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. 

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. 

Cathedrals of industry

I took this double-exposure image on a recent visit to an exhibition in the roof space at Salts Mill. The vast spaces up there always inspire me as much as whatever event I've gone to see. The roof trusses remind me of the arches in cathedrals. This one, made of wood and iron, was leaking a rust stain down the stone wall. I've overlaid it with a rather battered and random piece of metal gridwork I found, screwed to the wall and fashioned as though it were small shelves or a rack, though for what purpose I have no idea.  

It got me thinking that, in their own way, our northern textile mills, these relics of the Industrial Revolution, were truly 'the cathedrals of industry'. I'm glad that some, like Salts Mill, are able to be preserved and appreciated for their scale and the quality of the work that went into the buildings themselves, not to mention the craftmanship of the machinery (like spinning machines and looms) that filled them - and the fine fabrics they ultimately produced in large quantities.

'And no bobbins and spindles and shuttles are left

Where weavers once tended the warp and the weft

To fettle to fabric with fine-spun thin threads

But axes have fallen and silenced the sheds.'       C Richard Miles

'A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.'   Antoine de Saint-Exupery

(For 'rock pile', please read 'textile mill'.) 

'I went and looked at one of these great cathedrals one day, and I was blown away by it. From there I became interested in how cathedrals were built, and from there I became interested in the society that built the medieval cathedral. It occurred to me at some point that the story of the building of a cathedral could be a great popular novel.'    Ken Follett

The story of the building of Sir Titus Salt's great mill and his village of Saltaire is told many times in many books - though I don't know of a novel yet. And what a story it is; what a legacy he left us!

'Beauty is not generic, bland, and clinical. It isn't all things to all people. The Cathedral of Notre Dame in its endlessly intricate detail was beautiful. Modern office buildings are not.'   Michael J. Knowles

One of the aspects of Salts Mill that continually blows my mind is the elaborate detail that adorns it. The Victorians were never interested in utilitarian architecture. These buildings were statements about their founders, in a way that our bland modern office blocks are not. 

'For me, the reason why people go to a mountaintop or go to the edge of the ocean is to look at something larger than themselves. That feeling of awe, of going to a cathedral, it's all about feeling lost in something bigger than oneself. To me, that's the definition of spectacle.'  Diane Paulus

'But the first step inside, and a silent gasp -

it's bigger inside than outside...

and the sound of your steps soars to the high

indescribably glorious roof like a

small bird looking for an escape....

and you feel an intruder into the space of history

waiting for you to find your place.'   Michael Shepherd

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