I first came across the 4am Project via a tweet on Twitter about 6 hours or so before the scheduled global, synchronised act of photography that would take place on the fourth hour of the fourth day of the fourth month 2010. Oooh, intriguing concept, I thought. I’m in.
Immediate quandary – this is unscheduled activity, do I try to stay up? Perhaps I should go to bed and set the alarm. But that would risk bleary-eyed grumpiness of a disgruntled awakened husband? Hmmm, maybe I should just say ‘stuff that for a game of night time soldiers’ – heck, it’s gonna be dark everywhere anyway, right? Er, okay, not in those snowy places where it’s light for 22 hours per day but pretty much everywhere else surely? I mean what kind of photos will 4am throw up…apart from dark ones – oh and snowy ones?
Actually, I like staying up well into the night. I’m a night owl by nature. I relish the peace and quiet the early hours offer. No bickering teenagers fighting over the laptop/ computer/TV remote/last biscuit/dog walking duties. Oh, and there’s wall to wall Mock the Week on Dave, and the opportunity to break into the hidden chocolate stash without being rumbled. Even the pooch is in bed instead of parked at my elbow agitating for a scratch. So the chance to take part in a global collaboration like the 4 am Project meant I was an easy pull.
I liked the idea too, that my 4 am, where I am, here in this delightful shop-less hamlet, nestled snugly in an idyllic North Wales valley, is pretty far removed from the heaving metropolis of Britain’s second biggest city, Birmingham (home of 4 am Project founder, Karen Strunks). Should make for an interesting contrast I thought…assuming my photo actually comes out given the seemingly impenetrable darkness that is a cloudy night in the middle of the Welsh countryside.
And lo, that is precisely what I captured with my inadequate little digital camera…a photo of blackness, spookily punctuated by the ghostly, gnarled fingers of the aged apple tree at the end of the garden. Beyond it, by day, stretches an uninterrupted view of the glorious Ceiriog Valley, once described by David Lloyd George as “a little bit of heaven on earth.”
At 4 am on the fourth day of the fourth month however, it was less how green is my valley? More, slag heap black bach’. But hey, isn’t black so much better than that vague orangey cloak that drapes ambient light-polluted urban conurbations. Pah! Not on my 4 am patch I muse smugly as I snap.
The dog had followed me out for a pee. Clicking into the darkness done, I retrieve her from the meadow with a soft, low whistle and turn to go back into the house. My tired eyes are immediately assaulted by a blaze of light that I promise you would hold its own on Blackpool’s seafront. Every light at the back of the house is on – even youngest teen’s bedroom light…and she left for a ski-ing holiday yesterday lunchtime. Uuh?
Something spooks the pooch and she races back into the field barking her boots off. Woofin’ ‘eck, that’s some noise penetrating the sleepy silence as her remonstrating bounces and echoes across this high sided valley. Yet another light pings on…only this one belongs to my neighbour. Er, time to go upload to Flickr and watch the world’s 4am Project photos roll in.
