Open Studio event

Posted on June 4, 2016 by Rachael

It’s been a while since my last blog post, but I haven’t been idle. Among the many projects on the go, this coming week sees me participating in Surrey Artists’ Open Studios for the first time. Together with my friend, Jenifer Bunnett, I am opening my studio to the public. The Open Studios project offers the public access to artists and makers by visiting studios, meeting artists and makers, browsing completed works and learning about their method and work in progress. Our first open day is tomorrow, Sunday 5th June, and our studio is ready and waiting. In addition to sharing our printed work, there’s a slideshow of other photographs, a demonstration of the on-camera filter system we both use, and drinks and homemade cake served in my courtyard garden (weather permitting!). If you are able to make it, you will be very welcome. Dates and opening times in the flyer below.

SAOS flyer

About Waves and Imogen

Posted on February 29, 2016 by Rachael

Poseidon Rising

Last month I published a collection of ‘wave monsters’. I have been down to the South Coast almost every week all through the winter, working mainly on fast-shutter captures of high seas. That’s a round trip of 140 miles at least once every week, usually getting down there in time for dawn. Often, my efforts have been rewarded with poor light or even driving rain. But it has still been one of my most exhilarating projects so far. Finally, my patience paid off, when Storm Imogen hit the coast earlier this month. Epic surf met great light, and I was one very happy, wave-obsessed photographer. So, I hope you will forgive me for one more surf-orientated post. If, like me, you are addicted to seascapes, there are more on my website.

Raptor

Leviathan

Thetis

Panther

Kraken

Methuselah

Landfall

Wave monsters

Posted on January 16, 2016 by Rachael

Curly

This winter, I have managed to make it down to the coast at least once almost every week. We’ve had some big seas and interesting light, but not at the same time. Until this Tuesday, that is…

Horned monster

High tide and winds whipped up the surf, creating wave monsters backlit by rays bursting through low clouds.

No hands!

What a thrill! One of the best photoshoots I’ve had for a while.

White horses

Like most Brits, I am half-obsessed with the sea; if I could only photograph one thing for the rest of my life, it would be the sea.

Frills

I live in a landlocked county but, happily, the coast is an easy day trip away. Back again next Tuesday!

Giant

For the curious, these images were all taken in Newhaven, East Sussex with a shutter speed of 1/800 to freeze the waves.

Phantom

I hope you enjoy meeting my wave creatures.

Whip

“My soul is full of longing
for the secret of the sea,
and the heart of the great ocean
sends a thrilling pulse through me.”

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A new year, yet another new start

Posted on January 4, 2016 by Rachael

When I first started this blog, back in April 2012, I had a particular reason. An injury meant that I was not able to get out with my camera to make new images. Blogging gave me an outlet for my frustrated creativity and a new lease of life for images I had already taken. Nearly 4 years later and the injury is still troublesome, but I have learned to live with it. The brain is amazingly good at learning to live with things, even pain. The problem no longer stops me doing what I want and what I want hasn’t changed – I still love (am obsessed with) photography.

‘Five’: Venice

As I slowly returned to making new images, this blog became more and more sporadic. In the end, I will always choose to go out with my camera rather than spend time at the computer. That is not going to change, but I would like to see if I can combine the two more effectively. So I have signed up for Blogging 101 with good intentions.

Still morning, Hamnøya, Lofoten Islands

Perhaps paradoxically, since starting a photography blog, I have obtained a Masters Degree in Victorian Literature and Art from the University of London. Yes, I like to read and write! Accordingly, I never intended Focused Moments to be a picture-of-the-day kind of blog. (Nothing wrong with those, by the way, just not what I intended.) Looking back at the early days, I see the posts that were most enthusiastically received usually had plenty of words as well as images. A good example is my article about the relationship between photography and mindfulness. So I plan to make time for more posts like that. I am also interested in exploring how the literature I enjoy and have studied may influence the images I make.

Tempest

Standard blogging advice is to write about oneself, to ‘make it personal’. I am not so sure about that. I am quite a private person and this is a public blog. The images will always be the heart of Focused Moments; I hope they are more interesting than me! Nonetheless, there are aspects of my photographic life that might merit more exploration. I enjoy exhibiting and have already written about some of my experiences in that area. Some readers want to know more about other things, my role as a camera club judge, for example, or what it is like to lead photography workshops. More on those, and other ‘stories’, will follow.

Frost on the Wey

2015 was an epic year for me photographically. I hope that 2016 will be equally exciting and, if any of you share at least part of the adventure with me here at Focused Moments, this blog will have succeeded. It is up to me, now, to make it worth your time.

Aurora over Skagsanden

Chalk and sea

Posted on December 20, 2015 by Rachael

One of the clients on my most recent workshop pointed out to me that it has been a long time since the last post on this blog! Shame on me! So here’s a little summary of what I have been up to in the last few weeks, and some of my latest images.

