PhotocatsEyes

Frosty hills and domes...

The weatherman predicted frost, and we got it. Yesterday morning, all was frozen, little clouds of air came out of the sheep grazing as if nothing was going on.
This was going to be a beautiful day. I love those sunny days with frost. Crisp air, you know the bugs are down, every breath you take is filled with the good stuff.
In fact, it has frozen again last night, so I will be on my way to Embsay a bit later, see if I can find more frosty things.

I had a family shoot planned, high upon the Moors, and it was exactly the kind of weather we needed. Crisp, clear and cold. But dry... On my way to base I could admire the sun on trees and fences. I was driving towards the light.
Birstwith too was frosty, and I could not resist putting the car on the side, and snap some more.

Those are the shots you have to take as you see it, as five minutes later, the sun can have melted the ice. Fast action is required.

Queen Anne’s lace is always pretty, in summer, with their white blooms, in fall, when they turn brown, and on frosty mornings, when they become even more lacy-er then in summer. The walls all over the place give a nice black backdrop for the white flowers.

We are lucky, it is one of the few days in England that it is completely wind still. No breeze to rattle the frozen branches. Later on the day the absence of wind will render the Thuscross reservoir into a perfect mirror for the surrounding landscape.
I meet up with my family on the base, the fire trucks are parked, and I can clearly see the hot air coming out of one of the boiler exhausts. Makes for another neat image. No time to move the cones, as I am parked where I should not be parked, and they do not totally like camera’s on base...

Therefore, the cones stay in, and ruin the pic but hey, I have fond memories of clouds coming out of the ground.
I am meeting up with mom Debbie, dad Andrew, daughters Eden and Bethany and the Rabbit. Stumpy. Hmmm, this will be a first. Never before did I family shoots with rabbits. Let’s face it: this rabbit IS a part of the family. And it is well behaved, poses nicely when we ask it, it is having the trip of its life.

It gets handed over from lap to lap when we change places and poses, a bit tricky to handle, it is used to being cuddled, but this is a total new environment for the small animal. Maybe it senses that it is visiting the lands of his forefathers. Moors, heather and grass, with zillions of wild rabbits running in and out.

He gets to sit on a rock, but immediately is looking to get off it, to go and run. The last thing we want is a rabbit lost, so we keep a close eye on it.

The family wanted a picture of them in a phone booth, with a view on the base. No problem, except for the fact that there is no phone booth to snap with the domes as background. We will have to fiddle...
Our last stop for the day is Thuscross Reservoir, in between the base and Skipton, and what a day.
The water is not moving, it gives us perfect reflections, most of the times, the surface is rippling. The high moors are rarely without wind.

The couple of houses on the hill can be seen, double vision in nature.

More people out and about. Walkers enjoy the peaceful day and armed with army maps, cross the small paths through the woods and along the reservoirs.
A couple of those around Harrogate. Catching the melting water coming down from the Moors in spring, and providing Leeds and other cities around with fresh drinking water.

Once in a while, they do open the dam and let the water flow, time for the cano clubs to come to Thuscross and have their small boats rocked on the ritm of the running water.

We are on the top ahead of the dam, and all of a sudden spot a whole serie of mini’s, together on a mini-drive. They picked a nice day to do so. The girls count more then ten I believe. Just in time, some distraction as the little one got tired of the shoot. She wanted to go home and be warm inside. Could not blame her, it was chilly...

Down at the foot of the dam, more walkers taking hikes. The sun is throwing long shadows.
We split up, we do have enough pictures, time to go home and see what I got. Debbie has baking to do, she is a kitchen princess in the cooking field, I wonder what marvellous things she will crank out now.
I take the back road back to base, have errands to do. And see the domes lit by the winter sun, a whole bunch of them.

The cold hangs like a thick blanket over the landscape. The sun is lower in the sky, the shadows get a lot longer, and in spots where the sun does not reach, it is really cold.

With on the right side the wind farm they put up along the A59 from Harrogate to Skipton. 8 Of those huge wind catchers, delivering energy to those who need it.

You have to shoot them from afar, they don’t like it when people are snapping just outside the fence. I am high up, on the road to Greenhow, and get a frosty view of them.
Some sheep are having lunch, I interrupt their peaceful day so far.

They get extra hay now as the grass in the meadows has lost a lot of its feeding power, they still graze but would not get enough food if they would not get extra.
Busy times for farmers. Touring the Dales with hay for their sheep, often in different locations.

Back to Birstwith, via Dacre Lane, it will soon start to get darker. Short days are here, 20 days more to go and the days will start to get longer again.
And now the end result of our shoot: the domes in the background and the family in a phone boot. The wonders of a computer and some photoshopping...

It was a nice afternoon, hope the Knights loved it as much as I did...
Off to Embsay now, see if they have some new things in stock...

Talk later!

Living like God in France...

Is the saying in Belgium. It means living like a king, and a king in Normandy. Normandy is the land of honey, of the rich butter. But I did find some more pics of Saint Riquier browsing through old photographs. We were cruising Picardy and Normandy in May of 2006. Kind of nice to relive our trip partially through images shot two years ago. Photographs create memories and make sure that we can relive our memories.
And photography is a learning curve. Every time I discover something new, it shows in the photographs. All the pics I took on that trip have a darker edge on top, I just learned about a neutral density filter, to block the mean light in grey skies.

