The Long Traipse.

 

Ben – Precision.

 

This weekend we went on a different route around Nottingham than the usual training of Plaza, IBM and Auditorium hotspots. Many had voiced their opinion in recent weeks about wanted an adventure, training different places and it would be a great change of pace and scenery too. The plan, to make people aware before hand I posted on the event. We would meet up at the usual Plaza hotspot but then go straight to Castle College followed by the NCP car park, the Broadmarsh area in front of the garage, the Nottingham Courts, Contemporary Art, Adams Building and then finally to Snienton or alternatively somewhere closer. It was a big list, depending on the time spent in each area, we might not get to train at them all. There were plenty of side street spots to session in between the main spots listed. Everyone seemed happy with the choices and there seemed to be  fair few people confirmed out for the day too. This was looking to be a very promising day indeed, both weather and turn out.

I was ready early for once and arrived bang on time, making sure I was there for this day trip then arriving late and then finding people were too deep rooted to Plaza. We moved right away to Castle College to warm up, without too much of an argument. There wasn’t as many out as expected but we still a nice number of people, which increased as the day went on. We had Andy from Shift out and some of the Derby folk too. It seemed that James was scared of the running cat he had previously conquered [1] and now felt like he may have lost it, forever even. Thankfully not though, after warming up more he got it on his third attempt, much to his relief. The rest of us were doing precision jumps on the skip next to the running cat. Jumping on, over and from it to the nearby walls. The skip wobbled when landing on it, making it difficult to stick and it launched you off it as you jumped from it. Some of the guys were doing bar work and other movements and it already felt like a great day of training.

 

James – Running Catleap.

 

While many of us were getting into the swing of training and feeling much warmer. The funniest thing happened when Mat and Holbrook had found some small scaffolding, the kind you seen painters using, a small section from that holds the ledge. Holbrook had the idea to use it for underbar movements, flipping it around in the air before he he went through it. Then he ran towards the wall doing a tic tac, then trying to do another movements over it once he landed, looking like a skateboarder. It was all very mental watching, but very funny too and would have made a great little video had I had filmed. Phil was filming a few bits on his glide cam rig he had with him, which instantly had the attention from Paul and James. I wanted to take photos and film too, but there weren’t many angles I could get at Castle College to make things look nice and it was rather crowded so I didn’t bother with shooting anything. We saw some guys from Leeds eyeing up the bigger running cat and running precision jumps before they vanished elsewhere.

Muscle ups were being done and this made Tom tell us he could no longer muscle up, at least cleanly and yet when he tried one, he did it perfectly as we all watched in anticipation for a failure. Just as we were about to move, there was a crazy Phil challenge going off. It involved standing not on the top of a blue railing, but the rung below it as show in the [2] image and then trying to cat to a blue fence in front of the railing. Now this catleap was quite far even from the top of the railing, but to go from the rung it felt near impossible. You couldn’t bend your legs properly (all part of the challenge) and the calves remained tensed with the rail pressed firmly against the back of the legs. Phil was close to it or did he do it in the end, I forget as it was so ridiculous.

#128 – Zade & Ant Weekday Adventure.

 

Like most training sessions, they are held at the weekends and very occasionally, in the week, but usually the evenings. However, this session was to be a Tuesday afternoon as I wanted to train and seeing as Ant was available he said he would be out. He was wanting to get more training done in Nottingham, as it had more areas to train. Ant is apart of the Kirkby Parkour group that comes to train with us. He has been to a few of the weekend training sessions and even though I have trained with him and the others of the group, I don’t properly know Ant all that well. He is in many ways, much like David in the respects of being quiet and gets on with training. He does talk, but usually when spoke to and he is also good at what he can do (movement wise) and is quite strong, like an Ox too. I hear he is meant to have a giant dong like one too, if you believe what the guys tell you…

It was an unusual pairing, no one else was free and so it was going to be an interesting training session. We met and then headed over to the NCP car park for the start of our training session, another not so usual route. I had already trained UN (Urine Nation) way too much, but as for the upper floor, not so much and there were a few things I wanted to practise. We had picked a fine day to train, while we were at the top of the car park it looked as if it may rain. The clouds in the distance were so dark as you can see in many of the images. Practising a dyno (double tap) as some of us called them back then, too and from the railing ledges. Increasing the distance with each lower rung, trying to get it from the furthest point. It felt near impossible not to kick the leg out behind you to readjust the momentum of the dyno, which I didn’t like the look of and wanted to stop it happening.

