I'm a photographer…..get me out of here
Having a pub all to yourself for the afternoon would be a dream come true for most dreary alcoholics, but in this case it was a miserable, damp, mildly hazardous task. I’m not a dreary alcoholic by the way – my alcoholism is always exciting.
The Oddfellows Arms was once a thriving pub in the shadow of the huge Harry Potter theme park in the heart of Alnwick. I guess it was thriving in the 1950’s anyway when there were thriving hostelries on every street corner catering to the thirst-needs of men and boys who had just emerged from the pits covered in black filth, and in need of refreshment in the form of 13 pints of 1% ABV bitter before heading home to blacken the wife’s eye because she didn’t have the water at the right temperature in the tin bath in front of the coal fire or tea on the table. Times were a lot more simple before the damned rights of birds not to be chinned on a whim.
Anyway, this boozer had succumbed to the inevitable closure due to Supermarkets selling the same stuff for ten percent of the price, and the fact that most people in boozers are complete wankers, and nobody can be bothered with loudmouthed English tossers anymore – not even other loudmouthed English tossers. It had been derelict for several years, and was being sold as a development opportunity. I was advised to watch out for the dodgy floor at some location on the first floor. Let’s get to work.
The main bar and lounge were first to get the treatment. This was a basic job, so I simply stuck a flash on the hotshoe and bounced light at half power on to the ceiling just behind the camera. The shutter speed was set at 1/80th sec to ensure the windows weren’t blown out, and the aperture was f6.3 as usual to ensure focus from foreground to background. This use of flash creates an image which has lots of light near the camera, with dramatic light-falloff as the distance increases due to the inverse square law. To overcome this, I shoot an ambient light frame – 1/15th sec at f6.3 in this case – to capture the natural illumination, and mix it in during the post production process. It’s quick and simple, but it works every time.
There was a rear dining room – presumably for the B&B guests, and that took second to shoot. The hallway to the rear was a bit of a physical wreck, and there were rooms on all sides which needed to be shot in complete darkness as there was no power available. The kitchen was clad in stainless steel, but had a slither of light in there thanks to the skylight.
Up on the first and second floors were the guest bedrooms and living quarters I presumed. I couldn’t quite suss the layout, as the rooms didn’t flow properly. The first floor was covered in bits of hardboard which flexed downwards as soon as any foot pressure was applied. It felt as if it could have given way at any time, and I didn’t want a repeat of my last close shave, especially as this drop would have been 10 feet or more onto a concrete floor below. I attempted to skirt the soft bits as best I could, shot the spaces quickly, and moved up to the roof space to cover the guest bedroom there – some of which overlooked the Harry Potter theme park wall.
The orange room needed a touch of the “elephant in the room” technique to rid the space of a double bed frame, and I left the ensuite bog seat up as it was splattered with some sort of human waste. Other toilets within the rooms had huge turds sitting at the bottom of the water, urine that had been left to ferment for 3 years, and so forth. I should carry a Hazmat suit for some of these jobs honestly.
After sorting out the interiors, I quickly got the extensive rear exterior shots. The place has a huge beer garden surrounded by a big wall, so could be redeveloped into something nice I guess.
Just before I packed up, I realised that there must be a cellar somewhere, so had a quick look around and found the door to the absolute pitch black subterranean space formerly occupied by hundreds of gallons of beer. The iPhone torch function was switched on so I could have a gander, and it became apparent that I was going to have to take the photography equivalent of an “I’m a Celebrity” Bushtucker Challenge to get the shots. There were spider webs measuring six feet across, and when I took the plunge I was expecting 50,000 crickets to come crashing down. Things kept brushing against my neck and heed, and the only light was from my phone. Luckily the autofocus of my trusty old D3 locked on to the opposite wall even in the near-darkness, and my flash exposure estimate was spot-on first time. Out of there.
I left my favourite shot until the end obviously. A culmination of my many years industry experience, technical know-how, and artistic flair resulted in this incredible photograph of a urine trough – complete with old tab burns, wads of old man-hockle, and dried-on piss stains. As I locked up the place and headed back, I knew that nothing could surpass the marvel of this moment caught in glorious colour for ever more.
