Lacy Sleeves

I love this time of year as the cow parsley begins to flower on the verges next to the neatly clipped roadside hedges. It looks like the frilly lacy cuff of a blouse poking out from under an exceptionally well tailored jacket.

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Wild Horse

With shiny skin
And fieriest eye
Clattering hoof
Will never die


From memory of mine
The horse if wild
A creature fine
Who's always bright


Yet man took horse
To call his own
And broke him in
With reins and such


Man used whip
T'was very coarse
And took the life
From the wild horse


Wild free
Full of glee
That was the wild one


Shame on man
To do what's done
Took spirit soul
All joy as well


Oh wild horse

In lieu of a bluebell

I have still to find a wood with the sea of blue underfoot so I thought I would explore my garden:

My Bluebells

Solomon's Seal

Rhubarb Flower

Clemetis

Ain't nature beautiful.

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Royal Wedding - a Moira perspective

Television rules the way we see things - in particular national events like the cup final, the Grand National and very occasionally a Royal Wedding.

I want to record what people are doing who haven't sat in front of the TV or an Internet connection whilst a Royal Wedding is taking place.

I am going to produce a photo-film or book of what happens around me on 29th April.

Update: whilst this sounded like a good idea I felt I did not want to intrude on people's day off. Loved the Grace Kelly-esque dress - very elegant.

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Artist Statement

Most people hate to write their artist statement. I think it is because they have to be honest and critical about their work. I have heard some quote Lewis Hine "If I could say it in words, I wouldn't need to photograph", but I think mostly they are just plain embarrassed.

With all the hassel of deciding on your final images for a show you then have to edit and make your final choice; then you have to stand back and write a short piece to sum up what people are going to be looking at. Being a photographer is not really very much about photography, it is so many other things.

I probably spend more time reading an artist statement when I am at an exhibition than I do looking at the image - so I need to make sure that what I write is compelling and interesting enough for someone to read right to the end.

I find they usually fall into one of three categories:

1. Meaningless but flowery
2. Academic gobbledegook
3. Plain, unadorned, honest

I have approached writing my artist statement like writing copy for an advertisement. Why have I produced this work, what is it about and finished with a little about me.

It is honest and truthful - but with a little bit of flowery.  It will follow.

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bluebell search continues

I took a little drive and found ... no bluebells. I do not want to drive all the way over to Yoxall. I may photograph the ones in my garden tomorrow. However I did find these:

and my favourite from the day:

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Small World - Exhibition layout

Have simplified what and how to display my images for Free Range. Have gone bigger. Big is best.

I will have the prints laminated onto board and framed with powder coated matt black frames and battens to attach the images to the wall - I do not like seeing mirror plates. The centre image will be A1 (841x594mm) and the other two (594x594mm) approximately.

Glad to have reached this decision. I now need to write an artist statement.

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In search of bluebells

Went in search of bluebell woods today:

Think the bluebells got wind of my intentions because I couldn't find any. Except this one:

I do know where there are beautiful bluebell woods but the last time I was there I was with my angel and so wanted to avoid those to avoid the tears.

Will pop out to Calke Abbey or Ferrers Centre on Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday this week to get them before they start to fade.

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Is it a good thing or not?

Since I have had the I-pad I find that I wake up, pick it up and start surfing. I do my research, I make notes of items that interest me, I seek inspiration and often find it. This all feeds into my work, research folder, little grey cells and ideas.

I start working whilst still in bed.

It has to be a good thing - right?

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Jill Cole

I realised this morning that I had not put a note on my blog about a talk given by Jill Cole. Here are my notes:

After her talk I asked:

"Do the Army vet the images you have taken on the firing range before you exhibit them - or do they trust you?"

She replied:

"I started by showing them but they trust me now. I have to ring the day I want to go - this is to make sure where I am going there is no firing taking place."



Birds

Her words of wisdom were that small things in a local area can have a bigger message. This reinforces the message that I took from the talk with Ian Beesley in that all you need to photograph can be found within one mile of your front door. Add these two together and you have a winner.

I am pleased to learn that I will be working with Jill on the National Forest Photo-Canopy brief as she is the first Artist in Residence for this. I am looking forward to this very much.

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Having one of those days

OK I am about to give up, stop and go and sit in the sun.

So far today these things have gone wrong...

• I closed a word document after updating it with an awful lot of work. On closing I clicked 'No' when asked would you like to save changes? Why? Don't ask - because I don't know.
• Next I knocked the iron off the ironing board and it hit the carpet hot side down and melted the top layer of the carpet. Honestly you can't make this stuff up.
• And now after updating my research work with many, many, many images it wont let me save it. It says the file is too big? Really it does. I stupidly used the full size jpegs (4MB) rather than resizing them (75KB) and there were more than 40 of them. I know STUPID. I have resized the images and am just waiting to see what happens to the file once it has finished responding to me clicking 'remove some images' option which it asked me when trying to close.

Fingers crossed everyone.

It's gone - I will need to do those three thousand words again.

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Dead Souls

From this height, the sleeping city seems like a child’s construction, a model which has refused to be constrained by imagination. The volcanic plug might be black Plasticine, the castle balanced solidly atop it a skewed rendition of crenellated building bricks. The orange street lamps are crumpled toffee-wrappers glued to lollipop sticks.

Out in the Forth, the faint bulbs from pocket torches illuminate toy boats resting on black crepe paper. In this universe, the jagged spires of the Old Town would be angled matchsticks, Princes Street Gardens a Fuzzy-Felt board. Cardboard boxes for the tenements, doors and windows painstakingly detailed with coloured pens.

Drinking straws could become guttering and downpipes, and with a fine blade – maybe a scalpel – those doors could be made to open. But peering inside . . . peering inside would destroy the effect.

Peering inside would change everything.

Dead Souls - An Inspector Rebus Novel by Ian Rankin 1999

The tenth John Rebus novel

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Eden Odyssey Book

How to showcase the Eden Project work? I want to see it all together, telling a story - so I created a book.

I have shown this set of images using my i-pad a few times during the last week but realise this is not enough, it does not tell the story properly - it needs to go into a book. I will find out the Eden Team's email contact and send them this link to the book on Blurb.

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secrets

"There are no secrets better kept
than the secrets everybody guesses."

George Bernard Shaw

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Panorama - Prestop Park

Felt the urge to get out and capture a panaorama when I woke up this morning. I had made a panorama of Prestop Park in December 2009 and I have always planned to capture the same image through the seasons. The trees are that beautiful lime green of early spring at the moment so I went out in the early morning hazy light. Here's the result:



April 2011

 

December 2009

The detail in these images is stunning - not helped by having to reduce the quality so they can be uploaded onto this blog. I will go back in Summer and Autumn so I have the full set.

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Newark

Day out in Newark with camera and two good friends. Decided to turn my lens to slightly different subject matter for a change and a challenge.

Newark Marketplace:

Nattering in Newark

A break before the parade arrives

Newark Castle Park:

I will eat that Ladybird

Trees, flowers, bees and ice cream

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Landfill

Spent the morning in the company of a very interesting man who took me around the Veolia Landfill site. A stunning feat of engineering and a very pleasant morning.

Clayworks



Landfill



Landfill

Thank you Keith.
Looking forward to going around the Clayworks with Lenny.

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perfection

"perfection consists not in doing extraordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well."

Angelique Arnauld

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Eden odyssey

Processing images from Eden Project and refining my edit. Loving them as a collection of images. Uploaded some to my website and put them all onto my I-pad. This will give me the chance to make a fourth edit before sending them to Eden for their use.

Here are my favourites:

The Biomes:

Eden at Sunset

The Core, Mediterranean Biome and Rainforest Biome



The Roof of The Core



Rainforest Biome

The Birds:

Thrush



Robin itching



Thrush



Thrush Nest Building


The Plants:

Tulip



Always something growing at Eden



Ferns

People and Things:

Wendy Tailor - story teller and singer



WEEE man



Sculpture



Gardeners Shed



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Ph Fi Da

Photography Filled Days

What a fantastically photography filled few days I have had and four more to come.

Thursday I was in the studio assisting on a product shoot for country-ware clothing. Ended the day with hands that smelled of waxy jackets.

Friday I was photographing 24 students at Roundhills Community College for their new college prospectus. Beautiful day, wonderfully behaved students and some pretty decent shots.

Saturday I processed the images and dealt with the necessary paperwork.

Sunday was a day without photography apart from having my photograph taken at the Ashby Town Council Civic Service at St Helens Church, Ashby. Oh I also delivered the paperwork and DVD with all images to my client.

Then I started packing in preparation for the journey to the Eden Project in the morning. Camera bag full to overflowing, items logged, serial numbers noted, cables already spaghettifying. Chocks away.

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Roundhills Community College Students



Science



Cookery



Music

Developments in the Small World

Getting very excited about moving this project along. Have set myself a deadline for today as I want to have something new to show at our next gathering on 20th. Set up a few scenes, popped down the road to raid stationery cupboard and started making images.

I want the images I exhibit to form a story - almost like a comic strip or stills from a film - at the moment I am not sure where the story is going but here are three of my favourites from today.

A meeting in the countryside

A meeting in the city

Soul searching



I have a commission on Friday and will need time to process the images on Saturday, I have a service to attend on Sunday and then the commission at Eden Project starts on the Monday through to Friday. Time is short to get this project completed - this is why I needed to make a start today. I will now have time to think about what I have created and what else I need whilst I am in Cornwall.

You just have to love being a photography - this is so much fun.

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Small World

Making a start on the small world project. Hit and miss with the ideas, some are more difficult to create than I thought. Playing with ideas and models - seeing how they form and develop. Decided to go to bed happy with these two images. I can see how I can begin to make a story using this idea.

Tomorrow I will develop with better lighting and more detail and construct a narrative.

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