 

Ant – Kong.

 

I captured some images of Ant doing kong vaults (one seen above) over the nearby wall. Ant flew over the slightly higher than normal wall so easily. As well as being higher, it was thicker too. So you had to be able to kong well as it wasn’t like being able to vault a thin railing. I was quite envious, as he would skip step into the kong as well, which made it look even nicer. I tried to learn and mimic how he did the skip step, but it felt so unnatural and impossible to do myself. I instead would always double foot punch kong over those walls, as I knew that would give me the height I needed to clear them. I do try to skip step kong, but with how mentally challenging it is and plays on your mind about the run up, I gave up for now. We did some kong drops over the higher wall, though neither one of us rolled out of them. Something we should both be doing from that impact, but Ant couldn’t roll and hadn’t yet learnt how to…

I just didn’t like to roll, as like with many people it was something which hurt the shoulder or hip. I guess being skinny didn’t help this matter, so if I did roll I preferred to be wearing my hoodie. I really hoped it wouldn’t rain as then our day would be  limited to where we could go and not to mention it will have been a wasted trip for Ant. It did start to spit with rain and we hoped it would pass as we made our way over to the Auditorium hotspot. I was doing a fairly big precision jump (seen below) and I was quite pleased with such a jump.

#98 – Fisheye Photography.

 

Flip – Portrait.

 

Training today was going to be all about one thing, the curvature of the fish eye lense. I might not have an actual fisheye lense to attach to my photography camera, because my camera is so ancient that there isn’t one, nor was it made to have such things unlike modern digital SLR cameras with allow such accessories. I did however, have a clip on fisheye lense which I use to clip onto my DV camcorder while filming in tight spots for my videos on occasions. I decided to see if I could do the same on my Fujifilm camera, it worked but just barely, it clipped on very loosely and so I decided to stick it on with some Blutack to make it secure and hey presto, it worked very well. Had my lense not extended out on my camera, there wouldn’t have been a chance in hell to get it attached. Either way, today felt like it would be a productive day of training and myself and Flip  had a new style of taking images thanks to the clip on lenes which I couldn’t wait to try out. Fisheye lenses have fast become a popular choice for filming Parkour, though I haven’t seen that many photos being taken in the same style, maybe that will change over time? We started our afternoon up on the top floor of the NCP car park (above the Urine Nation hotspot) to get some photos with Nottingham Castle in the background was the plan and some other posed shots with the city scape in the background of the shots.

After taking some shots, Flip suggested that I start taking normal shots because all the ones I took currently were of a slanted angle and have become the same to see for him, and no doubt others too. I said the only reason I shoot my shots in that way is because I like the the style of the angle, rather than normal straight shots of portrait and landscape, which I class as boring and the norm. I guess I like things to be different and the slanting is a way to achieve that, it’s my style of taking photos. Perhaps in time I will revert the standard way of taking photos, but for now I like the slanted style. Some of our posed portrait shots we took of each other came out… Well, what can I say? Apart from them being rather ridiculous. Posing for the camera is one of the worse things I can imagine myself doing if you are not a photogenic person and it comes across so easily that you are striking a pose for the camera too. I have to admit I’m not one for being the most photogenic guy and as such, I hate self portraits and always will, compared to those who are photogenic and don’t have to try hard at all. I can take great portraits of other people though, as you will have seen in previous posts. Taking portraits of any kind, more so self portraits takes a great amount of preparation, time and effort no to mention trail and error to get the look and feel you want to achieve for the shot.

