quite a while to strip back those complications, distractions and unnecessary additions, strip them all away, removing the mental ornamentations to focus on what is real. After all the edits, rewrites and abandonments, this time I think I’ve finally cracked that Nut.

This is the story of how a tiny six year old camera has changed my life and my photography for the better.

Taking you back a few months, into those often dreary Lockdown days, I started clearing out some space in my cluttery camera cabinet (a beloved but dusty writing bureau on my side of the bed). Like a lot of photographers I have acquired a fair bit of under-used or unnecessary equipment that have been filling boxes and boxes and boxes around and on the bureau. There’s lots of places online now that will readily buy second-hand camera equipment and accessories for good prices. It was incredibly cathartic sitting down, sifting through and letting go of a few bits and pieces. The cash I generated put a lovely ReadyBrek glow back in my virtual wallet, which then itched and wriggled like Sticklebacks, desperate it seemed to be spent on new stuff, new stuff, lovely sparkly new stuff. High on my mind was a wide angle Fuji mount lens, one that would be great for my all-round photography. It had fantastic reviews, and there it was, all sparkly and terribly available in that easy sleazy come get me virtual window, take me now Boyo, I’m all yours, I’m ready, just click and I’ll come to you my Lad.

A week passed, maybe two. Still in lockdown, time wasn’t flying by nilly dilly silly willy, it was porridge, interminable cold stodgy Norman Stanley Fletcher porridge. Served up salted at home and in your garden confines where, let’s face it, you were sick to eye teeth of hearing ShelleydumdumWendywossname doing her ballet plee-ays on the lawn next door, again! Meanwhile Davey HooHahhhhhPantsfromFourDoorsDown was partying every fecking day without fail like it’s AD99, except it’s not Dude and you can’t sing, you really can’t! So just stop, please! Then we can start burying all the birds that have fallen from the skies as a result of your false-gecko mimicry of Prince Rodgers Nelson….

During the interim I returned often to the Sellers site, to lust after that lens’s curvaceous optics, my Precious, hmmmmm yeessssh. But clickety click, over too quick, nope, it just didn’t happen. The money lingered, most unusually, in my account. It was free money, mine to fritter if I wanted. But something, ME OBVIOUSLY, held me back. But what? Why? What did I really want?

One particularly lumoxly lazy Lockdown morning, I was flicking through social media, absently minded as always. No thoughts were occurring in Noggin-centraal as I sipped my Yorky tea and munched on Shredded Twittergram. The Haps weren’t happening, every day bled blandly into the next. That was just the way we all were during the Pandemic lockdowns, existing, waiting for purpose, hanging on and hoping, looking out at the world from the front window and just seeing normality rendered utterly strange by an unseen virus. I’d often sit in my little garden shelter (built during Lockdown version 1.0) pondering and wondering, gazing into the depths of our wildlife pond imagining; what would it be like to fall from the sky, scattered on the wind as a billion drops splashing down into its depths? What would that feel like? Would I slowly dissipate or feel every single drop splashing down as a million trillion microdeaths? Well, I dunno, bit glum innit, it was just one of many lockdown vagaries that I slowly lowly thought on as the days dragged out.

PING! A You-tube notification. Such was my lack of direction I clicked on the link and then tumbled down that rabbit-hole, terrier like, tongue lolling. I found myself watching with unexpected interest, avariciously devouring the content as if I was some kind of Matrix-addled consumer locked down and jacked up to a virtual world controlled by an unseen menace……..wait a minute…. Suddenly I was no longer falling like rain.

The vid that I watched lit a little fire, that has smouldered quietly, steadily, for a while, lost in the liminal corridors of thoughtlessness, beyond that stained back door and down that rusty fire escape, eerrrr yeah it’s probably worth sticking your head in the skip just to check, it’s where most of my charred brain-trails end up…..the odd blue pallet too. I’m dressing this well, eh? Discuss Jay, explain yerself before they all fall asleep! Okay, so, I guess deep down I haven’t been that satisfied with how I’ve been shooting, and it’s not any one single thing, but little crumbs here and grains of sand there, all collecting on my cranial bedsheet, niggling away beneath me. All of that was brought into sharp focus by this cheap and cheerful vid, coalescing around a deep rooted need to simplify, declutter and concentrate on what is important to me. I’m a bit slow I guess, I hadn’t realised I was feeling quite so, heavy.

