Traffic

 

Traffic
 
I have been stuck in a traffic jam
cars and vans and lorries and bikes
jumbled up unable to make their way
forward
 
jostling for position for the getaway
nothing progressed at all for months
and all I could do was identify the
vehicles
 
that were all the many stresses in my life
not being able to focus on any one of them
compounding the stress and the traffic
jam.
 
Suddenly an acupuncturist or an osteopath,
almost certainly, has shown one vehicle how
to navigate out of the melee and start a
journey
 
making a space for the next vehicle to
straighten up and leave, like one of those puzzles
with only one space but the corner shape must
exit
 
and now all the vehicles are moving
each in a separate lane on the motorway
(though the bikes must make their by another
route.)
 
All the types of vehicle are still present
but moving at their own pace
at variable speeds stopping and starting
individually
 
and I have clarity at last
and I am back in my own body
and in my own head and I have found
myself.

An image for our times, personal and global.

2018 Challenges

Tomorrow a new year begins.  Like everyone else, my life has ups and downs and uncertainties and from my current perspective 2018 looks more than usually uncertain and complicated, with several personal challenges on the horizon.  However, I’m going to start two new creative challenges this January.  

I’m giving Photo A Day another go.  Last year I managed until some time in April.  I was happy to find I’d given up and felt I benefited from the space I gained.  However, as the year wore on I found I was taking fewer and fewer photos and that my life was feeling the poorer for it.  I understand why/how this happened; much was to do with getting the balance of the year wrong and needing to work full time to restore my pottery stocks to something approaching normal and I was pleased to achieve this eventually.  But where are the photos? 

The other challenge is the 64million artists January challenge.  This will apparently provide a short task every day during January, designed to kick-start one’s creativity.  I’m not promising to do the task every day if it’s impractical but it struck me that 10 minutes or so each day should be achievable.  This year started quite well with textiles work but my pottery work has been a matter of keeping stock levels and with nothing new.  I also had lots of vague ideas about mixed media work but no time to explore them, though I am hoarding materials that come my way.  This challenge is about creativity generally: drawing, writing, music, I don’t know what because I haven’t done it before, but it starts tomorrow.

Results of both challenges will be posted on Facebook and Twitter.

Wot? No ....

Fill in the blank to suit - no blog post, no photo a day, no fresh bread; this week I'm especially conscious of all the things I've let slip lately.

Most mornings recently I've thought today might be the day I get back to the Photo A Day challenge but still it's now more than three weeks since I posted anything. I think it's because of the shape the year is taking.  This part time work thing is not as easy to manage as it sounds.  I've done a lot of the part where I'm not working already this year so now find myself needing to do the work part most of the time.  The Photo A Day challenge often needs thinking about and thinking time is what I'm shortest of.

No fresh bread ....  well, I'm pleased to say that I've managed to continue the year with a home-made loaf on the go most of the time unless I made a deliberate decision to buy something different for a change.  This week, though, no fresh bread because I didn't make it when I intended to.  I'm hoping that will be put right soon because the bread has been better than ever.  I keep thinking about a post about that but as you'll have noticed ...

And no blog post.  Why is that?  I've also got an idea for a short article that I've been wanting to write for about a year.  I thought I might do that in the winter, but no.  Really, very little writing of any sort.  What's that about, then?


I've still taken photos, of course.  Functional ones of new work (ah yes, the gallery pages of my website also need updating but almost certainly won't be any time soon), documentary ones, in particular of the garden, watching how last year's new plants are coming into their own for a second season and relishing all the new tulips I bought in the autumn, and photos taken for the pleasure of photography, to capture things I've seen and maybe create one or two images I really like.

So
Wot? No ...  real explanation.  Not for the lack of blog posts, anyway.  Perhaps this will be a (nother) new start.

Photo A Day 2016

 As I've mentioned before, I've been doing the Photo A Day challenge during 2016. I haven't actually put up a photo for a little while and from time to time during the year there were odd gaps. I've been pondering whether to do it again next year. 

 

How much do I mind the missed days or, latterly, weeks? I suppose it does irk me a little when I miss some. But it's a bit like healthy eating. Just because I ate a big slice of cake today doesn't mean it isn't healthy to eat fruit tomorrow. The fruit still counts. So with the photos, the ones I've taken still count and there were still days when I did produce a photo but had to dig deep at the last minute to put one up and on those days I was certainly meeting a challenge.

