Monday, February 11, 2013

Blyth a blowin'

I booked a photography course sometime ago in my optimism that I was working and could afford such treats. I love trying to improve my photography techniques and the coast is wonderful up here in Northumberland so what could be better: A crisp clear February day on the beach with my Canon and a tutor who comes with a bag of filter accessories and long exposure expertise! I have always wanted to capture a milky sea against St Mary's Lighthouse!

I didn't know then the situation I would be in now. Unemployed and a bit a sea. Emotionally adrift and mentally exhausted.

As the day approached I got more and more anxious about it. The weather has been bitter and just miserable. The forecast was for more snow and freezing winds. I tweeted my fears and wondered whether the course would go ahead in a blizzard. 

Then I started thinking of excuses not to go: I'll cry if someone is nice to me. My camera battery isn't holding its charge. My head isn't holding information. Can I drive that far and maintain my concentration? The children need to do their homework. What if it snows... will I be sleeping in the car? And who am I kidding, I am hopeless at taking pictures. 

Anyhow the day came there was no snow in Hexham. A tweet came in that the extreme weather would hold off until 3pm on the coast. So I made my way downstairs, made a flask up, buttered some cheese scones and packed the car up with spare clothes, camera gear and a sleeping bag. Surely the weather would be OK.

Oh my god. I had never experienced anything as cold as that North East Wind and a wild sea. 

There were four of us booked on a course. A young chappie from toon and a lovely couple who had driven all the way up from Reading the night before who had not anticipated just how far away Northumberland was. They were from South Africa too... I think they found it all a bit bleak!

After a bit of a prep talk from Jason, our tutor, about filters and f-stops and what bit of kit we all had we headed to some groynes that would provide the anchor for our milky seas!

I quickly found the spot I wanted to shoot from... but had to step back quickly as the spray and tide were heading inwards!




This was my basic composition... but without slowing the speed down too much. Conditions at this point were probably the best in the day (10.30am) although it was bitterly cold.



Had to step back quickly as the tide was rushing in, but beginning to experiment with slowing the shutter speed down (0.8sec) having a ND0.6stop filter. (ISO100). I can assure you the sea was not flat!

The wind and spray was beginning to get out of hand, and my hands were beginning to have that out of body experience where actually you'd rather not have hands because they hurt so much.


Decreasing the speed a little more. Its clear to see that the wind was beginning to hamper the clarity over a long exposure (now 3.2 sec exposure compensation+1). The white patches on the wooden posts show what level the sea was crashing through at.


That image became this converting to BW and adding a post production polarizing filter. I am happy with the composition but cursing the wind and my flimsy tripod.


I wanted to time the exposure right to get the waves retreating to catch the reflection in the wet sand of the groynes. Cross that I  cropped the full reflection of the post. I can only blame it on haste caused by the extreme cold!


Battling the wind.

We moved down the beach a bit and Jason started  getting his Canon MkII ready for us to try with the 10stop filter. Unfortunately he dropped the filter in the water so drying time was needed. The wind however was increasing and we, I think were all suffering from exposure on the beach.   
We beat a hasty retreat to the beach hut and fish and chips to warm us up. Using the 10stop would have to wait until after the the sleet storm had passed.

After a feeble attempt at eating a massive box of fish'n'chips (enough for 3), we headed back into the wind to use Jason's Canon MkII with the 10stop filter. I haded straight for the jetty but wanted to bring more to the concrete that jutted into the sea.

I grabbed a few large pebbles from the beach and placed them in the middle of the jetty. I like the way it is possible to change the landscape with just a tweek of creativity. 



And that is the shot I wanted to learn to take. 150sec ND10stop. The sea is lying to our eyes as it was wild, but I love this milky smooth effect!




The final shot of the day. I wanted a do another shot of the jetty but with a visual full stop at the end of it. I tried in vain to heave some old lobster pots out of the sand, the weren't budging. So I though a deckchair would add a point of interest and a contrasting delicacy to the quite strong lines of the concrete jetty and the horizon. I suggested it but thought it impossible in the wind.... unless it was anchored with a person. Unsurprisingly no-one was prepared to sit in a deckchair at the end of the jetty with the waves now crashing over it. If I wanted this image, I was going to have to get very wet. Just trying to erect the deckchair in the wind was a challenge but I got there eventually and sat slightly anxiously as the waves washed around my feet. Jason the tutor set up the camera and started the exposure.It was a very long 90 secs, with the waves actually breeching my knees. I tried so hard to keep still but the shock of the cold north sea going through my clothes and down my shoes made me flinch. I wondered whether the exposure finished, but Jason signalled that there was still 30 seconds to go!






So there you are. Poots loves to be by the seaside, even in wind chill factor baltic. 

We all returned to the beach hut to defrost again and look at using lightroom for adjusting out images (much easier than photoshop!) Everyone had created an image that they were really happy with and certainly would be proud to print and frame.

Jason Friend is running more tutorials, I'd like to do some more, but will have to see what happens work wise. He has a lovely manner in the way he guides us and we all learnt so much not just about long exposures, but about our cameras too.

Gathering up my stuff and wet shoes I left in a much more positive frame of mind than I had started my day. But crikey I don't think I have ever been as cold.

When I look at Jason's picture above it make me smile about just how amazingly metaphorical it represents my life at the moment. Everything is crashing around me, wild and uncontrollable. But no-one but me can see it or feel it. All I want is some calm, and I'll stick my neck out for it. I will probably get criticised, or hospitalised, or classed a manic or something. 

The Art of Zen - I seek a balance, calmness in calamity. I can't control the sea, but I must get control of my mind.