Okay, I admit it, actual original thoughts are difficult for me, I’m not a novel person, I’m derivative as hell and I wear my influences on my sleeve. And as a rule I’m not really gear orientated, I don’t lust after the newest and bestest stuff. I’m happy to make do and mend, plus I’m never that flush for cash, life’s never been like that and I don’t hanker for it either. Thus I’m not averse to buying secondhand and the majority of the lens glass that I own is of a vintage. I don’t need the latest and greatest. I’m happiest just creating images, it’s what makes me tick, but perhaps I’ve lost sight of that pureness along the way. A while back I owned a lovely Samyang wide angle lens for my Fuji XT20, oh I so adored using it for street photography, it just ticked all the boxes and worked well under most lighting conditions. But then, one disastrous day it just stopped working. I dunno what happened, a ding or something untoward had happened inside it, feck knows what, but inwardly I was pretty distraught.

Ultimately I traded it in for spares or repair to generate some funds, but yeah, really really gutted. Nothing since then has felt the same or rendered images quite so beautifully, with a filmic old school feel. So, as I watched that Youtube vid, those little fires in those dark corridors started roaring away, suddenly a lot of personal response boxes were being ticked that I had no idea were there, and where the heck did that sub-menu come from?!? My tail was wagging for sure. I thought, oh I like the look of that!

Part of my ‘process’ (oh gawd, kill me now, did I really say that?) for capturing street images around and about the city is rooted in the need to be inconspicuous and to work really simply. I love wandering and happening upon life as it happens, true and pure, simple and just Me. I’ve been using the XT20 for the last few years and it’s wonderfully easy to blend in using such a diminutive but powerful bit of kit. People just act more naturally around me, making it much easier to capture those unique gestures and happenstance moments that are the lifeblood of street shooter. You can probably sense the ‘but’ coming eh? Yeah, here it comes, a hot and hairy total eclipse….

As much as I love my Fuji I still need a bag for it, I can’t stick it away in my pocket (like a mobile phone) when I need to be stealthy or simply because I’m on the move. Yes, I could easily purchase another Samyang lens, to recapture that wonderfully wide viewpoint, but there was more to it than simple nostalgia. In reality I’d been hankering for an even simpler approach, a clean uncomplicated methodology based around really basic kit. A small camera that I can fit in the palm of my hand and was capable of capturing fairly high res photos, that could slide surreptitiously away when required. I do like taking photos with my mobile phone but there’s always a distinct sense of dissatisfaction with the image quality (they don’t print particularly well when blown up either) and they have that certain over-cooked look, yeah they just look like mobile phone photos! But, the thing is, no one notices you when you’re taking photos with a phone, because everyone else does, no one thinks you’re shooting them. So, for the street shooter, they’re an awesome tool, as long as you accept their limitations.

A little while after seeing the YouTube vid, I found myself trawling through ebay and other used camera outlets, I’d abandoned the lusted-after lens utterly. The lens wasn’t the answer to my question, because the question being asked was a completely different one. My attentions had switched, I wanted a camera, a little compact go everywhere Buddy. The YouTube vid had featured several compact cameras, but it was the Ricoh GRii 18mm f2.8 that caught my eye and fired up my Tinkthank. To give a little context to this, throughout the Lockdown I spent a lot time walking, staying active outdoors. I’d regularly take my Fuji out on these walks, squeezed inside my hoody’s pocket, with a spare battery in my jeans and nothing else. I grew to really enjoy this pared back approach, and it was this idea that I kept coming back too.