And that whole trip is more or less unusable for stock because they again are technically not good enough. DOH... Can’t get them to 49 MB.
When making a small photograph bigger, you can do it by adding little pixels in between the existing ones. A pixel is a tiny square, it is the stuff digital photographs are made off. If you would look at a photograph through a microscope, all you would see is colored squares. It goes without saying that if you add non existing pixels in between, at a certain point you will start to see it. Which is why most of my Normandy trip has to be hidden for mankind for the rest of my life...
If the agency would just accept them in the size they are now, they are fine, can easily be printed out to poster format and still look crisp and clear, they just go out from an imaginary point of view that every goddamn photo has to have the potential to hang on a billboard in Times Square.
It’s a hard world for documentary photographers. Where the context and atmosphere of the photograph can make a stronger statement then quality.
I know, lame excuses. I need to get a lot better in holding the camera still and check exposures - and leave filters off...

Not a very strong statement in the above picture, the tower of the grand church in Saint Riquier, the filter is overdone, and the perspective is off, but I can show you all nonetheless what a magnificent building it is. And how many carvings there are.

The restoration crew has modern tools now, pressured chisels, without electricity no work gets done. Not so in 1500 and a bit when they had to do the whole thing without electricity. Pure and simple Manpower...

What stuck to my mind from this trip was the fact that all the villages and small towns in Picardy and Normandy seem to be yellow.
The overall impression is that all colors are subdued, and a grey-ish yellow is the upper tone.

The color comes from little accents, store fronts with a colourful banner, a no parking sign, and of course the flowers.
All the color you could need and want is in baskets with flowers hanging around and spreading joy on sunny days.
The subdued colors were maybe induced by the grey light we travelled in, no shiny blue skies that brightens the whole world up.

And we are after all travelling through the battlefields of two wars. Grey and yellow match the millions of little souls floating around here, they came from all over the world. Africa, America, Australia, little souls that never made it back to where they came from.

Littered over the place we find military cemeteries, with thousands of small white stones. Neatly in a row. The last resting place for brothers, fathers and sons.

We only visit one, but there are a hell of a lot more. With names that mean nothing to us, but another family grieved...

E.J. Parker was 18 when he died in the fields in France. A kid... Look at 18 year old teens now, sipping coffee and text messaging in Starbucks, how would they have coped with what 18 year old guys in 1916 had to deal with?

Leaving the cemetery and going back to the car, we notice again that the French country side is beautiful.

It is how I imagined it in my days of reading books in the book store my parents had. I read about cows in meadows, in the shadow of a french mansion, and fruit trees blooming. Picnics in orchards. It’s a place where I could be happy.

The pansies scream it out, be happy. Lives go fast, enjoy every minute of it.

I agree with them. Life is too short to spend a lot of time worrying about things not to worry about.

A bit more French bits tomorrow... while I slowly start gathering things up to take to Belgium with me next week. Trying to make room and find a time that my 3 boys can come together for a dinner. They all have their lives now, some arranging is needed to get them at the same place at the same time. And my visits are always too short.

Allrightie, friday, a new weekend, frost outside, the meadow has a frosty white green layer icing on top.
And a family shoot tomorrow, in Nidderdale.
Life is good...

Turkey day? Not here...

It’s Turkey day. As in Thanksgiving. For the Americans. One of the days that we should put up in Europe I find. Days to be thankful, for what we got and have...
It is a nice idea. Coming together, all nicely dressed up, having tons of food, and just be together, laughing and having fun. And be thankful for the people who invited us, to share there thank day. It’s big in the States. One of the few days in the year where the whole country is off work, all is quiet, after all participants took the right plane and got to the other side of the country. A mass movement for a day of peace in the hearts.
No peace here, instead, I am frantically going through old photographs, checking which ones to use for Alamy, the stock agency where we can put our pics and try to sell them.

Today I am thankful and chuffed because I made my first sale... not huge for humanity, but huge for me. A photograph I took last year in Alamagordo, when the Chamberlains joined us on a trip to White Sands. Alamagordo is a tiny town in New Mexico, with lots of old vintage styled ad signs. I snapped some of them, and see, now it will be in a book, 1/8 of a page - tiny picture - but who knows, school kids might get a view of a small part of New Mexico.
Having photographs to put up to Alamy is no problem. I have thousands and thousands. The thing is that they have to be technically good. Which means that only 1/10 of my archives is good enough... The files have to be huge (49MB) and they have to be noise free and sharp. To get the pics noise free you have to expose them correctly, a field that I lack in at times. Under exposure is noise. It’s a fact! The better you know the basic photography rules, the more chance if your camera can deliver the big files, that you get accepted for Alamy. And it’s a steep learning curve...

I was browsing through folders with our trip to Normandy in 2006, and do have what I call some “interesting” shots. The North of France as it is.
A former hotel now a home, grass growing on the side, as the people inside can’t be bothered with taking it down. That would be me... Who cares if some weeds grow on the side of the house? It’s environmental acceptable... Some people I know would tackle it with salt water and brush, not me, nope... I loved how the pale blue on the building spoke. A tender image.

On the other side of that crossing, the Cafe Tabac de la Gare. Freely translated Station Tobacco... Looks like a lot of buildings in the North of France, on the edge not of decay, but “more or less on the edge of neglect”. Charming really...
We had a great lunch in there, they have a granny ruling the kitchen, and you can go in and have a seat at a table with a creeking chair and a plastic table cloth, but the food... Man, the food was to die for!

After lunch we drove on and landed in Saint Riquier. A silent town, lost in time, where life goes at a steady pace. You can see it is the 21 century when you look at the parked cars. The houses tell a story of hundreds of years.

Saint Riquier lies on the road to Abbeville, on our way to Normandy. We stopped to have a look at the gorgeous cathedral they have.
Sleepy village, yes, but they have the most splendid piece of architecture, matching Westminster Abbey and York Minster.

