There has been a touch of tulip mania in our house over the last three days. Bunches of birthday flowers arrived and filled our available vases.
And then a new vase was gifted. A plump pair of buttocks just screaming to take on the overload from our existing tulip supply. Tulips are my favourite thing to photograph in late January. Normally they take over from daffodils but this year, despite us living in the corner of the country where daffodils first grow we have yet to buy a bunch. 80% of cut flower daffodils sold around the world come from Cornwall.
It was only in late December that I realised that in all my yard care of last year I had failed to replant our bulbs in the autumn. My mind taken up with climbing plants and trellis.
With a house full of tulips my weather wish for today is sharp shafts of sunlight to show them off in photographs. The ones illustrating this blog were all taken with artificial light and then tweaked. Let’s hope for better light today.
The tree, although beautiful, did not take our attention. The dogs filled the mental space where pondering could have happened.
But this tree turns out to be the perfect specimen for my current experiments with an easy image to double and treble expose digitally altered grey seascapes. I can’t say that I am entirely sure where all this fettling about is taking me but January skies are a lot more interesting with some tweaking.
Exactly 11 years ago Hugo and his dog cousin Barnaby were both a year old and we were in Cornwall for a birthday weekend. Hugo was an urban dog and for Barnaby these fields were his everyday playground. It was permitted that they run free in these fields. What happened next was one of those moments in life when even recollecting this moment makes me feel guilty and uncomfortable. Out of nowhere a herd of deer appeared and the two naughty dogs chased them for fifteen minutes, nothing we could do would persuade the dogs to stop.
Eventually the deer decided that the chase was no longer for them and elegantly jumped a fence back into the enclosure that was supposed to have contained them. Eventually two exhausted dogs returned to us.
Months later we were back in London but on a day out in Kent. The same thing happened but with another dog friend, Monty. Almost the exact same scenario, a National Trust property in an area where dogs could run free. Another herd of deer somehow appeared. Hugo gave chase like the expert hunter he believed himself to be with a much larger labrador friend learning very quickly. They scattered family picnics and we , their hapless owners looked on in horror while hiding their leads in our pockets so nobody knew they were ours. The deer of Kent were as wise as their Cornish counterparts and leapt back into their enclosure.
Once again two exhausted dogs returned to their owners. Hard to pretend they weren’t ours at that point. We all sat down to attempt a picnic and the dogs calmy explored a nearby wooded area. A small commotion and the labrador returned with a rotting deer leg in his mouth. Hugo proudly trotting alongside. I think they were pretending they had actually caught a deer, when it had clearly died of natural causes some time ago. Another picnic ruined!
11 years have passed with no more deer encounters. This is a good thing.
Here we are in the actual mid-winter. Mid January to Mid February. Lola had a moment of a real photo opportunity on a red Chesterfield in a Bikers cafe today. She is a dog that loves both sofa’s and cafes. Her perfect life would be as the companion dog for a food critic. Lola is not a fan of mid-winter.
I was feeling a bit mid-wintery this morning. Just a bit bored of my winter clothes and wishing for sunshine. Last weekend’s glorious days were just too much of a tease for me to happily revert to the greige of this weekend. The cure was a jar of marmalade.
I have absolutely jumped the gun with this purchase. A good friend makes the best marmalade on the planet. But she is a purist and only makes it when Seville oranges are in season and available in February. Hers is dark, bitter and bursting with flavour. Only Frank Cooper gets close and on a day when the sun has failed to make an appearance I need marmalade to bring some colour to my life almost as much as Lola needs a sofa!
Cold water swimming and creativity. Where or what is the buzz?
Cold water swimming is repetitive and challenging in my chosen location. No matter what I am stuck with, a cold water dip brings clarity. Since this is about creativity I can share a very recent light-bulb moment.
I was away in Penzance with a number of people for whom the physics of medical imaging is something they could natter about endlessly.
Some of us went swimming in Mounts Bay on a dull, cold, grey day. After dipping in the sea I found a naturally occurring rock pool that was big enough and deep enough to hold a whole human .
I could gaze out to St Michaels Mount and appreciate the beauty and bleakness of a winter day. Knowing that my photographs would be lacking a little interest. My light bulb moment arrived as my core temperature dropped.
I could manipulate the image just as I would an ultrasound, X-ray, C.T or M.R.I image. And then stick the images together using a reference point. In this case the island of St Michaels mount.
Taking to the Sky, Mounts Bay.
