Postcard from Manteo - Opening Reception

The opening reception on Friday 6th July went really well. a crowd of 21 braved the unseasonably wet evening and stay for a good two hours each absorbing the OBX atmosphere.

There was lots of drinking of iced tea, lemonade and Norman Palmer (which is a mixture of the two and a top tip of what's in at the moment in North Carolina where the temperature has soured to 110 degs f). There was also a spread of food likely to be consumed in Manteo; sweet potato cakes, crab dip, corn bread, muffins and pecan cookies to name just the homemade food.

Local photographer, Graham Hobbs, was one of our guests, who had come along to make a photograph for the North Devon Gazette. He stayed about an hour soaking it all in before grouping us all together at one end of the room with as much American and Manteo items as we could grab for the shot.

Later on, about 11pm, we had a Skype video call from Mayor of Manteo, Jamie Daniels. It was great to chat for half an hour with Jamie and the hand full of guest still here. Amongst the conversation was talk of Manteo's July 4th celebrations where Jamie felt compelled to show off some of the paraphernalia worn in the parade.

a Postcard from Manteo

I have a joint installation/exhibition with Sadie Green at Green House my home/studio in Bideford as a part of Art Trek 2012.

The installation of photographs, video, sound, smells and digitally generated art has transformed our home into a sensual experience of Bideford’s twin town in the Outer Banks of North Carolina USA.

The Opening Reception is on Friday 6th July 7pm–10pm where a light fare of North Carolina food can be sampled. The installation continues through the weekends of the 7th/8th and 14th/15th of July 11am-5pm. There’s an illustrated talk at 2pm on each of these days.

You'll find my studio here: Green House, Torridge St, Bideford, Devon

Sea Caves, Shipwrecks and the Rocky Shore

On Thursday 5th July, somewhere on the North Devon Coast, 10am - 5pm I'm offering a new workshop 'Sea Caves, Shipwrecks and the Rocky Shore'. I'll be introducing the handful of participants to my own photography. They'll get the opportunity to experience the secret coast, hidden at the far ends of a sandy beach, full of caves and shipwrecks. And learn how to make the best of their own camera under demanding landscape and lighting.

5th of July is a spring tide, an extreme high and low; low tide being approximately 2pm. This will give us the chance to really explore parts of the rocky shore that is usually under 25 feet of water! - all for only £50 !!

Here's a list of the other photographic workshops I'm offering this summer:

Introduction to digital photography 10am - 5pm (unless stated otherwise)- £50
A practical days workshop learning to gain control over your camera, shutter speeds, aperture, ISO, flash etc, setting it up for optimum quality under any given lighting, and making better pictures through composition. Numbers limited to a hand-full. I also offer it on a 1:1 basis for ½ a day for £75
Course Description pdf
Thursday 31st May in South Molton
Thursday 7th June in Appledore (during the Arts Festival)
Saturday 9th June in Appledore (during the Arts Festival)
Thursday 28th June in Barnstaple (11am - 6pm)
Thursday 19th July in Exeter (11am - 5pm) + tour of exhibition
Friday 27th July in Exeter (11am - 6pm)
Saturday 28th July in Bideford
Saturday 18th August in Bideford

Half Day Intro to digital photography - £25
A 'sit around the table' workshop to get to know your camera better. You'll learn about shutter speeds, aperture, ISO, flash and setting your camera up for optimum quality.
Wednesday 13th June in Bideford 1.30pm - 4.00pm
Tuesday 10th July in Barnstaple 3.00pm - 5.30pm

Photographing your own Artwork 11am - 6pm - £50
I have a wealth of knowledge and experience of photographing 2D artwork, jewellery and ceramics and I'm willing to pass this on to artists eager to improve their own image making camera skills. Although this workshop is for a small group (max 5) I also offer it on a 1:1 basis for ½ a day for £75, or I can deliver the workshop in your own home or studio anywhere in Devon for £100
Course Description pdf
Saturday 23rd June in Bideford
Monday 2nd July in Bideford

Introduction to Photoshop 11am – 6pm - £50
Opening an image file and adjusting levels, contrast, brightness and colour balance. Rotating, resizing and cropping an image. Placing an image or images into a new file. Using layers and history. Participants will need to be computer literate i.e. use a computer on regular basis and understand the basic controls. Small group (max 4). I also offer it on a 1:1 basis for £150, or I can deliver the workshop in your own home or studio anywhere in Devon for £175
Sunday 24th June in Bideford

Intermediate Photoshop 11am – 6pm - £50
Using tools, masks and filters to manipulate your image. Tools used in this session are: marquee, move, lasso, magic wand, eraser, paint bucket, eyedropper, hand and zoom. Making a contact sheet and using batch production. Adding type to your image. Participants will need to be computer literate i.e. use a computer on regular basis and understand the basic controls. Small group (max 4). I also offer it on a 1:1 basis for £150, or I can deliver the workshop in your own home or studio anywhere in Devon for £175
TBA July/August in Bideford - enquiries welcome

Appledore Arts 2012

front of brochure, image by Pete Ward

I'm very much involved again, in the Appledore Visual Arts Festival this year. On Friday I'm leading a Pin-Hole photography workshop for the festival. I'm really looking forward to getting the big black bin out and helping participants make cameras out of boxes and tins. There ought to be time, this year, to make some stunning images with this primitive technology, as we'll have all day to work on it.

Either side of this, on the Thursday and Saturday, I'm running my own 'Introduction to Digital Photography' workshops. A practical days workshop learning to gain control over your camera, shutter speeds, aperture, ISO, flash etc, setting it up for optimum quality under any given lighting, and making better pictures through composition. Numbers limited to a hand-full. You'll need to book these courses with me and they'll start at Susie's tearoom at 10am.

On Sunday, if not before, I'll be enjoying the delights of Bideford Bay Creatives 'artists' studios' installation which will be taking place in one of the out building's in Susie's garden. Each day a different pair of BBC artists will take up residence there and make the place their own studio for the day.

Details about my workshops are found here: http://greengallery.co.uk/workshops.htm

Land of Opportunity

I've now left North Carolina, where nothing can be finer and arrived home in North Devon, which is closer to Heaven.

Photograph of the ship-like structure that is the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. This fabulous image is their Facebook cover photo. I was too excited to take any pictures!

Manteo, Roanoke Island and the Outer Banks are wonderful places populated by lovely people who were very welcoming and generous throughout our stay there. The land of opportunity has presented me with a bigger travelling exhibition next summer which will start at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum on Hatteras Island then move on the Maritime Museums at Beaufort and Southport. This touring show will have much new work, that I shall be working on throughout this year, based on shipwrecks.

Local Opportunities: Summer Photography Workshops

Introduction to digital photography 10am - 5pm - £50
A practical days workshop learning to gain control over your camera, shutter speeds, aperture, ISO, flash etc, setting it up for optimum quality under any given lighting, and making better pictures through composition. Numbers limited to a hand-full.

Thursday 10th May in Barnstaple
Saturday 19th May in Bideford
Thursday 31st May in South Molton
Thursday 7th June in Appledore (during the Arts Festival)

Half Day Intro to digital photography - £25
A 'sit around the table' workshop to get to know your camera better. You'll learn about shutter speeds, aperture, ISO, flash and setting your camera up for optimum quality.

Thursday 24th May in Barnstaple 3.00pm - 5.30pm
Monday 18th June in Bideford 1.30pm - 4.00pm

Photographing your own Artwork 11am - 6pm - £50

I have a wealth of knowledge and experience of photographing 2D artwork, jewellery and ceramics and I'm willing to pass this on to artists eager to improve their own image making camera skills. Although this workshop is for a small group (max 5) I also offer it on a 1:1 basis for £75 a day.
Tuesday 29th May in Bideford
Saturday 23rd June in Bideford

Introduction to Photoshop 11am – 6pm - £50

Opening an image file and adjusting levels, contrast, brightness and colour balance. Rotating, resizing and cropping an image. Placing an image or images into a new file. Using layers and history. Participants will need to be computer literate i.e. use a computer on regular basis and understand the basic controls. Small group (max 4).
Sunday 27th May in Bideford
Intermediate Photoshop 10am – 5pm - £50
Using tools, masks and filters to manipulate your image. Tools used in this session are: marquee, move, lasso, magic wand, eraser, paint bucket, eyedropper, hand and zoom. Making a contact sheet and using batch production. Adding type to your image. Participants will need to be computer literate i.e. use a computer on regular basis and understand the basic controls. Small group (max 4).
TBA June/July in Bideford - enquiries welcome

Workshops and dates can also be found at this link - www.greengallery.co.uk/workshops.htm
Workshop vouchers are also available so you can buy one for a friend or family member who is keen on photography and would enjoy learning with me!

contact 01237 477789 or email info@greengallery.co.uk 

Reception and Presentation

Invite wonderfully designed by Kitty Dough

This was always going to be an evening of exultation and intrepidation I had every confidence in Kitty Dough, Larry Warner the exhibits curator and all of the staff and volunteers at the Aquarium; I just had to make sure I didn't mess it up!

