My last blogpost.....here.....

After 5 years of weekly blogging here on the Blogger platform I will be moving to my new Wordpress home next week!! As the next five years open up before me I am excited about the new possibilities.

I hope dear readers you will continue to enjoy the Foxglove Lane Blog On the new site, besides the usual blog,  you will find an archive of posts from the last five years, and there will be a new section of resources called "for rainy days." I will continue to run the Print Shop and will be adding a new section there called "Squarefullness," a collection of mini, square landscapes, 120mm x120mm (5x5 inches) signed, mounted and ready to frame.

Mostly it will be a space for sharing images and thoughts about life down a long winding lane in rural Ireland! More of the ordinary and the everyday small miracles that take place in the western sky and in the unruly hedgerows. No big plans, just more of those small moments we share.

As this will be my final blogpost from the Blogger platform, I want to remind you of a few changes so that you can be prepared. If you are following this blog via the Tuesday email, then none of this applies. Your email will continue to arrive (if it doesn't then let me know)

If you are following via the Blogger reader then the best thing to do is subscribe to the Tuesday list here and you will stay up to date.

I will keep the old blog archive at the blogspot address www.foxglovelane.blogspot.com (for the moment) and the new blog will have the old familiar address www.foxglovelane.com There will probably be a few little blips during the changeover, please let me know if you spot anything going awry.

For the bloggers amongst you I will outline in an upcoming blog (on the new site) how I made the move and why; what I found out in my research about site design and what I've learned from five years of weekly photography and writing. All in good time. "Ripening" my word for the year is dictating the organic pace of all of this.......

See you all on the other side. Yikes!!

Pixelated friendship

Sometimes, here in the middle of nowhere,  I get the most precious correspondence. Mostly from people I don't know and have never met in the real world.

There's a tribe of ripening women who consistently show up and dazzle me with their shining wisdom. They are photographers, practitioners and bloggers of all kinds; sky watchers and lovers of sunsets everywhere, in Australia, Brazil, Alaska and on Horsecroft Farm in merry old England; sensitive types who love birds, and lanes and dogs; writers, creatives and friends of Ireland; sassy beach walkers and mid-winter sea dippers..... 

And lonely people, bedridden, who remind me of my Dad's last years and send me warm email messages. And men too, with foreign sounding names and fabulous websites of their own. People with all sorts of deep knowledge and technical skills in their own fields, or who live in big cities and pine for hedgerows. 

Even real old friends, who played in the back gardens of Ireland and beyond, send hand written notes with warm memories or mail me snippets from their lives. 

So thank you ALL. (Even if you never did send any love letters and just visit here occasionally, consider yourself included) We may never have met in person but through some twinternet alchemy we are developing a new kind of pixelated friendship. 

Soon Foxglove Lane will be moving lock stock and barrel to a new website. I have yet to learn how to fully make the transition, but things are falling into place and while parts of my brain are now fried, a few of those pesky old brain cells are leaping for joy.

Here's to you, me and continuing pixelated friendship!



By the way there's an interview with me here by nature lover and blogging legend Donna Abel Donnabella. Hands across the Atlantic! 

Blogging and the things that make us more alive

No artist is pleased… There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive.......

Martha Graham

Photoblogging has brought me deep into the world of light and mystery, ordinary everyday beauty, friendship across the world and back on a path to writing. It's been every week now for almost 5 years.    

This year was my fourth to be in the final of the annual Irish Blog Awards. Each time it has sent me on a bit of a wobble, something that I don't enjoy. Don't get me wrong, I love sharing what I create with you. But judging and competing? It reminds me too much of waiting outside the door of the Oral Irish Exam in the Leaving Cert; sets my poor nerves on edge!

Building a space to be creative is why I blog. I get to own and nurture my own artistic apprenticeship. I can share with you out of love and vocation, and still be the one who benefits most of all from the whole process. I gain the satisfaction, connection, learning, progression and pleasure from the work I do. I can barely even call what I do here work, it's actually a lot more like play.....

So I did in fact win the Silver Award for photography in the Blog Awards. Thank you to all of you who supported and voted for me through the early stages and those who judged and organised the event. 

And a special shout out to all the finalists, nominees, and bloggers everywhere who are part of this creative Irish Blogging Community doing what "keeps us marching and makes us more alive".

If you love the veils of early morning fog visit the Mist Gallery 

Welcome little Zwartbles lamb!

