A New Location

I find myself regularly now in pastures new.. in a City! It's exciting exploring new places and I'm sure there will be much more camera wandering to come but for now the Cemetery is providing many photography opportunities. It's taking me a while to find my eye again I have to admit as it's been a long time but that joy is still there although shockingly my eyesight isn't.

WOW! seems like time is not the only thing that's moved on since I last posted. What a weird feeling it is to not be able to see the image through the viewfinder or even the image on the Live View...well that's different from before! It took a bit of getting used to but it's just a case of faffing with glasses a bit :-)

a bit of photography time squeezed in

I had stopped blogging, I don't know why...

not enough hours in the day possibly but probably more that I am still living in a bit of a limbo land and am not settled into any sort of routine. Hopefully this will be the week I sign contracts on my new house and can start to move in. I am looking forward to having a desk and some 'me' time in which to set aside hours in the day to write. I have been a headless chicken for the last few weeks dividing my time between work, visiting my daughter, seeing friends and driving endlessly backwards and forwards between them and where I am living. There has been no time at all for photography. We had a whole lot of snow one day though and I made myself take some time to go out with my camera. Keep fingers crossed that this is the week my new life starts and I will be blogging away again I'm sure!

frost at last!

What a glorious frost we had this morning! I was straight out into mums garden in my jamas and dressing gown!

I have a lot of frosty leaf and berry pictures from last year so I was looking for something different to add to my portfolio.

There are a lot of balls in the garden, Madge is still pretty much a puppy and I just love the frost on this yellow one!

There are a lot of stones too, I wish I'd seen these a little earlier as the frost was starting to melt by the time I got to them. Perhaps we'll have another frost, its still January after all!

full moon frolics

My mothers house is surrounded by countryside and it has been lovely to be in a rural location again after living in a town for years. We all trudged up to the top of a nearby hill the other night as my brother (26) wanted to let of Chinese Lanterns and take photographs of them against the full moon. Myself, my son and my mother were in charge of the lighting and release with a little help from Madge the dog!

It was actually quite fun and the sky was gorgeous with wispy clouds, followed by clear star scattered black with glowing orange from the city of Leicester in the distance. The lantern lighting wasn't hugely successful as we were trying to let off all 8 at once and so had unfolded them all and laid them all on the ground. In hindsight we think this had made them damp but we did manage to get a couple up in the sky. I hadn't taken a tripod and only grabbed my camera at the last minute as it was my brothers show really but I do like the effects that I got all the same with my camera set on night shooting and just the built in flash. As my laptop is still in hospital, i don't have any editing facilities so what you see is what you get. There are no special effects or editing done on Madge's portrait, it just came out that way!

Frigiliana, Spain

Frigiliana in Southern Spain, within the province of Malaga is a stunning location if your looking for traditional Spanish streets to photograph,

particularly during the last four days of August when they hold the 'Festival de las Tres Culturas' when the streets are draped with colourful flags and there is a traditional market with street dancers and shows.
The town is high on a hill with a labyrinth of cobbled streets and plazas, whitewashed houses with wrought iron balconies holding masses of potted flowers.
Roof top gardens at the many small restaurants give amazing views at sunset and the church
where the wedding was held that we were a part of was attended by many local Spanish ladies, dressed all in black, flicking beautifully decorated fans. Photo opportunities around every corner!

wanderings in the woods

A gloriously sunny foggy morning led to some magical sights in our local doggy walking spot.

I dragged myself out at silly o'clock to amazing rays of light through the trees

glistening dew covering every surface

and the most spooky mist rising off the ground meeting the fog. The bench above has been 'relocated' from the adjacent golf course and sits in the middle of the field.

But the picnic benches in the picture above are a permanet fixture full of licky ice cream kiddies in the summer and huddled up doggy walkers stopped for a chat in the winter.

I spent hours wondering around as the sun rose along with the wellie boot wearers and it was lovely to chat as muddy mongrels jumped up to sniff my camera.

Each walker had a suggestion of their favourite part of the wood to photograph

and the highlight for me was the little water rats feeding alongside the robins and blue tits at

some bird seed that someone had left on top of a tree stump.