However, I soon discovered that searching for secondhand Ricohs, across the plethora of online outlets, was a rather demoralising prospect. The prices attached to Ricoh’s pocket rocket were more volatile than liquid hydrogen, outright astonishing in many cases. It’s not even the latest model, replaced by the newer, juicier GRiii model. A five or six year old beastie can easily sell north of 500 quid. I gave up looking after that first day and thought it’s not meant to be and got all mournful Tame Impala on my mp3. Days passed, hours passed, time stood still. Then, as the Lockdown measures started to ease, I found myself excited to return to work and ergo, society itself. Bus journeys and interminable commutes were once again part of my day, YAY! One evening on my way home I found myself drawn back into the eBay maelstrom, the itch was still there, I needed to have a good scratch. My excuse, the X21 was late, and the search terms I’d used on eBay were still saved in the ‘last searched’ box. It was OatsoSimple to click on it. I skimmed and whirlygigged down and down, avid but a bit despondent. And then Lo and hush, shush, there was one available, ooooh hullo You, Sexy! (yeah cuz I don’t lust after gear eh? 🤣)

The price was relatively modest and very very very available, golly get to it, buy-it-now Boyo, on sale from a Gentle Man of Inverness. His description of the camera further warmed me to it – saying something to the effect of he couldn’t justify keeping such a great camera in his cupboard, he wanted to sell it to someone who could make the best use of it. I thought, I’ll send him a message and ask him about the camera and it’s general condition. Two minutes later my inbox bulged with keen messages from him, one very eloquently written and the other two comprised of images he’d snapped in his locale. Turned out this lovely man is a fine art photographer and his camera was simply surplus to his requirements. After some chatter about the camera and it’s capabilities, I took a leap of faith, trusting in this Gent. He, to be fair, followed me on social media and said on a number of my photos that his camera would be a perfect fit for me. By the time I arrived home I was seduced, the Buy it now icon had been pressed, and the money was gone from my account….. I was committed now…….

So, the Ricoh GRii then, or GR2 if you’re simple like me. It’s not a new camera, it came out about 6 years ago, quickly becoming a favourite amongst street and travel shooters alike. Its tiny 18.3mm lens captures a pretty wide field of view. The kicker is the sixteen megapixel APS-C sized sensor that you’re more likely to find in larger mirrorless cameras like my Fuji. It’s sleek, stealthy and smaller than my phone, and hella-yeah, it fits in my pocket! Technically speaking it’s not the most up-to-date of cameras, there’s no viewfinder or tilting screen. Battery life is unremarkable and it does have it’s problems with dust getting onto the sensor. The newer version, the GR3, came out a couple of years ago with some updates including in-built camera stabilisation, so I won’t kid you, it’s an expensive piece of kit for what it is, a fixed focal length compact point and shooty thing. I then had the obligatory-hory post purchase bout of ‘oh shit what have I done?!?’

But, as you’ll have no doubt noticed with the images I’ve posted in this Blog I really needn’t have worried! When the camera arrived a week later I couldn’t get my head around the sheer tinyness of it, it’s sleek and mysterious like spy gear. But after taking a few shots during a local walk I was an utter convert. The image quality is just gorgeous, filmic, a bit grainy but sharp with superbly rendered colours. Note the woman in the far window in the photo below. Yeah the resolution isn’t as high as other cameras, but wow. This from a compact camera.

It fits covertly inside my hand, fingers wrapped comfortably around it and it feels good there, secured via a slinky wrist strap. It even slips inside my trouser pocket, which just blows my mind. Getting anything bulky in my middle aged flabby pants is a struggle at the best of times, so fitting a camera comfortably in there is a bogglement to me. In my head I’ve dubbed the camera ‘Ricky Ricoh‘ (so it goes with its big bro ‘Frankie Fuji’, I’m simple like that, see?). As I wander I’ll think, little Ricky or Frankie would work well here, depending on the situation in front of me and how I think a scene or place can be best captured. With Frankie Fuji I have a greater degree of flexibility, it’s a mirrorless camera with interchangeable lenses, stupendous colour science and matchless image quality. I’ve been using it a lot with a diffusion filter on the lens to create a dreamier look in camera, it’s a look I really enjoy.

Ricky Ricoh on the other hand is so much smaller, with a diddy pop out lens, no viewfinder just a screen on the back. In many ways it’s similar to using a mobile phone. However, let’s stop right there. Little Ricky ain’t no phone, it’s a gem of a camera. Ricky is all about capturing images. The lens is a fixed wide angle, so if you want to zoom in to a scene, ya gotta move dem pins of yos. Little Ricky makes full use of the processing power behind the APS-C sensor (similar to what is inside my Fuji, just a few megapixels less, 16 rather than 24). The so-sharp-it’s-silly lens and huge sensor size enable you to capture amazing amounts of detail in a colour palette that’s just the right side of super saturated. Compact point and shoots aren’t meant to be this good or such fun!!!

