One Sunday in early January I was off on a road trip to make the most of an experience bought for me as a Christmas gift by my family. I am a Batman nut, I love Batman as a character and whilst i appreciate that vigilantism is not necessarily the ideal way to ensure justice is served, I appreciate the way that he uses detective skills and cunning to overcome the villain of the piece.
I like the aesthetic and the colour black is fascinating to me, the look of the 1989 Tim Burton Universe is far more interesting to me than the overly camped up style of the 1960s TV series and movie. The mystery and danger of the character and his environment is a constant pull. I love reading the books and have many trade paperbacks from my first, The Dark Knight Returns from 1986 by Frank Miller, all the way through to my latest couple that I had at Christmas.
In the Burton universe of Gotham from the ’89 movie there is a character that I became fond of immediately, the Batmobile as originally designed by Anton Furst. The sleekness, aerodynamics and features of Batman’s vehicle captured my attention and I had a huge poster of it on my bedroom wall when I was 16, and I would go on to buy loads of models and toys based on this vehicle.
’89 Batmobile
As my family know all about my obsessions they set up a gift for me at Christmas that consisted of a two hour session riding in a replica of the 1989 Batmobile and perhaps taking some photographs.
The day came and I set off for Ascot in Berkshire in my boring Skoda Octavia to arrive by 11am. When I got there I rang up Mark Perkins so he could direct me to the correct location which was his house. I pulled into his large driveway and awaiting, halfway out of the garage, was the huge batmobile that would be my ride for the day. Mark was a top guy and after having an introduction and a cup of coffee he showed me the Batmobile and also another Batmobile replica of the vehicle seen in Batman Vs Superman.
We had a chat about where he gets his vehicles from and why he started collecting, then moving onto providing vehicles for shows and events. He has a number of vehicles including multiple Batmobiles, a Lightning McQueen and Tow Mater, Dumb and Dumber, Flintstones, Ghostbusters etc. Check out his website for even more cars.
Then it was time to pull the Batmobile from the garage and head out on the road. I climbed in, awkwardly, and sat in the passenger seat looking around at the series of buttons and switches which looked impressive, even if they’re not screen accurate. Mark hopped in and as we pulled out of his driveway onto the main road he operated a switch that lifted up the front end of the fibreglass body so that he could clear the traffic calming measures, he was unable to sit in the seat fully and was half stood up and half sat in the seat as he tried to work out the free space around his vehicle.
We headed off to Ascot and a petrol station so that he could top up the tank and as we were driving along with the sliding roof positioned forward some people looked at the vehicle but most people appeared to be used to seeing this huge black car driving through the town centre. We pulled into the Asda petrol station and Mark jumped out to pop a few quid in the tank whilst I sat there feeling like I was Vicki Vale.
With some gas in the tank we left and headed to the Ascot racecourse car park so we could take some photos. We were there less than 30 seconds before a family arrived and then a couple of other people to find out why this Batmobile was milling around here.
Mark used my phone and made a couple of videos and took some photos of me sat in and around the car, before I got out and did some more photos with my phone and camera. I asked if we could close the roof so that the silhouette of the car was more in keeping with my preferred view and then took some more photographs.
Mark asked me if I wanted to drive the car and I initially said “no” but he said I could, so I took it for a spin, slowly, around this car park. It was awkward to drive and see out of the window as well as judge where the front of the car is but it was a good experience. A short video can be seen on YouTube at this link: https://youtu.be/slPjz2w9PlQ
After a spin in the driver seat, Mark showed me the flamethrower that simulates the turbine on the rear and then we headed back to the house so we could have a look at the other cars in his collection. A quick look at the Batman Vs Superman car and then out to another tall garage which had a car transporter in. He pulled out the lorry and then offloaded the 1966 Batmobile and told me about how Adam West had been sat in the car more than once. It was a good looking car and awkward for me to get in and out of but I looked closely at the details and was impressed by the overall effect of it all.
