space matters - making some new work - experiments with first aid items

Since my MA project is currently entitled 'Space Matters', looking at the need for breathing spaces, I took a first aid space blanket to the woods this week and laid it out on the ground.

As you do.

If you are an 'artist' you can do almost anything and call it 'research'.


And yes, I did watch carefully to make sure there was no one else around.

Having photographed it I used as the base for a double exposure.

Space/space blanket/first aid/station were the words in my mind.

I placed it in the air, up a tree, on the ground.

It felt good to be making something new.

Over the pond.

I am not sure what I was trying to achieve.

Just playing. Which is how my work usually evolves.

Keep trying different things until something catches my attention and feels right.

When I got back and looked at the images I was initially excited, and then felt that I was not really conveying the message that was intended.

I seem to have a desire to wrap things.

I am often taking photographs of bits of string.

What does this mean?

I really don't know.

But I did label one series of images of electric fence tape  'Don't fence me in' which should tell me something.


I took the 'blanket' to Dungeness. Plenty of space there. And lots of wind too. It was very difficult to pin down. I used stones.


 I found it difficult to make anything work, but a video of it blowing in the wind was more successful

.

The wind put me off using the space blanket a the beach, and when I returned to the woods I tried taking photographs of it wrapping a tree.



Such a different feeling. I felt as though I was trying to keep the tree safe.

I enjoyed this too.


Again nobody was looking....

Having tried a space blanket I felt obliged to try a bandage. I wrapped it around the branches of a tree.



And then overlaid it onto another tree.

I am not sure about the twigs from the first tree showing up.

I like the random colour overlay in the colour version of double exposure.

Now I need some more authentic bandages, preferably gauze or open weave.

I don't know where this is going, but I am enjoying the process.

And yes I am a bit mad. Probably have been for some years....

It reminds me of collography and using some open gauze tape as my subject matter for printing.

Themes that come to mind;

tape /wrap/fence/protect/enclose/confine

what do these have to do with 'space'?

It seems to be more about lack of space and being fenced in or enclosed; the opposite to what I seek in the landscape.

So how could I represent this opposite more effectively?

hmmm. I will sleep on that.

last night's transient  middle of the night idea was wrapping twigs.....

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!