Saturday 31 January 2015

Challenge be gone

So I've done it. The 30 days have been and my January of carting my camera wherever I go is finished. Now I will have no excuse for avoiding all the dull but necessary things to be done that surround me. The 30 day photography challenge that I found on Pinterest has been great in so many ways, but I must confess I am glad it is finished. This week has not had the best of themes and some of them have consumed my day. But if it was easy, it wouldn't be a challenge, would it? It's interesting how many times I've gone out with something in mind to fit the theme, and actually another photo that was taken that day would fit the bill better than the grand plan had.

Would you like to see my final ten? Well here you are...

Day 21: Faceless self portrait. I was for a second or two tempted to try some naked body parts but couldn't think of any areas I'd be happy for you to see. I tried a terribly unflattering shot looking in the fridge with my head cropped off. In the end I tried to sum myself up with something smaller...


Day 22: Inspirational. For this one I had always fully intended to do a little homage to Malka Dubrawsky, who always manages to chirp up my world with the brightest funkiest batik patchwork fabric patterns, bursting with sunlight. But I couldn't do them justice and actually there is something amazing and ever-changing outside calling to me every day at the moment to take ever more photos...


Day 23: Patterns. I knew this one would be a doddle. I was meeting with my lovely monthly group at Clevedon Craft Centre, we would be doing art of some sort and something beautiful would materialise. In fact it was the materials that materialised, in the form of a gorgeous box of crayons in the sun, that somehow seemed more fun when they were out of focus:


Day 24: Animal. Yes, I could have bothered the cat again. Or I could have tried to capture the essence of the stick insects (which isn't easy, I have previously tried. Smallest child recently wrote out a schedule for a family talent show and their only talent was "standing still" for several hours). It was a Saturday and the children needed some exercise, so this was my feeble excuse for a trip to the city farm...


Day 25: Strangers. Just the worst. Really not comfortable. I think I'm too English for this one. I spent a morning rushing out snaps, most not properly focussed as I didn't want to be spotted. There were lots. Mostly rubbish. This was the most in focus, and, I hope, the one that tells a little story: why are they looking in that direction?


Day 26: Close up. Aha, back in the comfort zone. Slap on the macro lens, quick trip to the shops to buy some flowers, get the ones with the reduced label. Anemones always make me think of my mum, who loved them; I tried to plant some in my garden a couple of years ago but couldn't bring myself to bury them in the ground.


Day 27: Celebration. It felt a little odd trying to stage something that could be construed as a celebration, at 9:30 in the morning on a grey day after the school run, with just an old bottle of French cider and a light on.


Day 28: Flowers. Ah, I hadn't spotted that a couple of days before. So out come the reduced flowers from the close up challenge again, still hanging on to their uprightness for a few more hours.


Day 29: Black and white. Daughter says "Easy, do a cow." I tell her I don't know where to find a cow, and she reminds me of the calves we saw at the city farm a few days before, as if I am an idiot. I explain that I can just do a monochrome picture of something coloured but she won't have it. So I drop her at school and head off for my grand plan, into Bristol for a gritty bridge, some graffiti, something dramatic. I find the bridge and after several rushed and unfocused pictures while I'm dodging the tutting cyclists, it is a no hoper. I mutter to myself while trudging along the road towards... the city farm. And of course the calves are inside, not a hope of a picture. Luckily a sheep is too stupid to get worried and move when I'm spending minutes poking my zoom lens at it.


Day 30: Self portrait. Oh dear. This one has been bothering me for several days. Interesting that the two most bothersome challenges have been the people I don't know, and the person I know the best. I plan on a good night's sleep to iron out the wrinkles beforehand. But I hadn't bargained on getting up twice in the night for a feverish child and a husband who gets up extraordinarily at 4.30 to welcome a new machine at his work. This was never going to be easy. And in the end, I had an interesting self-realisation. I took hundreds. And guess what? I cannot stand any pictures that feature my mouth. What is it about that strange slit just above my chin? Where are the full and luscious lips I have in my imagination? Thin and mean, or lopsided, gormless, mocking or just plain silly. It's got to go. And then, once I have a few I feel OK about, I wonder about a little bit of editing. Surprising how easy it is. A couple of minutes and I can rub out all sign of those bags under the eyes. That's better, if a little odd. Have a little go at getting rid of the crow's feet... then suddenly I am not me any more. It is wrong. Weirdly husband says it looks like a boy - interesting, are my wrinkles womanly? So back to square one, here I am in full unedited glory, bags, wrinkles and all...

If you too feel like doing the challenge (and I would heartily recommend it), here is what I found, but do let me see the results:

Tuesday 20 January 2015

The next 10 days...

On with the 30 day photography challenge. I am going to miss this when it's finished. Here were the last ten...