 

Flip – Portrait.

 

I’ve always like the images Flip takes while out training, I find them to be different to my own, he sees things in a different light and often picks up more on the surroundings which he included into the images too. Where as I’m more about the subject and the movement or the object being completely in shot, all of the time. I don’t crop nor do I take shots close up with beginning or landing of movements missing and not within the shot. I guess when you see another photographers work you will always put in question your own and how to improve it. Sometimes I look back at my own images and think that wasn’t all it seemed, I had an idea, look or feel I wanted to achieve and it came out nothing like I imagined. I envy the professionals who get brilliant shots each and every click! Some of the experimental shots we did, did work, but a vast amount of them were pure cringe worthy and I’m sure many of you readers will be laughing at them once you scroll down, if you haven’t already before reading this post. Enough was enough with trying to find a good shot, non of them which we had in our heads came out in person like how we had imagined. Another thing I was hating about today was my hair, it was getting longer and very untidy. I’ve tried to gel and spruce it up, but failed and it looked like a hot mess. I am questioning if I should re-grow it long again or whether to keep it short, the jury is still out on that.

I put carefully put on the fisheye lense and instantly the shots became and looked awesome due to the effect of the lense and added some sort of character to the shots. I really liked how close you could get to a person with it, like with Flip staring down the lens and many other of the silly portrait shots we took. The only downside to them were the black framing it caused, again that could easily be manipulated with Photoshop or taken out completely if needed. As well as the framing, the lense made the images curve and so it was perfectly in focus in the middle of the shot but the outer parts of the images were blurred and out of focus.

#91 – UN Training.

 

Zade (Me) – Turn Vault.

 

Today was an ever so small jam, what with it being a Tuesday weekday session. It was a later than normal meet up, what with us not really deciding to go out until later in the day due to nice weather and being a last minute arrangement. I rallied the troops and in the end it was myself, Flip, David and Banham who decided we would meet at 3pm to give ourselves enough time to get ready and head over to town. We made our way to UN (Urine Nation) because, with it being a weekday all our usual training spots we usually trained at were open for business and inaccessible until the late evening after work hours. Walking down the steps into UN felt like it did the very first time I entered the area all those years ago. The foul stench of urine, and a shit smell which I had long forgotten and not been able to smell when we used to train here regularly, shot into my nostrils ripe and unpleasant as ever. The sun was shining, it was dry and yet we ventured to one of the undercover spots within the city centre, we must have been mad to choose such a location for training, not to mention at the end of the day our hands will be cover in a black layer of dirt.

You forget how much an area can change, after not visiting it for a while, new movements get unlocked and you see the area in a new light. However dirty and dingy the area may be, it does provide you with a nice urban feeling for photos, which work rather well. Even if many of my shots today were positioned the same on a tripod while different movements were done. Flip wore my UF hoodie for a photos, which actually suited him. Banham at first was always looking directly at the camera even when the was doing moves, as if it wouldn’t capture him or he had to look over to make sure one was being taken. As seen below in the images, it felt forced and unnatural until he focused more on just doing the movements without being aware of the camera then the images looked much better. We mainly practised monkey/ kong vaults over the railings. Some splits vaults by Flip looked really nice as photos, we also did some double vaults together while Banham had to try and get us both in shot, easier said than done with a person who isn’t too good at photography. It also lightly rained later on which was good as we were undercover away from the shower.

 

Flip – Side Vault.

 

The area had a giant red road barrier in it, no doubt dragged here by the skateboarders who used it to grind along the top, there was also some loose bricks scattered in the area too four to six of them. We picked up a couple and set them flat on the floor, showing Banham how we used to practice precision jumps when we first began training. It was great for overall precision training as the bricks made you more sensitive to how you jumped and landed to and from them.