We met on Twitter. Many people find it hard to understand how Twitter even functions, but in our beginning, a short few years ago, a small group of bloggers in Ireland discovered each other there. All with individual interests and reasons for blogging, eventually, here in the South East we bonded offline, over cups of coffee, camera phones and Wordpress v Blogger. 

Today myself, Eadaoin (City of Blackbirds) and Susan (Vibrant Ireland and Travel) are at Suzanna's farm in Kilkenny where she breeds Zwartbles sheep and makes dark chocolatey blankets from their wool. Four nerdyish females in the photography heaven of Irish Spring sunshine!

Could it get any better? Well it did.

Straight after lunch Suzanna led us into the orchard where there was a ewe in labour. Here we witnessed the birth of the last lamb of the season. It was the first time I had seen this up close, an everyday event full of wonder. In the shadowy light under the trees, with the rhythmic circling of the ewe, the wet lamb stands up in seconds having being licked and nudged by her mother. 

Later we brought some new babes for a walk through the daffodils planted by Suzanna's Grandfather, we lay in the wood anenomes to photograph the dying light and fed lambs from bottles in the farmhouse kitchen. 

I'm left with the warmest glow of gratitude. Passionate women, cuddly lambs and sunny daffodils, a perfect kind of day..........

See also my first meeting with Suzanna in December 2012   

You can find Suzanna's website here

Outside it's winter, but inside........

Outside it may be winter but if you are back here, reading this, you are helping to create an inner glow of warmth! From the wonderful book lovers who have been buying my book, to bloggers and on line friends who have shared, every positive word of encouragement has really been special. Thank you!

It is such a vulnerable thing to put a self published book out into the world. I had absolutely no idea until I did it myself and I still can't fathom the disturbance it created in my world. In many ways it has reminded me of when I first started to blog and share photography anonymously. But like everything else I've done in the last three years.....there are so many new lessons in it. 

Sure it's what the book is all about! Setting out again and again in spite of these feelings of wanting to hide, give up or literally fold up the tent. So today I want to mention where you can find some of these wonderful generous bloggers and broadcasters, and there's still time to have a copy delivered before the holidays. It's only available on line here or get the download here

First of all Nicky Cahill of Salt and Sparkle invited me to participate in her Q+A interview blogpost series, published today! Nicky is a Belfast based writer and broadcaster. We met on twitter where I suspect we were drawn to each other's sense of place and love of the soulful. 

Next up was Tony Riches from the The Writing Desk who invited me to guest post. Tony supports writers and creatives through his blog which has a huge following on line. He is also a published author and his latest novel The Secret Life of Eleanor Cobham is available on Amazon.

My friend and blogger Susan from Vibrant Ireland and Travel put together a selection of Irish gifts to buy on line and included the book! Susan is some one I have admired and followed since we first met up as newbie bloggers three or four years ago. She shares positive stories from Ireland and from her travels, and yes she is just as vibrant as her blog! She also offers blogging tours and other services through her partnership with Dee in Green and Vibrant.

Candi and the stories from her life on Looking for Blue Sky have always melted my heart. She is a single Mum of 3 who writes courageously about the fun and the challenges she finds in every day life and the joy in each of her kids. So thrilled that she included the book in her blog of 9 Christmas gifts available on line!

Then there's Pat Carroll from CRY FM in Youghal. Pat invited me to chat on his Drive Time radio show and asked me such intriguing questions about what I do and why. At one point he compared me to Leonard Cohen, which made me giggle, so he is right up there as a critic as far as I'm concerned!!

But especially to all of YOU for coming here every week, for your ongoing support, encouragement, emails and for buying the book.....THANK YOU!

Always the people's favourite

The sky is impossible to ignore. Here in rural Ireland we are mesmerised by it. Approaching weather systems come up from the Atlantic south west and we peer into the distance for information, comfort and possible impending doom.

When I began to share my photography on line through the blog and on social media, it became clear that I wasn't alone in this fascination. My statistics would go through the roof when I posted a sunrise/sunset photo, and so I shared lots of them, even though sunsets are renowned as a cliched image to be avoided at all costs!

In reality no sunset is a cliche. Each is a once off, unique, live, light show. It's even easy to think that you are a great photographer when in fact you just show up and Mother Nature does the all work. That's the way it is with sunsets, the magic is just present in the light......