With this car covered up and loaded back on the wagon, ready for a trip to Denmark soon, we walked up to another garage where there was a version of a Tumbler from the Christopher Nolan / Christian Bale series of films. It’s amazing to see the effort that someone has put into the manufacture of the vehicle and the way that the front wheels steer, but the overall appearance was not as accurate as the car from the movie. Mark said that he was looking to upgrade it at some point and I’d be interested to see how it looks post work.
After a quick tour around a Batbike and Tow Mater it was time to help Mark back the ’89 ‘mobile into his garage, it was a bit tight and I was glad he was driving. With this last bit of vehicle action it was time to head off and leave him to preparing his collection ahead of the sending off for the shows in a foreign land.
Shooting
Next on the short road trip was Bisley and the National Shooting Centre there. As a family we used to go to Bisley so that Dad could be the steward in the English Twenty Club, a bar and clubhouse for the members of the English Twenty Shooting Club.
We went in July each year for the Imperial Meeting that contains many different competitions for many different calibres and styles of shooting. For that fortnight in July I and my brother, Mike, would usually go and do some work in the butts, which is the area at the end of the rifle range where the targets are, in front of the large banks of sand. When working in the butts we had to wait for the shot to hit the target, then pull it down, mark it with an orange square and paste a patch over the previous hole. We would also have a board on the bottom of the target that informs the shooter and marker whether it was a V-Bull, Bull, Inner, Magpie or Outer. I think we earned around £15 per day for a long day filled with hard work and hanging around with other markers who tended to be older than ourselves so appeared more sophisticated.
The last time I went to Bisley, before this, was in 2017 when my brother Gaz and I took Dad there to see the last time the clubhouse would be used. We were there for a weekend and Dad hadn’t been in the best of health so this might be, and as it turns out it was, the last time he would travel there. It’s a special place for my family and for me, as I grew up a lot in the presence of the people I hung around with and even worked in the bar of the club. Camping or caravanning, or even staying in the “lines” hut type buildings always brings back memories from my childhood and my formative years.
As I was in the area I wanted to pop in and see what had become of the English XX Clubhouse as well as have a quick look around. I walked up through the clay pigeon shooting area up to the Stickledown range and took some photos of the clock tower and the long 1200m long rifle range. I had a walk around other areas of the camp before gettign back in the car to head off to the next destination.
Brunel Brutalism
Next stop on the Google maps route was Brunel University. The university has a number of buildings on the campus that are famous for appearing in the movie A Clockwork Orange as the Ludovico Treatment Centre and the entrance lobby of Alex De Large’s tower block house.
The grade II listed building containing the lecture theatre are built lovingly of concrete and have a great aesthetic that I enjoy looking at and taking photographs of. The architects Richard Sheppard, Robson and Partners/Stillman & Eastwick-Field designed the structures built between 1966-71. I love the appearance of the blocky nature of the stairwells that project out of the front of the building and reach out over the quad. The concrete has the impressions of the wooden shuttering still visible on its surface, reminding me that this futuristic structure from another dimension was fabricated by people
I had a walk around the building and took some photos from all angles and I even pulled out my 28mm TS-E lens, a tilt-shift lens. This tilt shift lens is designed to move the front lens in a way that is abnormal to the usual way of the lenses being aligned. In most lenses the front glass and rear glass, as well as any glass in the middle are all aligned to be in a straight line and perfectly parallel to each other as well as the focal plane, where the sensor is on the digital camera.
The front element can be moved to the left or right but still in the same orientation as the rear and focal plane. This is what I used for the photos of the lecture centre that you can see below. When I get too close to the building the converging verticals make the building appear to be strangely proportioned and leaning backwards in a very odd way. The first picture shows the way that the six uprights along the front appear to lean awkwardly whilst with the front element of the lens lifted up higher, it alters the perspective of the shot, as can be seen in the second photo. In the bottom photo of the two you can see that the six uprights are a little more natural and the three large blocks that overhang the quad do not appear to be stretched at all.
I also used this shoot as a first opportunity to use my new tripod which proved more solid than my old one, more details of this might show up in a post later.
