An awkward moment

I'd forgotten how much I liked this one. I found again it the other day while putting together some promotional stuff, getting ready for Dorset Art Weeks in May. It was taken during the summer on Portland, as I recall, on the edge of a park in Portland. I love the lush beauty of the flower border and the sickly squalor of the heart image.

I can remember, for virtually every image, where it was taken and the situation it was taken in, and I sometimes wonder if i should write it down for each too. That's partly why I keep this blog, but even if I added one image a day it would take me far too long to do. There's a funny story associated with this one, and it says a lot about the current climate for photographers who work outdoors: I was with my kids at the park, and they'd run off with Vick to play on the swings. I spotted this heart on a post of a basketball net. Now, I'm very careful not to photograph in parks and playgrounds if there are kids around, even if my kids are with me, as I know it makes some parents uncomfortable, including me if the photographer is an older man with thick specs on - you can't trust them.

Anyway, I was on my own, no-one around, so I took the heart photo, but as I did, three or four girls sped up to me on their bikes and engaged me in conversation about what I was photographing. Had they been adults I would have explained my project, but these girls were aged about 10 or 11, and although they were obviously happy to talk to me, I felt like I'd morphed into that classic old man with the cobover and thick specs, and I knew that whatever I said, to a passerby reading my lips it would look exactly like "do you want to see my puppies?".... I made my excuses and fled in the direction of my family.

It was a bizarre experience, and my wife thought it was hilarious, the way I'd reacted. I know people who photograph on the street in the style of the classic street photographer, but I know that I can't do it. I know too, that I've missed hearts I would have loved to have got because they were in playgrounds. One in Venice was particularly tempting, but I just couldn't get my camera out, even though I could see another dad snapping away at his kids, and my kids would have been in some of his shots... the dirty bastard...

Taken in a Skate Park

This picture was taken in a skate park in Christchurch. Christchurch in England, not New Zealand, in case you wondered. It's called We Love. I thin k I've explained before that the titles derive from the grafitti, so whatever's written with the heart becomes the title. It makes for some interesting titles, especially when the language gets a little purple, or the photograph is taken in Italy - Italians are profusive in their expressions of amore!

So this was called We Love, which I found interesting in itself, as it didn't say what they love. Is it that they were disturbed while writing, and perhaps it was going to say something like 'we love the underside of skate ramps', or maybe it's as simple as it is. They love. Why not?

I was really pleased with the landscape side too - I love the texture of pebbledash, with its aggression and its depressing association with postwar utilitarianism, and the broken window is just beautiful. The soft curves of the tag across it contrasts nicely with the sharpness of the stone and of the shattered window too - something for us to love...

With Love Red

This is another image from Bournemouth. Have I written about Red before? Red was a grafitti writer who I felt like I was stalking around town, as his or her tag was a heart symbol. I heard, later, that Red had been arrested, and maybe reformed, though now and then a new heart appears in Bournemouth that has the same style and finish...

This picture was taken under the flyover in the upper gardens - one of my favourite places. Vast slabs of concrete towering above, frozen waves of cobble adding texture, and the green of the pine-planted gardens to either side. Now and then, a splash of colour too, before the grafitti is cleaned away again, leaving a blank canvas for the next time. It feels like a futuristic place to me, like the world we were promised in science fiction movies from the seventies. Many of those movies, it turns out, were filmed at the abandoned Olympic Village in Montreal. I went there once, and loved that too - I'd love to go back and look out for lovehearts.