The only thing that matters right now..... on the biobead spill at Camber Sands

 

So much has happened, but only one thing matters...

18/11/2025

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My initials on the wall at the fish and fruit market, Funchal

So much has happened in the last few weeks. 

So much, that at times I felt completely overwhelmed and felt that I had taken on too much. Amongst other things I was coping with.....

• Redecorating at home; paint colours to choose. Thousands of match pots and bits of painted coloured paper around the house. OK, not thousands, but more than I care to admit to....
• a solo show  to be hung in a beautiful community cafe in Hextable.
• a health issue that has taken some time to come to terms with.

To distract myself from all of the above I booked a November trip to Madeira for a walking week in a group of 'like minded' individuals. Walking is the activity that calms me above all others.

Little did I know that the group would be just me and two other people; another group of friends having cancelled at the last minute due to a leg injury.
Little did I also know that one of the other two was afraid of heights and edges, and the other had a fear of walking down hill. 

Sunny street, Funchal. Madeira.

So we muddled through, on levadas (ancient water irrigation channels), cliff tops and mountain paths, each hike being a challenge for one or other of my two companions, until the poor local guide almost lost the will to live trying to keep everyone happy.

I was just grateful to be walking, in shorts and t-shirt, and away from the worries of domesticity. I changed my walking pace from pretty speedy to VERY SLOW, and all was well. I also ate a lot of cakes. Pastel de nata and Queijada da Madeira to be precise. Delicious.

Unfortunately, while I was away a disaster was unfolding back at home in Camber Sands.

Tiled street, Funchal

A disaster that beats all other environmental disaters on the local coast hands down; the release of millions of plastic biobeads into the sea from Southerm Water's Eastbourne Wastewater Treatment Works.

A big enough problem to reach the national news. A beautiful sandy beach covered with millions of black plastic beads. An environmental disaster on a grand scale. 

I felt distressed not to be able to turn up with the other many local people to help try and clear the beach of the beads. I have done beach surveys counting these biobeads in the past with Strandliners, and know how devastated their leaders will be. 

I followed the news each day, only to learn that Southern Water had been found culpable. I wanted to be there. 

Southern Water staff sieving the sand some days after the spillage.

I finally made it to the beach on Sunday; nearly two weeks after the spill. Many sacksful of pellets had already been removed from the beach by volunteers. 

Staff from Southern Water were sieving the sand in a slow and laborious way. It was a depressing sight. 

I made a video of the process for Instagram. 

watch the process of collecting biobeads on the beach here

The video shows the sieving of sand, and the collection of biobeads so much better than any still photo can. But because I know not everyone can access the video, here are some photos anyway.

a wheelbarrow full of biobeads at camber Sands

The early clean up operation undertaken by Strandliners and  @nurdlecoasts is now on hold until the next spring tide. This is a particularly high tide around the time of a full moon, which will carry the beads further up onto the beach, and hopefully allow another collection of washed up beads using a microplastic vacuum which can only work on soft sand.

biobead debris from the clean up at Camber Sands

The whole event makes me very sad. 

A feeling of 'solastagia'.

Solastalgia is the distress caused by negative environmental changes to a person's home environment. It is being felt by so many local people.

I created the book 'Shore' last year about man's behaviour in relation to the sea shore. A book created in frustration at the way we treat our beautiful coastline.
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On one of the pages I wrote;

'What if it rained so hard that the water
companies opened their flood gates and poured
millions of plastic beads and gallons of sewage
onto the brightly decorated shore, as we danced
like fools in the surf.'

Image from the book 'Shore', showing biobeads and microplastics

It shouldn't have happened. 

There are no words.

On beauty and overcooked vegetables

 

On beauty, and overcooked vegetables

4/7/2025

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A very good friend asked me what my next blog post would be about. We chatted about writing and I explained that I have recently been having difficulty working out what is OK to say in my blog. Before I gave up alcohol completely I found that a glass of wine helped me to find the perfect balance between saying too much and holding back on what I really feel. Now I am mostly  just holding back...... but let's see how this goes.....