My own home cold water swimming spot has its own island that I can use as a reference point.
Drakes Island on a dull Day
The buzz this morning was applying my Mounts Bay, medical imaging ideas to Drakes Island.
Poof!! I hear you say this is just photography. Where is the art in that?
But what is to stop me doing a water colour or many watercolours with a registering point and then photographing them and suprimposing.
An experiment for the next few days.
And that is what cold water swimming brings to creativity. A clear mind where new ideas flourish.
Visits to Art Galleries and Museums are one of my life-long pleasures. I really loved my visit to Penlee House and I am sharing the Bloomberg Connects QR code to explore the Galleries for yourselves.
This blog is more trivial than an appreciation of a really great gallery.
The artist responsible for the rainy promenade picture is Norman Garstin, his daughter Alethea was also an artist.
It was this fact that jumped out at me.
Many years ago when I was first pregnant my mum had lent me one of her guilty secret novels. Guilty secret, because she didn’t always read great or worthy books. She often read books that she described as ‘ pulpy kidney novels’.
The heroine of this fiction book was a talented artist called Alathea Heron.
I have no idea if the author deliberately chose two Cornwall based artists to create the name. Alethea Garstin and Patrick Heron.
Unusually for one of my mum’s pulpy kidney books this one was very readable.
My hormones were madly in a state of flux and I immediately thought I would call my possible foetus Alethea and that she would become a great artist. At the time I was an obstetric ultrasonographer in Brighton and I quickly realised my foetus was a boy and the name Alethea dropped out of thought and mind until this week.
By the time I was pregnant with a daughter I was living in Cornwall and despite being very aware of Cornish artists, when I chose her a Cornish name Alethea did not cross my mind.
Which led me to a very trivial ponder. Do people carry over their name choices for each pregnancy. Should I have kept the name Alethea close to my heart until I actually had a daughter or is it entirely normal to discard the unused name and choose afresh for each pregnancy.
I suspect my daughter is very grateful for my fickle mind, her actual name is much more suited to her character.
This whole trivial ponder has just cost me 75 pence with free postage! The book was published 40 years ago but Abebooks had several. I wonder if the heroine will impress me as much as she did 39 years ago, or was it just hormones?
The Penzance days are done for January 2025. There has been a lot of actual pondering while my eyes and mind could settle on a distant horizon with St Michaels Mount a geograhical and visual reminder of reality.
The trip was always about pleasure and work. There has been much talk of how to make medical images the very best they can be. Often that is about optimising many shades of grey without creating artifact and false detail.
Cornwall in winter is often a study of 50,000 shades of greige. A colour that swoops and dips between grey and beige.
I have spent a little time applying medical image physics to my photographs . Altering them to suit my needs to create a false image of a real place using real images.
I won’t bore you with the details because it really would be very boring. These three pictures were taken in the space of 5 days. The registration point was that St Michaels Mount could be seen as I took all three pictures.
By double exposing 3 times using the horizon as my common point I have created a magical realism image where murmerating starlings join two kite surfers in the skies near St Michaels Mount. Banishing the greige.
Morning para surfers at St Michael’s Mount. Not a bad way to start a week, I was wrapped up warm with hot chocolate in hand.Penzance is being very good to me today. Sunshine and warm enough to go without a coat once the sun was properly up.
Monday morning with more murmuration. Really couldn’t help myself there. Although of course that was actually Sunday night. Here is a bright morning photo from Sunday too.
Bright dawn sunshine lights up a rust stained wall at our swimming zone.
We chose an area very similar to our home zone, with ladders and handrails to ease our way in and out.
Looks can be deceiving. This was not an easy location to get in, but it is the choice of local dippers.
Yesterday was a day of wrapping up warm and enjoying the smug sensation of a sea swim achieved early and a whole day left to warm up in the sunshine.
A pub roast dinner and a day of basking and walking in winter sunshine completed Sunday.
The Rain it Raineth Every Day. Norman Garstin 1847-1926
Sometimes it feels as if this is true. William Shakespeare wrote the quote which is the title of this painting and the nearly true statement in Twelth Night. One of my favourite W.S plays.
A rainy day in Penzance. What to do?
A lot of enjoyable faffing about and dog walking in damp conditions and an afternoon trip to Penlee Gallery and Museum. Which was a wonderful welcoming place.
And here is the serendipity of live blogging.
The sun is out this morning, the Bobbers are up and the sea is exceptionally chilly.
No more arty faff. Just me and sunrise and my post swim plunge pool.
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