Cat life

 Just parking this here. I had it on Facebook but I’m not sure I saved it anywhere else. It happened when E was at my house, drawing. She decided (completely her own idea) to draw my toy cat. She was four at the time. I thought it a very observant study. 

Blackbird singing

'Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
Blackbird, fly
Blackbird, fly
Into the light of the dark black night'

(John Lennon/Paul McCartney)

(Actually, it wasn't a blackbird, it was a crow - but never mind!) 

Artistic talent

I spent a happy afternoon recently at The Hepworth, Wakefield with my daughter and two grandgirls. The gallery is very welcoming to children, providing packs of paper and pastel crayons so they can sketch and draw. The girls spent a long time happily ensconced in one of the huge window bays, sketching scenes inspired by the foaming waters of the River Calder below, as it tumbles over a weir. It was a very hot day so eventually we adjourned to the café for drinks and cake. Elodie (11) continued her sketching at the café table, producing this picture of the little flower arrangement on the table. 

I was really impressed at how observant she'd been, capturing not only the graceful arrangement but adding her own touches. The vase was white, not red for a start, but in the picture red tones in with the rusty foliage. There's a confidence, freedom and lyricism to the drawing that I really like. It's taken pride of place on my kitchen noticeboard for now but I wanted to 'immortalise' it here too. 

 

Weir-d

Playing around with layers to create an impressionistic effect. I'm never sure whether these 'work' or not. Is it just blurry? I think some subjects perhaps work better than others for this technique and perhaps this is a near miss. 

Inspired

I visited an exhibition today in Leeds that contained an exquisite little book called 'A Venetian Brocade' by Helen Douglas, who is a Scottish artist and photographer. The images in her book are collages and layered images of Venice. I was really inspired by them and wondered if I could create something similar related to Saltaire. I took the basic idea (though I could not, of course, not slavishly follow it as I could only guess how she'd created the pictures). Anyway, playing around with some of my recent pictures of Salts Mill and the canal, I have come up with this collage. I do quite like it, though I'm sure with more practice I could improve on it. 

Patterns - and creativity

I seem to be adopting a blue theme in the last few posts. (Cool! 😄)  Here's a collage I made of reflections of Salts Mill in the canal. I'm often drawn to these patterns in the canal and river, which constantly change with the light and the movement of the water. Saltaire is so familiar to me and, even though it's a stunning World Heritage Site, I sometimes get bored by the same old views of the same old places. It's good to challenge myself to make something 'new' of it - and these sorts of patterns and abstracts are as 'original' as you can get, in that each frame cannot be repeated exactly. 

Having said that, I also feel a little frustrated that I get so far and then can't get any further, creatively speaking. This is not displeasing - nice colours and shapes - but I can't help feeling I should be able to make more of it. It's not really very artistic. It reminds me of when I was doing 'O' level Art. I'd drawn some flowers, quite nicely and neatly, and my art teacher took up a brush with red paint and drew a big messy outline around each flower head, with the idea of encouraging me to be freer and looser in my work. It clearly wasn't the right way to go about getting me to relax into it. I was horrified and didn't really see what she was getting at.  Now, I do, of course, but I still can't free my brain of that 'neat' gene. 

OK, pushing myself to riff on the theme now... a paler version:

Pale and layered ( probably like this the best!):

A layered and blended version: 

Change the colours: 

iColorama

I’m a bit of a sucker for photo apps on my iPad, and over the years have experimented with quite a few. Most of them appeal initially for the rapid and interesting effects that can easily be produced, and most of them quickly lose their appeal for the simple reason that they are  - as far as I’m concerned anyway - a bit over the top and ‘fake’. In addition, most photos put through these processes are not admissible in camera club competitions and so have limited value for me. It is more sensible to use normal photo processing software and one’s own photos, including textures and colour layers. Playing with apps can, however, be an absorbing, even soothing, activity and a fun way to fill some spare time, when reading or TV or other leisure activities don’t quite scratch the itch. 

I’m not talking about the very useful processing apps, like Snapseed, which is my (and many other photographers’) choice for mobile editing as it is very good and versatile. No, these are apps like Distressed FX, which offers texture overlays; Waterlogue, which allows you to convert photos into watercolour effects; BeCasso which offers a variety of creative ‘paint’ filters and my current favourite discovery: iColorama, which offers a plethora of styles and effects. I rarely pay a subscription for these apps, just using whatever free content there is. I rarely delve deep into them either, so I suppose I’m not going to produce instant masterpieces without practice. Nevertheless, they can give quite pleasing results, like the sunset fantasy above. (Not that I can remember now how I created that! That’s the downside when I’m ‘just playing’ as I fail to note the various stages of experimentation so that I can never replicate the effect twice!) 

The same app produced the image below, produced ‘in the style of Van Gogh’. Rather fun. 

Pond life

Just an unassuming little pond... yet it's hard to overstate how excited I can get in a location like this, which is all about light, shadow and shape. I didn't really spend long there and yet it was one of the highlights of my day! Another day, another season, a harsher light and it would look completely different. In addition, the way you edit images like this can change the 'feel 'of them a lot.  These are just my initial edits; I may look at them again another day and decide to try them another way... 

Actually, I think I love this in black and white: 

Honesty - or dishonesty

Nothing really profound about this... I had some photos of the seed heads of honesty, which are round, silvery, papery things. They have fascinated me since I was a child, when they grew in my grandmother's garden. I liked to rub them between my fingers and feel the seeds inside. I just decided to do a bit of layering and blending here, with a blurred layer and a normal layer. (So, honesty rendered dishonestly?) Quite like the resulting messy abstract and I really like the colour it became with the blend mode... kind of chocolatey... which reminds me... (heads off to find sea salt chocolate that I know I have in the kitchen cupboard! Yummy.) 