Perhaps it was the excitement but I only managed fuzzy pictures of them but it was wonderful

to take the time to just watch nature being beautiful!

colours and lines

Running with last weeks posts about colour, black & white photography and the colour purple I clicked over for my daily fix of Kats blog and had a 'moment' when I saw her photograph 'Under the Bridge' This picture incorporates my colours and I could look at that picture for hours, it calms my soul. These are the colours I paint my figurative paintings in and I have clothes with patterns in these colours, so looking at this picture is heaven to me.
But it is a little more than that, the subject is 'me' too. There is Architecture, water, my new favourite decay and lines! How thrilling are lines in a photograph, sending your eyes backwards and forwards, around the picture and back to the beginning again. I have hundreds of pictures with 'lines' running through them and this links nicely with Kat's current
Exploring with a Camera theme of Opposing Lines.
'Red Leicester'

Red Leicester has so many lines that when I first saw the picture I had taken, it felt a little overwhelming. When taking it I was drawn to the colours I saw through the lens. The red made a striking foreground against the brown wood and the pale blues of the sky through the windows. The architectural elements were a secondary consideration even though I had gone to Leicester to capture architecture and pattern but all the opposing lines in the picture take your eye off in different directions and somehow it works.



So as with Kat's picture, take the colour away and I would still love it, which is what we have been trying to achieve in black & white photography, although it was the colour that I connected with first in both pictures.
I find this subject fascinating, that you can look at an image and LOVE it, its that subconscious 'knowing' that this picture is just perfect for you. Its when you begin to break down the reasons why you like it that it becomes really interesting and I listen intently to visitors to the Gallery, when after looking around at the many images on the walls they stop in front of one picture and are transfixed. Many times the first comment is "This picture is me" and then, usually when a puzzled friend asks why, they begin to break it down into "I love the colour" or "I love to look at boats" or "I love the pattern". Often people will come in looking for a picture that matches their living room and they leave with something totally the opposite. They come in with a practical head and they leave following their heart.
As I've mentioned before, as an artist you are aware that by painting onto white canvas you are baring your soul to the world with your creation. You are choosing the subject, the colours, the composition and presenting it for admiration and often criticism. Its a scary thing to do sometimes.

I wondered if the same where true of photography, do our pictures have our stamp on them in the same way, could you look at a photograph and say oh yes thats so and so's work. These ponderings inspired the 'Me Reflected Photography Share'
I had been looking for a picture in my portfolio that holds all the elements of the 'me inside' to put in the share and I hadn't found one. Kat's picture would be very close and I wondered why in all my time as a photographer I had never strived to take my perfect photograph and had never analysed what elements I would need in that picture. I have some pictures that I'm very proud of, as I'm sure every photographer does but they have all been reactive photography, something catches your eye and you take the shot. Its not so easy to manipulate nature or buildings into your perfect composition and if you do, it then begins to feel too contrived. Enter the whole debate about photoshoping and if you take out or add parts to an image is it cheating? ....... this is where my head begins to hurt and I realise I'm rambling way off track again and I still haven't loaded the dishwasher......

pictures from the allotment

"Take nothing but pictures, Leave nothing but Footprints"

Here are some more photographs taken from the allotment
I talked about yesterday, some of which I have sold in my Gallery and that has had me puzzling over the quote above.

'Frosted Flowers'

Photography is one of the very few things I do, with a growing family, that doesn't cost me money. Wandering along on my own with my camera capturing the 'magic' is mine and I don't have to pay a fee or a tax for any of it. The countryside is just there waiting for me with birds, squirrels, water voles, sheep and cows putting on a show that

doesn't cost a penny.

'Rays of Light'
But thinking about the quote, I do 'take'. I print my photographs and sell them, I get something out of all this natural giving and do I ever put anything back? Suddenly I feel very selfish and .. eek ... exploitative! Perhaps I'm over thinking it - hey I've nothing to feel guilty about today so lets invent something! hmmmm

'Smiling Flowers'

When my group and I visit the local nature parks and places of interest we pay for the car parks or we pay an entrance fee so thats fine, no guilt there and when I go to my favourite canal locations in this area I take bread for the shivery ducks so I supposed they don't mind being my muses for half an hour. The cows, well cows are such flirts they will happily pose for hours on end pulling funny faces for absolutely nothing. But how does it work when you are photographing something that in essence belongs to someone else, like the allotment, should you ask first?

'Cold Cabbage'
I went to take pictures in Leicester at the Highcross Centre, a gem of patterns and architectural elements for any photographer and I got 'told off' by security. It hadn't occurred to me that I would need permission to photograph outside the building at 8am but the manager from Waggamamas (which had an amazing reflection of the building in the window ) came out and told me to go away and then the heavys descended in the form of a gadget laden security guard, who directed me to the Management Suite to get my okays. I tried to show her on my camera that I was infact taking pictures of the stunning blue sky against the supporting steel of the top most corner of the centre but apparently in that part of Leicester even the sky belongs to the big boys and us mere mortals cant have a piece of it without permission.

