Lake Como

I probably should have mentioned I'd be away for a while. At first because of unpleasant work loads. But most recently because we've been on holiday, with no access to a computer to process photos. So here's just a taster of from our week and a bit on Lake Como in northern Italy. Yes, it is a bit touristy in places, but like all touristy areas, real daily life is only a few minutes walk from the curio shops and theme park restaurants. Even this close to the Swiss border, it's all delightful rural Italian cliché, with stone walls, narrow lanes, Vespas and old Fiats, geese and green fields, handmade Tallegio cheese and spectacular lake views over patchwork green fields. More to come when we get home at the end of the month.

A deconstructed Moto Guzzi

Why would an otherwise completely sensible person buy a 33 year old motorcycle, sight unseen, as a pile of parts?

Reason no. 1: It's a classic Guzzi


Reason no. 2:  Yes, that odometer really does say 26,326km. This Moto Guzzi SP1000 is basically brand new. Slightly more grubby than is typical for a new bike admittedly, but not a trace of wear anywhere. Flaking chrome and three decades of dirt, but all the working bits are almost virginal.

Reason no. 3: Well this is really the same as reason no. 1. Until the mid 1980's Moto Guzzi manufactured the most beautiful internal combustion engine on the planet. Still the old rounded tappet covers.


Reason no. 4: A very trustworthy, soft Welsh voice, all the way from Aberdeen. No, not Scotland, Aberdeen near Graaf Reinet in the Eastern Cape, South Africa. And some pictures. I'm not insane.

I fetched it Friday evening. Unpacking had to wait until Sunday. To the uneducated the following picture might look like a big mess. Understand that the newspaper is actually gift wrapping, and suddenly the true nature of the scene becomes clear.

Which brings us to reason no. 5:
Yes, there is another classic Guzzi engine in those pictures. It belongs to my 1971 V7 Special. We've been together since 1993, and slowly, slowly, she is returning to her former glory. Since she really is Special, serious modifications are out of the question. The SP 1000 though, is like a beautiful woman dressed in ugly clothes. She needs a little undressing, and some new clothes. A mistress, if you will, something of a plaything. Don't be alarmed though, that's just the Italian way, my oldest love will always be first in my heart.

P.S. I don't really equate women to mechanical possessions.
P.P.S. On the other hand, I do relate to the V7 as more than a machine. Judge me as you will.

10 Feb update

I made more motorbike fix up progress this weekend than I have in ten years. Miraculously everything seems to be there. That pile of bits now looks sort of like a bike, and I've got a pretty good idea of what I'm aiming for - a custom that uses almost all original bits, maybe even the original paintwork on the tank, but every excess piece will be brutally pared away and all the lines cleaned up. That open rear frame is a winner and will stay, with all the components that were under the side panels to be hidden away somewhere else. Now to decide what needs to be cut and changed, and what bits I need to make, and then I'll take it apart again, do all the repairing and fabricating, and just put it back together again. Easy.

I promise this won't become a motorcycle blog, but if you're interested, bookmark this post and I'll update with major progress.

Moto Guzzi SP 1000 cafe custom mock up. It's going to be pretty. And no, that's not the saddle I will use.

For reference, here's how it looked before. Sort of charming in a 1980 kind of way. The windshield is very practical , and not completely hideous, but whoever thought those engine cowls were a good idea should be shot and thrown in Lake Como. Not only are they an ugly blight on that exquisite v-twin, they also bash the knees of any normal sized person. Contact me if you would like to purchase all that excess bodywork at a very reasonable price.

That same Moto Guzzi SP 1000 circa early '80s. Photo by original owner Les McMahon

February 2014 progress:

I've mostly figured out what I want to do and have started getting bits ready. E.g. this pair of lovingly hand-fabricated headlamp brackets.



What you see here is about about 22 hours of Photoshop mock-up, cardboard templates, staring, measuring, staring, cutting, checking, staring, brazing, cosmetic filling with tin solder, grinding and painstakingly hand sanding to be ready for plating. Yes, that's only one small component. But this isn't a race, and aren't they pretty?

26 March 2014 - Carbs

Such a lovely name, Dellorto. Even the code sounds charming to me, one marked VHBT 30 C S, and the other VHBT 30 C D. VHB designates the old square bore Dellortos, with a nice wide 30mm diameter to feed those big cylinders. S is for Sinistra, left in Italian, D for Destra, right, indicating their respective sides.
They started out like this:


Filthy and corroded, dried out petrol sludge glueing everything together. This is great news. It tells me that this is why the previous owner stripped the carburettors, to try to deal with a problem, not to fiddle. It also confirms that the low mileage is genuine and the bike stood for long, long time at some stage.


A couple of hours of soda blasting, followed by a good rinse in boiling water and a careful drying got everything looking almost new. Home soda blasting is great, quick, safer and cheaper than nasty cleaning chemicals. Basically like sand or other media blasting, but with baking soda - powerful enough to quickly strip grease and deposits, gentle enough to leave even plastic components undamaged. The intake manifold gaskets had previously been stuck on with some gasket gunk, so I took the time to scrape them off carefully and get the manifold mating faces dead flat with sandpaper on a glass sheet.


After that it's like playing with a puzzle, making sure you have all the bits, undamaged and in the right places. MIA: one float pivot pin. Due for replacement: two number v9 needles badly corroded, one of which also had some wear. Dubious and should probably be replaced: one main jet, number 265, worn ever so slightly oval by the worn needle. All jetting standard and hopefully will do well with modern fuel, I've no desire to mess about with the more than adequate standard torquey performance.


For now, only temporarily assembled while I wait for the required parts, which will only be ordered once I discover what else I need. To keep everything corrosion free and prevent binding while it waits, all parts and channels are slathered in Fluid Film. Like most of their clients, I'm in love with this lanolin based anti-corrosion lubricant, which smells like Arnica lotion, doesn't go sticky or smell bad, and won't harm me, unlike most solvent based petrochemical lubricants that don't disclose their composition, but almost certainly include scary carcinogenic short chain hydrocarbons.

The Yale of Beaufort at Kew

I'm not sure why a mythical white beast with gold spots and swivelling horns would be considered sufficiently imposing to be an important heraldic device for generations of British Royals. Especially as depicted here, looking like he's about to throw up. A condition I can entirely relate to, having yesterday contracted the stomach flu raging through Cape Town. Sadly, although I am quite white already, no gold spots have appeared.

Labia Theatre

For Lily who is both a marvellous cook and poetic writer and photographer, and Braam, who appreciates benign decay but not necessarily the pigeon shit that tends to come with it.

http://labia.co.za - it's still running, and still the only independent movie theatre in Cape Town. Go and watch an art movie there in an atmosphere of authentic shabbiness, tinged with sadness and served with beer. It may not be around forever.

Update 14 Jan- A digital photographic aside

I've been concious that I need to deal with my tendency to take too many pictures, with not enough care given to each one. I've been looking over transparencies and negatives from the days when money and therefore film was very limited, but my time was cheap. I took better pictures. Exposure and composition tended to be spot on, even on transparency film where one has a half stop margin at best. Far more of the pictures were of meaningful subjects.

Now don't get me wrong, I love digital. As an environmentalist with a technical bent, how could I not? Anyone who's ever done darkroom work is aware that the chemicals are super-scary. Sure my best selenium toned prints are lovely to look at, but that stuff will kill you and is environmentally toxic even in tiny amounts. Digital is benign by comparison, and done right can provide quality that required far more time, and insanely expensive medium format gear back in the day. Plus you don't have to spend hours at a stretch locked in a pitch black, humid hole reprinting the same bloody print to get it right. The magic of seeing that image appear under the orange light soon disappears after the fifth time you've fixed, rinsed and dried it, checked under realistic viewing conditions, and still haven't got the exposure and contrast right.

Sometimes, digital does let you get the moment that would have been almost impossible before. The image above is one of around 65 shots. I wasn't just shooting randomly, I only pressed the shutter when there were flying pigeons potentially located in compositionally useful places. No motor drive, single shot only. It's never easy to compose with fast moving elements, but the great joy of digital is that you can check those difficult shots, and when you've got it, you know. I realise it's not a picture for everyone, I've left it quite flat and cold, but I love the composition, and what I didn't even notice at the time, the way the diagonal viewing line of isolated pigeons bottom left and top right just emphasises the stillness of all the sitting pigeons, in contrast to the two flying.

