Royal West of England Academy

I have had two photographs selected for

The Open Photography Exhibition at The Royal West of England Academy in Bristol. They have been selected from 1700 entries from across the South West. The Exhibition opens on the 20th February and runs until 5th April.

New Year's Resolution

Every year I always make an image of some sort for a Christmas card. Sometimes it’s a physical card, sometimes an ecard, sometimes an animated gif; but these have never appeared on my blog.

Therefore my New Year’s resolution is to make a post of my Christmas image for the record and so that anyone viewing this blog who hasn’t received a Seasonal Greeting from me may get one. This image, taken during the switching on of the Christmas lights in Bideford was an experiment with Photoshop CS5’s HDR capability. Rather than combining images with a range of exposure, I combined a variety of the same exposure but with different parts of a laser show, people in different places and all of this at a slow exposure which blurs a lot of the movement. It isn’t a straight HDR either because that combined image was then merged with a couple of others taken from the same place, and some of these were made through intentionally adding some movement to the camera mid-way through an exposure. I’m really pleased with the result because it makes a very disappointing display, from a spectator's point of view standing in torrential rain, into a real light spectacular.

Condemned

It’s been a while since my last post. Most of September and the whole of October were spent in the States, accompanying Sadie Green on her Winston Churchill Travel Award www.sadie-green.blogspot.com where I documented her journey of discovery tracing the export of North Devon pottery from the 17^th and 18^th centuries. I was also representing Bideford Bay Creatives www.bbcdevon.org in Manteo NC supported in part by a Networking Artists Network go-and-see award; developing a relationship between Bideford and her twin town Manteo through the arts. Whilst there I was posting to the www.bidefordmanteo.blogspot.com

One of the similarities of both towns is their geographic settings as naturally sheltered harbours. Bideford 3 miles up from the Atlantic Ocean on the tidal River Torridge and Manteo on an island in the shallow Roanoke Sound 5 miles west from the thin, fragile, Outer Banks spit than shields it from the other end of the Atlantic Ocean. My photographic work in North Devon has been primarily in the sea caves along the rocky shoreline. The Outer Banks of North Carolina is 100 miles+ of sand, called, like our North Devon coast “The Graveyard of the Atlantic”. Both places have this unenviable title because of the 100s of wrecked ships on NC’s treacherous sand bars and our rocky reefs.

Global Warming, Climate Change and Sea Level Rise with the expected greater frequency and magnitude of storms will only add to the graveyard. The irony is that it makes great pictures. Whilst in North Carolina I spent many a late afternoon walking the Atlantic beaches and the closest to Manteo's was at Nags Head; here wooden houses, now condemned for living, seem to have been built on the beach. Whether this is a sign of climate change or of Man’s stupidity or both is unclear, but as is often the case with buildings they look their best just before they die.

A note on the photographs: The last 2 images in this post were taken by the light of a full moon and distant street lighting. Exposures were 1 minute long.

Pinhole Workshops

There seems to be a lot of demand for Pinhole Workshops this year, either that or I'm in greater demand, either way is good. I've just completed a days workshop at the Dartmoor Life Museum in Okehampton, a wonderful place full of nooks and crannies where you discover treasures of the past.

The miracle of photography is experienced in its most heightened form through a pinhole workshop. I’ll never understand how I completed a National Diploma in Graphic Design and a HND in Photography without being taught about the pinhole camera. It wasn’t until I started teaching full-time myself that I learned about this subject. The amazing thing is, as my 7 students learned yesterday, that you start the day with a shoebox or biscuit tin and after about an hour using only black card, scissors, tape, a square of black plastic and a pin, you can make a usable camera.
Guessing the exposure takes a little longer (unless you do some complex maths), because every camera (or box in this case) has a different size, or distance from the pinhole to the paper negative (traditional photo paper). Fortunately, with everyone using the same pin, the ‘lens’ diameter is the same. Considering that the only adjustment to exposure was time, 3 of the 9 cameras made in the workshop made acceptable paper negatives at the first shoot. After another couple of tries everyone had a good exposure. Keeping the cameras still, through exposures of between 1 and 8 minutes with a little wind around, proved to be the next challenge. And the final challenge was getting an interesting image. The image below is a pinhole photo of her mum by a 5 year old called Ophelia and has the quality of Julia Margaret Cameron.

My next pinhole workshop is on Saturday 4^th September at the Plough Arts Centre in Torrington and is for anyone over 14. Please get in touch with the Plough to book a place.

Back Photographing Bands

Peter Bruntnell our local North Devon singer/songwriter, who tours with his band nationally and internationally, is responsible for organising and mc-ing Monday nights at Lilico's in Barnstaple, part of the North Devon Festival through June. He'd asked me if I'd take some pictures, here are some of them. Pete's the one with the blue head.