'Dawn of an English Morn'

The same thing happened in my local Co-Op (a large department store) They have some amazing displays in their homewares department, lovely patterns made by repeated objects and shiny, sparkly things hanging in rows holding reflections to die for. So I was snapping away with my i-phone in order to put them on my Instgram page and I have to admit this time I did feel a little sheepish but I wasn't going to sell these pictures, I was just taking them for the joy of the capture when oops wrist slap by the manageress
" I can't let you take photographs, you might be a competitor trying to steel our ideas"

I'm hoping to take a model to Calke Abbey to capture some Vouge like shots against the blistering shutters in the abandoned rooms. Now I know I'm going to need permission for that and I suspect its going to cost rather a lot for the privilege. I haven't plucked up the courage to make the phone call yet......

the colour purple

Thinking again of colour from Wednesdays post, the photograph below works well in black and white because of the impact of the light and shadows and the depth created by the foreground flowers, the middle ground field and the far ground trees.


Add colour and most people would rather look at the picture below as we are so used to looking at flowers as colourful things, that once our eyes see the colour its hard to go back to being without it.

'Lilac Dancing Flowers'

I'm linking in with The Shades of Autumn Photography Challenge and this weeks colour Purple with this photograph as it one of my favourites in my initial portfolio, I think because of its fairytale like quality. It was taken on a very cold frosty morning and these flowers were the first in a winter allotment to catch the first rays of the morning sun, hence the title, as they almost look like they are dancing with happiness at the arrival of the day and the warmth!

Sadly this allotment that I visited to take photographs for a number of years is no longer there. The old man who loved it had been given the small plot to tend on a farmers field, across the road from his remote house in the countryside and this year, when spring came, the farmers crops grew over the land where the allotment used to be and I realised he had gone. It was a sad day. Imagine the thrill one day in late summer when I stopped my car and saw the old mans flowers had returned and were fighting for their space amongst the corn, I wonder how many years they will come back.

I thought about trying to contact his family to give them some of the photographs to remember him by but I never introduced myself to him, I only saw him a couple of times over the years, bent over tending the ground or hurrying back into his house. He didn't seem to welcome intrusion into his world, so to talk to his family would be a little odd. Perhaps I should have posted some through his door while he was still here, as a thank you, as he must have seen me out of his window, parked by the side of the road, snapping away in all weathers.

I read a quote on photography 'Take nothing but pictures, Leave nothing but footprints' and thats just what I did at the allotment, should I have done more?

do I have to choose?

'A Blaze of Glory'

A glorious red image for the Shades of Autumn Photo Challenge at Bumbles & Light

http://www.bumblesandlight.com/shades-of-autumn-photo-challenge/

The tree is in the gardens of Leith Hall in Aberdeenshire, Northen Scotland
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/rhynie/leithhall/index.html

I have now visited two National Trust properties in a month, see yesterdays post on Calke Abbey

having not set foot inside one for more years than I can remember.
I used to love period dramas, visiting old sites and houses, Antique shops and of course Antiques Roadshow was never missed. But in the last 10 years my life had gone in a thoroughly modern direction and I have discovered a love for all things minimal and 'happening'

So why this sudden shift back to the past. Its a little odd. The trip to Leith Hall was work (Architectural) and my photography club trip to Clake Abbey was on the recommendation of someone else, so I hadn't really chosen either to waft me back on the winds to my previous loves.

Now I'm in conflict, am I a thoroughly modern Millie or am I an 18th Century candle light chaser?

I can hear my collected bits and bobs unravelling themselves from the newspaper in the garage as we speak but they arn't going to 'go' in my house of all things Habitat and my partner would have a fit if my ink well was positioned next to his modern sculpture - eek, what to do!

And this brings up a contradiction of photography too. We all have our 'Thing That Thrills' the subject I am constructing a lesson about at the moment. The image that we each choose to photograph the most, the thing that gets your pulse racing, gets you out of bed at 5am to go trudging through muddy fields in the dawn mist. And my question is

'can we have the same passion in our photography for two completely different genres'?

How does my love of photographing steel shop shutters glistening in the sun fit with my rekindled love of snapping Ionic columns?

Here is a 'Me Reflected' shot, I was trying to capture the round gates at an interesting angle whilst lost in the magic of Leith Hall gardens and lost in thought over 'what sort of photographer am I?'

Do we have to choose, I hope not!