As I walked around the side I decided I needed to use the toilet so had a wander near the little convenience shop. As I got closer I noticed that there was a door open and I entered to use the bathroom, after the short break I came out and the doors were shut again meaning I was stuck inside. I walked out through a large atrium and then carried on for a wander around by the “Towers”. One of the towers has an entrance that appears in the Kubrick film but is locked up and the stairs are blocked off to modernise the facility. The buildings are huge boxes balanced on a narrower base and whilst it’s not the standard grey concrete structures but I still find them fascinating to look at. Even the contents of the roof of the towers appear fascinating to me, the antenna and even a structure that looks like a helipad.
The following photo is of Tower B and was made with the Canon 5D Mk IV and the 24mm TS-E lens and the uprights appear to be far more upright than they would normally if I’d taken them with a normal lens.
Whilst this improved some of the pictures that I made on this occasion I struggled to see how it was any easier than hitting the Auto Transform tool in Lightroom, or even the distortion tools in photoshop. I suppose this is a more pure, or in-camera method of achieving the same appearance.
On a side note, whilst I was shooting with the tilt shift, I also chose to try the tilt method which alters the focal plane alignment, so that the front glass is at a different angle to the rear. This is used often when photographing something and wanting to capture the whole depth of the image in focus. Imagine if you will a row of buildings and to shoot them all in focus you would need to have a tiny aperture f/22 or even more. With this tilt motion I can keep a smaller aperture and tilt the front lens to be aligned with the subject, so that items to the left and right are not in focus. It sounds weird but it does work. I haven’t seen any practical use of the lens for this purpose yet though. A photo is inserted below to illustrate what happens when I tilted the lens to the left to better align the front lens element with the front of the building. You’ll be able to notice that the right side and left side of the image are not in focus where the centre part on the building is generally better focussed.
During this journey around the grounds of the university I was not bothered by security, not even once, whereas in February ’24 I was hounded for about 30 mins whilst being asked to leave, due to “taking photos of the security cctv systems”
Once I’d returned to the car I checked the weather and there was a light breeze but nowhere near the 24mph limit that is recommended as the maximum by DJI, the manufacturer.
Aerial
I stood by my car, loaded the battery into the drone, turned everything on and then launched it up and over the top of the buildings so I could capture a top down view or two of the buildings. I find the overhead views fascinating and also the ability to make an image from half way up the face of the structure means that the Tilt Shift lens isn’t as important as it perhaps used to be.
Once I’d finished here I headed off in the car to arrive home late on in the evening with the promise of an important audit to take place on the Monday morning. I slept well and left the photo sorting until the day after. No point trying to do everything in one day, I’d already had a monster day so I chose to go to sleep and have a brighter start in the next morning.
Reflecting
The overall feeling of the day was that the Batmobile experience was a great one, I had fun driving the car albeit a little slowly and then having the opportunity to take photos of this machine and the others in Mark’s collection. It was weird being driven through a town centre in a Batmobile and I now understand just how impractical it would be to have as a daily driver especially if you happen to be a night time based vigilante.
The trip to Bisley was not as entertaining as it used to as the old English Twenty Club is no longer serving the same purpose and is just a lounge for people not necessarily related to the club. The ranges were relatively quiet, it was grey and wintery so maybe I’m just used to seeing it in the July summery time of the year. Even though when we were camping as kids, there was some tremendously wet summer weeks in the area.
Brunel University was well worth a revisit as last time I went the construction boards were up preventing a clear view and clear photo. It was also great to get and try the Tilt Shift lens in a practical location. Whilst it was a fun experiment, I’m not sure if it will prove to be an essential part of my kit for the future, unless I start a career in architectural photography.
Despite the misgivings and the good parts too, it was still a day out. I was able to catch up on some podcasts, Hello to Jason, as well as have a cruise up and down the M40 to go and take photos. Someone once said about golding that “a bad days golfing beats a good days working” and I’m minded to agree with them partly. Any time that I can get out with the camera is a good time.
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