Tonight on the drive home through County Carlow I was seduced yet again by the golden hour. A combine harvester was creating an extra layer of dust and this seemed to act like a filter for the lens.
Standing there under a deep terracotta sky, besotted by the gloaming, I remembered the words of a reader from Brazil,"when the sun rises it is for everyone." 

Sunsets and sunrises will always be the people's favourite.....



PS....

I am taking part in a Group Exhibition called Being Here and you are all invited to the opening on September 12th @7.30 in Aoife's Gallery, Parnell Street, Waterford

Meanwhile back on planet earth

The backsides of two bullocks grab the warm morning light and become walking terracotta canvasses. They rustle the swan into alertness and she glances over her shoulder as they pass.

Not too many more trips around the sun before we will slow into winter, and this morning I am back on planet earth savouring the moment. There are so many people to thank and acknowledge, so many kind messages to respond to. What does it feel like to win Best Photography Blog? Unsettling has to be the word!!!

For now thanks to the Blog Awards organisers Lorna, Amanda and Beatrice for a fantastic event and to Damien O Cearbhuil Photography sponsor of the Best Photography Blog Category.

Congratulations to my friend Dee of Greenside Up who swept the boards and who kept me a seat at the "Outdoor" table of friendly wellie wearing types where I felt so at home!!

Later I will try to share more of the story with you all. To be honest it's all a bit overwhelming..........but that's me.........and it will take a few more long walks before I fully absorb it!

Meanwhile back on planet earth.......she seems to be saying to me, slowly, slowly..........take it all slowly........

Rabbit, headlights.

It was so good of you all to put me into the final of the Blog Awards 2013  Thank you! What can I say?

For about 30 seconds after I heard the news I was delighted, but then performance anxiety set in and I wanted to go right back into the burrow and hide! Rabbit, headlights.

Immediate next thought? What kind of rabbit would have to be pulled from the hat for my next blogpost?  Nothing would be good enough.

It was all rabbits, burrows, hats and headlights. That's when this pheasant came striding out of the long grass. He puffed himself up, strutted up to my window and the cheeky divil even winked at me saying, look at me, just LOOK at ME!

I didn't wish he was less of what he is, or a bit more rabbity, or a bit less in my face. I lapped him up, his crimsons and golds, his feathery coat, his cock sure command of the world. We are what we are.

The rabbit in the headlights moment has mercifully passed, I have a subject for this week's blog and I didn't even have to lie out in a wet field to capture the photos.





More golden colour in the Autumn Gallery here

Blogging facts, 10 lessons and a few seeds.....

Foxglove Lane Facts

Friends this is my 200th published post and there are another 157 that are still in draft. I have been blogging for 28 months and have uploaded almost 1,000 photos here. Foxglove Lane has had over 261,000 pageviews. As I started out with one very short post and one tiny photo, today feels like I have come some distance along the creative path.......So here we go, the top ten blogging lessons learned to date.....

 10 lessons 

1. Dawn and dusk

Modern digital cameras are incredible. While studying in college, the costs of developing and printing was enormous, the chemicals in the dark room brought me out in a rash, black and white was where it began and ended. So imagine the liberation of re-discovering photography in an era of total creative control!! Nevertheless the light of both dawn and dusk are still my top photography tip, that at least hasn't changed!

2. Make the space

So far my top blogging highlight has been developing a creative space of my own. Up to now I have been craving a "room of one's own" as described by Virgina Woolfe.........but my space has turned out to be a virtual one. Just a few paces from the field to the cloud.....That's it, just me, a camera, a few lenses, a tangle of cables, a laptop and wifi!

3. Small is beautiful

The down side of blogging is the pain I get in my neck from typing and drooling over other blogs. I work on a very small laptop.....I love the compact nature of it, the mobility, the scope. I often wonder if I should have a bigger screen? But to be honest it is important for me to limit screen work and maximise the "actual" work so I continue to squint and hunch with the benefit of less is more.

4. Just do it

The upside is you get better at all of this. One of the biggest thrills for me recently was that I learned a bit of CSS code to change small things on my blog and galleries. Improvements happen through practice and doing what I do. There are amazing blogs out there (I will compile a list of my faves one of these days) but keeping to a personal learning path, blogging about daily reality, photographing the light and shade, showing up every week, these have been the most important underlying facts of blogging.