They are in the process of restore the church to its former glory, it is pretty miraculous that it survived both WWI and WWII. This whole area
was just around the corner of the front lines, amazing that it got not shelled flat. Saint Riquier lies in the Somme area, and raging war scenes played out.

Mr Wonderful and myself stare in awe... The scaffolding is in the way, but that too is real life. Can’t restore the thing without having scaffolding around it.
Who carved the faces and clothes? Where did the medieval people find the inspiration and time to go stone carving with results that we still see today?

We have to consider that they only had primitive tools compared to what they have in Homebase today... Patience must have been their middle name...

The windows have a complicated system of shutters that fold up and down. Some of our modern architects could learn from those ancient sites.
In french the church is called ‘l“Abbatiale”. The carvings show the rich Gothic style.

The Abbey next to the church talks the same language. It has been built to last. Forever... if man does not destroy it first.
The metal anchors keep the walls up and straight. Whoever thought of it must have known how to do it... Would the anchors be the results of monks mind games?
Could be... Only monks were educated and knew how to read and write. While it was probably carved and built by illeterate lay men, somebody had to draw up the plans and numbers.

We take a short stroll in the rest of the town, and still manage to miss a house where Napoleon Bonaparte used to stay, but we see other beautiful trinkets.
The “Boucherie”, the butcher. Wood work painted in ox red.

A small fortified tower in the market square... Part of UNESCO, world heritage sites. Dating from 1528. A four story high building with a prison and a 17th century clock in the small clock tower. A bit sad that I have to get 50 to see all that beauty. And I lived in Belgium for so long, I could easily have visited those forgotten towns, but had no idea they existed...

I could have known about it as they have a huge rooster statue in the middle of the town square, proudly calling out to strangers visiting.

Way too soon Mr Wonderful wants to drive on, I could have stayed another couple of hours, but then I would never get anywhere. I have it on my to do list before I die, to go back to Saint Riquier, and see all the other sites in the surroundings...

Last photograph for today was a chef cooking in an Honfleur Restaurant. He saw me and my camera and came out and posed. Too funny.
If anybody would know him, send me a note so I can send him his pictures... Honfleur is not that big, so there is someone out there who must know him.

And those are all the things that make my archiving of photographs such a long lasting task, as all the memories come back while looking at the photographs, and soon I decide that I need to write about it on my blog... I can blog till the end of 2050 if I want... grin

Some more France pics tomorrow, same time, same place...

The base contest: hmmm, not good enough!

As you might know, every year we have a base contest. Where we take photographs that make a link between Americans and Brits, to accentuate the fact that we live overseas in one of the nicest area’s of England, as a bunch of americans...
I should in fact not enter contests, as I am a terrible looser. If I don’t get first price, I immediately sink back in old nunnery feelings, meaning that I sink back in bad childhood memories of nuns pestering me big time. I was never good enough. And a lost contest brings back the not good enough part of my upbringing.

I thought I had a good collection, with lots of bits of typical English stuff. There is rain for instance. And fog. The calendar tells us that summer has been here, except where did it stay? Not in North Yorkshire... We saw lots of rain and fog. A cottage is pretty british too, and the donkey’s. The cygnets are so cute that they HAVE to win...
My wellies shot and the hay balls each got a third price in different categories, none of the others got mentioned. Darn it... I am such an horrible looser. They should forbid me to enter contests all together.

As usual, the lovely Angela Marquis had set it all up, put up with all of us sending in pics too late, a hectic job to make it all fit into the right paths, inviting the right judges, sending out invitations to possible winners.
And it is fun to sit and have a chat with other photographers or wannabees, and talk photo ops in North Yorkshire. Plenty of those. Every year I spend a couple of days frantically go through folders as I know that perfect photograph, I just need to find it. In February I start shooting for the base contest in september, except, by the time we have to send in our picks, I have forgotten what I took and that it was for the base contest. I do shoot 20.000 pics a year in general, so you can see why frantic is the correct word.

A good thing about the award ceremony is the cake. They do sell those fabulous cakes on base, the Best in Show gets the first cut, and with a nice cup of coffee, things are set in good order. I bring home a box of super chocolates, and a can of real hot chocolate, the powder format, to make the real thing. On the stove top, with milk. Yummm...

The winners go on a panel, for everyone to go and see, and we get displayed down Ops for a couple of weeks. Nice!
Next time more luck, I need better shots...

After the ceremony I had a quick dash to the commissary for some errands, and took the road home.
That is when I made a discovery... I found sheep...
Nothing new you might say, she sees sheep every day... Nope, these were different. Not the daily Swaledale’s...
They were fluffy and wooly, a timid bunch...

Obviously not used to people stopping and watching them, I tried to lure them closer to the gate, the thing is, how do you lure a sheep?
No bucket in the car, they do know buckets, let me tell you. They know a rattling bucket even better. Guess I should have a rattling bucket with me in the car at all times.
I could go to the farmer’s store and get some sheep candies, need to give it a try over one of the coming days.

They keep staring at me, small bright eyes, pink noses, small ears sticking out of the side. Those woollies are ready for a winter on the moors.
I need to find out to what farmer they belong, and go and find out some. They have painted butts, which means they will have lambs in the coming spring. We need to think ahead here...

A couple of them can’t be bothered any longer with my presence, they start chatting amongst each other.

“Shall we go to the other side of the meadow? Or do you think it is safe to have her standing there with that machine that makes sounds?”

“Maahhh! No clue... Could we eat it? The machine?”

“Look at Freddie, he is eating his snack, if he is OK with her standing there, it should be safe enough for us too...”

