On the road again

Long trip. Late at night. Torrential rain. Roadworks. And just to cap it all, suicidal French drivers. Time to be afraid. Very afraid. It's the best way to stay alive under these circumstances.

Autumn and still more Strawberries

Yes I know, these aren't strawberries, but when you've seen one you've seen them all, and you saw one last time. But we did just have another few this morning, and very nice they were too. But instead of another photo, here's a shot of the first beech leaves turning taken in the luvverly sunshine.

Global warming?

We picked this in the garden yesterday. October 7th at 750m altitude. It looks good enough to eat. Which is of course what we've done.

A rainy day in Swansea

That's all I have to say about that.

Sunflowers on canvas

I ordered a few sheest of different fabrics for inkjet printing and have been trying them out. Getting the printer to take up the thick sheet is a challenge, but it sort of gets there with a very subtle bit of encouragement. Choosing the print setting is hard because there isn't one for the kind of stuff I'm using, so I'm having to test a few to see what works best.

The idea is to be able to add other media to the sheets, like this first one is canvas, and I'll be adding fabric and acrylic paint to that.

The next experiment is getting the right adhesives ...

On the tarmac again

Off to Swansea this afternoon for a couple of days, back here late Friday and (probably) off to the southeast of England next week. I expect to clock up 14 or 15 hours on the tarmac this week. I'm thinking of getting my own plane. Smaller of course.

Sunflowers and window frames

As some of you will probably know, I've been working on a photography/multi-media project this year. So far the ingredients are sunflowers and window frames. The central idea is about how framing affects what we see, and our choices in that. As I've been looking at framing in its widest sense, I've been wandering off into issues of preservation and decay, aging and the cycle of life. But I think I'm now seeing all that as a different project. Maybe the sunflowers will feature there too, I don't know yet.

Anyway, acquiring and experimenting with the window frames was the first stage, and I think I'm pretty happy with all that. I'm still photographing sunflowers, even though they're looking pretty old and tired now. My current stage is experimenting with different printing techniques and materials for the image, and the paint and other media I'm using too. I've found some A4 sheets that go through my inkjet printer that are made of a whole range of materials: canvass, silk, linen and cotton. And I'll be sending some images to be laboratory printed onto canvass too.

The plan is to be able to show some of this work to the local town councillor for culture and see if I can get a date for an exhibition in the art gallery some time next year.

Fishing and wood

We caught some little fish. Well, they did. I was just enjoying the spectacle and the sunny afternoon alongside the Allier.


And, as I said, the wood's in ...


There's something primieval about a pile of wood and an open fire.