Wichert Walls

Today was a good day, two good friends getting new jobs! My friend and I worked at the same photography studio for most of last year, both loosing our jobs before Christmas under not very nice circumstances and both feeling aggrieved and a little nervous for our futures. So the job hunting had begun and today we travelled down to the village that I was born in for my friends interview, a pure coincidence (or was it...) and a job that she really wanted. I had had an interview just before Christmas for another studio position but although I had been offered some hours I'd heard nothing more and was beginning to feel very twitchy! Well my friend received a phone call on our journey back to say that she had got the job and I had an e-mail waiting for me when I got home outlining start date, hours and rate. We certainly are two happy girlies today!
Now the village that I was born in (well I was actually born in a hospital but brought back to the village only hours old) is one of the most picturesque Anglo-Saxon villages in Buckinghamshire and is one of only three wychert villages nationally.Wychert describes a method of construction using a white clay mixed with straw to make walls and buildings, which are then thatched or topped with red clay tiles. It really has the most beautiful thatched cottages down its little winding lanes flanked by the areas distinctive walls and I could have taken the most gorgeous and endless photographs but it was my friends show and she is not a photographer. Sometimes you have to let the opportunities slide and I knew that throwing anything else into the mix today would stress her and I have vowed to re-visit alone with my camera another time.

The Grand Canyon

This picture is of an exhibition that I visited before Christmas by photographer Deborah Bird. I went back today for another look. She had been awarded a Bursery Grant to visit and photograph within the Grand Canyon. Deborah froze her paper sculptures in water and then photographed them as they melted with the natural light and the Canyon as a backdrop. I went to meet Deborah and she was very inspiring and very tired!

Take a look at her work on www.deborahbirdart.com

Venturing into Town

A Dismal Day

With my Christmas Chest infection beginning to ease, I decided to venture out and see what I could snap. I could tell from Facebook posts that people were going back to work and business' were re-opening today so I walked into town to see what interesting 'scenes' I could spot. Its only the second of January so the shops and the main street look very much as they did a few days ago at the height of the Christmas shopping madness with only the addition of sales posters giving a splash of red everywhere. Shoppers trudged about looking glum and drab and when I called in to say hello to my friends at the Art Cafe one of the customers commented that I wouldn't get a good picture on such a dismal day. I can usually spot a picture somewhere but I knew what he meant, no sun to cast interesting shadows, no frost or even snow on the ground to give some wintry sparkle. But when I came out of the cafe the street scene had been transformed by a gorgeous sunset. It just goes to show if you wait long enough a good picture will show up.

The town's Christmas decorations are still up and they're still switching on, even though all the merriment is over when it starts to get dark, which is nice. It had been raining non stop for about two weeks and although its stopped now the ground is soaked to bursting and the atmosphere is very damp so the pavements were glistening. Add a little interest in the foreground with a couple of A boards and hey presto!

Happy New Year!

Happy 2013 to you all! What a pretty poor job I did of photography and blogging last year then! Time to take action and FORCE myself back into it as I clearly have the creative willpower of...of...well of someone who has no creative staying power at all!
Last night I watched 'Julie & Julia' whilst sitting home alone on New Years Eve for the first time in my life, something I was dreading but that actually turned out rather well with this wonderful film. It is a story about an almost 30yr old office worker who really wants to be a writer. She decides to make herself complete a writing project by combining it with her love of cooking and she creates a blog on which she charts her progress in cooking all of her heroine Julia Child's recipes from her cookbook in one year- 365 days- a recipe and a blog a day.
She confesses that she starts things and never finishes them - sound familiar?

Really, come on me - New Years resolution - get back to blogging! My notebook, a new one for a new year, my portfolio books of photography work for sale and a game of patience all sitting on the sofa suddenly seemed a very fitting image to take to signify this resolution. I have also promised my daughter and two of my best friends so now I have put it out there that I have challenged myself, pride will not let me fail, now how the heck do I use this camera again????