Sheep can be very confused at times. They want to eat, at all cost, but if a human stands in the way, as in behind the gate, not moving, just watching, what is a sheep to do?

“Come on Diddo and Bramley, I don’t trust it. Let’s walk... We can always come back later, when Freddy is ready to move over!”

Only Philippa and Pepperwetter stay behind, looking somewhat worried... Soon enough they too turn around and follow the bunch walking slowly but surely to the other side of the meadow, out of my view. The secret thinkings of sheep... We must avoid humans without food no matter what.

And on sunday past, we woke up to snow... Mixed feelings. I love to watch snow, but I don’t like to go out in it. PT is covered. It’s a bit early for the white stuff I find.
Only November for god sake...

When I go out to snap some, I can feel that it is not the light fluffy kind of snow, it is frozen solid. Bitterly cold, sleet on the move...
Time to have a good cuppa and some deadly sin croissants. I have a can of crescents in my freezer section and an apple, we can rock the house.

And I need to get back to blogging, I have neglected my blog over the last fourteen days. Too busy rearranging my computer, and try wading through the boxes in my scraproom with stuff to go to Belgium with me next week.

More later!

Edwardians in color: civilians and Petit Jean

Some more Albert Kahn today, and I have to correct a typo from yesterday. The Kahn Collection does not hold 720.000 but 72.000 photographs. I had one zero too many... With apologies...
I am totally under the spell of that collection. I want to drag the whole world to France, to go and see the museum. I think we need the whole archive digitized, scanned, so we can watch them. Like they did in the States, with the Library of Congress pics. Years and years of photographs, all viewable online, a treasure.

The Archive of the Planet has treasures too. And a very close call home. As I said yesterday, those people are not anonymus, they are real people. They are in color, they are real...

One image struck me even more then some of the others... A family, two women, a baby and a boy, and a man with a spiffy vest...
I immediately go digging through my old photographs, and indeed, I do find one similar. Not taken by famous photographers to be homed in a famous collection, but hey, it’s serendipity...

Maybe I should have a play with it and try to color it in. Would not be the same result as the Kahn photographers got, but it might bring some spunk to the photograph. My maternal grandmother was in her thirties here, and the baby can not be older then a year, it is my aunt Dina... The one big difference between the photographs is that the french family was taken in the beginning of the twentieth century, while my grandmother and Dina must have been the thirties...

In those early days, people did not travel, had no extended gardens, for a lot of families, life was a small terrace house or cottage, and the only outside air they got was sitting at the frontdoor, chatting with the neighbours...
Small blessings...
Amazing to see how life in the North of France resembled my hometown in Belgium, only a couple of miles from the French border.

I vividly recall pictures that show me the same view as the above one, hay in turrets on the fields, with a spire of the church in the distance...

The villages below the front line where all the fighting took place can be seen on the map.
Kahn’s photographers took a lot of pictures around Soissons, Reims and Verdun. Big names in WWI history...
The stories about Reims make my heart soft and my eyes water. Gutwrenching, and they are not even people we know up close...
Reims had a beautiful Gothic cathedral, and the people living in and around it had it in their daily life.

On screen comes a portrait of a little boy, Petit Jean, small Jean, his name is Jean, but I can’t help but call him Petit Jean...
He has a fierce pose, little booties, hands in the pockets, a funny little lad. With rosy cheeks. Bless his little heart.

His brother comes in view, also called Jean. And he tells how the Germans were camped outside of the town, on the hills.
Shelling the town, hitting the cathedral.
Petit Jean often played in the streets around the church. He liked to talk to the smiling Angel.

On that fatal day when the Germans were shelling the town, Petit Jean did not come home, and his mom went looking for him.

She called out his name: “Jean, Jean!!!”
And found him under the rubble. He was still alive, did hold on to life for a couple of more hours, and then died in her arms.

Petit Jean could never be forgotten, and his brother who came into the world after WWI still thinks about the little brother he lost and who he was named after. Rest in peace Petit Jean...
There are other stories, and I find it fascinating to attach old photographs to real lives, and hear what happened and how people fared.
We also hear about a nun, normally the devious kind of people in my mind, but this one was different.
The Germans captured a hospital and wanted to kill the patients, but sister Marie told them they could do it over her dead body.
They didn’t... And she was awarded a cross after the war, for bravery and having stood up against the enemy.

If you look in her eyes, you can actually see that Over her dead body would be quite a body...
So many different stories, all kinds of normal people like you and me, caught in between rock and a hard stone...
It is the stories of the children though that touch me the deepest. I have no armor, they come in, I hear them, and they stay on my mind.

The children are always a bit more victim as they have to live to what grown ups decide. The girls look so girlie with a nice bow in their hair, the tiny boy has a cute blue jacket. My heart cries...

Life in the small villages and the country side of the North of France would never be the same again, WWI took their relaxed way of life away to never return it. The same happened in Belgium, where the towns close to Ypres and the coast all became names in history books.
I will share some more of the beautiful photographs tomorrow, I know the quality is not good, I am sure they look better in real, my only goal is to wake you all up to the beauty of those photographs of a way of life lost, and make some of you make the decision to go and see the Kahn Museum in Paris...

Talk later!

The Eleventh day of the Eleventh Month...

In 1918 was the day on which the world started to breath again. After four years of extended misery if we may say so. Here in England, this day is more then present in daily life, and often the weather is co-operating with grey clouds and wind in the trees. Making us realise how miserable it must have been in those trenches. In Flanders Fields. So close to my bed, yet far away as 90 years lie behind all of it.
Very easy to get sucked into history and having a hard time getting back out. On television, they showcase the horror in all its facets, but on sunday, something completely different was shown.
Yes, on our new television, 40 inch, towering over my living room...
For the first time in my life I heard about Albert Kahn, banker and philanthropist. I wondered for a moment how it was possible never to have heard from this man and his work. Work is a minimalistic expression.

