Taking time out for family...... and looking forward to creating a photobook course in 2024

 

Taking time out for family ..... and looking forward to creating a photobook course in 2024

28/12/2023

0 Comments

 

remembering summer days © Caroline Fraser

​ Christmas has taken most of my energy for the last three weeks. For the first time in a number of years, both my children and my daughter's family were staying for Christmas. One from Vancouver, and one from the French alps.

Recent Christmas's have involved long journeys to the mountains of Canada, and epic organisation by my daughter. This year she did the travelling, and I did the epic organisation using a large spreadsheet of days, activities, meals, ingredients and a shopping list.

It worked. We were ten for lunch on Christmas day,  preceded by a pantomime trip on Christmas Eve, and a visit to more family on Boxing Day. Two cars, three trips around the M25, 16 people for Boxing Day lunch, and a lot of lego. No snow, no skiing, but some good muddy walks and lots of meals.

I was prepared. The freezer was stuffed, and I was able to enjoy the few days without having to do endless cooking. I even did some knitting in the midst of serving Christmas lunch, to untangle some dropped stitches for my grandson who was entertaining himself between courses.

And now they are all gone. The house is uncannily quiet. The lego is all cleared away and there is a pile of washing to work through.

It was a very special time. So special that I didn't stop to take a single photo. Not one. I will have to rely on my memories, and the new decorations on the Christmas tree, including a brown bear with a fishing rod, to remind me of my camping trip in Washington state with family last May. I was the only adult present on our pitch who was able to set up a fishing rod. That surprised everyone! A childhood spent casting endlessly on the River Wey was not wasted. I don't remember ever catching a fish, but that's not really the point.

I am bird © Caroline Fraser

The first thing that I did when the house was officially empty was to go for a walk in the woods. I left OH ( my other half) pondering the puddle that keeps appearing in the middle of our kitchen floor during the night ( AAAARGGGHHHH...........), and escaped.
I tramped through the mud, passing many dogs and bobble-hatted children.

The low winter sun was just breaking through, and it felt good to be out and able to think in peace. I filmed things that caught my eye as I walked; catkins, leaves, birch bark, the stream, the mud, some crows, bobble-hatted children, and more mud.

You can see all of these on my Instagram feed here

I then returned home, ate some more left overs and chucked the remains of the Yule log into the food waste bin, as there was no one left to eat it.

It was time to get back to my normal life.

The Dive © Caroline Fraser

So what next for my creative endeavours? I have been working hard on a book for my FRPS, and am now awaiting feedback, to see whether it is up to the required standard. Being all about litter on the beach, it is somewhat unusual, and I don't want to say too much at the moment. Every time I look at the layout I seem to change it, so I am leaving it alone for a week or so.

The image below is currently 'IN' the draft book.

None of the images work well as stand alone images, which means that the book structure is vital to bringing them together. It has made me think about how and why I make images. Working in a series is, for me, more satisfying than single stand alone images that might be framed. In the middle of arranging my book I received notice from the Royal Photographic Society that a book for submission should only contain 20 or 21 images. That threw me somewhat, as I have never before had to work to a certain number of images when making a book. I am not sure that I agree with a restriction for this particular submission format, but will keep going for now. One way or another, a book will come out of my months of trawling the beach for litter and items washed up from the sea.

​I need to move on. I don't want to spend the rest of my life photographing litter, even if I do keep picking it up. I am ready for a new chapter.

Image made with beach litter© caroline fraser 2023

---

​So what are my plans for 2024?

For 2024 I wish to create a photobook course. I have recently been procrastinating due to my inner demons and lack of confidence. There are some aspects of learning that are well suited to online learning, and others that are much better in real life. My challenge for January is to sit down and work out what is holding me back, so that I can find ways to overcome the obstacles that I have created in my head. Giving myself a time frame is helping. By the end of January I will be ready to launch my prototype course. 

I don't create courses to make money; I make them because I really enjoy teaching, and they allow me to share what I have learned in my photographic journey. One of the top ways to stay healthy as one gets older is having a sense of purpose; what the Japanese call Ikigai ( a life purpose, or a reason to get up in the morning). I enjoy the challenge that creating a course gives. There is lots of research to do, and thinking about how to best explain technical elements to participants. As I work out what to teach I have to keep learning, and this keeps me entertained and contented. Currently I am working on how to use Padlet as a platform for my course. Padlet will allow students to share their ideas, research, and to give me feedback on the lessons.

