Previous | Next :: Biker in the Rain and Gloom of a London Afternoon : Camden : London | October 6, 2009, 6:37 pm

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Hey Marc. .......... what was it you were saying? ........... You can't take any more of the British gloom....... up there in the North of England.............

........ Im glad I am in the bright light and sunshine of the South....... yeah London is never 30th of a second at f2.8 at 400ISO in the middle of the day................

Except all the time.......... I could cry............

hehehehe...........

At least I am not one of these despatch riders riding their bikes all day in the constant grim rain of today................ You get so wet riding a bike in the rain....... you so seriously need the right clothing gear.......... I remember once riding a motorbike in a combat jacket in pouring rain......... I got so wet it was like I had jumped in a swimming pool wearing all my clothes...........

London still seems to have a fair few despatch riders........ I am not really aware of them in NYC........ London used to have tons....... we used to use tons of them ourselves at the Insight agency...... we had a ton of bike companies.......Addison Lee....... Fastway Flyers (sometimes known as slow way sloths in our office depending upon their performance)........... hmmmmm......... the others I can't quite remember now......... but we constantly had bikers on our own accounts or from the newspapers themselves...... collecting or waiting to collect prints and transparencies for our clients the big newspapers and magazines............

The very first photographic job I applied for ....... I went for the interview with the radical press agency Report/IFL....... I could hardly get up the stairs all the bikers were goin crazy cos they were all piled up waiting for their packets....... the Report guys were churning out black and white prints as fast as was possible....... but there were 20 despatch riders waiting to wisk the stuff back to the different newspapers....... it seemed fantastically stressy and at the same time important and kind of glamerous ........ I got the job after waiting 2 hours for them to even be be able to see me........ and then I was one of the dudes stressing like mad to churn out my black and white prints while the bikers paced around ...... radioing their base.... "yeah yeah Im still here"...." yeah the packet is not ready........ I know the final deadline is 6...... I know know ...... I am hassling them........I am hassling them........ course I am yelling at them".... blah blah blah.......

With all this digital technology we virtually never use bikers now........ when in the past we might use up to 50 a day...........

I think most delivery bikers these days are delivering pizza......... the odd legal document I guess....... but i don't think too many photos go by bike now.............

Cheers Jez XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

PS............ If you want sunshine and light try the video of our trip to the Maya Breeze Inn and Resort in Placencia Belize !!!!!....... hehehe........... its on my facebook page so click here to become my friend or if you already are a friend you can just go straight to the videos....... its quite a nice funny thing....... worth having a peek at in my humble view........ hehehehe.......... :-))

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