Of course every self respecting business has them; the annually reviewed and tested pithy document, guaranteed to cure even the worst cases of insomnia, upon which the big chiefs would resort to immediately if a crisis were ever to occur. In my previous life I even had to propose updates to ours a couple of times, although it felt far removed from what I was qualified to do. As I presented it to the governing body, I made some sage comment about risk being at the heart of every senior team meeting and looked for approving nods around the table in the hope that it had helped to disguise a painful attack of impostor syndrome. I’m convinced that when the pandemic struck, UK plc dug out its own emergency procedures manual; the one that had been dusted off and reviewed, with a couple of paragraphs refreshed and updated before being approved by some parliamentary select committee in the middle of a particularly snoozy agenda when everyone was itching to get to the members’ bar to engage in whatever they’d later be found guilty of. Now they were glad that Jordan and Poppy, the bright young things from Treasury Operations had been to the benchmarking exchange conference in Vilnius last spring and come back with that great idea they’d pinched from Marius and Ruta, their equally irritatingly gifted Lithuanian counterparts. Until that moment it had been assumed they’d just gone for the expense account lunches and the duty free on the way home, but now it seemed their visit had been worthwhile. “It says here we need to close the schools, put half the nation on furlough and get most of the rest of them to work at home.” And then a few paragraphs further down; “who came up with this? Support the hospitality industry by subsidising the punters and paying half the price of their pub lunches on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Genius!” I’m sure the Cabinet didn’t really come up with that at the drop of a hat. They might have claimed the credit, but you can be pretty sure that the Civil Servants did all the clever thinking and implementing. Maybe the soubriquet “Rishi’s Dishes” was coined as a nod to the new chancellor in a hurry by some Whitehall underling with a talent for Cockney rhyming slang, but I’ll bet the concept had long since been lying in Section G, paragraph 143.2(f), waiting for its moment in the sun. In fact, we had a Jordan working for us as an apprentice for a while, but he was one of those rarities us masses come across once in a career, as calm and capable as anyone I’ve ever worked with at any level. Jordan was destined for much greater things than a humble college accounts department, soon leaving us to be fast tracked to manage a large team of staff somewhere secretive before the eve of his twentieth birthday. He had to have “security clearance,” whatever that means – and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he’d dreamed up one of the more inventive schemes that Boris and Rishi pretended was their brainchild. He still sends a Christmas card, but I’m not allowed to ask him about his work unless I want to be dragged away by the SWAT squad in the middle of the night in my jimjams. He’s still only about 24 and I believe he may actually be running the country while Parliament goes on its summer holidays. I hope he’s worked out what the new Prime Minister is going to do to sort the energy price hikes this autumn.
Not all of these thoughts occurred to me in the moments that I heard the sound of hooves on the tarmac behind me, but I knew an opportunity was about to occur and that a sudden change of plan would be needed. Ali and I had just completed a rather wonderful circular walk along the banks of the River Barle, starting and ending at the famously mysterious Tarr Steps as our brief stay at the edge of Exmoor came to an end. It had been an especially pleasing way to complete the day, and the crowds that had converged here when we’d arrived three hours earlier had now dispersed, with only one soon to depart family left wading in the cold water and skipping over the iconic causeway. Now I could at least try something; quite what I wasn’t certain. Photographing the steps in their entirety didn’t feel like it was going to produce much more than what documentary togs call a “record shot,” and I scratched my head as I hadn’t given the matter much thought beyond that. Finally deciding to zoom into a small section with the reflection of the trees in the water balancing the composition, I reached for the polariser and the six stop. In truth, I wasn’t feeling particularly inspired. It was still probably going to be a record shot and nothing to write to the papers about.
And that was the point at which the steady clip clop sound of approaching horses came into earshot, signaling the fact that a far more interesting spur of the moment shot lay in wait. “I do hope we’re not about to spoil your shot,” came the voice of the first rider. “No, you’re about to turn it into a much better one,” came the response, the only piece of spontaneity that young Jordan might have nodded at in approval. The rest was chaos of course. As the equestrians briefly paused at the water’s edge, seemingly so at my behest, I ripped the two fragile filters from the lens and stuffed them into an already full pocket, before dialing in a torrent of random settings designed to change a long exposure to a very fast one in low light. With very little thought about the enormous dynamic range before me, I hit the shutter in hope as I invited them to cross the ford. Come on now, you’ve all taken the odd shot when any attempts to reduce the highlights later on have left you with a strange pink featureless patch where the sky is supposed to be haven’t you? Even since I realised that the pretty graph on the back of my screen actually meant something, the highlights have been blown to kingdom come on more than one occasion.
Watching Nigel Danson’s three way chat with Mads Peter Iversen and James Popsys last weekend on YouTube, two thoughts emerged from the hour long presentation. Firstly, it was agreed that James, a confirmed disciple of the "run and gun" school of landscape photography is much better at reacting to situations such as the sudden and unexpected arrival of horses than either of the other two with their more considered approach. But then he doesn’t believe in tripods or filters, which is an alien world to me. Secondly, when they were each asked what were their favourite images from their own portfolios, Mads chose a predictably stunning image of some early morning geese flying low across the water on a misty Danish morning in front of a fir forest; a picture he’d confessed he had to do a bit of “hit and hope” of his own in the making of. Did you see it? The picture took my breath away, and I’m used to being routinely bowled over by Mads’ pantheon of extraordinary output. And then I remembered my last visit to Godrevy just before we went to Exmoor and the ritual flight of the gulls to the lighthouse that seems to always happen half an hour before sunset – another moment where I’d locked into a long exposure and missed the chance of a far more interesting shot than the one I was taking at the time.
So I’ve decided that what I need, before I even think about putting the camera in the bag again is a set of emergency procedures; something that makes me a little bit more James and a little bit less Nigel and Mads when the moment of unexpected drama calls for it. They won’t be as long and tiresome as the ones we had to update for audit committee each June, but they will need to be useable in the event of something exciting happening without warning, such as horses crossing a river next to a national landmark of uncertain age, or seagulls making that end of day exodus to Godrevy Lighthouse in huge numbers. It might even be as simple as going to the place us togs sniff at, and putting the camera into automatic mode and letting it decide, or it might be that I need to work out how to use the creative buttons and set up shortcuts for such moments. It also needs to include a section on having a better receptacle than a pocket already stuffed with keys and a mobile phone for the quick and safe storage of rapidly discarded filters. Having the filter pouch more readily available might be an idea – in fact there’s a clip on the tripod to hang it from. And finally, I need to test the emergency procedures in a controlled environment and give myself feedback on how I performed and what needs improvement. I’ll need a tick box form for that. Oh heck - that's a slippery slope I've started making right there.
Or rather more likely, I’ll forget the entire thing until another sudden moment comes careering into the field, catching me unawares and cursing myself at the sound of the white noise between my ears amid the rush of excitement. I’m sure Jordan would know exactly what to do. He was always on top of things when the you know what was flying at speed in the direction of the office fan. For a start, he would have immediately noticed that there was a dog wandering across the Tarr Steps when the photo was taken. I didn’t see it at all until I looked at the image on the big screen at home the next morning. Now where on earth did that come from?