Priory Bay, Isle of Wight

In my last post, I shared some pictures from Birling Gap, and I have been back there, as well as other locations nearby, a few times since. My eye seems to be particularly drawn to chalk cliffs at the moment. Having been brought up on the south coast, they are very much the landscape of my youth and I now enjoy rediscovering them with my camera.

Seven sisters at dusk

While beguilingly beautiful, the South coast can also be dangerous, as I was reminded on one of my recent trips to Birling Gap. I was, fortunately, standing out on the sand at low tide, when a huge chunk of the cliff came crashing down. No-one was hurt although there was a group of very shocked foreign students on the beach at the time. It was a sobering sight and, from now on, I will be more careful about heeding warnings not to stray too close to the cliffs.

Seven Sisters

Last week, I spent a few days in another chalky place, the Isle of Wight. Although the weather was trying, to say the least, there were some moments of good light and, let’s face it, it’s hard not to get a picture when at the coast. It will take me a while to get through all the images I took, but here are a few ‘tasters’.

Pink glow at Freshwater Bay, Isle of Wight

In other news, I was delighted to find out that one of my pictures has been selected for inclusion in the Outdoor Photographer of the Year book. It is a year since I first submitted work to Outdoor Photography Magazine, easily my favourite photography publication. Since then, the magazine has published several of my images and commissioned a short article. I have been bowled over by the enthusiasm and support I have received from them.

Fistral beach – selected for Outdoor Photographer of the Year book

Regular readers will already be familiar with the work of my friend Jenifer Bunnett, who continues to be a great pal and enthusiastic companion on our photographic expeditions. If you haven’t seen her work before, you can access her website by clicking on her name above. I have also recently enjoyed outings with two other photographers, Sarah Medway and Lorraine Heaysmon, both committed landscape shooters with impressive portfolios. Photography can be a solitary activity and, while I really enjoy that solitude, it is also nice sometimes to share the adventure.

A capture of Jen capturing a seascape on the Isle of Wight

My spare time (what spare time?) continues to be filled with judging at Surrey camera clubs and giving talks. I recently presented a new talk, ‘From Canal to Coast’ to Guildford Photographic Society which was well-received. As a judge I am obliged also to compete in camera club competitions, which is fair enough when you think about it. So, last month, I was pleased to win the Best Image trophy at Surrey Photographic Association’s 2015 Open Print competition. I have shared the picture here before but I think a second airing is justified.

seascape

Of course, this is also the main season for f11 Workshops and we have had some great days out with our clients. Our last workshop of the year was in West Sussex and, although the weather seemed determined to be gloomy, our persistence was eventually rewarded with some really special light. My business partner, Tony Antoniou, and I will not make our own images when leading workshops, so I have no picture to share, but I have seen a few of our clients’ shots and am glad to say they did it justice.

The location of our workshop, but taken on another occasion.

Finally, Jen and I have had a couple of productive meetings about our pro bono project with the Basingstoke Canal and there will hopefully be some big developments on that front in the near future.

Phew! What a busy few weeks it has been! What has been your best photographic adventure so far this winter? Feel free to share in the comments below. 🙂

Birling Gap

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Rachael

I have spent the last two Tuesdays at Birling Gap in the South Downs National Park.

Although I love discovering new locations, there is also a joy in revisiting known places.The light is always different, the seasons and weather change and, at the coast there is always the added variable of tides. The first Tuesday, a low tide revealed sand that reflected the cliffs and interesting sky:On my return this week, the tide was shallow, never uncovering the sand. This created a very different mood:
I grew up in this part of the country so photography trips to the South Downs National Park always feel like a coming home.
The chalk-based landscape is really quite special and, at Birling Gap, I love the way grey rocks sit on the chalky base below the white cliffs…
…and the chalk makes the sea bright against a stormy sky. I am heading down to Sussex again tomorrow. As always, I hope for interesting light. But I know that I will enjoy this beautiful place no matter what the weather brings.

Focused Moments, the exhibition

Posted on October 14, 2015 by Rachael

It is a year and 5 exhibitions since I decided to shift the focus of my photography towards the fine art side of things. This time last year I was exhibiting a series of Surrey landscapes in a joint exhibition with my shooting buddy, Jenifer Bunnett, at The Lightbox in Woking. Then, in March, we showed some of the images from that exhibition alongside new local landscapes in ‘A Certain Slant of Light’ at the Guildford Institute. In August, I hung a panel in ‘Light on the Land’ at the Mall Galleries, and in September, five black and white pictures in ‘Mistresses of Light’ at the Oxo Tower. It was a lot of work, and the learning curve was steep, but it was also great fun. However, the climax of all this has to be my first solo exhibition, ‘Focused Moments’, currently showing at Arté Gallery in Weybridge.

I needed a lot of images for this exhibition and I wanted to make sure I could offer something for all budgets and also remain true to my own style. I must have spent a small fortune (I daren’t add it up!) trying different papers and framing options. In the end, I went with three fine art papers in simple black frames and a few prints on aluminium. I also decided to have two special books made for visitors to browse. On the advice of the gallery owners, I have made these available as limited editions, and they seem to be going down well.