(Long exposure workshops can be booked with www.jasonfriend.co.uk)


Thursday, February 7, 2013

A Walk with Welly, 7th February

I was determined to make carrot cake today. Thinking it would do me good to try a something new I went online to find a recipe, hopefully with ingredients that I would already have in. Walnuts, carrots, cream cheese, self raising flour are all in my cupboard just waiting to be in a carrot cake. I found a recipe and I had the ingredients... but the measures were in cups (for goodness sake USA the rest of us went imperial donkeys ago). Well thinking how silly, cup measures are for women's under- garments (and forever perplexing for me). That was it, I suddenly panicked that I would have to think about converting the measures. So the carrot cake project for today was shelved for a day when my head wants to think. 

So I diverted to my needed, "I don't need to think about this" routine, (ideal when ones head is in crisis) and decided to get Welly up and out for our normal walk in the woods by the river. He'd had his breakfast, so surely would be raring to go.

On the contrary, he had other ideas for his morning.....


refusing to believe its actually morning... a classic Welly pose.

 Still in denial


Anyway I managed to persuade him that good things lay in store in the woods. He wasn't impressed by this young field spaniel.... a newbie on the block and with a weapon. So frightening, his heckles went up! And then he ran away.


Unusually he got his feet wet. He isn't one for puddles, or rivers or the sea!


This is his look when he wants a biscuit out of my pocket at the halfway mark. Sit dead in front of me and doesn't budge until post snack time. He is very predictable.


And this is the look when the biscuit is on top of the camera.


I usually find it very hard to photograph Wellington as he is always ahead of me. I normally only see his little bum on a walk!

 Welly with something disgusting. Probably a rabbit skin. "Don't even try and take it off me.... you'll have to catch me first"


"And when I do this puppy look you really don't mind if I eat it"


Now this was most unusual. A trick. Standing still on a mossy tree trunk. The problem was capturing the moment. Every time I stood back to snap him he jumped off. Even more bizarrely he was happy to keep getting back on.  Eventually he got the hang of staying still (biscuit on top of camera again)


Dog ahead alert... on my path! Another newbie (she was a lovely old girl)



And then she wandered off. 



Getting the hang of posing for the camera.


This is what you want in a dog... perfect poise
(Now he is just showing off his standing still skills learnt today)


Tired now, but on the home straight.


One last picture, again an unusual thing for him to do!

.


Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Well... I'm over that cliff.

Not sure what to say.
My voice fumbles for words. I can't put socks on or tie my laces without it feeling like a mental battle. Sentences can't be strung together easily. I have forgotten so many things in my memory and my short term memory is shot to pieces. Making a meal seems like a triumph when I have done it. It used to be so automatic.

So this is what a mental breakdown feels like.

So I went to my GP last week, crushed by the stress of work. He gave me a sick note.
I went back this week. He prescribe antidepressants and another sick note. For sure now I will be dismissed from school. Dispatched as a bad teacher when in fact its just a bad time.

Not sure about taking the pills. Surely I can walk this off and leave it behind. On the other side of and at the bottom of that huge cliff. Its bizarre. Some things make me feel really positive down here whilst others make me want to run. Or hide.

Sunlight and clouds all at the same time.

I need sunlight. I need a rest. Admitting I need a break is the first art of the battle people say. I've been on an emotional bender for years. Well is it OK if I hibernate? Or should I walk it out? I can't decide. I have projects and ambitions in my mind that I really want to achieve. Think my way out of it, or have a rest? I can't decide.


Sunday, February 3, 2013

I visited Paris. Once.

I visited Paris. Once. 
Passed through it many times en-route from La Roultiere to the UK.
Ironically, although living in France, MrLR was adverse to travel. So we did not get around much.
Anyhow. Because I can't remember, I have to look at pictures to tell me I did it. Once.




Easter and warm enough for this at Huttopia Versailles.


A much deserved biere blonde.


Perfect engineering and design beauty


Perfect offspring (occasionally)



Taller than the Eiffel Tower


Where do the people end and de Vinci begin.


Form and orderly queue #MonaLisaMania


Perfect stairs

The coast is the place where I feel most calm.

Throughout my year in Northumberland, the one thing that has retrieved my believe in myself and any potential future I have here is my love of the glorious coastline here. Whenever I feel that all my worries are squashing the life out of me, if I can, Welly and I retreat to the coast. We walk, we sit, we watch the waves and I build silly little towers of stone. Its very restorative, and calming. It turns a day into a holiday. It empties my mind of my divorce and my lost french life. If the children come with me I am sure it helps them too. They have had the most enormous wrench imposed on them and I need them to survive.

I had deleted many of my early blogs here which contained many of my coastal pictures because they felt like a feedback loop. Whilst the coast provides relieve, it also reminded me that I had very very dark days. Days when I felt the only escape was to wade into the water and let the tide consume me. However my pictures are now reminding me of what I have to do when the bleakness sets in. Walk, breathe and notice small details of nature. 

I always knew the power that the sea had on me. But visiting Druridge for the first time since our return to the UK reminded me that I would need a strong relationship with the coast to survive this enormous stressfull change. It was March 23rd 2012. A beautiful day in Hexham. I needed a happy day with the children to remind them we would be OK. So we headed northeast, and straight into a sea fret!


Welly had never seen the sea before and the kids havent grown up with it in the way that I had. The waves were fascinating to them and terrifying for Welly!





Welly can't make out what to do with the waves. Water you can't drink and it moves all the time!


Cold north sea. Dont get wet I reminded them we have no spare clothes.


Getting wetter by the minute but he doesn't seem to mind! Yet.....






Wet clothes now caked in sand.... but look at the smile!


Dune duty... one most tumble down them!


Now he's cold!


Welly strikes a bum pose in the family photo!

It was a very happy dune day. The sea air had worked its magic on me and the kids!