~ How to be a photographer ~

At first light, let the sounds and colours of the morning enter you. Rise when the animals take breakfast. Over coffee keep a steady hand on a long lens, chaffinches might be dropping by. Or go out into the frosty dawn, well wrapped up and remember your key this time!

At the peak of the day open the kitchen door and watch gulls rinsing their salty feathers in the pure lake waters. After a rain shower study bulging drops on twigs. Smell the sweet damp soil. Listen to the hail, how it hops off the gravel path. Wash the mud off your hands if you can't resist handling those wet stones.

Towards evening time let the fading light distract you from work, cooking or company and draw you yet again to the window or the roof top. During the darkest night sense the moon or the constellations. Is it going to be frosty or warm tomorrow? Keep some shoes close to the bed for emergency exits.

In winter follow the sun as it sets over the forest. In summer watch it move into the true west and sink behind the mountains. Track it, while monitoring the movements of the earth. Ponder her speed, flying through the universe.

Know the way light streams into the house at angles. Sit with the cat snoozing in each ray, following her from lap to sill. When the light catches a glass or the shadow of a chair falls on the rug, pay attention. Get close.

If there's a lemon in a bowl or a blue teapot, put it with a pink geranium on a green table cloth and snap it then and there. Cake is good but colour is even better and will sweeten your soul.

Most of all listen to the land. How it swells and ebbs throughout the days. How it warms and cools or sometimes rumbles in the night. How it questions you while holding everything still.

Photograph where you live and what you see. Your own trip, every day, every year, throughout your life. Be there with that camera in your hands.

Because this is the beginning of what I am learning about how to be a photographer and every other thing in life.......

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!

Winter sets in and the elves are pretty busy....

 

Winter has set in and I am now counting the weeks until the Solstice and the gradual return of light. In the dark evenings I burn candles to cheer our hearts, cosy up with a blanket and find I am craving chocolate!

On waking, I love the silvery glow and a particular kind of stillness that announces another frosty morning. Blue sky icy days have me leaping out of bed, and I am by no means a morning person!

Hibernation may be here for some but myself and the elves are pretty busy in the Foxglove Lane Print Gallery! My first year of this venture is still a steep learning curve and thanks to all of you shoppers I have learned a few more tricks of the trade. Next year I hope to be more established and to have fuller creative control over each product. I have been experimenting with printers, products, papers, processes and while it has been mind boggling it has allowed me to keep prices down while I find my feet. I am no where near happy yet with my progress........there is so much more to learn and share.......but I'm getting there and making plans......

Meanwhile if you fancy a bit of Christmas gift  browsing check out the Seasonal Greeting Cards and the Print Gallery all delivered anywhere in the world! One or two people have had problems accessing the PayPal page so if this happens to you please contact me as I can offer another payment method.

Thanks to all of you who have sent me photos of the prints, framed and in your homes. I will make a collage and post on Facebook. Keep them coming!

But for now it's back to the busy Christmas workshop for me and my imaginary elves......

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!