Rainbow Journeyman’s diary

If you haven’t done so already, sometime soon you’ll be digging your camera out of its trusty bag and hoiking it off to take some pictures to add to your collection or for exhibition work. Hopefully, as you will see later in this blog, you’ll be looking for something seasonal to add to your collection. Spring, after all, has sprung. And albeit a bit early, the garden is full of Daff’s and the hedgerows are looking interesting. But, before you walk out of the door with it, stop! Take stock of what you are expecting this precision mechanism to do for you. First, ask yourself a question. When was the last time that you took all your equipment out of the bag and thoroughly checked it over? If you’re any thing like us at Rainbow Journey’s, who uses their cameras virtually every week, or obversely, if you haven’t used it since last Michelmass: then I expect it’s been an age.

Okay, I hear you say to yourself, what is he on about now. In defence, I will give you a little example or two.
A close friend of ours, who prides himself on the fact that he has a 200,000 mm lens attached to his camera, a Russian Zenith complete with Blue Label Vodka bottle attached, (Here, I exaggerate slightly), grabbed his camera from its case in our back garden to photograph a few goldfinches who work their way round to our bird feeders. That is after they have noshed on Brian’s (Our neighbour who lives next-door) posh nosh feeders. (My friend lives in Basingstoke, where the birds cough from the motorway fumes to announce their presence) I digress. The look of amazement on my friends face as his camera detached itself from his grasp and went one way, whilst he followed his chosen path and went the other. It was a worthy picture in the making.
The autopsy revealed, over the years that he has had the camera, he had never ever checked that the neck strap was firmly attached. As a consequence, the strap and the camera parted company and camera became spatially aware (A sort of detached branch of Aeroflot in the making) and it took flying lessons. Fortunately no harm was done. As, being a keen gardener our grass had not been cut for a least a week, (or may be a tad more) and it had a soft landing. Lesson learned. Now the straps are “tacked” under the buckle with a bit of blue tack. Unobtrusive, but effective. And not a drop of Vodka spilt.

In addition, a short while ago. Suitably dressed up to the gills against the cold, I heaved a camera into the car and dragged it off down to St Just, in Cornwall. “Just to pop a few pictures into the bag on some Mine workings.” Like all “experts”, (working from the book) I set the camera up beautifully to the correct exposure, then decided to add a filter……… and took a series of posed hopefully “artistic” pictures. I was doing the posing not the camera. One likes to play to one’s audience.
All good clean fun. And, to drag in or out, that terrible old clichéd, panacea for all writers, it was “in the bag.”……. Except, it wasn’t. When, after driving back seventy odd miles, I ran them back into the computer. I realised I had something disgusting, green, and almost invisible, stuck onto the filter. And it showed. (This was probably part and parcel of the joys of showing the filter to our five-year-old granddaughter) Uch! So, you have probably guessed my blog for this occasion. If you really want to know how to waste a day. This is just how you do it. Don’t check your equipment. To add to this mess. I later realised the spare camera battery was also flat. As I always try to rotate the spare battery with its counterpart. I can only assume I had forgot to tag it for charging. Doh! There is a case here, as my Old dad would say. “He who hastens too fast for the brain often becomes a soil analytical expert!”

Now I know this sounds a bit like preaching to the converted, but, lesson learnt. I now, every so often, pull all the equipment out of the bag and check it all through, thoroughly. Taking time to clean both ends of all lenses, and snot covered filters. Also to wash and thoroughly dry the lens cleaning brushes. And, because we live in a less than friendly environment, camera lenses I am not using immediately I pack away in a bag with silica gel.

Which neatly leads me into my next bit of verbally written rubbish. I expect you all know about silica gel. You do? Good! For those of you who hesitated there for a nano second. It is one of those chemical composition materials that apparently have no real magical properties. Except the Chinese and the Japanese and virtually everybody else pack little bags of it in all electrical equipment. For those of you who pull all the wrapping off in a hurry to get to the goodies, that’s the little bag that always falls on the floor as you unpack from whatever it is that you bought and the dog tries and succeeds to groffle it; being sick all over your new carpet in the process.
But, as they say in all the better mags, if used properly and fit for purpose, it can be a tremendous asset to any person who has a camera.
Bob, a friend and customer of mine (Just the one?) who lives in Tavistock, recently explained to me that he had gained a slight amount of moisture inside one of his most favourite telephoto lenses. Traveling to Plymouth to trawl round the various camera fixers, and having been quoted silly money to solve the problem; and, on advice, he locked the lens into a box with a bag of silica gel. Ureka, or some other such nonsensical words in a foreign language, within two weeks of enclosure the moisture had gone. That’s using you nod to save money. Oh, and a simple foot note here. Like most of those in the know, he regenerates his gel in a hot oven. Not with the camera, I hasten to add.
Now onto the more serious stuff.
Next time

See yah out there on your Rainbow Journey.