After a few short practice walks locally, I decided to stick little Ricky in my bag with Frankie for a day out to Blackpool. After the long looooooooooooooong days and months of successive lockdowns here in the UK I’d been contenting myself by staying local and making the most of where I live, in and around south Birmingham. Additionally I got into watching several Youtube channels based around photography. These channels were a happy distraction, but you know, distractions are ultimately empty if you’re not somehow involved yourself. One video, only about 5 minutes in length, really peaked my interest in Blackpool, that old beast of a seaside resort in the north-west of England. This vid was just a simple Go-pro affair of a guy taking photos in and around the seafront and its many distractions.

It was blue touchpaper for me, oh hullo there, that’s looks cool! I found myself exploring the beachfront on googly maps, researching local places of interest and history, the likelihood of good weather and how quick the train journey was. A couple of days later I’d booked myself a cheap day return on the first free day I had available, yeah I was slightly obsessing and really unreasonably excited. I’d not been anywhere since time interregnum, that pandemic time has become almost un-quantifiable, its calendar dates irrelevant because they all vignetted into one long date-week-month-year-thing, punctuated by Boris Johnson’s sweaty hufflepuff and Chris Whitty’s doleful disapproval.

And Blackpool, why the feck Blackpool?!?!?! My wife and Fam were incredulously underwhelmed, yeah nah Bro, rather yow than me mucka. In my defence I’d never been, no really, not ever, despite a childhood awash with seaside family trips to Margate, Yarmouth and Minehead, even flying Air Fungus to the heady shores around Dublin, my mother’s home. Blackpool was never really on our radar. With my Lot we prefer quieter retreats, but for the wandering minstrel in me, well, Blackpool has that kitsch glamour that’s hard to resist. It’s a boozy beacon for every lusty Stag and clucking Hen party north of the Equator, it seems. People go to misbehave and live to excess, which is all very interesting for street Togs like me. If you do a simple google image search for Blackpool your screen will fill with richly colourful pics of towers, piers and party filled establishments. And then there’s the illuminations!

One of my personal photography heroes is Martin Parr, whose fabulous work has become synonymous with the idiosyncrasies of the British seaside and so I thought, why not look for that uniquely British aesthetic in Blackpool. Another contemporary whose work really inspired my interest is Manchester-based street photographer Gisela Szlatoszlavek. She has produced a fantastic body of work capturing diverse aspects of life in the north of England, including her wonderful ‘That Golden Mile’ book all about street life on the Blackpool seafront. On occasion we’ve exchanged messages and she encouraged me to go, enjoy a walkabout up there, to see what sort of images I’d create whilst there. Gisela is very helpful to other Togs and I’m very grateful to her for her encouragement.

If you’re from the UK or you’ve ever visited our shores, there’s something about the British seaside that’s become ingrained into the national consciousness. It’s buckets and spades, donkey rides and deck chairs, strolling the pier whilst eating a stick of rock and having sand-sprinkled fish and chips on the beach. Our obsession with holidays to the seaside date back to the Victorian era. This saw masses of people escaping the industrial grit and grime of the City to bathe in the cleansing seas and look for a bit of saucy fun. Our seaside resorts are part of our modern heritage, they’re leisurely places that feel rooted in that bygone time, it’s an industry that really trades on that nostalgia, looking back to a Britain that only exists in our memory (and photographs).

As a photographer the seaside aesthetic offers an awful lot visually. There’s something for every interest in photography; the sea itself, architecture, heritage, people, landscape, sunsets, wildlife and everything in between. For those of us who like to capture the reality of life, the street or documentary side of life, it can be overwhelming because there’s just so much to see. And even if you’ve very very disciplined in your approach, there’s something incredibly spontaneous about the seaside that can distract you completely from your initial goals.

I’d arrived early, just after nine in the morning, there was drizzle in the air and a group of youths were fighting outside Blackpool North station under the glowering gaze of Blackpool tower itself. Literally hell for leather scrapping, flying fistycuffs and ankle biting. The odd candid expletive exploded from the Andy Capp-esque maelstrom, one of the lads trainers flew off and there was blood. I did wonder if they were hangry and just needed some Weetabix, but whadda I know about life in the Noorrrth? I skirted the scene and wandered away, down to the seafront, passing many rundown shops and B&B establishments.

I grabbed out little Ricky Ricoh to capture a particularly wasted looking hotel just as an equally wasted looking Scottish lady shouted at me ‘Best go home Luv, this place is a fookin shithole!‘. She lunged out at me and stuck her hand on my camera as if to snatch it from me, but she calmed suddenly, perhaps realising how aggressive she was being and that I had no idea who she was! She modified her voice to a gentler pitch and told me she’d lived in the area for 35 years and that, sadly in her considered opinion, the place was going to the dogs. Oddly she then started telling me about her hubby’s rather large gnome collection and that perhaps next time I was in town she’d invite me around to view it. She then stumbled away across a pedestrian crossing, grumbling about the time. She never did give me her contact details, so perhaps I’ll never pay witness to the Blackpool Gnomes, but then, maybe that wasn’t the point. I stashed Ricky Ricoh away and wondered shore-wards.

A couple of minutes later after crossing the tram-tracks near the North Pier, I found myself braced against the beachfront railings staring out to sea, breathing in deep and just letting my eyes drink in the view. The constant breeze tore tears from my eyes, well, that’s my excuse anyway. It was very quiet but for the constant calls from the gulls overhead. It was nice to just stand awhile, adoring the sea as the tide started to drag its heels from the shoreline. The windblown drizzle felt cool on my face, I felt positive the weather would eventually come good.

My eyes were quickly drawn southwards towards the piers and beyond. The sea walls here go for kilometres in either direction. Originally much more modest in size, they were built in the early 1900s, constructed from 25,000 tonnes of basalt imported from the German Rhineland. After a century of pounding by the Irish Sea the sea wall was replaced in a huge project that widened the entire promenade and created the Mediterranean-esque seawall we have today. The massive bulwark is actually rather wonderful to look at, its simple stepped lines follow the gentle curves of the shoreline, its pleasing leading lines are visual cannon-fodder for the photographer.

The itch to snap is difficult to resist in such a place, the Tower looms Eiffel-like above the nearby North Pier. Aside from the odd joggers and doggers going up and down the Prom, Blackpool looked groggy from the night before. I pulled out Frankie Fuji and grabbed a few shots looking along the shore and it felt really really good to be out somewhere new, slowly easing into the new day. I had built it up in my mind, planning everything I wanted to capture. I walked the virtual seafront and sidestreets on Googly Maps, identified places I wanted to walk around, in perhaps a vain attempt to distill Blackpool life into one day. However, this put a lot of pressure on me, unnecessarily. Seriously, how can you capture successfully, a place in just a day? It’s not possible, life isn’t that straightforward, and places change as the hours pass by, especially in a place like Blackpool, that’s so full of human distractions.

After an hour gently strolling south along the promenade to the Pleasure Beach I found myself ditching little Frankie in favour of tricky Ricky. As the shopfronts started to open up and people began to throng towards the Beach, it became apparent as I walked that the 35mm lens (50mm full frame equivalent) on Frankie Fuji was going to be far too long for the shots that I felt like capturing. Blackpool is such a sight to see, everywhere you look there’s something going on, little kids with candy floss stuck in their hair, lads with sticks of Blackpool Rock down their trousers shouting ‘Oy Oy!’, sweaty beer bellies, old ladies with handbags filled with change for the slot machines, short skirted girls carrying huge cuddly toys, beefcakes in pantyhose, it’s all there, strolling down the Prom. Having little Ricky hand in glove so to speak, I felt confident to lose myself in the crowds, capturing images as I went.

I’ve learned the hard way that travelling light really is a necessity, especially so with cameras. As a result I didn’t have the option to change to another Fuji lens, having only the 35mm f2 lens on the Fuji plus Ricky Ricoh. My bag is so much easier to carry as a result! Plus there’s all the batteries in the side pocket, so keeping it simple made trekking it all around that bit less cumbersome. And minus the distractions of those ‘oh what if I use that lens’ conundrums my mind was free to focus on what I could capture with what I had and nothing more. As a creative exercise restricting yourself to a single lens or a single subject matter actually forces you to think more creatively. You have to work with what you’ve got, no distractions from other lens. You’ll find yourself thinking more about composition, light and colour, rather than distracting yourself with what ifs and maybes.