Stoneleigh Abbey and the visitor that changed everything

It takes some talent, or not, to go to a house as stunning as Stoneleigh Abbey in Warwickshire and not take one single photograph to be proud of! To be fair as I have done very little photography this year, it will take a while to re-find my eye and I know to be patient. Today was the first step in getting back into the swing of it and having been invited onto the Jane Austen Tour at the Abbey I put my camera where my mouth was yesterday and took a few shots when the tour was finished.

My friends and I found the tour a little odd as it turned out that Miss Austen only set foot in the house for 10 days in her entire life but it was sold to us that these 10 days were the inspiration for Mansfield Park. It was amusing how enthusiastically the tour guide pressed the notion upon us, with rather overly hopeful links to chapters in the book, that it "must have been Stoneleigh"  Her joy that the handwritten manuscripts for Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Predudice would have been within Stoneleigh's walls during the stay was charming and we were directed to the many pieces of furniture that Jane would have seen as though the novelists gaze had turned them to pure gold. Such belief and delight held a mirror to me that I hadn't really felt that enthusiasm for anything much this year.

 Life is better, much more peaceful but I have felt numbed and dampened down, not in humour as I've laughed more in this last year than for several years previously but in the ability to be immersed in anything really deeply. I lost a lot in a year and its bound to take its toll, it'll take time but today was a huge step forward, I'll be trudging down country lanes in pursuit of that perfect shot again before we know it. The gate has been shut but its about to open again.

After the Storm

After the Storm was a Nick Butterworth story that I used to read to my children when they were little. Its a tale of Percy the Parkeeper and the animals that live in the park who are of course his friends. One day a huge storms hits the park, causing damage and disruption the the lives of the animals and good old Percy gives them support and love and rebuilds everything until all has settled again.

I have had my storm and am still in the aftermath, feeling 'very sniffy' like the fox in the story. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a mess, I have been very brave and steadfastly determined. I have committed to developing my house, worked hard at my job and spent lots of lovely time with friends and relations but I've done no photography or artwork at all.

My heart was broken at the choice that I had to make and somehow it has been unthinkable over these last 9 months to tap into 'emotional me' to be creative. Emotional me has been too broken.

A great artist, they say (whoever they are) is someone who has suffered and lets all of that pain and angst out into their work, creating pieces of much greater depth, feeling and brilliance. Well, like I told my counsellor, I haven't wanted to let it out, it can stay nicely packed away in the moving boxes that still stand in the corner of my bedroom thank you very much.

But after a conversation with the photographers and creative types at work yesterday I began to think that that was an awful shame, and a waste. I think, actually upon reflection I would like to try a little emotional creativity after all now. Slowly at first I think.....

The photograph above was of a storm that hit us a couple of months ago on what had been a lovely sunny day. The sky went very very black and all of a sudden the most enormous hailstorm and hurricane took over our world, denting all the cars in our town, smashing windows, conservatories, destroying roofs and flooding houses and shops. It was unlike anything anyone had seen before and my car still resembles a golf ball! Things have been put back to normal and now all that remains is story swapping and knowing chuckles whenever you see a fellow golf ball driver, life goes on and I feel very lucky that it does. I shouldn't waste my given talent, more is to come.

I own a home - at last!

I haven't taken any photographs since I last posted, not one. I haven't blogged, I haven't painted or done anything creative at all, unless you can call decorating creative. Today at long long last contracts have been exchanged and I own a home. Its taken so long! Ive been renting, in limbo just waiting, waiting, waiting. Its been tough a rollercoaster of lost deads and renegotiation and lost hope and refound hope and all the time dealing with heartbreak that I never expected to be so deep or last so long. But now a new beginning and a better life and a time for me to refind my love of photography and art. I work full time now at a photography studio and I am renovating a very dilapidated house but I will endeavour to squeeze in blogging time and photographs whenever I can.