Photo Challenge Week 52 Portrait: Self Portrait
Ending the 2016 Challenge as it was begun, with a selfie (which I was far more prepared for this month than I was back in January!)
It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christimas
Although it still doesn't really seem to feel like Christmas, despite the tree being set up and the presents all wrapped, I know it's close, because this week it was time to make the excessively sugary fudge boxes that I give away to my ever expanding and entirely lovely family.
So even if I'm not feeling particularly festive yet, I can at least be jittery from the ongoing sugar rush and pass it off as Christmas cheer and use it as a fabulous excuse to practuse my food photography skills!
Week 51 Artistic: Art
When I was a kid I loved to draw. I used to think I wasn’t very good at it, because my likenesses never looked the way they were meant to and the things I tried to draw from my imagination never turned out how I wanted. But no matter how disappointed I was by my creations, I never stopped creating them because to create is something I have always needed to and continue to need to do. So I drew, I sketched, I scribbled and painted, I shaded and printed and traced and blended and even though I enjoyed it, I couldn’t ever find a method I that truly gave form to the ideas in my mind, that could crystallise my memory to keep it from fading away, or to tell the stories that I could find no describe. I tried writing, and making music, I studied art history and textiles and finally learned how to actually draw something that looked ‘right’. But I still wasn’t satisfied.
And then I got a camera.
And I can still remember planning the first picture that I wanted to take with it, in Blackpool, beneath a pier to photograph the crisscrossing, rusty, structural beams and their shadows falling in dark stripes on the pale, damp sand. I remember visiting the spot on the cold December trip we took at Christmas once a year, I remember the dog that chased us on the beach and our car breaking down on the side of the motorway and the totally ridiculous skirt I wore trying to impress my then boyfriend and now husband. And I remember shooting that first frame, and guarding that precious camera and it’s even more precious contents, wondering if I’d even got my exposures right enough for it to turn out, or maybe I would mess up the developing and destroy the thing entirely. But I didn’t. And while I watched the perfectly contrasted lines bloom upon the red lit paper, engulfed by the smell of chemicals that still feel like home to me, that I knew I’d found the vehicle I needed to take the parts of my soul that so desperately wanted to be seen, and make them live. It was like magic.
Photo Challenge Week 50 Landscape: Symmetrical
I don't know what it is about landscape week that makes me think it's going to be easy, when most of the time it ends up being the trickiest, and 'symmetry' was probably the most complicated of all so far. But this week Bridgnorth won an award for the Great British Highstreet's Large Market Town category, and so it seemed only fair to use this week as an excuse to celebrate this lovely new hometwn of mine.
Wingalkers At The Crown, Bridgnorth
On Friday I was invited along to a Wingwalkers performance at The Crown, Bridgnorth to snap a few live shots of their gig. The band were brilliant as always, lots of funk, rock and a fantastic cover of Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars with an epic guitar solo throw in at the end just for good measure.
Also, I kind of want that light for my house, because a light that read The Smiths lyrics that are about a ligh, is about the cleverest/coolest light I've ever seen.
Photo Challenge Week 49 Portrait: Dancing
This week's challenge theme was dancing, and just so happened to fall within the week that I was working with BMTC and had my studio set-up right next to these ladies while they practised their tap performance. So not only did I get to watch (and listen) to them while I worked, but between headshots I managed to snap a couple of pictures of them doing their thing.
The aim of this week was to use the shutter speed to capture the sense of movement, which when working with super speedy tap dancers was particularly tricky to find a balance between totally blurry feet and completely stationary, but I think I found a happy medium.
Bridgnorth Musical Theatre Company 2016
Working with the cast and production team of Bridgnorth Musical Theatre Company is always a pleasure. Never were there a more efficient and poised group of people (and their actor-pup) and I'm always happy to be able to turn a library into a studio for an evening. You can check out their website here to find out more about their upcoming production of Annie. It's going to be brilliant!
November
November has been a lot of street markets, predictably unpredictable autumnal weather, planning for Christmas, testing out studio kit and getting entangled in fairy lights every other day. I can't believe it's over so quickly, but I am so ready for 2017!