And yet. There are too many mediocre pictures. In the world, and on my computer. I don't want to photograph less, but this year should be a year for deleting, for taking fewer pictures, and going over old ones. Expect some posts from the analogue archives.

the science of portraits

Cameras do horrible things to people. Self-conciousness sets in, and with it uncontrollable rapid blinking and forced smiles. Even the most self-confident rapidly get that rabbit in the headlights look when faced with a huge unblinking glass eye. Ladies contort their heads into weird positions in a misguided attempt to hide real or imagined flaws or sagging.

For me portraits must be entirely natural. Unguarded and not posed.

This is why family portraits are a nightmare. Let's do the maths - it's all about probability. For an average picture with an average group of humans I'd estimate the input numbers as follows:

Adults
chance of an adult sitting properly without finger up nose: 99/100 = 0.99
chance of an adult having an acceptable expression: 4/10 = 0.4
chance of an adult having a great expression: 1/20 = 0.05

Children
chance of a child sitting properly without their finger up their nose: 6/10 = 0.6
chance of a child having an acceptable expression: 5/10 = 0.5
chance of a child having a great expression: 2/10 = 0.2

For the purpose of the calculations that follow, it is important to note that having a great or acceptable expression and putting your finger up your nose or similar antics are NOT mutually exclusive, as demonstrated convincingly here by both Sadie and Zoë who manage to look beautific while respectively mining for gold and pretending to be an eel.

Single children

Contrary to popular wisdom, portraits of single children on their own, are therefore not too much of a challenge - probability of a great expression, natural, decently framed picture without orifice exploration is:

0.6 x 0.2 = 0.12 or 12%

i.e. 1 in every 8 or 9 photos is likely to be a great success

If you can even relate to kids a little, just set up your kit, shoot 8 to 9 photos and et voilà:



You want a picture of your son just before his milk teeth fall out and he looks all rabbit-like for the next five years? No problema señora:

Multiple children

Two kids together? Still do-able:

(0.6 x 0.5)² = 0.0144 or 1.4%

i.e. 1 in every 69 photos is likely to be a great success

Three kids? We're starting to get into lower your expectations territory. Unless you want to shoot the 579 images that it would take to have at least one shot at them all looking great  over enough sessions for the kids to stay fresh, you'd better accept that at least two of them are going to look merely OK while the other one looks superb enough to make the mediocrity of the other two clearly noticeable:

(0.6 x 0.2) x (0.6 x 0.5)² = 0.0108 or 1.1%

i.e. 1 in every 93 photos is likely to be a two-thirds OK with one-third great success

And best you bring your best reflexes and enough light for f11. You don't want to be a little out of focus for that one in 100 shot. Keeping them still is not an option.

Single adults / teenagers

Single person portraits of adults are already substantially more challenging. While it will probably be easy enough to get an acceptable photo unless the person is really camera-phobic...

0.99 x 0.4 = 0.396 or ~40%

i.e. one in every 2 to 3 pictures is likely to be OK

...getting a really natural and flattering picture can be a lot harder:

0.99 x 0.05 = 0.0495 or ~5%

i.e. one in every 20 properly exposed, lit and framed pictures might be pretty decent.

Teenagers can be more challenging still, although the standard deviation on that group is awfully high so I will omit probability calculations as largely meaningless for specific cases. I personally think morose is not actually that bad since it's at least natural and will likely make an authentic portrait, although not necessarily one parents would pay you for.

Combinations

Hopefully I've already made my point and you know where this is going.

Let's say two grandparents, two parents and two kids. Want everyone looking their very best?:

(0.99 x 0.05)⁴ x(0.6 x 0.5)²= 0.000000054 or 0.0000054%

i.e. one in every 18,507 pictures is likely to be close to perfect.

I'm not really an 80/20 kind of person, but with these odds, I'll settle for OK, with a dash of lovely. Oh wait, one of the kids has run off and refuses to come back? Never mind, then it's time for alchemy. Just put grandpa with any available granddaughter:



Probability of success: 100%

after the wind

The southeaster has been howling for weeks. I've been entertaining thoughts of moving to Thailand or the Med, where decent, gentle air is taken for granted. This morning, the wind was just getting started as usual, then it just stopped. Completely. Idyllic summer appeared and I was instantly in a beautific mood.



The last two years have been unnaturally still for Cape Town. Weeks of summer wind is more like what I remember. You'd think after 42 years here I'd be used to the wind, but no, I still hate it with a passion.