Born in France on the 3th of March 1860 as one of the 5 kids of Louis and Babette Kahn, he became a well known banker in Paris, setting up “The Archives of the Planet”. Kahn went bankrupt in the Big Depression and this put an end to this totally amazing project:
a collection of 72.000 colour photographs documenting the whole planet between 1909 and 1931.
Not an easy task as colour photography was in the very early stages, amazing when you come to think of it...
Jean Brunhes, the project director of the Archives of the Planet send photographers all around the world, and started in 1914 to documenting life in France, just before the outbreak of WWI. Thanks to a special liason with the military, the Archives contain sets of pictures of both military life on the Western Front and the life of the civilians caught in between.
Kahn died in 1940, escaping the Nazi Occupation and deportation. He left us with a raging manifesto against war and destruction.

I put this book on my wish list, grin... I HAVE TO HAVE IT!!! And I put the Museum near Paris on my list “Things to see before I die”.

I am watching BBC four, and see the colour images in front of me. Very mesmerizing, as we are used to see WWI in black and white.
It is the first time that I see colour, and the colour in the images is what makes them real. Suddenly the anonymous people we know from old sepia photographs become real flesh and blood. Shocking and beautiful in the same context.
A soldier having his lunch at a fountain, bike parked against it, a silent war image saying more then a thousand words.

A photograph that resonates deep in my heart, a man sitting on a wooden desk, writing... Is he letting his parents know about his life? A wife? Kids? A big gap between front life and home... Only connected through letters and post cards.

Another one, touching me again, with a group of soldiers gathering up to get the newspaper. Strange, I never knew that the french had a blue-grey uniform. They used to be dressed in black and red, but as that made them sitting ducks to be shot at, the Ministery of Defence ordered blue to be the new colour. Blending in more with the surrounding landscape.

Odd, the photographs show us a side of war that is rarely seen. In between battles, the men catch up with life. Reading, washing their clothes, sleep, trying to kill time with a creativity never imagined in army language...

Along the walls of preserved trenches and caves that offered shelter for battle fatigued men, we find touching carvings made out of mud. As that was the material to go by. Mud was omnipresent...

Religious symbols carved in the cave wall, even though Army management was not happy with the context. Catholics were not liked.
I am flabbergasted. How can man not get in touch with spirituality when they are surrounded by death on a daily base?
“Thank God for small blessings“ is not known by command.

I am shell shocked too, watching it after 90 years. Of course, the world must have been in colour, we are just so programmed to think about WW scenes in black and white, it is easier to take distance from black and white. The colour makes it impossible to escape.
It pushes our noses right onto it.

This could have been our own childhood street, black and white makes it out of another world, another era, colour brings it home.
They were real people, in a real world, they were our grand parents and parents.

Imagine coming home from a trip and find your village or town like this. Where do you start?

Where have the people gone that ran the Cafe du Centre? The cafe in the middle of town? Are they alive? Are they amongst the thousands of refugees in Paris?

One by one, the colour images rock our television screen. Loud, screaming, we don’t want this again...

And we have the funerals... Those two are ”lucky“, they have a funeral. For millions it is getting buried by blown up mud and earth, or a mass grave.

I think they should remake history books. History should be the Archive of the Planet. We should show our kids war in colour.
We’d better show the colour images to our rulers and governors, who drag us into war for a noble cause...
We should try harder to do things without war.

After all the guns are silenced, graves are all that is left. Men will never come home, kids have become orphans, wives mourn husbands, is a noble cause enough to allow for all the destruction? I don’t know... not sure anymore...

Can we get to a world peace without ending up with millions of graves???

Fall, fell, fallen and Autumn...

November is consistent. At least her in England. Today is Rememberance day, and the weather is appropriate.
Grey in different shades and teints. We had a bit of sun last week, on different moments, not staying for long. But long enough to go out and enjoy the rich colours.

When I left my house yesterday I had the above view. The road from Ripon to Harrogate crinkles in front of our house, only a wall between us and the road, so all we see at the front door are the tops of trees on the other side of that same road.
I need to go to Harrogate to pick up Mr Wonderful his new television. Mixed feelings on my part.
I am European... He is American. It means that television and sets can be a tricky subject.
In Europe, a television is more or less hidden in the house, it does not take center piece in the living quarters. And when people come in, the tv is switched off. That is how I was raised and how I raised my kids.

Not so in America. They like it big. As in really big. I would have had the happiest husband in the world if I would have told him to get the biggest screen he could find, and attach it to the wall, we could chip the cupboard in the other room. He would have been happy. But it did not happen.
He had to “settle” for a small one, 40 inch...

In American speaking a small set, in my eyes, a huge thing demanding too much attention. I would have been glad with a much smaller one.
I don’t believe in movie theatre screens in a living room. I know, it is taste, and all people are different.
So we had a bit of a raffle yesterday evening as I was wondering how to pretend the thing was not there... While Mr Wonderful happily played with buttons and cables.
Cats spooking up and down as we were moving stuff again. And they don’t like it...
That was the reason for me going to Harrogate, yesterday afternoon. And the little bit of sunshine made a whole world of difference.

I try to find a spot to put my car on the side and snap some. A mile further can make a big difference as the sun jumps behind clouds, with different light falls as a result. Nothing is ever what it seems. One moment I am the only one on the world, nobody in sight, me and the trees along the A61.

Two minutes on, cars pop in view, and I know I am standing on the side of a major road. Traffic disturbing the peace. I know of one more spot where the view is good. Can’t park there, but hey, I can drop the car on the grass for two seconds, snap, get back in the car and no one will ever know that I was there. Can’t do that when Mr Wonderful is in the car with me. He is a law abiding citizen, parking only where it is allowed. Which does not have the views that I want. Why can’t it never be easy???

Hurry, hurry, snap and go. But you get an idea of the the fall colors right now... A month ago these same trees were still green.
Nature is a wonderful thing. And I am on my way to town. Harrogate, with a lot of green in the centre, and the Stray in autumn colors.

The Stray is a park like green space, spanning the whole of Harrogate Centre. It is where you go to see fall and where you linger to find the first crocusses after a long winter. Ever changing with the seasons, on the Stray you know wether it is summer or winter.

It’s clearly autumn now. Families and kids playing in the leaves. Memories come back to me from my childhood. My grandmother lived in a park.
When the trees were done shedding leaves, city personel came to brush them on a heap.
Over the weekend, with the kids home from school, we went to play in the park. And no bigger pleasure then to let yourself fall in those soft heaps of leaves. Soft, a smell that I can still call back, buried in foliage. And my grandmother coming out to yell at us that we had to go play somewhere else.
She was ashamed of us when we did our brat things... No grand child of Gabrielle Niffels was to be seen falling into heaps of leaves. Just like no grand child of Gabrielle Niffels was going to be found sitting on the big lions bordering and guarding the park.
I have no idea why my grand mother was so crossed when we did one of the two things I am talking about.

So for me, it is bitter sweet to see the kids falling and rolling in the leaves. They are having fun, and the parents are watching and are laughing too.
All of a sudden, I miss the people who meant so much for me when I was a kid. My grandmother, my dad and my aunt Blanche.
I wished my dad could have seen Harrogate in Fall. I wished my grandmother had known Aaron. I wished that Aunt Blanche was still here, so I could visit. 3 People who meant safety in my rocky children’s days.

What a fall day in Harrogate can bring of memories. More people walking. Dogs, boys running.

Little benches all over, I could sit there for a while and be silent. But no, the car is parked on a double yellow line, I need to get back in and drive on.
Before a policeman comes over and does not see why I need to snap so bad.

The old shelter houses make a nice touch when surrounded with changing trees. They are darker then in spring, when the fresh light makes them brighter. Seasons playing tricks with our minds.
I bet they are the same green in fall by spring, it is just my look that adapts.
The television needs to get home, and the kitchen needs to be cleaned up. Had friends over for a quick cup of tea, and the kitchen still
reflects on it. Tea, cups, picture books, cookies... The nice moments show on the table...

Ending this sunday entry with some apples... Fake, paper mache. Got them in May when my sisters were here. In the little store in Grassington. They caught my eyes, I knew they would come in handy for a shoot. Figures...

Time for sin now: I made the apple dumplings again, apple hidden in crescents and baked with sugar and Mountain Dew.
Not the right kind of food if you want to loose some. Dark weather asks for drastic measurements.
Apple dumplings, here I come...

Foggy mist or misty fog???

Fog outside, and fog inside. My brain is fogged up too. Too much gray does that to me, it drags me down.
And we had a lot of grey. We are thursday today and since monday, no sun was visible. I would definitely not be the person to live in an area without sun. And what am I saying, we do actually live in an area without sun. A bummer.

On monday morning, I woke up to sheep in the fog, with the morning light waking up behind them, it gives them a little rim of light. We get glowing sheep in winter when the sun is low and shining from behind them. Photography is all about light, back light is the best. Gives everything a golden glow. Not so this week. The sun does not get through the clouds, and we stay in a silent grey world.

It’s funny how sounds get muffled in fog, you could pretend to be alone on the world, seeing and hearing only distant sounds. Eery...
I drive through Markington on my way to the garage on monday looking for some good fog shots.

Can’t drag it out too long though as Mr Wonderful is waiting at the garage to take me back home. My car got hit by some of the contractors building the bungalow next door, and they ran. We have no clue who did it, we only know that it will come out of our bank account to get it fixed.
I will be without car for 3 days, so this is my last chance of shooting some foggy stuff.

I go and take a peek at my lonely tree, yep, it too is surrounded by grey, the fields surrounding it are still green. The hedges have been clipped already by the farmer, each farmer has to take care of the hedges adjacent to their land.

And some farmers are more punctual about it then others. There are small country roads where you can hardly pass as the hedges have sprouted so much they cover parts of the road.

England is in a spell of damp and fog. Older walls have grown algae on them, or mosses. As we are in the beginning of November, our television screens are filled with WWI rememberance programs, and those grey foggy november days hold me in their clutches. I can imagine vividly how depressing the trenches must have been, even if it is now 90 years ago, I look at some of the walls and feel how my morale is sinking faster then any chocolate orgy would be able to cure. This would and could be the moment that I eat a whole bag of gummy bears to avoid sinking deeper. A box of luxuary Belgian Chocolates would help to. Only one more month before I go to Belgium. I need to bring back a box of chocs, as armor against grey foggy days.

Lucky for me, when driving through Birstwith, the mist tries to go away, does not succeed, but at least I can see some colors in trees.
I know now why halloween is orange. If you look at nature, orange plays the head role too.

A beautiful sight I must say, and sorry Mr Wonderful, you will have to wait five minutes later as I can not let this opportunity slip away.
I might never have the same view again. A lost picture is lost forever.