I had made a practice run of the presentation a few days earlier. This was taking place in the perfect location. I was to share the room with a 285,000-gallon shark tank ''Graveyard of the Atlantic'' that's 35-foot long and 14 feet tall. As well as the sharks, and numerous smaller fish which sometimes become dinner, the  tank holds a 1/3 scale replica of the USS Monitor, which lies just off Cape Hatteras at a depth of 210 feet. The room is essentially lit by the dull blue glow coming through the 5.5 inch thick acrylic window of the tank. The projector screen seemed massive, like a small cinema, and combined with the powerful projector made my images look awesome. I spent a lot of time getting used to a wireless mouse because I was using Adobe bridge for the slideshow which enabled me to use big files and zoom right into the images.

Meeting and greeting was at 6pm around the exhibition cabinets. This helped to guage the interest level and questions my audience might have; and calmed my nerves. There was a great spread of Anglo/American food available that had either been bought from the next State that likes to call itself a commonwealth, or homemade like the scones.

7pm was the presentation. Kitty introduced me to the audience numbering 50+. The talk was far more than my photographs, although there was a fascination in the way I construct my images from as many as 100 seperately taken frames. This exhibition, to me, had always been about introducing Manteo to it's twin town through it's surrounding coast, river and, originally shared, history. Using old maps, the North Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty map and Richard Larn's shipwreck map, I took my audience on a journey from Marsland Mouth on the border with Cornwall, along the Hartland coast, across Bideford Bay, up the Torridge into Bideford, around Saunton Sands to Baggy Point, along to Briery Cave at Watermouth, into Combe Martin and it's caves which were mines; and finished off on the Exmoor coast at Wringapeak, near to the Somerset border.

It was supposed to be a half hour presentation and in practice it had been 45 minutes to I had vowed to cut it shorter. But, when I get excited I can't stop; so it was more like 50 minutes, plus questions which were many. Nobody seemed to mind the length except perhaps my ever supportive wife Sadie who had been gesticulating 'cut it' and 'wind it up' but I hadn't noticed! Sadie is also credited for all of these photographs.

The Exhibit

18 months ago I was invited to exhibit at the North Carolina Aquarium on Roanoke Island. It's been a massive 2 weeks for me, working up to 'Great Britain's Graveyard of the Atlantic' which opened on Thursday 5th April. And it's not been plain sailing at all. The exhibition prints were made within the State and this foresight for possible problems paid off. We arrived in Manteo, the Dare County seat and home of the Aquarium late on 22nd March and the very next day opened the package containing the exhibition mounted giclee prints.

After very little time I started to notice strange marks in the highlight areas of the prints and it was all too obvious that the prints, packaged face-to-face, had migrated some of their rich dark areas onto the light areas of their facing images. There were other odd finger shaped smears, odd in that the process of manufacturing the prints has no human contact until they are packaged. Charles from Mastercolor of Greenboro had been very helpful throughout the process of getting the work made since the end of February, and he was as devastated as I with the result which he hadn't seen. Sample prints on different paper stock where UPS'd straight away and arrived on Wednesday 28th. The face-to-face packaging had been an issue but confounded by the saturated black pigment ink that didn't want to stay put. I chose a giclee lustre similar to the prints I'd ordered from Germany for Silver Bonsai Gallery, on the Island, to stock. The finished mounted prints arrived on Friday 30th and Sadie, Kitty Dough (exhibitions co-ordinator at the Aquarium) and I hung the show that afternoon. I should perhaps say created the installation as that is a better description of the artwork.

Me and Kitty Dough, who has been a star throughout the past 18 months

I opened this post with the 18 months of lead time; organisation was crucial with this show. Normally I might turn up to a gallery with a car full of framed images and make design decisions with the work in the space, returning some images to the car and making an exhibition of the work that works best together in the space. But there was no space for those kind of decisions here. A working scale 2D model of the display cabinets has been on my computer for months and has changed many times until the final images, sizes etc where fixed. Even here I decided in the end to have sixteen 16x20's and two 16x16's so that a little interchangability was still possible - and it was needed!

The Aquarium staff, who have been encouraging and supportive throughout, were thrilled with the exhibition prints, and amazed at how quickly they were installed using 3,4 and 6 inch space bars cut from some old foamex. But the icing on the cake, that the Aquarium staff had never seen, were the 200 postcard sized 'snapshots' that I'd had printed as supporting work for the exhibition. These where carefully placed to look like a random collage of images taken on the North Devon coast over the last 7 years.

The first international exhibition in the North Carolina Aquarium was installed and open to the public.