The most important page that I have created at the moment is the 'stuff I need to learn properly' page. It is one thing to be able to use software to make books, but quite another to be confident to help others use it successfully. I am feeling excited that I have got this far. 

padlet page for photobook course

 So, as you can see, my mind is fully occupied for now. I have a lesson plan to work through, with a list of tasks to complete before I go live.

My first cohort of students will be my guinea pigs. If you are interested in being part of my test group; a free course in return for honest and constructive feedback then please contact me
(see below). Participation will involve 5-6 sessions spread over 6-8 weeks on Zoom.



​In the meantime I wish you a happy and creative 2024.

Everything is coming up roses...... Christmas in Gore

this is Gore

Here I am, in paradise.

Well not really Paradise; I went there last weekend, and it was. Paradise is near Queenstown, in LOTR country.

I am in Gore , Southland , New Zealand South island. A small town surrounded by spectacular options for landscape photography.

Dairy farming country.

Where cows are plentiful, along with green grass and plenty of rain.

cows in a meadow

Where the roads are quiet and wide, and I can walk to work.

my daily commute

Tractors are a popular mode of transport.

on the road

And bulldozers are handy for tidying the garden.

The local hills are gentle and rolling

sundown

And the gardens are full of roses

Christmas roses

Roses filled compost heap

As you can see I could wax lyrical for some time.

But it is Christmas ......

and I have work to do.

My other half (OH) and youngest child are arriving on Christmas Day for a holiday.

And obviously Christmas dinner is first and foremost on OH's mind.


Hams and salads, strawberries and pavlova are the local favourites for the Christmas feast.

But we are ENGLISH

and must do things properly.

I mentioned to OH that I couldn't find a turkey, and that maybe a chicken would do.

SILLY ME

Of course it wouldn't do.

I mentioned that I couldn't find Christmas pudding either, and immediately OH volunteered to bring one, having only the day before muttered about  the extra weight of carrying a lens filter that I needed and asked him to add to his luggage......

PRIORITIES PLEASE

Food first.

I was getting worried.

But then I struck lucky.

I found the ENGLISH section in the local supermarket

English foods in New World Supermarket

Well never has a photo that I posted in Facebook engendered so much discussion and amusement.

I shall stop posting landscapes and post pictures of food instead....

Sandwich spread; 'sick in a jar'

tinned haggis; ' yum yum' ( ironic of course)

Branston pickle; sold out.........

Creamy Reeses? what on earth is that. certainly not ENGLISH

It was suggested that most of these foods were last normal fare in England when ration books were still available.

So we could feast on a tinned steak pie and some Birds custard......

Or I could cook a real meal, which I will endeavour to do ...........and not a chicken in sight.

Plus a flaming pudding along with brandy butter AND brandy sauce. Just like we always do.......

Epic beer

All washed down with some Epic Armageddon beer, and some local wine.


Followed by a walk in the park to see the local reindeer and the Christmas sheep.

Gore's very own stag

Gore's Christmas sheep

Happy Christmas everyone!

I'm off to Paradise.

Paradise, New Zealand

sheep in Paradise

Feast of delights - Christmas shopping in Rye

One week to go.

Lots of cards and small prints from me.

Lots of lovely food and arty gifts from everyone else.

Hope to see you at the School Creative Centre , Rye

Christmas greetings - with a bit of red from the Greenway

Happy Christmas © Caroline Fraser 2013

It's that time again.

Blowing a gale outside.

presents wrapped...........and unwrapped because I couldn't remember what was in them; foolishly thinking that I would remember ............

labels added to save a second unwrapping before the intended recipient's official unwrapping.

Time to make a festive e-greeting for my friends and acquaintances.

Time for a bit of 'fiddling'. This is not a rude word in my book,  so please no rude comments.

When OH asks me what I am doing as I sit glued to the mac, he gets the same answer every time; 'just fiddling'

Which really means that I don't wish to explain that I am experimenting with pictures that I know he won't be interested in, playing around with layers and seeing what I can create from a simple image or two. Only by experimenting can new ideas take form, and while most of them are discarded along the way, once in a while something good comes from a few minutes or more spent in Photoshop with old or new images.

A Christmas greeting then.

What can I do in a few minutes before heading out to spend time with friends?

A quick look back through my folders of photos for 2013 tells me there aren't any snow pictures. For when I visited iceland to take snow and ice pictures it rained incessantly.

So a bit of red then?


Browsing through my folders from 2013 brought back memories of another cloudless ( almost) sky day and a long hot walk through a part of London I never knew existed.

Back in the heady days of summer I went on a guided walk in Stratford, east London, on the  Greenway.

Greenway

I never can resist a lamp post

Walking along the top of the 'Northern Outfall Sewer"  has its down sides on a hot day, but the mixture of Victorian architecture and new London tempted my fellow photographers to get snapping.

I lapsed back into my suburban photography mode

fence

tree

house

lamp post

tower

fence, wall, bush, tower

This seems to be a habit that I can't break.

fence, tree, tower

fence, tree

fence, tree 2

I have a desire to break the image in half, horizontally.


or if not, then vertically

tree, post

towers and posts

Anyway, I was looking for some red for Christmas

And saw this

red and white

Back in the summer I experimented with multiple exposure of this red and white tape and got this....

more tape; multiple exposure

Which I did nothing with until today.

I popped it into Photoshop with another almost identical image and put one on top of the other.

Blended them with multiply mode and a little bit of  Topaz Adjust from Topaz filters and made this

Happy Christmas

Which is nothing like the original, but with a bit of 'fiddling' I now have an abstract that will be my Christmas e-card as I like the reds and the pearly whites.


Happy Christmas!

today is really not going as planned

Marram blues©caroline fraser

The new life is meant to have more time for photography and less for proper work, in order to engender feelings of calm such as allows me to create images of a happy and fluffy nature.

And so I set myself aside two days to prepare for the lovely and distracting Christmas Bizarre in Rye.

Where people chat, share ideas, buy Christmas presents, eat soup and generally feel good as well as raising money for charity and possibly even selling a few greeting cards.

I drove down to Camber late last night, having shared food with my other half and done a reasonable day's work.

When I arrived the house was icy cold and the boiler silent.

But there was no sign of the mouse in the cupboard under the sink, so at least I knew I would be able to sleep.  I fiddled around with the Potterton boiler manual, and wished I had paid for emergency call out, for we are entering a cold snap, and there are flood warnings in action.

I left helpless messages on OH's phone; but he was not answering.

I pressed a few knobs, nothing happened. Then I found a page with taps and instructions, opened a few valves and hey presto; we had heat ( we being me).

Some hours later the house was a bit warm, and I tucked myself up in bed with a  book.

Some more hours later I awoke, frozen to the core. I dived into a cupboard and fetched myself  two more duvets.

Some even more hours later I woke again; it was 9.30, and the day was half gone.

I rushed off to set up my stall at The School Creative Centre in Rye. Lots to do. Labels to make, pictures to hang. There were plenty of distractions, not least a lovely young girl who wanted me to tell her how much each of her prints should sell for. Not easy. The only thing I could say was that the price depends on how much people love what they see, and who knows which punters will love what works, and that for every piece of work there is someone out there who loves it, but getting the work and the person together is the biggest challenge.

And how she should hang her Christmas lights? Also quite tricky. I suggested a few options and she listened with due attention. I have no Christmas lights, as I am currently very much in denial about the whole Christmas thing. Thank you, youngest child for telling me that you want  a screwdriver for Christmas; I might just manage that.

winter

Just when I thought I was getting somewhere I found out that my embarrassing  diary clash had not been resolved, and I was committed to driving back to suburbia to do my proper job in the morning. So apologies to Paddy for not inspecting his wood pile. Paddy's wood pile

I pressed on, finally finding time to eat and drink at 4.30; a bacon sandwich at the farm shop with a nice cup of tea.

Back in the car; up the road to home.

No sign of other half.

Mother rang, distraught that her TV was broken. She rather depends on it to fill the evening hours.
Try looking for a knob on top that says 'on' say I hopefully.

Three minutes later she rings back, delighted to have fixed the problem. This just about made my day.

I ring other half ; after all he might be taking advantage of my absence, and that wouldn't do.......but he , poor man, is stuck on a train from Brighton, as there is bad weather , and the trains are not running to form.

'When you get home, lets go for a curry' say I.

'Ooh, that would be nice' says he.

So here I am, typing away frantically in the hope that I get these words down before he gets home.

Which I have.

See you tomorrow at the bizarre.