5. Stepping back

The biggest disappointment is not being able to keep up with replying to every comment every day. I thought I could! As the work grew, the day job exploded, and the lessons required more time, I had to step back and focus on delivering rather than socialising! I miss it but I simply don't have enough hours in the day. (I still try though)

6. Don't be shy, be ethical

Most important lesson was to set out anonymously, otherwise I would never have broken through my shyness. Initially a combination of blogging and a twitter stream helped me to connect with the world and the encouragement of other bloggers especially the Irish ones sustained me over that first year. Although I eventually signed my work, I also learned how to maintain privacy, boundaries and continue to aim for an ethical approach to both photography and writing. 

7. Make encouraging friends

What's heartening is that people who read, comment and contact me seem like wise old friends at this stage. Encouragement was what I needed......a million thanks to each one of you who saw that, I think you know how much it still means.....  

8. Love it

Craziest part? I am still loving this!

9. Don't listen to the voices

Advice? Don't listen to the voices in your head, they are easily distracted by the brilliance of others and need to get 100% focussed on getting down to work!

10. Content 

Out of 200 posts these have had the most pageviews. I'm never sure why some posts are more popular but I think the harder I work at the content the more the world seems to appreciate it.....

10 Popular posts

1.  Love

2.  Always an Apprentice
3. Frosty morning on the lake
4. The beauty of the web
5. A mysterious relationship
6. Is creativity about just putting one foot in front of the other?
7.  "You wouldn't get the likes of it in Killarney"
8. The courage to be happy
9. Relentlessly snowy Berlin
10. A blanket of green moss soothes the brain

A few seeds......

To celebrate I have a fledgling project to share with you today. If Foxglove Lane is the Studio then one half shut eye is the sketch book you might find there.... lying open at a random page. A space to explore inner and outer worlds, to play with the dreamy colours of digital image making, to practice capturing people and places. It will be a comment free zone but please feel free to browse or if you would like regular updates just sign into the "follow by email" gadget.....

Always an apprentice

 

Are we always beginners? I remember setting a goal to try blogging for three years. Now two thirds of the way there, am I getting somewhere?

The inspiration was to have an online studio, a sacred sharing space for an aspiring light seeker. A soothing cushion between a harsher world that any introvert would prefer to avoid. Time out to listen to the voice that comes from a calmer place, urging quietly; create, have courage, go deeper.

Aspiration, from the latin "to aspirate, breathe life into." And that's what is needed to continue at all, a pledge to apprenticeship and artisanship. To always be the vulnerable student, the breathy beginner.

An apprentice light seeker, inwardly and outwardly, strengthened every day by creative practice and soul searching. Juggling the paying of bills and reaching for the stars. Getting through the darker days as opportunities in Ireland recede and recede........Taking a deep breath, diving even deeper than before. And rising to the surface with small treasures to share.

If you are beginning......make space for a voice that will soothe and invigorate. Call it a blog if you must......you might end up listening to yourself and believing what you hear......





Note: The Foxglove Lane blog began in February 2011. See the first ever post Raining cats and dogs here. It took 2 months of blogging before there was even a single comment!

I was hoping for something big..........

OK I have to admit it.  I was out looking for something big and impressive. Too much drama in your life and losing the run of yourself will have that effect!

I was stalking the heron always liable to show up even if he is flying away from me, and I knew the swans were back on the lake for the winter. I was there, waiting, ready to shoot. Even sounds so wrong now! Ready to "shoot." Full of expectation and hoping for bigger, for better, for perfection!

I was rationalising and angsting, big time. Listening to bulldozers in the distance, fearing the changes that are taking place all around here as agriculture becomes the new boom business. Rehearsing some sad tale in my head about the decline of the wilderness and the end of civilization as we know it.

The next big thing never made an entrance. I was forced to stand there, to be there, to let the light find me. The reeds reflected patterns in the water, the fish surfaced and disappeared again. Thrushes flitted cleverly creating constant distractions as I missed each one!

Then I noticed the little guys! All the time they were there in the bushes and trees. Too small, too bland, too common.....I had spent a day trying to write something about "what I've learned from blogging." And here it was writ large.  That "trying" too hard doesn't work. That trusting the process is essential. That small stuff is good stuff if that's the story that is there to be told.

It's the only way that feels real to me anyway. A lesson in humility learned and yes I'm still holding out for the big guys too when they finally decide to show up!