Shoreline Abstraction

I am aware that, given the winter we've had, I am failing my blog! Christmas was rightly spent on family activity but I have built up some photos to share. They just need some time spent on them in Photoshop. Here is one taken down at West Wemyss. I pick up all sorts of things from the beach hoping to involve them in pictures at some point - old signs, boots, rusty cans, etc - but I thought I'd try and make something on site.

Winter Light (part II)

It's now at one of my favourite times of the year for making and taking photographs. Up here in the north, as the winter solstice approaches, the arc of the sun is getting increasingly shallow. I get a living room full of low, strong light (when it isn't cloudy). The light moves fast when you take time to work with it and I like to play with the long cast of shadows. Here is a link back to a post from nearly 3 years ago:

http://awinterlens.blogspot.com/2008/01/winter-light_16.html
I've had the cutlery set out again...it's almost an excercise, like doing your scales, just to spend time with simple everday objects and light. I was quite pleased with the discovery of the carving fork but I'm not sure the blue linen tablecloth was the best background.

A Walk in the Woods (Part 1)

I took a quiet walk with the dog through Wemyss Firs on Saturday. Apart from the Scouts and a few joyriding motorbike scramblers there is rarely anyone else around. I saw two huge Buzzards in the fields beyond the woods, and a deer (a photo of which I will post soon). Chestnuts were falling from huge trees along by the river, and the remains of many open, half-eaten ones lay on the ground. I had taken quite a few pictures of the sun coming through big, old, gnarled trees - Oak, Chestnut, Beech - but none of them seemed to work out. All a bit cliched and poor quality (note to self - make more use of tripod) but I like the effect of the layers in this 'puddle picture'.

The Kiss

It's nearly the Equinox I believe and time to come back to A Winter Lens for a while. I quite like having the 2 blogs, it's a bit like having two houses. I left asummerlens.blogpost with a kiss so I'll start Winter with the same...

Fife Open Art Exhibition

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDDrEFxuOJU

Amazing...I won a Shell Award for my entry into the Fife Open Art Exhibition! Sadly I was unable to collect the award in person as I was working - we had the opening concert of the Royal Scottish National Orchestra's new season in the Usher Hall. The troops went to accept it for me as the video link wasn't working ;-)

Thanks to Dee Dee for managing to capture and upload this!

Sunrise

Here are 3 images taken a couple of weeks ago. The sunrise over the Firth of Forth was spectacular. I just marvelled at it until a little voice inside my head said "go and get you camera you idiot, it'll be gone soon". Or was that my son talking from under the duvet? I got some straight shots and then my youngest son wanted to take one so I let him. The weight of the camera meant the image was blurred, but we liked the result and I had a go, slowly panning the camera from side to side.

Urban Graffiti

Urban graffiti can be a bit of a hackneyed photo opportunity - surely it's too easy to make a good photo out of somebody else's picture. But when you find something you like there's a sense of pleasure in preserving a piece of someone's creativity before it inevitably gets erased. Isn't that what is behind a lot of photography anyway - capturing a moment in time that can't be repeated?

Aerosol

Having posted up a number of black and white images I felt the need for a splash of colour. I found this old aerosol can, weathered beyond product recognition, on Pettycur Bay. When I began taking photos of 'found objects' from the beach I had a tendency to think that these things - old shoes, cans, bottles, cardigans - had been washed ashore, but the more I scan the beach the more it becomes apparent that they left there. Beach parties, picnics, rough sleepers, local boat owners all leave or lose things that become part of the shoreline.

Hear The Wind Sing

We took the boys out on a red squirrel hunt on Saturday. The weather was foul, but the afternoon was great and they just loved it. There were no guns involved - when I say 'hunt' I really mean more of an educational expedition to look at red squirrel habitats and learn more about their behaviour. It was run by http://www.fifecoastandcountrysidetrust.co.uk/ - we were the only 4 people on it which seemed a bit sad but it meant we had the countryside rangers all to ourselves. Anyway, as I was wandering through the forest I noticed the way that the wind was blowing certain trees around - Norwegian Spruces, Rowans - so I put the camera on the ground and pointed it up. Using a slow shutter speed I hoped to capture the feeling of the wind. I'll be pursuing this in more detail but thought I'd kick off this year's winterlens with a couple of images on this theme. Coinidentally, a colleague lent me What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami so I took the liberty of using the title of one of his other books as a title. Sensibly, the red squirrels kept themselves indoors.

Spoon

Another one from the cutlery set

Fork

This is one of a series of images exploring light and shadow. If I have any advice to offer it's this: make your subject the best it can be. This is old, silver plated Sheffield steel. For me, there is no better cutlery.

Winter Light

There is about a 2 to 3 week period each year when the sun just manages to skim it's way across the horizon and (when there are no clouds in the sky) the light streams into the house. It reflects across the sea, too, so it's quite uncomfortable to be in the room with it and we usually draw the blinds. I had been setting up the table for my birthday party dinner last year when I noticed the long shadows it made from the cutlery and took this photo. I've waited another year and made a series of cutlery/shadow images. It takes me to the elements of photography - light , shadow, form, time - it's a shock to discover quite how quickly the winter suns moves across the sky. The composition you thought you had got just right keeps moving!

Edinburgh Blues

finding the mini parked here made me smile.

seaweed and beach ball

two images from the beach

it tastes like the real thing

to borrow a phrase from radiohead. This is an image from a series of photographs I am taking based on the theme of the coast. I haven't been one for heavy photoshop manipulation but this seemed to give it more of a pop art feel which I like