January 14
Prints! Prints! Prints! *

* For those of you who haven't been reading stacks of thick books on the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Henry VIII's last words were 'Monks! Monks! Monks!'. Delightfully geeky, no?

November 25
A view of my studio and a stretch of the wall of print possibilities for Dissolution. It will continue to grow for another month, and then I'll have to start culling and framing for the opening in February.

 

October 31
Film processing finished--I'm drying contact prints on the kitchen table because my darkroom lines are full!

 

October 21
Here are some images from my expedition to England to finish shooting for Dissolution, a project focusing on dissolved monasteries in England, Ireland and Wales.

The one sunrise

I spent far too long looking unsuccessfully for this tiny little tripod adaptor that I had forgotten back home. Without it, I was affixing my ten pound camera (that's weight, not cost) to my tripod with my poor aching fingers while holding my breath. I'm still holding my breath until I see the negatives...

Stop 1: Tintern Abbey

Stop 2: Wenlock Priory

Stop 3: Haughmond Abbey
This abbey closed for the season the week before I arrived, hence the barbed wire.

Stop 4: Valle Crucis Abbey

 

June 2
Framing up some photos to hang at a river-themed show.

 

May 14
The Mirror of Earth is now showing at Hull University and will be all summer long. Many thanks to Fr. David DeVerny for the opportunity!

Empty hooks at the gallery

 

April 14
I've just received the third place prize in the Phidian Club Literary Competition, breaking my perfect four-year run of poetry rejections. How can I go on without that reassuring equilibrium?

Snapshot, 4 May 2008

All the elements are there;
Sun, yellow flowers, good exposure,
Your breezy hair holding
A nimbus, the season’s last sweater weather,
And you in that hand-knitted sweater; the first
Time you ran on uncertain turf;
The first flower successfully plucked
By the stem and not wrecked in the attempt.

The shutter snicks, the film is limned,
The instant imprinted, but moment
won’t stop blooming;

You thrust that first flower into my camera hand and
Run away laughing laughing
laughing

 

March 26
It's Thursday, Baby; and Thursday night is the night that we make prints.
Here I am in my tiny darkroom, making...a tiny print.

 

February 09
A couple of nice thumbnail juxtapositions from the 365 project: