Candle and Mattress

The light is interesting today, bright and autumnal, so I took my camera on the short walk from my house to the allotment this morning. I'd taken five or six pictures by the time I'd got to the top of my road as suddenly everything looked interesting. I was thinking about the Henri Cartier-Bresson quote:

"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst."

I usually write a photography quote on the board for each lesson with my second year students but had forgotten to find one yesterday, so one of the students found this corker. Anyway I ended up wondering how many photographs I'd made so far in my life, and working out it must be at least 50,000, probably considerably more!

So my favourite two images from today seem to work well together for my eye thanks to the mix of deep red and silver. The candle was literally shining out of the shadows and stopped me in my tracks, thought I was having some kind of epiphany for a moment.

Comments

A Lovely Pair of Pins

I knew the expression 'pins' referring to legs but had to Google what the Cockney rhyming slang comes from. It looks like 'pins & pegs', but there are some great alternatives like 'bacon & eggs' and 'dolly pegs'. I think I might start trying to incorporate more Cockney into my everyday speak, I do have London roots but they are more South (Saff) London than East London, where I think it originates. Anyway this is all to illustrate a new picture that sits quite neatly with an older picture. So brogues, legs and a sea view from my two main muses. This might be turning into a set... Oh by the way the top view is Morecambe Bay and the lower image is from The Wirral looking across towards Wales. The North West of England is a beautiful place, with some stylish residents.

Hold Your Hair In Deep Devotion

At last after a week of being indoors, I walked into the light! I went solo and had a photography day in Liverpool, just what the doctor ordered, as they say. I'm a bit out of words at the moment and was going to include a Philip Larkin poem, but I've been thinking that Alex Turner is my modern day poet hero and this is my favourite track on AM, tucked away at the end. He's in his twenties and yet the words suggest a time before he was born, filling my head with images and memories. I've included a link to the track if you want to listen to The Arctic Monkey doing their thing whilst taking in my pictures... UPDATE Well since writing the above it has been pointed out to me that the song is actually based on a poem by John Cooper Clarke, which makes sense of the time frame (being written in the early Eighties) and the fact that I responded to the lyrics like a poem. Apparently Alex Turner first heard it read by his English teacher whilst at school. So mayb...

Linda McCartney Video Commission

If you'd like to access my cyanotype video workshops, they are still live on The Walker Art Gallery website: Cyanotype prints for beginners Advanced cyanotype prints

Marc Provins

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