This prompt was my nemesis last year. I really struggled with giving up control of my edit. This year I decided to jump in feet first and offered up a self portrait to anybody who wanted to have a go! This edit is by Chantel Wanten, who used LightLeap to process. Chantel is one of several Framers who posted an edit of my phone selfie on the Phone Photographers Group, and I’m grateful for all the different images I had to choose from. In return I offered several edits back. The sense of collaboration and conversation was really great. I particularly liked Chantel’s ‘less is more approach’, converting my colour shot to black and white, enhancing some features and smoothing others. I’m particularly pleased that she disguised the very prominent mosquito bite on my face wonderfully! Thanks Chantel!

My slate tide clock marks the local tides as the sea ebbs and flows through its Luna cycle. How easy it is to rotate it, to reverse time, to believe low tide can turn to high tide, to turn the world upside down and, by some sort of magic, bring back its equilibrium.
But as Robbie Burns said “Nae man can tether time or tide”, so we work with what we’ve got, we move forward with every tide and like the tide we change the shape of what’s to come.

A tryptic reflecting on the fact that our water is no longer clear or clean. Whether it’s the abandonment of the ‘blue flag beach’ standards, the relaxing of laws around dumping raw sewage in our river and seas, or excessive run off from fertilisers polluting our streams and rivers, it’s clear that we’re destroying our most important resource. Raw sewage is pumped into our seas on a daily basis with warnings not to swim in the sea near me a regular occurrence, and none of England’s 4600 rivers, lakes and other waterways meet “good” ecological and chemical standards. The abstracted ripples in these images of pooled water represent the ripple effect of this pollution - 10% of freshwater species are already at risk of extinction, and 38% of fish health checks are failed due to pollution.

My dad passed away last December, and we were in the process of selling his home, with exchange contracts imminent. It was strange to think that a few weeks later I’d be handing over the keys to the place where I most felt his presence - and his absence. I have complicated feelings about the sale even though I wanted this closure (and I really like the couple we’re selling to).

This is Dad’s bedroom. The place where he rested his old bones. The photo of his room is overlaid with an ICM of trees deep in the heart of the forest, where we scattered his ashes earlier this year - the place his old bones rest now.

The heart of the matter is the core, the essence. Its what we find ‘in the centre’.

This particular heart hangs from a silver birch tree in our garden. It twirls and dances in the wind. Over the years the rain has rusted it, but this burnished aging has made it so much more beautiful and useful, creating tiny craters and crevices for lichen to grow and where a handful of seed can be left for the smallest sparrows

The pale shadow behind it is a flat stone heart found on the beach. It’s round edges were tumbled by the tide and sculpted by the sand. Again, what could be seen as the ‘damage’ or erosion, caused by time and nature has created a thing of beauty.

Rumi said “you have to keep breaking your heart until it opens”.

Maybe this is the heart of the matter.

This a composite of three ISM/ICM shots of my buddleia swaying wildly in the high southwesterly winds yesterday.

I’d injured my knee so couldn’t go far for this shoot, so I just stood under the trees in my garden and shot with a low shutter speed (2 seconds) as the branches and leaves were tossed around in front of the lens by the storm, sometimes moving my camera, sometimes letting the movement come from the branches themselves.

I think, by the way, I might’ve just made up the term ISM (intentional subject movement, as opposed to intentional camera movement)!

I had lots of fancy ideas for this week’s ‘reflection’ theme, and didn’t get around to any of them. So - as often happens - I took Alice on a morning walk to the sea in the hope that something might find me. And despite it not being very smooth today, the sea did offer up this little millpond tucked beside a groyne, which was reflected in its still water, along with a tall spindly groyne marker. I’d have loved to get close up, but we’d just reached a stretch of beach where dogs have to be kept on leads and off the shingle, so this is the best I could get without my zoom. I do also like the way the colour of the sky is reflected in the water, including the silvery morning mist in the centre. The sunlight was silver all day today, hidden behind cloud.

Alice, our bearded collie is a girl who likes routine, and her favourite part of the day is her morning walk. At at weekends we often wander down to the sea with her or take a short drive to the woods, and while she’s off exploring I usually grab a few photographs. Capturing the local environment through the seasons has become part of my morning routine now, and this ICM collage represents that morning’s sun-dappled woodland walk.

I was stuck at home with Covid all week so my options were limited - and also, I had zero energy. Then I spotted my leading lines just outside the back door and decided to use them to escape the confines of our plague house and have a little daydream. This is just a solar light on our slatted garden table, but I’ve played with colours and tones and the image now makes me think of jetties, a pink tropical sunset and the deep turquoise sea...

I’ve always loved how negative space creates or emphasises shape, and that’s what I tried to do here with the uneven curves of the plaster framing the rectangular shutters with their vertical lines. I also like the mystery that’s can be created by negative space - not only do I wonder what’s behind the window, but what the building is, whether it’s an upper or ground floor window, whether there are other windows in the building, where it is etc?

Without much time to consider my low key options properly I opted for a bit of blatant narcissism and a selfie with my new wavey hair. I prefer high key self portraits (they wash the years away), but needs must …

We have a small, secret ‘zen garden’ tucked behind our normal garden, and this is a stone who Buddha sits in it, shot from above. I am a long-lapsed Catholic and I’m not not aligned to any formal religion. In terms of beliefs, I’m probably closest to humanist, but not quite, because there is an element of spirituality swirling in my mix. The teachings of Buddha resonate, with their focus on compassion, kindness, and self-determination - plus, I love to meditate.