Little Ricky Ricoh’s capable wide angle lens freed me up to focus on just enjoying all those lovely sights strolling along the promenade. And oh gosh golly did I walk it! I did circuit after circuit during the seven or so hours that I was there. And really I only scratched the surface of the place. It was a fools’ errand trying to do more in that time. So I made the decision early on to stick to the Golden Mile area, patrolling the beachfront and closest side streets, the three piers and the beach. Even so I walked twenty four kilometres, drank copious amounts of water, chocolate and an entire grab-bag of Starburst sweets. Plus a delightful chippy luncheon.

The pavements and shops along the front are crowded close together, there’s a lot going on visually, especially with the trams and horse drawn carts passing close by. Little Ricky Ricoh immediately felt like the better option, the right tool for the job at hand, and boy howdy was he ever. The 18mm view (28mm full frame equivalent) allows you to grab a fairly wide view, but it never feels like it’s too much. In tight environments like around shops you can catch compositions with lots of layered interest across the frame, the Ricoh just felt right. Within a few trial shots I felt much more comfortable, especially using such a small camera at relatively close quarters to a lot of passersby. The lens captures so much detail, making it a breeze to shoot looking across or through my chosen scenes. It’s so small people barely notice and, even then, it just looks like a mobile phone, I’m a tall cumbersome fellow so it’s difficult for me to blend in, but with the Ricoh I never felt conspicuous. Despite my lumbering presence I was able to stand back and watch for interesting people and moments. In addition, Ricky Ricoh has an extra bit of fun functionality that really ups the game. It’s called Snapfocus.

Snapfocus is a function that harks back to the days of shooting film on the streets. Photographers back then would often pre-focus their lenses to a certain distance, say two to four metres ahead of them. By setting the lens aperture to something like f8 or f11, they could shoot from the hip, aiming the camera at passersby without having to focus the lens. They knew that the settings they’d used would be mostly in focus. Little Ricky Ricoh uses a similar set up but with some fantastic advanced technology to further finesse zone focusing. On the Ricoh you can utilise the various autofocus options, but in a sub-menu you can also utilise the full press snap option. What this basically means is that you can select a pre-focused distance, say three metres. As you’re going around snapping the camera will use your chosen autofocus mode. But, if you see a shot that you don’t have time to compose and focus, if you quickly press the shutter button fully down, the camera will bypass autofocus and capture the shot at the pre-selected 3 metre distance, clever huh?!? This is really useful for shooting candid photos within scenes that are moving quickly around you, and I must admit I used it a lot in Blackpool, especially amidst the throngs in front of the shops.

I admit I fell in love with Blackpool’s faded grandeur. I could have spent the day just snapping the multitudes of colourful signs, shopfronts and goods on display. Then there’s the trams and horse carts, or life on the beach or people strolling along the piers. In the end I chose to just drift through all those areas on an informal kind of circuit, weaving up and down the promenade, familiarising myself with the significant places. I chose to capture little instances of people coming together, one of my favoured approaches, but without overdoing any one particular place. I think when I go back later this month I shall spend some more time lingering in locations where I can capture more layered compositions. Looking back through my photos from the day I’ve already pinpointed a couple of places that offer good potential. I was quite lucky with the weather which actively improved as the day wore on. As the morning rolled over and asked the afternoon to scratch its belly I found myself on a second circuit of the Prom down by the Pleasure Beach. Here the rollercoasters’ rampants loom over the tram-tracks like rolling hills of Mechano. Empty screams throng and swoon as the coasters twist and shout. It’s an interesting watch for five minutes whilst you luncheon; picture me munching on a hot bap and chips, I was ravenous by this point.