This week OH and I celebrated 43 years of marriage. I explained to very good friend that 'celebrate' was probably not the right term to use. For we have never felt the need for romantic dinners, anniversary gifts or sentimental acts. We barely manage an exchange of cards. Each year it is a test of memory. Who will forget this time. In the past we have had all possible combinations of forgetting. Both, just me, or just OH ( my other half). The rememberer always gets to feel good. Phew! I made it this time.......

This year we both failed in different ways. OH took himself off to find the Mediterranean Sea for a few days, for a 'proper summer break'. No matter that we have a heatwave here in England. This was his way of dealing with the fact that he has agreed to go to Norway for our summer holiday. No weather guarantees there. I don't enjoy humidity or heat. OH thrives on sweating in the sun whilst climbing an ancient ruin. I just want to jump into a fridge. So he left an anniversary card for me at home, forgetting that I, also, wasn't at home. I had escaped the heat of suburbia for the cooler climes of Camber Sands. 
I remembered that the anniversary was looming too late to put a card into his suitcase, and had to make do with a vastly inferior e-card. Almost as bad as no card. Perhaps worse... it certainly felt desperate.

So we spoke on the day. He from a castle in Corfu, sweating in the Mediterranean sun, and me from the sunshine of Camber Sands, fresh and glorious. We laughed at our joint ineptitude, and all was good.

Which brings me to the cabbage ( and mange tout peas). How is it that after 43 years OH still cannot cook either in a way that allows one to enjoy their freshly picked, home grown delicious flavours? How can it be so hard not to boil them to a soggy mess, and serve them dripping with water, onto clean white plates? There. I said it. No going back.... and yet we have 43 years. Some things are just not worth worrying about. 

I have pondered long and hard about whether it is OK to blog about this, and realise that fear of getting it wrong was stopping me from writing at all. All this indirect communication through blogs is turning into a family specialty. Son does a wonderful job of communicating all sorts of things with us via the written word. And surely it is OK for me to reciprocate. So much that needs saying gets said, and our lives are so much richer for it. Maybe not the cabbage bit, but we all get to understand each other a little better, and that is the strength of words on a page.

And in the middle of writing this OH and I popped off to Norway where it was unvbelievably hot and sunny every day for 8 days. 27 degrees and barely a cloud to be seen. No moody landscapes on this trip.

It was so hot, and so beautiful that I barely took any photos, and my camera stayed in my suitcase for the whole trip. I fell in love with Norway, and knew that I couldn't do it justice in such a short space of time whilst on the road. I will have to return at a gentler pace.

So I soaked in the beauty, swam in the beauty, and hiked in the beauty. And that was more than enough. 

Morning sun, near Oslo airport.

Working with the landscape in Santa Fe

 

Chimney Rock, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico

 
Santa Fe,  New Mexico, in the United States of America.

A trip that I had been looking forward to for many months; to Santa Fe Workshops, a photography centre with high calibre tutoring. The home of Georgia O'Keefe.

Part of me felt ambivalent about travelling to the US given recent worldwide events, but the other part of me really wanted to go; I was excited by the course aims and the work of its tutor Anna Rotty. The course was entitled 'Landscape as Collaborator'. 

A bit of a pretentious title perhaps? Not, it became clear, for those who truly respect the land and also the people who have inhabited it for hundreds of years before white settlers arrived. I had a lot to learn. 

So what is a collaboration? I was happiest with a definition that involved participants working together to achieve something greater that that which any individual participant could achieve if working alone. Without the effect that the landscape has on my psyche my photography would not exist.

I didn't want to get too heavy and philosophical about the title, being more interested to experiment with new techniques. Often my 'why' of making images comes much later. It  becomes clearer with time whether a deeper meaning is emerging. I am happy to let weeks pass and see what transpires. I was there to have fun.  And I did.

Typical adobe ( mud and brick) architecture of Santa Fe.

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Our group arrived with a few images from home already printed out, but quickly started making new images in the bright, almost desert, high altitude landscape.

It was refreshing to trek out into the garden with minimal equipment and to start photographing just a few yards from the centre. I have long given up photo workshops where you travel many miles in a bus to a chosen location, all jump out of the bus, line up your tripods and take the 'classic shot'. Not for me. Especially not waterfalls in Iceland or red boats sailing in front of icebergs in Greenland! I prefer the closer details and the colours of the terrain. I don't like having my photographic subject matter chosen for me.