I like shooting/editing in high key. I particularly enjoy the way elements can disappear and others appear stronger. This time it made me think of orchids and their contradictions. The second biggest plant family in the world, delicate but strong, prolific but with many varieties under threat of extinction, thriving houseplants but easily killed by too much or too little attention. The double exposure and high key brings out the strength in its shape and the focus on its tools of selfish pollination (no rewarding nector for its visitors - its a bit of a fraudster in that department). At the same time, the slightly blown image is untethered and fragile. A bit like us now I think about it ….

I used depth of field to concentrate on the detail of Alice, pushing a busy room with lots of distractions into the background. I’m always snapping her cuteness, her cleverness, her moods, her playtime. This time I purposefully looked only at her, noticing little details like how steadily she holds my gaze, how her long hair swirls against the cushion, how it falls over one eye more than the other, how soft and black her lovely big nose is. My gorgeous Alice.

Food is political. Even donuts.

Keith Jarrett’s powerful poems explore the colonial history of sugar & the transatlantic slave trade.

“until you have scraped the hurricane wind from your tongue
bent yourself back to touch the earth and sprung up again
until you have licked clean the machete’s blade
watched yourself lit aflame in the fields of your fallen brothers
until you have been bundled into the arms of a truck
felt your bones crushed
until you sing sap and boil and boil again
until your sweat becomes liquor
until it is swept into sand
until you have been spooned toothily into cargo ships
and crossed the waters in bottles cartons and tins
do not speak to me of sweetness.”

Here’s a link to him performing another. https://youtu.be/175uxzerdQk

I was nursing a mojo low for this week’s challenge (its fine - it happens), so for 6 days I was uninspired. Then, on Sunday morning I was out walking Alice, visiting the place I’d scattered mum and dad’ ashes just a week earlier, when I stumbled on a wonderful reflection in a puddle, lit by the sun shining through a gap in the clouds. I realised that here was a single light source, directed by cloud and the tree canopy. So out came my phone. Then the sun went behind a cloud and the reflection all but disappeared. A minute later and out it came again, illuminating the puddle like a light turned on a mirror. This will do I thought.

Almost every blue hour was grey that week, relentlessly so. But on the Wednesday the sun shone, occasionally. I didn’t have my camera of course - I was out with my husband for our wedding anniversary - but I did have my phone, so as we walked under pink and red blossom I grabbed a couple of shots, just as the pink blush was disappearing from the edge of the dark clouds. I layered the colours in a composite, which brought out an unexpected and appropriate blue/purple tint...

“Light spilled in from the half-shut window and filtered through your
sleeping eyelashes.
Beyond them,
shadows like tall trees on forest floors were painted on your
eyelids.”
Tyler Knot Gregson

Lately,, my husband seems to have accidentally become my muse. This one was stolen while he slept …

I found the poem after I’d made the image, which is a composite of three photographs including one of the forest (both phone and DSLR used). It seemed to fit perfectly …

I was in the process of taking an entirely different shot when my husband came in and wondered what I was doing on the floor … maybe these portraits are going to develop into a series.

I did take this around noon, but I decided to take a more metaphorical approach to this prompt. This is a tyre on my local beach, bound by a rusty chain. It’s synthetic circle encloses the natural pebbles. For me its a representation of an oil slick and our ties to fossil fuels, which sadly still make the world turn - including for me and my car. But we’re approaching ‘high noon’ and soon that rusty chain will break - will it be us, finally breaking the chain of environmental destruction or will we break the planet? I rotated the image so the chain was marking noon on a clock face.

Sitting in the back of a friend’s car, driving through the local woods on a rainy day, I looked up at the tree canopy through the rain splashed panoramic roof and realised we were speeding through frame after wonderful frame of subjects I never usually see, as I’m normally driving. The passing tree canopy was beautiful and other worldly. I’ve colour-washed this image with soft, complementary pink and green by playing with the colour balance. I think it ages it and helps recreate that Japanese ink brush effect I’m so taken with. I also think it slightly feels like you’re looking up at the trees through river water.

One of my favourite Leonard Cohen songs is Anthem. It seems to me a perpetual song for our times, and sadly more relevant now than ever. But like the break of day, it carries hope. The darkness does crack, the light does stream in.

“The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what has passed away
Or what is yet to be
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in”

I took an ICM shot of daybreak over the sea at Whitstable in Kent to capture Cohen’s words.

The link below is to a live cover version of Anthem sung by Julie Christensen and Pearl Batalla. I love it even more than the original.

https://youtu.be/-vKONRcAJnk

I missed a few prompts at the beginning of 2023. My mojo was in hibernation, but I’m starting to warm up again. January felt endlessly monochrome to me, but as it slips into February the balance of light & shade shifts, merging into a grey ombré that moves constantly between black winter shadows and small, bright hints of spring. No matter how dark, there are slivers of promise on the horizon. Nature is stirring, the birds sing louder, and tiny buds start to unwrap themselves on bare branches, hardly visible. I wanted to capture the stark lines of a February tree, with its buds just visible and I thought a Sumi-E approach could work , capturing a little movement as the tree starts slowly shifting shape. I’m still working on replicating the Japanese ink-brush technique in my photography and I’ve a way to go, but this challenge seemed a good opportunity to practice.

I start the year as I ended 2022, in a strange and unfamiliar place. My father passed away a few days before Christmas and I’m still living in a world where I see and am seen in different ways, depending on who I’m with and what I’m doing. I flip from the grieving daughter to the efficient Executor in a beat. In work I’m still the CEO, expected to make decisions and give support, but how can I when I’m looking at a foggy distortion of the world? One moment I can forget everything and be joyful, have a laugh, the next I snap in anger and the next I’m suddenly tearful. Everything is just a bit fragmented. I’m a bit fragmented. I know this will pass, but for now it’s who I am, so I thought I’d try using ICM to capture the muzzy, fuzzy, uncertain and transitory state I’m passing through.