High upon the hill on the other side, the sheep can not be bothered by mist or fog. They have no time to loose, the grass is becoming too thin for cows to feed on, but sheep are happy for now. It still gives them enough energy and vitamins to go further towards winter. Soon the farmers will begin to feed the sheep extra too. That is when you see them grouped around feeding irons.

It’s not all doom and gloom with fog, I do see the beauty in it too. Guess that no more WWI documentaries this week will be the better option for me.
And finally, I see Mr Wonderful waving at me, at the garage. He knew that I was stopping for mist shots as he knows who he is married to of course.
Good on him, he lets me. I can see that other husbands would be totally impatient, my first husband, El Fiasco would have been yelling and screaming aready... In fact, he probably would not have bothered to drive up with me and take me back home.

The garage is a busy little spot in a desert of silence and grey. Machines and hammering, people talking... PT will have to stay here for a couple of days, we have to keep in mind that this is England. Certain jobs that would be done in a day in Belgium take 3 here... What is the rush? After all, tomorrow usually is another day. If you believe British plummers and garage men...

Underneath a car I see a blond mohawk, and ask the boy if he needs extra gel to keep his hair upright. Not easy working under cars if you have hair that rises up ten centimeters easily...

He seems to have found ways around, a garage might be a good spot for him to work. I don’t see him working in a restaurant, the mohawk would not fit well under a kitchen cap. Those are obligatory here in UK.

I tell him that I would like to take a pic of him straight on, and bless his little heart, he lets me. I see blue eyes, matching the blond mohawk.
Cool dude!!!

On the other side of the garage, they are having a meeting, they need to set out a plan as to tackle the repair job, a good atmosphere. Nobody is rushed, all is quiet and peaceful.
The perfect time for a cake, with apples. November weather is good for inside planning and good cooking.

My cake comes out perfectly, and with a good cuppa both Mr Wonderful et moi enjoy the rest of the day at home...

Life is good! Even when foggy.

Talk later!!!!

A shameless plug, and friends

Today I want to introduce you all to a friend of mine. Far away, but a good friend. The wonders of the internet.
I met her in real life in 2003, can’t believe it is that long already. I was going through old photographs today, and looked at her daughters back in 2003, gosh, they are now grown ups...
The thing is that she makes cards. Not just cards, nope, cards so beautiful that I want to keep them instead of sending them out... They are too beautiful.
I bought a set and have problems in deciding to whom I will send one of those jewels...

Before I start sharing Carole’s cards though, I have to mention another one, that landed in my postbox last week!

Just to celebrate fall, a sign that someone that I have never seen is thinking about me, it was a real surprise. So thank you Diane. Yes, readers from this blog might know Diane as one of the commenters... I don’t know what I did to deserve a card... But it was welcome. Thanks Diane, loved it, and loved the thought that you without knowing me could send me a card that is so totally me...
THANKS!!!

Now back to the entry, the coffee cards that Carole makes...

As I said, not the normal cards, nope, each of them is handmade of course, just like the one Diane send me, and they are all different.
I want you to go and harass Carole in making MORE, as we need MORE...
And if you just like me don’t want to send them out, frame them, as that is what I will do with some of them. I realise that I can’t frame them all, and that I bought them to send out, so I do have to send at least a couple out... but...but...but...

Hard to decide which ones though... Never thought that I ever would have sleepless nights over cards. I do have them now, sleepless nights and they are about the cards.
I can’t decide which one to keep and which one to let go.
A solution of course would be to just order another set and keep the first set for me. Darn it... I should have thought about that one sooner.

I don’t know where she gets the inspiration to make them, I can only gasp when I take one out of the lovely box they come in, fondle them for a couple of minutes, to silently put them back. Not today, nope, today is not a good day to send one out...

Neither was last week wednesday, when I needed a card but went to base and got another one, as those are... well, you know by now, too beautiful to let go...
Have you ever heard a crazier story????

Not only should I perk up, I should pick myself up and kick myself in the butt... THEY WERE MADE TO SEND OUT...
But then look at the rich reds and oranges, the colors blended, I can almost smell vanilla and coffee if I look at them...

I want a latte immediately after watching the above one. Lucky enough I do have a Senseo, good for perfect cups of coffee, pods go into the machine, and your cup is filled with the heavenly brown dark drink, my days would not be the same without my little coffee moments. Maybe that is part of why I love those cards so much.
The theme is coffee, what else, and it speaks to me...

Another nice thing is that it is mostly paper from the Mocha Java kit, by Clubscrap, which was the first kit I ever bought from them.
I have no paper left from it, so it was a double surprise to see the cards that Carole made, as they were made from one of my all time favorite paper kits made by Clubscrap.
In fact, I do have the stamps that Carole used on the cards, we are both clubscrap addicts, but for some strange reason, my cards never come out like the above ones.
I lack the creative card design gene I suppose...

Anyway, you will all have to agree with me that these cards are wonderful, TOO NICE TO SEND OUT, but go on, harass her to make more sets, so we can indulge more...
Carole baby, get in your studio and get the making of more going. Fast and furious... We need them.

For my readers who I convinced by now, HERE IS THE ADDRESS WHERE YOU CAN REACH CAROLE AND HER CARDS...
At this point in time, she does need to stock up her store, but hey, write her an email and let her know that we are all waiting on more cards...

I hope nobody minds the shameless plug... can’t help myself at days to do something crazy...

So thanks Diane and Carole for the cards, it is nice to have good friends... That one goes without saying...

Take care all, I am off to photography club tonight, in foggy England November weather... Grey and dull outside.
Talk later!

Menwith Hill’s Next Top Model...

At Eden’s Fashion Fest... Let me expleeeen! We had a birthday girl... The lovely Eden. And she wanted something else then a normal girlie birthday party. So they settled for a Model Shoot. And I got the privilege of being the Next Nigel Barker, Notorious and world renowned fashion photographer Extraordinaire.
No Miss and Mister Jay, we managed. A lot of work had been done, it was all thought out, we were ready to rumble...

The age of most of the teens invited was 10 or eleven, and I had wondered up front how to keep them at the age they were. I do believe in kids being kids. It’s not a good thing if kids look like mini adults. So I arrived with my props... My choc boots, hats, caps, Mr Bear, it looked like a move by the time I got installed in the gym.
As that is where the birthday bash was going to happen.

Mom Debbie had taken care of the background, we taped it up to some of the gym props, it was almost a real studio. Grin... We only had one sheet though, we had some limits to account for. It took some setting up to get the girls in front of the drop and not see the rest of the gym.

The main thing that stays with me from this saturday afternoon shoot is fun. WE ALL HAD FUN!!! And that is what a photo session should be...
If the fun is there, we get energy and it shows in the photographs.
And these were tweens I believe they are called in the States, to small to be big fish and to big to be small fish. On the edge of puberty, when bodies change and drama enters the family dictionary.

No drama what so ever on saturday... They had lights in their eyes, we had giggles, of course, girls... girls giggle, and lots of pink! Mr Bear had no clue what happened to him. He went from arm to arm, was hugged, kissed, thrown in the air, he was a happy bear. I could hear him purr... Excuse me, he is not a cat. He made a sound that in cats language would be called purring... Mr Wonderful’s velvet brown cap worked along Mr Bear. We got the cap in the American Store in Belgium on one of our trips, and it gets used mostly as prop in shoots.

Idem Ditto for my gypsy hat. Found in Appleby Gypsy Fair, dry-cleaned to be sure that it was clean, and no looking back after that. The hat works miracles. Works for girls and boys... Funny thing. Artsy can be just that: a hat and a giggling eleven year old.

They all had their turn for their moment of fame, in the spot light... Well, not really, we used the incoming outside light from a side door in the gym. A source of light that is a lot softer and nicer for portraits. More bear hugs and hat wearing. It was good to give them something to do, at 13, they have too much arms and legs, and have no way of working with them in portraits. If you give them something to hold on to, they almost forget it is a shoot. I vaguely remember my 13 years of age photographs, standing like a Buckingham Guard, very uncomfortable, I hated to pose... Probably the main reason I became a photographer, being behind the camera is a lot more comfortable then in front of it.

The little mouse one, a tiny girl, utterly sweet, I heard afterwards that she hated to have her pictures taken, heck, i did not notice that. This mousy one rocked the place...
With bear, without bear, she did it and performed wonderfully well. Good vibes...

Besides bears and hats, I also brought brollies. Yep, umbrella’s. And they proved popular. It all matched up, clothes, smiles, brollie.
I was amazed at how well they all had picked clothes for the shoot. They all had exactly their age. I had wondered when they were at the make up stations, but it all stayed in tone. No one went crazy on lipstick and eye shadow.

A mixed group, tall, thin, tiny, anything went. In general, it feels as if the tweens were less unsure then I was at their age. Maybe the moms have found better ways of giving the daughters self confidence. A good thing. Little girls should be confident, so they can tackle life with a smile. A smiling tween is a nice thing to see.

All of them had brought different sets of clothes, and in between them, the fur vests went from hand to hand. It felt good to snap them, I had a blast too.
Hard work, but fun. My bones are creaking today, but it was for a good cause, no regrets.

My multi colored brollie was of service too. Remember my previous one died on the Masham Run, I got another one, exactly the same, as it is such a good prop.
Works everywhere and with anyone. I thought that the white fluffy furry girl was a bit on the shy side, yet she did a great job too. I loved the girls.
They lined up, got their shots, went for another outfit, and came back for more. All in a very good mood.

My props bag also contained some head phones, and man, they went crazy with those. I might have some blurry shots here, as I had to laugh so hard with their maneuvers... Hippy chicks... Dancing and moving on a silent beat.

A great afternoon, as I could be kid amongst kids. My favorite place to be. Seeing and watching the magic happening between people.
Photography is all about relationships. If there is a relationship of some kind, any kind, either with another person or with a prop they like, you can rock and roll.
Life is good with head phones...

We went for some group shots too, that took some more energy, as the background was only just big enough to hold them all. Here too we laughed so hard as it is no cat pee to get 12 girls in one shot.

We needed desperate help, big Sister Bethany stepped up a notch, together with Ally, one of the make up moms present.
It looked like this in reality:

And look at the red dress girl: spicy but heels that are two sizes to big. My kind of girl... Being 11 and being proud of it.
A big difference in the group too, some of them got the grow sprints already, and are scooting way up, towering over the rest of the class, some of them are still tiny, waiting on the big grow explosion. A very diversified group. Slowly growing away from being kids. Little ladies in the making.

After they all got the shots they wanted, it was time for the birthday cake, and I could start putting pics on my computer. The goal was to give each girl one shot, I had my little printer with me, and we used the booklets Debbie and me made a couple of weeks ago to frame them.

It was hectic, loud, but the main thing is that everybody had a laugh and a giggle, and we all felt on top of the world.

Eden reached eleven with a bang, and we all joined in into the happy birthday singing. She made a wish and blew out the candles, a real chacha girl...
Well done Eden, great party and hope you like the pictures!
Thank you for inviting me, I had a great afternoon as well...