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Photographing through a home made viewfinder.

We started off making viewfinders for looking at the landscape. This rapidly moved to taking pictures through the viewfinder. Fragments of sky, bush, tree, soil. Isolating objects. I have done something similar before with litter, but enjoyed the blue sky and the cotton wood trees.

We printed images in the digital lab and went outside again to try new juxtapositions. Finding shadows and creating shadows became a happy game.

a photograph used as a viewfinder.

self portrait with daisy

It was Anna Rotty's waterfall of light on water 'Paradise Waterfall'  that drew me in to applying for this course.

I  was excited at the idea of creating sculptures with photographs, and the idea that I don't have to frame my work in order to display it. This is good for both my pocket and the environment, and fits with my recent sculptural book making experiments, 

Paradise Waterfall | Anna Rotty

We found a beautiful sun lit stream to work with.

​A happy place......

​The bright sunlight created wonderful ripples on the water. 

Sunlight and fallen leaves

At work in the early morning

As the days progressed I became more interested in repeated rephotographing of images in different locations. Lush vegetation on dry soil. Water on parched soil. I started thinking about location, transportation and the presence or absence of water. 

The rain drenched lupins below are rephotographed in Abiquiu, Santa Fe and Vancouver. A record of my recent trip and also a previous trip to Alaska where the lupins resided. 

Abiquiu, New Mexico

Santa Fe, New Mexico

back to the lush rain forest of North vancouver

I worked with shadows and my own body. Placing myself into the landscape without showing my face. Immersing photos in the stream and watching them gain strength as they dried. 

​

'I am where I am' - Santa Fe

river washed photograph

As a stranger in Santa Fe I didn't have an obvious way to connect with the landscape., except as a stranger.  But by demonstrating my presence there I began to feel connected in the way that I usually do when walking and exploring natural spaces. 

I don't really know yet what I am trying to say other than;

'I am in this place. I give you the the evidence. This is landscape.'

See; I can be really pretentious if I try.......

Also emerging are themes  about changes with passing time, travel/transportation and  different climates.

Now that I am back home on the beach at Camber Sands I will continue exploring possibilities and playing with ideas until I really know what I wish to say.

I have all summer to think about it. 

​Thank you Anna!

Santa Fe cloud at Camber Sands

Immersion | Caroline Fraser

Adventures in Uzbekistan and a few home truths....

 

 

Son writes a blog. Once a week, without fail. Until he doesn't.......

I feel that this creates a certain pressure for yours truly.  I try to write monthly, and am now three weeks late. Son wrote recently about the Nike trainers that I never let him have as a child. About skiing and the anticipation and excitement of his first ski of the winter season.  Daughter reminds me of the rule that I set for them as children that no breakfast cereal should cost more than 30p per 100g.

I was a tough negotiater.... a 'mean' mother...... I left all these scars. But we all have scars, right? My mother wouldn't let me play a second instrument. She couldn't afford it. So I took up the oboe as an adult, and then discovered that counting bars when my instrument was not playing was nigh on impossible for me, so I was never able to join an orchestra. Maybe son can buy his own Nike trainers now that he is grown up. And daughter can have any cereal of her choosing. I was only trying to stop them eating too much sugar. Fortunately Weetabix and Shreddies are cheaper than Cheerios and Frosties.

Strange things are happening; I find myself playing the piano again after years of abstinence. Drawn in by Bach's Goldberg Variations, which featured highly in the novel 'Do not Say we have Nothing' by Madeleine Thein. The novel explores the cultural revolution in China. How much tougher was the life of those sent to detention camps for playing music. Their instruments smashed and their compositions burned. I feel so lucky in comparison, and am trying to learn to play some of the easier variations. It is a very slow process.

But I am really here to tell you about Uzbekistan. My other half (OH) and I spent 10 days there in November, The problem that I have, is that I was so blown away by the whole experience that I haven't known where to start, or what to say.

Registan Square, Samarkand

 I was tempted to book the trip by some photos of the Tashkent metro stations that I saw on social media. I find it odd that I chose to book on such a whim. The rest of the trip far outshone the metro. Taking photos without a tripod and an empty station was challenging and unsatisfactory.

The metro stations are ornate and dramatic. Each has a theme.  Photography has only been allowed since 2018, as the stations used to have a secondary function as nuclear fall out shelters.

This one below, Kosmonavtlar, is about space exploration  and cosomonauts.

Kosmonavtlar (Tashkent Metro)

Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space.

Decorative tiles in the Tashkent metro.

When I booked the holiday, I knew that we would be visiting cities from the ancient silk roads. Nothing prepared me for the breathtaking architecture found in the mosques, mausoleums, city squares and ancient madrasas ( colleges of islamic instruction).

From Tashkent, to Samarkand, and on to Khiva. So many buildings, so much beauty, and so easy to confuse them all after a whirlwind tour. I could dazzle you with ornate ceilings, walls and doors, but mostly I keep thinking about the people and the culture of the country that is about twice as large as the UK. 

The local tourists were as fascinated by us as we were with them. They were very friendly, and just as obsessed with their mobile phones as we were.

The younger generation are learning English as well as Uzbek and Russian, and were keen to practice on us by asking us for our telephone number and suggesting that we call each other ...... we politely declined.

​We were warned before we travelled that the diet consists mainly of meat, and that the local dish, Plov, a lamb, rice and vegetable dish is greasy and heavy.

So we were surprised to find that to he contrary, there were many options for delicious vegetables and salads, as well as the predicted kebabs and plov. Locals eat plov at least once a week, so it was interesting to see that you can buy pre-prepared carrots and potatoes in the local market. No plastic bags or cellophane wrapping in sight......!

Ready chopped vegetables in the market.

Plov - a dish with lamb, rice and vegetables.

The main reason to visit Uzbekistan is to visit the cities that formed part of the ancient Silk Road between the east and the west. We were bamboozled with historic facts wherever we went. A history that was unfamiliar and complicated. I found it hard to take it all in.

Mosques, mausoleums and madrasas, all built to impress with their blue tiles that denote wealth. Overwhelming in their scale and beauty. 

Kalta Minor Minaret, Khiva

Celing detail from the Shah-i-Zinda complex, Samarkand

Khast Imam complex, Tashkent

​We struggled with the local currency. One UK pound is 16,000 Uzbek Som. We needed 2000 som for a visit to the local 'facilities'. That's a loo, bathroom, restroom or WC to you, and is about 12 pence. in UK money. We held on to 2000 som notes wherever we could.

I was transfixed by the cloud formations in Tashkent. They seemed unlike any that I have seen in the west.

​

Central Asian cloud formation

We heard about family culture from our wonderful guide, Lochin.

He explained that when a girl marries she is not supposed to smile at her wedding, as she should be sad at leaving her own family. We saw many very miserable looking brides. The grooms looked pretty serious too. 

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Uzbek bride and groom.

Another custom is related to finding a partner that you might wish to marry. You don't tell your parents that you have met 'the one', instead you place a carrot on your father's shoe.

The youngest son of the family traditionally lives with his parents and his own family. This ensures that the parents have support as they get older.  A very different attitude to many western families.

I remember much more about these little details of daily life than the exploits of a fourteenth century adventurer. OH will have taken in all of the history and added it to his already extensive personal library of historical facts. I blame Mrs Newsome, my secondary school history teacher. She has a lot to answer for. And unlike most of my teachers I remember her name, and what she looked like. Short, with orange hair......

​

Street stalls, Khiva, wrapped for the night.

I was struck by the cleanliness and feeling of safety in Uzbekistan. No litter. No no-go areas. Street cleaners with hand made brooms wherever we travelled.

​I felt very safe. A testament to the honesty of locals is the way in which street stalls are wrapped up at night; a simple cloth and some string. I yearn for a return to such values here in the UK. 

A street cleaner takes a break in Uzbekistan

I have so many photos, so I will leave you with just a few favourites. My next task is to create a book of our trip before I forget names and places. 

There is work to do!

