Photo as Writing Prompt
Recently my photos served as inspiration for the Stromness Writers Group on Orkney where I was having an exhibition. My friend Gill Tennant suggested using my work as writing prompts,…
Recently my photos served as inspiration for the Stromness Writers Group on Orkney where I was having an exhibition. My friend Gill Tennant suggested using my work as writing prompts,…
Originally shown at the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool, the landmark exhibition Coming Out, Sexuality, Gender & Identity has now travelled on to the Birmingham Museum & Gallery. It features over 80…
Last summer, the Cloud Appreciation Society jointly launched a competition with Stromness Museum for the best cloud photos taken on any of the 72 islands of Orkney. The deadline is May 2018 and you can enter eight shots, which gives plenty of scope for clouds of all kinds and seasons. With its vast skyscapes, Orkney is the perfect location for appreciating clouds. So I too pointed my camera upwards and began to snap away.
It was an astonishing experience. Sometimes involving delicate sky calligraphy and sometimes suggesting Armageddon and impending doom.
After a few days, it became quite normal for me to wander through fields with my head almost literally in the clouds. And it’s a wonder that I didn’t fall over, especially as I felt distinctly light headed!
It’s October now and I will be returning to Orkney for an exhibition at the Northlight Gallery in Stromness. That’s an adventure in itself and will involve lots of hard work. But I’ll also be taking plenty of cloud breaks, which – without doubt – will give me a completely different perspective on the world. (more…)
Is there a family resemblance between these two cats? Both were photographed in Fez Medina in Morocco. The top photo of the elderly gentleman was taken by me in 2013…
This is my Lost in Time poster for my upcoming, eponymous show at the Northlight Gallery in Stromness, Orkney. It was also my first venture into using PhotoShop as a graphic…
This is where I will be in three weeks and three days time: back in Orkney where I’m having an exhibition at the excellent Northlight Gallery in Stromness. It’s called “Lost In Time”, a title which describes how I experience photography where losing myself, all sense of time and my bearings are essential elements in the intuitive process of finding the unexpected. This show juxtaposes journeys in the Middle East and North Africa with those made in Ireland and Orkney. In other words: places that either very, very dry or extremely wet: the Sahara meets bog.
(more…)
When this bird sqauwked loudly above my head, I had no idea that it was an arctic tern and one of the most extraordinary creatures in the world. I did realise it was trying to warn me it had a nest and was imploring to stay away from the chicks. Although I didn’t know where the nest could be, I soon learned that no squawking meant I was moving in the right direction and that frantic squawking indicated that I was risking a re-run of Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. (more…)
Tempus fugit memento mori – time flies, remember death – is a sentiment found in every historic, Scottish graveyard through graphic renditions of skulls and crossbones. In fact, you could be forgiven for thinking that here lies the remains of pirates. This photo shows an example of this, a 17th century gravestone located at St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall, Orkney. (more…)
Yesterday I visited Marinus Boezem’s Étude Gothique at the Kunstlinie Almere, where Rheims Cathedral’s ground plan has been delineated in birdseed. It was also a happy reunion that started last March at Amsterdam’s Oudekerk. Here, I filmed and photographed The Weather, a performance involving his weather map projections and cello music by Frances-Marie Uitti.
In the 1980s, Marinus worked on several major projects where landscape plays an important role. His greatest and most important work from this period is The Green Cathedral (1978–1987), which Étude Gothique is based on. For The Green Cathedral, 174 Italian poplars were planted in a polder landscape in Flevoland. The trees reproduce the ground plan of Rheims Cathedral. Much of Boezem’s spatial work can be located in the tradition of Land Art, and motifs such as landscape, space, climate, light, air and cartography play a central role in this work.
Every photographer should also be a beachcomber. Or a regular visitor to flea markets. Or a connoisseur of auction houses. Because everywhere, chance finds and hidden treasures are literally waiting to be discovered. My favourite example is this prehistoric implement, which I found washed up on an Irish beach.
And all you need to do is train your eye.
This approach can equally be applied to photography, where you recognise the exceptional rather than attempt to create it from scratch or through applying pre-existing expectations.
It’s simply a case of you will know it when you find it… (more…)