Little Ricky then spent much of the rest of the day in my hand, even as I wandered a little further afield down a few side streets. Away from the beachfront and the busy entertainment areas around Dickson St, the piers and the plethora of bed & breakfast establishments, Blackpool weighs heavy on the heart. Aside from a great many run down and derelict shops and offices, drug addiction and homelessness is rife. You don’t have to walk far to find this sad economy, and there’s a lot of it. It’s grim in places, and those unfortunates I saw were belligerent. As I mentioned earlier, I saw a fistfight when I arrived at the station, but it wasn’t the only aggression I experienced that day. Down by a row of derelict shops just a stone’s throw from Blackpool Tower, I received a torrent of abuse from a lad who decided I was various swear words and that he was gonna smash my face in. All for merely walking by. My camera was stowed away at this point, it’s better that way in dodgy or unfamiliar areas and I don’t point my lens at the Homeless. But still something about my face irritated this unfortunate man (fat tuck, southern banker, little hunt, fat bustard, fat wedo, sucking chithead, or words that sound like that, were spewed in my direction) so I kept my head down feeling distinctly unsafe and wandered back towards the relative safety of the Beachfront.

Down by the beach the afternoon sun was really starting to heat up proceedings and oh, my feet were sore. After grabbing a drink and those starburst I mentioned earlier, I took myself down on to the sands. Shoes and socks dully dispatched I took a long and very lovely lollop down to the sea – the tide had retreated beyond the ends of the piers by then. There was a gentle breeze and it was actually lovely for a while. The noise from the Prom rapidly falls away as you walk down the soft sands. I wasn’t far from Blackpool Tower and the North Pier, I took out Frankie Fuji and grabbed some nice photos of the tower partially reflected in the seawaters trapped amongst the sand.

I was almost alone except for a few brave or daft ijits swimming in the sea. Off to my left I noticed a couple of buxom young ladies who, out of nowhere, were suddenly rather, ummmmmmmm, lacking in attire. Cavorting through the waves I realised they were a couple of so-called ‘Influencers’ or some sort of twittergram twatishness – they took turns filming each other posturing in those classic insta poses as the waves crashed against them. Two teenage lads walked past where I was and immediately noticed these girls. They proceeded to sneak up close to them and then film themselves posing near the nearly naked insta’girls as they filmed themselves …..it was a weird very 21st century fourth wall sight. My feet were lovely and cool though.

I walked amongst the waves and slowly headed away to wander under the superstructure of the North Pier. Standing beneath it you can’t help notice it’s looking its age these days, unsurprising after decades of pounding by the Irish Sea and the feet of millions of tourists. A better photographer than me would have taken more interesting photos of it I imagine, it didn’t really inspire much from me to be fair. I thought I’ll have a walk up there instead, which I did, and my day continued onwards, spiralling around the seafront, capturing life as I went. As I walked back up to the sea wall to dust and dry my feetsies, I noticed a rather large message scrawled in the sand, because it was the day of THE BIG SEMI…… (ohh matron), you know, the one we were all so proud of winning before the flaccid final that we contrived to gift away on penalties, yeah that one. Sadly, despite all the optimism, it didn’t come home; as I limped back towards the train station later that day one bright spark (of Italian extraction perhaps) had modified the Home to Rome. How right they were.

The pocket rocket Ricoh has released my photography from the unnecessary burdens, both mental and physical, that I’d inadvertently put upon myself. I can ditch the extra lenses, drop the paraphenalia, put Ricky on my wrist, stick a few spare batteries in my jeans and GO! I’m free to focus on where I am, the people I meet, the incidents I find, what more do I need than that? Shooting with a fixed lens compact camera just makes a lot of sense if you’re travelling and want to stay light. Some might prefer to have a zoom lens on such a small camera, which does have it’s advantages and drawbacks too, but I’m not going down that rabbit hole, I’ve yabbered for long enough as it is! For my way of shooting, having that bright maximum f2.8 aperture on the wide 18mm lens really makes a lot of sense, especially if the lighting changes or you find yourself shooting indoors. In Blackpool there were no gear distractions, just the simple joy of meeting people, taking their photo and moving on. I lost myself in the realms of light, composition, colour and expression, which is what it’s all about. On the street I was able to set and forget, knowing that Ricky Ricoh was poised to capture images the way I wanted to capture them without any fuss or complications. Good grief, this is beginning to sound like a gear review!

After a bit of practice and some effort to familiarise myself with the menus and button layout really paid me dividends. You could argue that judging a street camera boils down to your success rate with photos. If you catch more than 50% that are keepers, you’re doing really well. Shooting with the Ricoh I found that I got far more keepers than average (what that says about my skill level well, you decide). The images are sharp across the frame and generally focused where I want them to be focused. In quieter moments, resting on the pier supping on some pop, I found myself looking back through the images, and really enjoying both how they looked and how they made me feel. Happy.

If there was fault to be found with any given shot it was usually down to me not making the necessary adjustments to cater for changing conditions. That said, I could have opted (and at times I did) to put the camera in P mode. Essentially this is a Professional AUTO mode – the camera makes most of the settings for each shot, but you can still adjust things if you don’t like them. P mode is generally excellent, it really is point and shoot, a joyfully pure experience. Manual mode be damned, photography should be fun, not a proof of your worth.

My memories of that day are primarily happy and positive, and I met so many lovely people. As I wandered and wandered and wandered, the Ricoh happily did everything I asked of it and more besides (deliberate slow shutter shots are very interesting, as are wide landscapes). Ricky felt natural in my hand, an extension of my eye that constantly surprised me by picking up more in the scene than I had initially noticed. Despite the lack of a viewfinder I was able to capture some lovely candid moments, as well as the odd portrait here and there.

I should also make a special mention about little Ricky’s film simulations. Like a lot of modern cameras, the Ricoh is equipped with a raft of in-camera film simulations that you can apply to jpg files. Some are good, the Retro and the High Contrast black & white sims for instance are certain worth exploring, whilst others like the insipid Sepia and tepid Cross Process are easily ignored. The stand out player is Positive Film, which is based on the old colour slide films from the 1960s. Blues and Reds are heavily saturated whilst greens and yellows are subtler. You can alter all the sims in-camera to modify saturation, contrast and sharpness to your preferred look – I tended to push up the saturation but worked with lower contrast and sharpness. If you push the saturation too far the skin tones do become overly red and the shadows lose a lot of detail, so it’s best to go easy, and I prefer that slightly faded look. With a couple of exceptions the majority of the Blackpool photos herein were processed in-camera using the Positive film sim and then lightly edited and cropped in Lightroom.

Looking through my photos now I can see the many opportunities that I missed, moments that I didn’t spot because I was in too much of a rush. Those are chances that I can learn from and perhaps plan out better for the next time, be more rigorous with myself. Admittedly I do get antsy when I’m shooting, I find lingering in a place makes me self conscious, so I’ll mill about a bit, exploring the scene to see what angles work best. It’s doesn’t always work but sometimes you can mine a little gold. The good thing is, this was just my first visit and from it I bagged some really good shots, photographs of a place and its people that I am proud of. Now I know the layout of the seafront better I can plan my next visit accordingly and think more carefully about what it is that I want to capture, I can look deeper and perhaps find more interesting stories to tell. I don’t imagine I’ll be quite so lucky with the weather next time around, so there’s a few indoor locations I spotted (plus there’s a huge Brutalist magistrates court that’s soon to be demolished) that I can go mooch around.

Writing this blog out hasn’t been the easiest of preoccupations for me, and I imagine some of you will have read this and thought, what a load of tosh, sort yourself out Man! Master of Procrastination, top of the class 1984, I thank you. I’ve really had to strip away layers of personal equivocation to expose some seemingly obvious truths. I could make excuses but really, I didn’t know where to start, although unconsciously it seems I’d been sleep-walking towards a resolution about what I wanted, needed and how best to go about it. So, mayhap it was just a thing I needed to go through, I don’t know. I don’t write this blog to give you (or I!) all the answers, it’s just Words and Pictures, slum poetry and window dressing, I daresay there are finer, more productive and efficient ways to analyse one’s own problems. Inadvertently I started the ball rolling by cleaning out my desk (so glad I did that, the dust was unreal!) and rationalising my camera equipment, it set me on a path that has really helped to simplify my creative process as well as making me a bit wiser to myself and my disability towards the phaff, prevarication and nonsense that I conjure to blind myself to the obvious.

It’s the simple things, eh? They’ll probably put that on my headstone.

Thanks for reading. Be well.