 

Silken

Sometimes I just enjoy playing with images in Lightroom and Photoshop. I can't say I always know exactly what I'm doing and I rarely have 'a plan' in advance, but just messing around with ideas and sliders can sometimes produce something quite pleasing. This started out as two images. One was an ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) shot of my Christmas cards, which I just threw randomly on to the floor!  The second has a trailing leaves pattern, which is my bathroom wallpaper. Superimposed, with altered blend modes, adjusted colour, cropped, duplicated and then assembled on a new black canvas. (I can mostly not recall exactly what I did, in what order, so even I couldn't replicate it.) The end result seems to me quite attractive (I may have second thoughts on another day!) and reminds me of a richly printed silk scarf. 

Family fun

Fun in the park after Hebden Bridge's Handmade Parade. I'm posting some photos of the parade itself on my main blog. These pictures were taken in Calder Holmes Park at the end of the parade, when we met up with family and friends. There were some food stalls and the music/rhythm carried on, with a performance by the Drum Machine collective. Down in the park it was actually quite chilly, with a keen wind, but the children were racing around with their friends and seemed mostly oblivious to the cold. 

When I see how settled and happy they are in Hebden Bridge, I am so thankful that they made the move up from London a few years ago. It's a compact town in a narrow valley and they are surrounded by a close and creative community. The girls go to a small primary school, literally just across the road from where they live. With many of their close friends living within walking distance of their house, it's a supportive and close-knit neighbourhood. They have chance to get involved in activities that are happening in the town, where there is plenty going on. I'm really grateful they have such good friends, with all the enjoyment and support that that provides.  

Connecting with the Divine

Sunset on the beach, the colours unbelievably vibrant. I took a great many photos and only towards the end did I think of trying a few ICM shots. (ICM stands for Intentional Camera Movement, where you select a slow shutter speed and move the camera whilst the shutter is open, to create a blur.) These days, there is nothing especially unusual about ICM; you see so many of these images. It can give a nice effect when the scene is about colour more than anything, though images often lack a focal point. I was reasonably pleased with this one, though it wouldn't win any prizes. It does, for me, evoke something of actually being there and witnessing the splendour of this natural phenomenon, fast changing and completely awe-inspiring. It actually made me feel quite emotional, watching the beauty unfold. No two sunsets are ever the same and the fleeting colours can be mind-blowing. To me, this image beckons almost like a portal into another dimension. 

'To watch a sunset is to connect with the Divine.'  Gina De Gorna 

Pastels

I really should find time to make more creative, non-representational images. I do quite enjoy myself when I let go and just let myself play. It's hard to judge whether the results are worthwhile, but these days it seems the only way you can be truly original (by which I mean show something different and innovative) as a photographer is to make composite or artistic images, one way or another. Most good landscape scenes have been Instagrammed to death. Sport, nature, portraits and street are kind of niche genres that I'm not too fond of shooting, and many of their subjects are seen over and over again, somewhat predictably. 'Birds on sticks', jet skis, racing motorbikes and so on...  

I did this one a while ago and just came across it again. It often helps to review these kinds of images some time later. If I still like them after a passage of time, that is good. I can't even recall when or where I took the base images but I was playing with water and reflections and then adding coloured texture layers. (As far as I'm concerned, my creative images are so 'original' that I couldn't reproduce one of them a second time myself, even if I wanted to. I don't keep note of the steps in their creation.) This one would probably look good printed on some matte, textured art paper. Printing is another thing I should perhaps do more of, though then you have to find space to store the prints, always a problem. 

Pebbles

Just a little playing with an image of my pebble collection. I can't truly say why I have a pebble collection... They are stones I've picked up over the years on beaches and brought home (and yes, I know you're not really supposed to do that!) Neatly laid out on a shelf in the sitting room, the hoard is perhaps one of my favourite possessions. There is something about the smoothness of them, their diversity of colour, shape, texture, the way they fit in one's palm - and yet all within relationship to each other. I like the grading from largest to smallest. 

I know my grandgirls appreciate them, especially M. In fact, there is a poignant little story to tell here... Once when the family came over, her father produced the tiny, rounded, orange pebble from his pocket and placed it at the end of the line, saying he'd been carrying it around for ages. It fitted and looked at home there so it was left. The next time the grandgirls came, that very pebble went missing. As they were leaving, I exclaimed about it (without really thinking it through!) M bent down behind the door and then produced it, saying: 'Is this it?' So we replaced it in the line. It was only after they'd gone that I realised the likely truth: that M herself must at one time have found it (she's the kind of child that does amass pockets full of treasures) and she must have given it to her daddy to look after. Perhaps she then forgot about it. Anyway, seeing it on my shelf must have reminded her that it was her treasure, so she reclaimed it, but obviously felt a little guilty, hence the 'finding it' again when I noticed its disappearance. I felt bad afterwards for not thinking ahead, and just keeping quiet when it disappeared from the line-up. I should have realised! But, sweet girl, I do love it and treasure it, all the more so because of that incident. And one day you can claim all of them for your own collection, knowing they were precious to me. They are, as precious as the finest jewels. 

Perhaps we're all a little odd! 

There are moments in life, when the heart is so full of emotion 

That if by chance it be shaken, or into its depths like a pebble 

Drops some careless word, it overflows, and its secret, 

Spilt on the ground like water, can never be gathered together.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow