A Cyclist on the English Landscape

A 12 months in the past, as a journey photographer grounded by the pandemic, I began bringing a digital camera and tripod with me on my morning bicycle rides, taking pictures them as if they had been journal assignments.

It began out as simply one thing to do — a problem to attempt to see the acquainted by recent eyes. Quickly it blossomed right into a celebration of touring at dwelling.

I dwell in a light seaside city known as St. Leonards-on-Sea, in Sussex, on the south coast of England. In the event you’ve not heard of it, you’re in good firm. It’s not on anyone’s record of celebrated English magnificence spots. Certainly, most of my driving is throughout flat coastal marsh or down-at-the-heel seafront promenades.

There’s historical past right here, in fact. That is England in any case. The lonely marshes I pedal throughout most days are the place William the Conqueror landed his males in 1066. In any other case, apart from being a hang-out for smugglers, this stretch of coast dozed away the centuries till the Victorians introduced the railways down from London.

Then, for a couple of gaudy a long time, St. Leonards and the different close by seaside cities grew to become widespread bucket-and-spade vacation spots, England’s personal Costa del Sol — that’s, till funds airfares and the actual Costa del Sol, the one in Spain, lured the crowds away and plunged the space into a protracted and not-so-genteel decline.

As for me, I’m a transplant. I moved right here from Australia. After the preliminary novelty wore off, that of being in England, it assumed a type of shrugging familiarity — the typical retailers, takeaways, a downbeat seafront, tough round the edges however with not-too-inconvenient entry to Gatwick and Heathrow and flights to extra fascinating locations.

However a 12 months of exploring St. Leonards and its surrounds, digital camera in hand, chasing the gentle, has modified all that. It’s introduced dwelling the fact that you just don’t must board a airplane and jet off to the far aspect of the world to expertise a way of journey or the romance of distinction. It lies ready on the doorstep — for those who look.

You don’t must go far. Certainly, I haven’t been in a position to. With the numerous lockdowns which were imposed on us over the previous 12 months, it’s been both discouraged or downright unlawful to stray far out of your residence. All these pictures had been captured inside a 10-mile radius of the place I dwell, and most of them a lot nearer than that.

I plan my outings and set out every morning nicely earlier than daybreak in an effort to be the place I wish to be in time to catch the first gentle. In summer time that may imply leaving the home as early as 3 a.m. In winter, it’s chilly starlight, the crunch of frost below my wheels, often snowflakes swirling in the glow of my headlamp.

I carry every little thing I would like on my bicycle and work completely alone. I’m each the photographer and the bike owner in the pictures. That half’s taken a little bit of getting used to. I’ve by no means been snug in entrance of the digital camera. As a journalist, I’ve all the time stated I had an ideal face for radio and the excellent voice for print. However wants should when the satan drives. What with social-distancing necessities and 0 funds, I’m all I’ve obtained.

These pictures, although, aren’t meant to be about me. They’re meant to characterize a bike owner on the panorama, anyone — you, maybe.

Creating these pictures has required not solely a brand new approach of visualizing, however a complete new photographic ability set. The primary query most individuals ask is how I set off the shutter once I’m 100 yards away on my bicycle. Easy. I take advantage of what’s known as an intervalometer, a programmable timer that enables me to preset no matter delay I would like after which have the digital camera hearth off a selected variety of frames. That’s the simple bit. Anybody can take a self-portrait.

Inserting your self artistically in the scene is a far trickier proposition. It requires juggling a maddening variety of particulars, most of which you by no means consider till you begin doing it and look critically at the outcomes. All the pieces issues, from the drape of sunshine and shadow, to the set of your headlamps, to your physique language on the bicycle. You must be actor, director, location scout, gaffer, key grip, even wardrobe assistant: I all the time carry a spare jersey or two in numerous colours to ensure I can work with any backdrop.

What’s extra, it’s important to play all these roles in actual time, in quickly shifting gentle, in an uncontrolled atmosphere the place vehicles, pedestrians, dog-walkers, horses, cyclists and joggers can — and do! — pop up out of nowhere. It may be massively irritating, and but at the identical time intensely satisfying when all of it comes collectively.

It’s addictive, too. Over the previous 12 months I’ve develop into a eager scholar of native geography — not simply the structure of the cities and the structure and the contours of the panorama, however when and the place the gentle falls as the seasons progress. I do know the tide tables like an outdated salt and comply with the phases of the moon. I’ve developed a peasant’s eye for climate. I can inform at a look, once I step outdoors my door, these mornings when an evocative mist will probably be rising miles away on the marsh. I plan my outings with the identical jaunty expectancy I used to really feel on my approach to the airport. And once I push off down the avenue, the world turns into massive once more, the approach it was once once I was a toddler: wealthy intimately, ripe for discovery.

By the time I return to the home, a number of hours later, having witnessed the dawn and put nonetheless many miles of Sussex countryside beneath my wheels, I really feel as if I’ve been locations, seen issues, traveled in the grand outdated sense of the phrase.

And, ever the journey photographer, I carry again footage of the place I’ve been.

Roff Smith is a author and photographer primarily based in England. You may comply with his every day rides on Instagram: @roffsmith.