And if you would like to sign up to my next online photobook course please sign up to my mailing list on the online courses page to be alerted to new dates.

online workshops - click here!

Help! I have too many photos on my hard drive.

Boat reflections, New Zealand

 
I have a problem. A big problem.

I have had to replace my ageing and failing mac with a brand new version, but for 2 weeks it has been sitting unopened in its box. My other half (OH) keeps asking me when I am going to open it. I reply 'when I am ready '.

The reason that I am not ready is because I possess way too many photos, and the thought of sorting them out to get them safely stored on a combination of the new mac and external hard drives feels like an organisational mountain right now. I am not ready to face the mountain; it feels huge.

This is all my own fault. I have my images neatly organised into folders of events and year, but I rarely cull my images. Actually never. Each time I sit down to attempt this, I get drawn into a trip down memory lane. I find images that remind me of all the projects I have thought about over the years, and after deleting maybe five or six I end up processing an old one, or feeling so overwhelmed by the enormity of the task that I give up and find something else to do, even cleaning.....

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Winter trees, Stanley park, Vancouver

I have a technique for finding images that are buried under a pile of 66,999 images, and that I have totally forgotten about.

I type today's date into my library and look for files that have a name that includes the numbers in the date. For example, yesterday was the 9th of October, so I type 910 into the search panel  and up pop all the images with 910 as part of their filename. I find it a good way to look back through the thousands, without any bias . A lot of surprises pop up. 

​For example the image below is from a walk that I took in my local woods during which I chucked photographs of nature into the pond and hung them from fences and trees. Yes, I know that sounds crazy. But I had fun doing it, and I cant really recall why I felt this urge. 
I probably had an idea for a new project, but as with many of my ideas, it went nowhere.

And that is OK.

​Life would be a lot duller without a few crazy moments alone in the woods.

Also from this '910' search are all of the photos included in this blog article. Below is another one where I question my sanity. At the time I was studying for an MA in book art, and that did tip me into a slightly deranged state of mind. I never did complete the MA, but that's another story.
​Life is too short to spend time not enjoying learning.........

'hello Liezel' on my washing line

​And then there was another burning desire fulfilled; to hang ribbons from a tree and capture the effect of the wind. That was a one day wonder, and no birds or bushes were harmed in the process.

ribbons in the wind

.Some incredibly happy memories appear in the search.

​For all of these images I remember so well the taking. The making.

​ They trigger memories that were locked away, possibly for ever.

Several are from my first artist residency where I wandered the streets and footpaths taking hundreds of photos of water., and which led to the creation of my book 'If I only had more time'. Three weeks went so quickly, and I wished I could have stayed longer, hence the  book's title.

​

Letterpress printing with Nina Rodin on my residency at Trelex, near Geneva.

So how to manage all of these photos? 

What I really need to do is have a massive cull, and get rid of the many duplicates and similar images. Even better would be to be much more ruthless in my initial uploads, deleting all but the best. Going forward this could work, but for now I need about a week of screen time to manage the task of culling and transferring a select few to the new computer.

'If I Only had more Time' - photo book concertina.

I know from experience that projects that don't get done soon after a trip or journey are unlikely ever to be realised. All of my videos from Alaska still lie waiting to be made into a major motion picture movie. Likewise my Latin American journey is more than worthy of a book, but I am now forgetting the details. It is becoming too late.

Making photo books is the best way to create tangible memories in my humble opinion. 
They truly represent my view of the world. 

So here's a plan;

1. spend a week culling in bite sized chunks.
2. spend another choosing which folders are worth keeping
3. spend another week listing all the unmade projects that are worth pursuing
4. Make sure that I have my photos backed up in three places; home, studio and cloud.
5. be brave; get the new Mac out of its box.
6. Transfer just the last three years of images onto the new Mac
7. Load up the new Mac with my image processing and publication software
8. START BEING RUTHLESS!

So let's make a start......

Ladder in a garden ; one for the bin.

Ardnamurchan - a definite keeper.

Clouds over Rye harbour nature reserve ; another for the bin

hair envy series; another lost project.....BIN

Three for the bin. One keeper.
Only 66,996 decisions to go.

​Please wish me luck!  I could be gone for some time......