Mike Tyrrell

One of the places that keeps pulling us back for a revisit is Pencarrow house. I’ve probably mentioned it before for several reasons, some of them quite sad. But it is yet again nearly coming to that time of year to sling cameras and kit into bags, dogs into cars and drive the old drovers road down to Bodmin and to our pleasure and benefit do another Rainbow Journey round the estate. Oh, and for your diary the gardens are open on the 1st of March. The house a bit later.

Why do we visit on a fairly regular basis? For a beginning Lady Molesworth, is always a very pleasant person to meet. Her experience and cordiality abounds and although she must have several thousand visitors a year passing round the gardens and through the house, she always greets us as if it were only yesterday that we were last here. Which looking at our records of visits is not too far from the truth. But that does not answer the question of why so often. Hm, deep thinking here. It’s probably over ten years ago that we made our first visits. The gardens were then going through stages of metamorphosis. (Being turned from a sows ear to a silk purse. Does no one think of the poor sow in that very old saying……… How unkind.) Anyway to continue. The American Gardens were then a bit of a shambles and the lake was full of silt and mud. Even the tadpoles were using satellite navigational aids and maneuvering at periscope depth instead of doing what tadpoles do. In fact a close friend of ours, Sue from a very posh school in Cheltenham, commented at the time. ” If I wanted to plough fields I could have stayed in Cheltenham on the farm.” Poor girl, turned up dressed for a stroll in the park, not dressed for a roll in the mud for a lark! And it rained! To give Sue the benefit of being a traditionalist and blue knickered; or is that blue stockinged, into the bargain. She followed us down there over a year later and agreed that the Rhodi’s were magnificent and the cream teas from the Cafe yummy! Which they both are.

Driving from a main road, a euphemistic name for the road that runs past the entrance, you travel down nearly a mile of carriageway through a series of rhododendron and azalea bushes that flank you either side of the road. Forming a Cathedral of colour over you head. Usually, by April, they are in their prime. Great splashes of colour that take your breath away for the maturity and proliferation of flower heads. And this year my feelings are, owing to the very mild winter everything will have moved forward a month and will begin to see this incredible display towards the end of February and into the middle of March.

Now, if you have looked at some of our earlier Pencarrow pictures, you will notice one where the trees stand like grey sentinels and are quite ghostly in appearance. This is an area where they found Ancient, early Brits settlements. (we were originally told Iron Age, but if you look in all the later guidebooks, it just refers to an ancient settlement.) Looking carefully you will see a raised mound which was part of the fortified ring used to protect their homesteads. All quite clever really.

What really intrigues us as photographers is the massive collection of flora and fauna and arboreal specimens that have been grown on this estate, to bring these gardens to maturity.
When we were kids, (Good memory required here!) in what was the Garden of England, then known as Kent. (Now, I believe, a suburb of the big smoke, London.) We used to go to a Avery Hill Park. The park and was full of majestic Oak and Sycamore trees some of them, we were told, dating back 150 to 200 years. So it is little wonder that we apply the same fascination to these magnificent gardens. Their maturity and coming of age very apparent.

Just a short distance from Pencarrow house is Bodmin. It’s one of those places that, like Topsy, has grown over the years. Originally quite a small market town, with a picturesque main street. Nowadays it has become a merry-go-round for traffic. It seems to be used as a shortcut by every one. Sited as it is between several major roads. But the most notable feature in the town, is, I am told from those with more experience than I, the Gaol! Now it is a museum but was once a guest house for the unfortunate. A place of confinement that struck fear into the minds of many honest local citizens. In times past, it took little effort to end up as an inmate, incarcerated deep within this austere building. Here you could moulder in your cell for several months before the local judge came round on his circuit. If the Gaol records are correct it took little effort to offend the local gentry to be deported or hung. This year, in keeping with a request from my other reader. We hope to include Bodmin, Gaol and one or two of Henry VIII castles that are not too far distance from this area.

Where ever you walk. Be friendly…

Mike Tyrrell