Photographing musicians is always an interest of mine, especially in this type of intimate venue. Here I was essentially sharing the stage with the band, trying my best not to stand on the guitar leads, occasionally adjusting the levels on the mixing desk when prompted.

There's a similarity here with my cave pictures. I'm usually in a cramped uncomfortable position, I tend to shoot into the light which is extremely high contrast and the light level is very low compared with daylight. Unlike a cave where I can use a tripod and shoot at 1 second and 100 iso, here I'm restricted to in excess of 800 iso and shutter speeds between 1/15 and 1/30 sec, hoping to allow some movement but keep a sharp, clear, facial expression when the opportunity arises.

around Combe Martin

Most photographers will look forward to sunshine, the weekend, or a time of day like sunrise or sunset. I look forward to the full moon and the new moon and note these in my calendar. A day or two after these moons heralds the highest and lowest tides, or spring tides, which occur every fortnight. A spring low tide, which always falls around 1 or 2pm in North Devon, gives me access to places at the waters edge that would be impossible to get to on any other day or time; places which are often totally hidden under the waves.

At the end of April on such a tide I went to the Combe Martin coast where the following images come from. The inspiration for the trip was an old postcard of Briary Cave at Watermouth. Postcards of caves are rare, this being the first I’d seen, and although I’d photographed this cave before I find that every time I explore a space the image comes out differently. Often this is because of that ever changing tide, light, season and the wave action on the interior of the cave.

The Combe Martin area has a very long history of mining. These 2 images were former mines, which probably starting out as caves before they were mined for silver, lead or manganese. They’re accessible, like many others, from the beach. The interiors of these ex-mines are often are usually rougher and more textured than a cave which is carved out by the force of waves throwing boulders against it’s interior.

This was a rich day’s photography for me. Usually I’d be lucky with one good result, but here I have four; and there were three other failed attempts also. These four images where made from 121 separate photographs in total. The overcast day and wet cave walls helped with the balancing of highlights with shadows. I was forever using bits of my hands as a shield to prevent light flare spilling into my lens, which nearly always points towards the light.

Three of these images will be part of my exhibition at Schooners tea and coffee shop in Appledore for their Visual Arts Festival 3^rd – 6^th June. I’m really exited about being a part of the festival which has an appropriate theme of ‘Coastline’ this year. If you’re reading this and want to know more you can download a flier at the following link: http://www.greengallery.co.uk/invite.jpg and come and chat with me in Appledore.

The image above is from a huge cave very near to Briary Cave. The headland seen through it is Great Hangman the highest sea cliff in England.

Potted History of Bideford

I’ve got really interested in history since living in Bideford; its history is heavily tied up with Art and America, two of my biggest passions. Bideford prospered in the 17^th and 18^th centuries through trade with new American colonies (it helped to set up) importing tobacco and exporting pottery. In the Autumn I shall be accompanying my wife Sadie on a research trip, sponsored by a Sir William Churchill Travel Award, to North Carolina and Virginia. She’ll be finding out where Bideford’s pottery went and making contact with artists, arts orgs and networks close to Bideford’s twin town of Manteo on Roanoke Island. For more information about her trip follow this link:

I’ll be looking out for visual similarities and differences between the two communities and environments. I’m hoping to find traces of North Devon in the old sea port towns, did our ships ballast, alien rocks and plants, get dumped on the beach, was it used as building material? Was anything else exported at the time, ball clay etc? I’ll be listening out for traces of local dialect with Devon words or pronunciations. Appledore smocks? I’ll be doing the same when I get back home, are there common place things here in North Devon that originated from the USA which we’ve forgotten about through generations since they got imported.

Also, in support of Sadie’s research, I’m photographing pottery. I started examining this craft when I was commissioned to photograph the ‘kiln in the park’ firing just before Christmas 2009. I’m now keen to make a good documentary record of potters who are still making slipware and using the sgraffito effect with red clay and white slip carrying on the tradition of North Devon pottery.

‘Bideford Pottery’, a family business of Harry Juniper, his son Nick and daughter Sue is the only pottery in town making pots instantly recognisable as North Devon ware. Everything is made by hand in a similar way to how it would have been done in the 17^th century. So far I’ve been photographing Nick throwing mugs and a pitcher and also decorating the jug. Close by is the studio of Doug Fitch, another young potter with a huge respect for the local tradition who even sources local clay which he digs out. Doug also has a collection of old pots and shards from the time when pottery in this area was as big an industry as it was in Staffordshire. The images in this post are the start of the documentary which I intent to take with me to North Carolina to share with the arts community and potters in our twin town Manteo and throughout the State.