Day 11: Something blue


Day 12: Sunset. This was a harsh and unfair one; I've done some great sunsets recently but this was an unforgiving grey day and there was never a hint of a sunset. So needs must and I had to create my own...

Day 13: Cannot live without. Interesting moral question. The children were telling me that I needed to take pictures of water and air. On a more vacuous level I was half tempted to photograph a pile of chocolate and peanuts with my iPod perched on top. But in the end I decided that life would be very difficult to bear if I couldn't see colours.

Day 14: Eyes. God, the cat got fed up with me that day.

Day 15: Silhouette. See, I can do a sunset!

Day 16: A good habit. Another one up for debate...

Day 17: Technology.

Day 18: My shoes. I find myself fiddling about on the Palladian Bridge in Prior Park Gardens, trying to remember how the self-timer works and hoping that I've stepped into the tiny little section of ground that was in focus. 

Day 19: Something I want. Again a dilemma. Some of these have been troublesome! I could have done something lovely to eat. A friend suggested I take a picture of a gallery. It could have been all manner of silly fripperies in shops. I concluded that after a few difficult days involving very contrary children and a husband who is made up of the same genes, what I really wanted was this (a tranquil sunny beach, not just a deserted corner of Portishead, not that I have anything against Portishead...):

Day 20 (today): In my bag. I didn't bother with the dirty tissues, till receipts, sweet wrappers and used plasters, I hope you don't mind...


 I would like to see what other people might have to photograph in their bags...

Saturday 10 January 2015

New Year and a Thirty Day Challenge

A good creative start to the year. Patchwork going well. Lots of promise on the felted art front: the pop up gallery before Christmas cleared me out of 10 pictures, and this week I packed up my remaining 8 and visited the lovely Angela at Popular Pots in Clevedon, who promptly took 6 of them to see if she can sell them, and asked for the 7th after I have reframed it. This morning a cheque arrived in the post as the 4 small beach pictures I had in Church House Designs in Congresbury had sold. A good positive feel, and for a lovely change, a big space in the room where normally lots of framed work lives, taking up space and nudging me into believing I am a failure at this art lark. Be gone! And the big space where that nastiness was is now beckoning me to fill it with new art, better art, art for North Somerset Arts week in May. Perfect timing.

In the meantime I have my other new creative passion to keep me company. I had a day or two of worry that once my photography course finished, the creative spirit would leave me and I would no longer have the ability or urge to take a beautiful picture. But the arrival of a few new lenses has helped, as has a resolution to ensure that one morning a week will still remain a photography morning. I was concerned I would lose the impetus to keep taking photos, so when trawling through Pinterest, I found a 30-day photography challenge, with a different theme for each day. Today is Day 10. Would you like to see?

Day 1: Self Portrait.
Not easy, or comfortable, but I found the wrinkles were suitably softened by the slightly hazy 150-year old French mirror I bought for husband for Christmas, that and hiding half my face behind the camera. I am also very aware that self-portraiture features twice more in the thirty days so there will be room for plenty of improvement from this...

Day 2: What I Wore

Day 3: Clouds. They were elusive on an unmitigating grey day, just a grey blanket of rain, nothing visible to focus on at all, and I had resorted to photos of clouds in mobile phone shops, art galleries and on pub signs. Then these arrived as I had given up and got back to the car park...

Day 4: Something Green. Easier today...

Day 5: After Dark. The £1.16 I spent on LED finger lights for the children's Christmas stockings was invaluable with a slow shutter speed.

Day 6: Obsession

Day 7: Changes to Come. A difficult choice. I started off doing a perfectly respectable shot of different fruit and vegetables, then dismissed it as being a bit too predictable as a New Year's health kick (as I have in real life, lovely doughnut earlier today). I found a frame and stuffed it full of wool, patchwork, a pincushion and a camera lens as a nod to my resolve to be more creative this year. But on reflection, it was just not a good enough picture. I was stumped. Luckily Day 7 was also my self-assigned photography morning and I had headed off to somewhere rather beautiful to take pictures. It suddenly occurred to me that one of these would count as a change to come for all of us at some point. So sorry, my dear recently bereaved friend who always reads this. But thank you Arnos Vale Cemetery.

Day 8: Routine

Day 9: Someone You Love. How hard it is when your two children have got sick of you trying to take the perfect candid picture of them, and they gurn their faces into forced grins, revealing the witchy gaps where new teeth are growing, and husband leaves before 7:30 am and is only home when you and he are too weary to think of taking a picture. I had a cute picture of the cat but didn't want everyone on Flickr to think I'm the mad cat lady. So eventually girl in the bath came kinda good...

Day 10 (today): Childhood Memory

What would you have done?