There is something really rewarding about filling a gallery. I have hung 60 images of which most are new pictures, taken in the last year, but there are some going back as far as 2009. When planning the hanging in this intriguing space with several different surfaces, it helped to create groups of images that worked together and then it was relatively easy to decide the order of the groups so that the exhibition flowed. I say easy – it still took us two full days to finish hanging the show!

Of course, there had to be a party. Many thanks to local lettings agents, Martin & Wheatley for sponsoring the opening. In a bout of last-minute nerves, I worried that no-one would come, but I needn’t have fretted. In the end, the event was buzzing, and we sold seven prints and two of my limited edition books during the course of the evening. Phew!

I think it’s important to be present at an exhibition as much as possible; people like to be able to talk to the exhibitor. I have had many interesting conversations at the gallery this week, some with old friends and some with new. And today I got to show my Dad around, which was really special.

If you have ever thought of trying something like this, I heartily recommend it. The experience has been amazing – exhausting, but amazing. It’s nice to sell, but even if I had sold nothing, it would still have been worth it. Many thanks to Mike and Sally at Arté Gallery for allowing me to bring my work into their lovely space, to my friend, Sam, for all the fetching, carrying and coffee and to my daughter, Maggie, for her excellent work as server and photographer at the private view. I couldn’t have done it without you!

Dungeness, finally

Posted on August 15, 2015 by Rachael

16mm, f/11, 1/6, ISo 100, .9 soft grad.

Having holidayed in the mountains this year, I have been feeling in need of a coast ‘fix’. So, on Thursday, Jen and I made an evening dash south. We chose Dungeness, honeypot location for landscape photographers. Having lived in the south of England for most of my life, I am not sure how I managed never to go to Dungeness before!

102mm, f/7.1, 1.6″, ISO 400

The forecast predicted changeable weather and dramatic skies so we had high expectations. We should have known better. There was a small amount of texture in the sky on our arrival and the promise of some lightning, but in the end the rain washed in and the sky smoothed over.

200mm, f/8, 0.8″, ISO 400

I took all the usual shots anyway. The scene below is particularly oft-captured, as I know only too well from my evenings judging at camera clubs. But, hey, I’d never been there before! Had to take The Shot. Would have been rude not to.

58mm, f/11, 2″, ISO 100

When the sky gets boring, the long lens comes out for some detail work. Dungeness certainly offers lots of potential there. It’s not my usual style but I enjoyed capturing some images of the netting against the hut.

200mm, f/11, 1.6″, ISO 400

I am thinking these two might make a nice diptych.

200mm, f/11, 5″, ISO 100

I liked the texture of the partially burnt hut wall.

200mm, f/7.1, 3.2″, ISO 400

I can finally see what everyone else has known for ages: Dungeness is cool – weird, but definitely cool. I will be back.

blend of 5 exposures, 200mm, f/2.8, 1/4, ISO 800

Mountain weather

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Rachael

Last month we were in the Canadian Rockies, one of my very favourite places. While we were in Banff we had changeable weather. This was great news for the locals as it helped fight several serious wildfires. It was also great news for me for a less serious reason, as it added drama to my photos. They say that if you don’t like the weather in the Rockies you only need wait 15 minutes and it will have changed. Makes sense to me.

Of panoramas and exhibitions

Posted on August 5, 2015 by Rachael

Still morning, Hamnøya, Lofoten Islands

It’s been a very busy time since my last post; I can hardly believe it’s only a month! We have just returned from two weeks in the Canadian Rockies, one of my very favourite parts of the world. In the meantime, the image above, from my trip to Norway in March, won the panoramics competition at Outdoor Photography magazine and was published in the latest issue, which was waiting for me on my doormat when we got home. Outdoor Photography is my favourite photography magazine and the only one I always read, so it was extra special to find one of my images with a full page all to itself. (For those who like to know, the image is a stitch of 7 x 3 bracketed exposures, HDR and stitch achieved in Lightroom 6.)

Winner in Outdoor Photography magazine

The timing was particularly nice as that picture is also the main image in a panel I am exhibiting at the Mall Galleries in London this week. The other two images appear below. I hung my panel on Saturday and the private view party was that evening. Much fun was had by all; I caught up with some friends and met lots of new ones and the party continued on afterwards in Covent Garden.

‘Five’: Venice

The exhibition is called Light and Land on the Mall and it is open until Monday 10th August. I am heading up there again tomorrow to meet some more friends and possibly on Friday as well. If you are thinking of visiting, let me know – maybe we can meet for a coffee.

‘Formation’: Winchelsea

Although the exhibition is hung now, the work continues as I am participating in another exhibition next month, again in London, at the Oxo Tower, with a larger panel of different images (black and white this time). Then, in October, I have my first solo exhibition, at Arté Gallery, kindly sponsored by Martin & Wheatley. More anon.

A well-earned glass of wine at the Private View party. Phew!

Focused Moments

A professional photographer's life

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