Another lonesome bob and a few minutes of tinkering with a phone camera and some Polaroid sunglasses and wet rocks.
Like all rocks, the rocks in our swimming zone are infinitely more colourful when they are wet and Polarised lenses enhance that effect.
This image is constructed by digitally double exposing two separate images a second apart and with some inevitable movement both me and an incoming tide.
What it demonstrates is exactly why this area is called Firestone Bay.
Lonesome Bobbing is not my normal way of sea swimming, but it is not unheard of. Bobbing with the Bobbers is the normal way of things for safety and sociability. Is it even bobbing if you are alone?
I wasn’t even truly alone on my lonesome bob. Two neighbours and a dog, were there before me. And thank goodness they were because in an attempt to capture a pet portrait I dumped my keys in the sea.
I was so busy doing the constricted-undressing- in -public towel wrestle I didn’t even notice their loss. When Tim noticed the brightly coloured key cutters bands and rushed in to rescue them. The photo is a fake, post-processing tweakery. They dried out quickly on a warm step,retrieving them I noticed the vivid colours ,created by bright, morning- sun and my sunglasses at a really low angle, close to the incoming tide. I popped my sunglasses over the lens of my phone camera.
Blurry but interesting, this impromptu image needed a little tweakery, but I might make a little polaroid filter for my phone camera for these brightly sunshiny days.
Lonesome bobbing, thankfully not truly lonesome.
I thought I had the measure of yesterday. About 5 hours of admin for two organisations that I work for. Some dog walking and some domestica. Serendipity however made those things happen alongside some lovely pondering. My early dog walk gave me a rare moment on the most popular beach nearby. For once it was deserted and I could get one of my ‘bad’ photographs to play around with later in the day.
The sun was up, the dogs were happy and I could perch on the drying rocks contemplating my day. But I was not alone, just at the point where the high tide had turned last night, there was a gathering of memorial flowers and some ashes. Someone else had not quite left the beach.
Just a small bunch of yellow roses signifying all the love and sorrow of an unknown person’s death. Somewhere in this Hybrid Printmaking image, of a spring morning at the tidal pool, these flowers create a little bit of the texture that makes this picture what it is.
I woke up this morning with a busy head. The sort of busy head that requires a list to be written for the rest of the month. The list is almost more important than the blog. But the blog is my calming moment.
But not so this morning. Jetpack my blog hosts have upgraded my phone App overnight and nothing is where it should be. This development will take a little getting used to! This blog will be brief because that list really does need attending to.
I also woke up wondering if this was a ‘bad’ photography day. Which I think it was. Aurally the day was fabulous. Mournful fog horns and distant church bells. The 21st Century was wiped from view. I wanted to create digital images that were truthful to the location but that still made the mist the story.
Brief and to the point this morning. I’m sure I will get the hang of this brave, new Jetpack world, but today is a day of lists and ticking things off.
Why mist? The Exhibition I am entering in the summer is about exploring the Tamar Valley with the Artist, Turner in mind. He and mist are forever entwined in my humble opinion. Mist and the Tamar Valley are also fairly frequent companions
But work for that exhibition doesn’t even make today’s list.
Silhouettes and sunset. 5 people are filming and recording an interview on the tidal pool slipway as the sun sets.
I’ve been lucky this week, my late afternoon walks have rewarded me with vivid colours, although these are enhanced, and dry conditions. The morning walks much less predictable. My feet have been quite giddy. Two outings without socks and boots. The omens for the end of winter are good, in my humble opinion.
I feel that any moment the need for thermal underwear will arrive and that soon after that the winter coats will be sent to the cleaners and then stored in the roof. Not exactly picturesque signs of a winter retreating but for a winterphobe like me every step towards Spring is a step in the right direction.
14th of February has been saturated with the colour red and messages of love for centuries. Specifically romantic love. I have always felt a bit uncomfortable with the whole day, specifically anonymous cards which always seemed a bit stalkerish. But recent years have seen the day gently eased from the grip of heteronormative love/lust to a day celebrating Love in many forms.
John Betjeman, a British poet, invented the word Topophilia. The love of place.
I am a Topophile. There are lists in my head of places that I love , places where I have a sense of connection and wonderment about.
The two pictures in this blog are either end of a short lane near where I live. They have visual beauty and the mystery of history coupled with an unpredictability because their appearance is always shaped by tides, weather and human activity.
Love is love on Valentines Day.
What are you most proud of in your life?
I think pride is a very hard thing to define and also quite transitory. Sometimes a cup of tea is so perfect that there is a moment of self-congratulation. Is that pride?
If I had clambered onto these rocks yesterday as these men did I would have been very proud. These rocks are covered in razor-sharp barnacles, climbing up is likely to have been very perilous for them and yet it looks almost effortless.
Pride in myself is not really in my skillset. Like most parents I am proud of my children, of course, they are wonderful people. But I can be proud of the most random of things, an observed kindness, wonderful acting, a beautiful garden.
I like my version of pride, it is easy to manage. The simple things that make life more gorgeous are worthy of gentle, transitory pride and I have loads of it to spare.
Sun rising on a different political landscape in the United Kingdom. Yesterday no political broadcasting was allowed until 10pm. Obviously broadcasters had to find a way to swerve those regulations #dogsatpollingstations on X and Instagram featured pictures of dogs waiting patiently for their humans to make their votes . All news programmes featured images of pets patiently waiting. Hugo and Lola were happy to pose. Not least because under normal circumstances they are not permitted in this churchyard.
Hugo even kept me company in my overnight vigil to watch the rolling coverage of our election results.
We are both a little tattered round the edges this morning. I bet he wishes he loved coffee.
What are your daily habits?
Anyone who reads my blogs know that blogging is one of my reliable daily habits. Along with dog walking and tea and coffee drinking.
A weekly or often more frequent habit is swimming in cool or cold water. Even at its peak the sea water nearby rarely reaches 16 degrees and International wisdom would suggest that swimming in those temperatures is not advised. Our coldest ever swim was 6 degrees one winter day.
After a week of balmy swimming in Greece, I had my first cooler dip this morning. Initially it was a bit of a shock,but I quickly acclimatised and enjoyed the fizz and tingle of a colder swim. I love how it resets me. The cold swimming and the company of my bobbing friends sets the day up with positivity.
In Britain we are approaching a General Election. I don’t feel this blog is my place to bang on about politics but this morning a fabulous apolitical quote jumped at me, so here it is . Typed across Firestone Bay. A place where it is my habit to regain positive vibes on a daily basis.
Privacy and a woman who ponders daily online might not seem a natural pairing.But only a very small percentage of my ponderables or imponderables are blogged about. People don’t feature much in pictures. Today is an exception This blob on a beach is our middle grandchild enjoying a soft sandy beach close to home. This is a week of very high tides, something that can be a flood worry. The other side of the story is very low, low-tides which is how we found the soft sandy beach, way beyond our usual rocky shore. The sand was so very soft and clean she immediately ducked down to run the damp sand through her fingers and became a living version of drone filming , a technique that has become so popular as infill in film and television story telling. Artists and designers also love a flat-lay image. It is probably not going to catch on as a portraiture fashion but I rather like the image. Low tide near home is not my usual thing, the rocks are slippy and slimy but the area of the beach that only gets seen infrequently seems much cleaner and kinder to my ankles. I may become a low-tide wanderer. A reliable habit, of more value than being a cranio- caudal portraitist.
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