 

The Facebook group for the challenge is full of people who meet it every day, whose photos are in the 'lovely photo' category every day, who experiment with filters and effects almost every day. Mine, by contrast, sometimes aim for the 'lovely photo' but sometimes are just unadorned snaps of the daily prompt in order to meet the challenge. I think I should be happy with that.  I've also produced the occasional image that I'm really pleased with.

 

So ... I'm going to take on the challenge again in 2017, with the same kind-to-myself attitude that if I don't do a photo every day I haven't failed the challenge.  In 2016 Photo A Day has sometimes made me think about how I take photographs and take time to construct a shot, sometimes made me keep my eyes open better for opportunities to meet the prompts I know are coming up and these are good things, which I hope to build on.  Most of those taking part in the challenge I've done are using their phones and phone apps to manipulate photos.  I, on the other hand, take on my camera and upload to PC, where I have Photoshop.  I think I'll continue with that but perhaps make an effort to use my phone for some photos as up till now my results from the phone camera have mostly been rubbish and it would be good to do something about that.

 

You can see the whole album of 2016 Photo A Day images here.  In the mean time, here's my pick of a favourite photo from each month of the year.  In some months had few photos to choose from so the favourite photo isn't always one I'm particularly pleased with and it seems I didn't meet the challenge at all in July, so there are only 11 photos.

 

 

Photo a day challenge

There are various of these challenges around, apparently, but the one I fell across and joined is run on a Facebook group.  Daily 'prompts' for the topic of your photographs are posted in the group, one month at a time.  The idea then is that everyone posts their photos to the group where others can comment, or just 'like' them, and a small selection are chosen each day as the pick of the bunch.  I do post occasionally to the group but mostly I post in my own Facebook Photo a Day album.  Recently a friend asked if I had learned anything and that prompted me to write about why I decided to do the challenge. I sort of knew already, but I found it interesting to put into words that other people could understand.

I took on the challenge as an artist's discipline. For me it's about many things 
 
- stretching my brain to find a subject to fit into the brief when I find it uninspiring
- continuing the process of documenting my life which I do already
- stretching myself as a photographer when I've got time to experiment with different settings on my camera
- sometimes aiming and occasionally succeeding in creating an attractive image that I can use one way or another in my artwork.

Like sketching, taking photographs doesn't always lead to anything much at the time but provides a resource to be drawn on when needed. I'm no good at sketching.

On 4th January I came down with flu and did nothing much of anything for a few weeks, including taking photographs, but since resuming on 24th January, I've managed to post something every day.

I am certainly learning - about myself, my cameras and about what other people like in a photograph.  I've also learned that a flatlay is when you lay the subject(s) of your photograph out on a flat surface and photograph from above.  This one, 'Fish pie', from January, was my first ever flatlay.  I'm quite pleased with it. 

Sometimes the prompts would be easy enough for anyone with any other people to hand to pose for them and others require animals so lacking both I resort to archive photos on those occasions.  It's often an opportunity to share some of my favourite photos, such as 'This is funny', from March.

Sometimes I go out with my camera looking for something that fits the prompt ('Path')

and sometimes I'll put together a still life of some sort, such as 'Toy'.  I'm particularly fond of this one.

And finally, occasionally I use Photoshop to create an image from one or more of the photographs I've taken.  'Abstract' is my favourite of these.

I am learning to look around more, take a little time out of what I'm doing in order to capture a photograph with a little care and planning, and at the same time to be spontaneous in my photography.

Watch this space.  

Frost

Nothing much to say about frost except here are two photos of geraniums on my patio after a fairly heavy frost.  I expect it will have done for them and other delicate plants in tubs but I'm not complaining about having had them all (even lobelia!) in flower until the third week in November.

Photography

I have recently taken part in a Facebook meme - to post an archive photo on six consecutive days.  It was a really interesting exercise.

To begin with I searched through all the photos I am pleased with and made up a short list. The first one I posted was this.  I love this picture and wish I could print it out, but unfortunately it no longer exists in any except compressed form as it was part of a big computer disaster which included losing a batch of images.  I had uploaded them onto Facebook so am able to retrieve the compressed version but the original is lost.  Since then I don't remove photos from my camera until they are saved in at least two places.

The second picture is another personal favourite, taken at Westonbirt Arboretum.  After this I began  to think about the fact that it was a photo archive challenge and not necessarily about the photos I consider to be my best ones, so I moved from digital photos, which accounts for the last ten years, to those I have in my many albums.  Most of these have not kept well.  I do have all my negatives (yes, even from 1962) in a filing cabinet and could in theory scan them in to create clear versions of them once more, but I'm probably not going to!

This photo at the Snake Temples on Penang, Malaysia was taken with my first ever roll of film, when I was 8.  It doesn't have a huge amount to recommend it as a photo but I wanted to mark the beginning of my interest in photography.

Having got into different types of subject, I looked for a still life.  I haven't taken many, but this one is one of my favourites.  Getting photos printed in the eighties (and beyond) often resulted in distortions of colour because machines don't like an image to be more or less one colour range and they compensate.  This still life was green and white (even the wallpaper was white with a hint of green) but the machine compensated with a pink wash.  The print has probably deteriorated in the album as well but I managed to Photoshop it into something I still rather like.

My family first started saying I was a good photographer (which was kind of them) when I got a zoom lens and managed to capture family members unaware because I was standing some distance away.  You can often, though not always, get some great shots of people if they don't know you're taking a photo.  This one was taken in 2001 and shows a dinner at my house.  The two people central to the photo were very close friends who both died within six months of each other in the last 18 months.  This is such a happy photo, showing them both 'au naturel', oblivious not just to me but everyone else. 

And finally ...
This photo from 2009 was an accident because I initially set out just to photograph the window I had just painted, however it is now one of my favourites.  I like the composition of the photo but it is also a picture of a place and time that are very important to me.

Searching through all my old photos has given me yet another nudge to make sure I do more photography.  I have ideas.  The next task is to set aside some proper time for them. 

I don't know why ...

... I feel so drawn to photograph bees and butterflies, but I do.  I guess I enjoy photographing all wildlife and plantlife and indeed domestic animals both human and otherwise.  The bees and butterflies are possibly my favourites, though.

Promising

Yesterday I found one of the coloured hellebores fully open.  The white ones, usually earliest, haven't opened their buds yet.  I love the hellebore season as they are the first things of the year to flourish in my garden and even in wind, rain (today) and snow they are a promise of seasons to come.

Melting frost

What's in a Blog?

I've been aware that this blog has been gradually shifting and the emphasis in the decreasing number of posts has become almost entirely on my work as an artist.  I'm not sure how this happened but I think it's been a bit of a circular thing - if I'm not writing so much I need to make sure that when I do write, at least people can keep up with what work I'm doing but much of my working life is spent doing tasks which don't change very much so there isn't anything to write about so often.  So it's time to break out and return to the original flavour of the blog.

I'm not writing for any particular audience.  I hope people will read this blog but I have no idea who they are - friends, possibly some of my customers, but also people I don't know who happen on the blog by one accidental route or another.  Whatever I put here has to be what I'm happy for the whole world to know.  Trying to balance that with what the whole world might want to know is, I think, something that's been in my mind lately and has led to the whole thing becoming a little stultified.  If I'm writing something you don't want to know, feel free to stop reading and come back another day when there's something more to your taste.

I hope to post more blogs which contain just photographs.
I may include more creative writing - if I do any!
There will be mentions of work.
I mustn't forget about food (writing about it, that is, not eating it!)
I hope to return to writing about ideas.
I'm going to write about more personal things too.



Today I went outside with my camera and the garden was not particularly promising.  However, the rosemary is looking splendid, so that's what I photographed.  Over the last ten years or so I have used herbs in cooking much more than I used to and I think I use rosemary more than any.  It may be my favourite herb.

Photo walk

I am starting a mini project which I'm calling my Photo walk.  It's a daily project but I'm not going to be anal about the daily bit.  I'll try to do it most days but if something else crops up or I forget or the weather is unpleasant then I won't bother.

Each day I will take the same walk, or at least part of it, and while on my walk will take one or more photos.  The photos might be of anything at all that I can see from the path or road I'll be walking along.  This one of ripening wheat was on the first day.  I had it as my cover photo on Facebook for a day and then it was replaced by this one.

I haven't decided exactly what I'll do with the photos; whether to use them just on Facebook, or try to blog them daily or what. 

Today I took a series of photos to show my basic route.  The top one shows the route setting out, the bottom one coming back.  This will mostly be my walk although on days when I have more time I hope to get just round the corner from where the fourth picture shows, to reach a little bridge.

I'm pleased with the montage of my route because it gives a good idea of what my walk really looks like and why it probably doesn't appeal to people much as a walk, certainly not repeated daily.  But take a camera with you and ....

Photos

Well, you can't say this post doesn't do what it says on the tin.

It's remarkably warm for the time of year, so we went for a little wander by the canal.  There are things in flower but I hadn't ever noticed before that they are all white.  I know the first flowers of the year are often yellow but had never noticed before that there were so many white things.

One photo is of course not flowers, but the sunlight on the leaves seemed to go with the general theme.

This blog needs to get back to its roots, I think.  I used to post photos or general news about our lives but then the blog got rather work-oriented.  People seem interested in that but increasingly there is less to say about it.  This is partly because I'm just not able to do the work I want to do.  Sciatica took care of a large part of the year.  It's mostly gone.  However, I now have a recurring rib injury - something I did when falling over last October which has obviously not healed properly.  Not sure what yet, but that doesn't actually make any difference to the fact that I can't make pots.

Stock is low, Another Beastly Art Exhibition is coming up in a few weeks and I wanted to make new ceramic work for that.  But it can't be helped.  I know rib injuries just take time.

In the mean time there is plenty else that needs doing, finishing off, labelling and packing all the textiles work I did while we were in France. 

In other news ...

I made my Christmas cake yesterday.  Regular readers may remember last year when the mice not only ate a lot of the stored cake but made their nest in it and as a final insult, left behind some bits of mortar and an old screw.  I have bought a new plastic cake box and this year's cake is now in it.  Because of the rib injury, I thought it wise not to lift the cake-in-a-box up onto a shelf above my head, so I asked M to do it.  When I asked him to put the box on the mouse shelf, he knew exactly what I meant.  The mouse shelf it shall ever be, then.

Photography

One of the great things about the internet is how easy it is to see other people's work.  One of the drawbacks is how easy it is to see other people's work that is much better than one's own!  Or maybe that's a good thing too.

I've always enjoyed photography and within the family have been the best photographer.  Along the way I acquired a few friends who were very good indeed, but that was ok because they were still in the minority as the majority of people either didn't have cameras or didn't take many photos apart from at weddings and along with my other artwork.  Knowing people who took better photos gave me something to aim at.  I continued to develop my photography with a view to one day perhaps being able to exhibit some photos. 

With the arrival of digital photography and related technology came an explosion in the popularity of photography and with social media everyone's efforts can be readily available for admiration. I now have several friends whose photos are of such a high standard that I don't expect mine will ever reach those heights!  I've also seen thousands of photos taken by people I don't know, which just take your breath away with their precision and composition.  The place of photography in my artwork has been diminishing for the past five years or so and I think this is part of the explanation.

On the other hand, put me in a location with plenty of wildlife and a little more time than usual, and I get the bug again.  I love digital cameras.  It's normal for me to take 50 or more shots to get just one that I like.  I think I took 62 shots of the little lizard at the top.  (He's only about 15cms long, including tail) though a very modest 30 or so of the deer.

There were certainly more than 50 pics taken of goldfinches.  I took one batch the first day I found several feeding away at the thistles and the second day, having got at least some halfway decent shots, was braver with the noise I made and opened a window perhaps 5 metres away from them.  They didn't interrupt their feeding so I was able to snap away and out of the second batch got this one, which I'm really pleased with.

And finally, butterflies.  I'm still busy taking them.  If you've followed my blog over the years you'll have seen pics of butterflies before.  These are  three of my favourites from the past two weeks.  I love the sweet pea pic because there's a little bug in there as well as the butterfly.  I never tire of the black and white butterflies, and the last shot is one I'm really pleased with because of the overall composition of the picture.

Hot and Cold

This is a painfully contrived blog title, for which I apologise. It's on a par with some of the segues they use on The Today Programme on radio 4.  It's the only thing I could come up with in a hurry, the first photo being of frost on a curry plant.  Sorry 'bout that.*  I've become aware that there hasn't been much in the way of photo blogs lately and wanted to put that right, but then what to call it?  Photos?  Perhaps you'd prefer that next time.

* Years ago, when I had more money and more time (some of my working hours were teaching, which paid me much more per hour than making!) I used to attend quite a few poetry events and some of the highlights were readings by the poet Adrian Mitchell, who died in 2008.  I didn't always agree with his politics but I admired his constancy and dedication to trying to right what he saw as the many wrongs of the world.  His readings were the most 'human' of any of the poets I saw.  He seemed to have no 'side' to him - what you saw was what you got.  One of his poems is called "Sorry Bout That".  I was just reminded of it, and him, when putting in the apology for the corny title. 

So in the end, you get a bit more for your money than expected.  Enjoy!