Whispers To The Sea

Okay, so I have being a little bit sneaky and I have been working on a little project for my dad's 60th birthday so it has been rather hush hush for some time.

I thought it would be nice to give him a very personal present so I had a book made for him, 'Whispers To The Sea'.

The book is 80 pages and filled with photos of Devon (Dartmouth, Stoke Gabriel and Sailing) as he loves it down there. But rather than making just a plain photo book, I decided to make it a poetry book. So there is a collection of 18 poems and an Ancient Greek prayer for safety at sea. The title of the book was taken from one of the Poems.

As you can imagine, it took quite some time to make this book. All of the photographs were taken and edited by me, I selected the poems, chose the layouts etc and several weeks later I was finally happy with it. Then I had to spend a week and a half biting my nails until it had been printed and sent back to me from the publishers!

I was so happy with the results and my dad absolutely loved it!

Below you can see the book and a few of the images that were used.



You can view the whole book HERE or alternitivley, please visit the 'Links' page on my website.

Copies of this book are available for family and friends only at this time - so please let me know if you want one!

A Thousand Words...

I must admit, that as much as I like photography, I am very picky when it comes to art and I often find exhibitions quite dull. But yesterday I visited the York City Art Gallery. There was an exhibition of various works of art compiled by Tracey Chevalier (author of 'Girl with a Pearl Earring'). The works were all chosen as Tracey thought they would make an interesting moment in a story.

Each work had a chalk board next to it for visitors to write their own ideas and stories in relation to the works and Tracey had written a few extracts herself.





I thought that this was a wonderful idea and a chance for visitors to interact with the exhibition. It made it far more interesting especially to read what others thought was happening in the works.

The Royal Armouries: Weta Exhibition

I have visited the Royal Armouries numerous times and I always find it interesting, probably because I have a keen interest in history and I just find the armour so amazing considering the technology at the time.

The museum is primarily organised by time period and in some places by country as well. I especially like the oriental armour and weapons – they are so decorative and so much thought has gone into the designs.

Anyway, I went this week to see the exhibition by Weta – the New Zealand based company that designed and produced the armour and weapons amongst other things for Lord of the Rings, Narnia & Hell Boy.
I am a huge Tolkien fan which is what drew me to this exhibition and I wasn’t disappointed!
The detail on the armour and costumes was outstanding and there was certainly a lot more than I was expecting to see.

The costumes were organised by race – Elves, Men, Rohirrim, Orks, Orakhai and right in the centre, Sauron and The Witch King of Angmar. Unfortunately, photography was not permitted in the exhibition space where the costumes were. However, there were two wax works elsewhere in the museum that could be photographed – an Orakhai and a Cave troll (as below) as well as Hell Boy’s gun (also below).

I was absolutely astounded at the amount of detail in these costumes and they were so beautifully made – if they had belonged to me, there would be no way that they would get used as props!

I really enjoyed this exhibition – it was very different seeing present day film costumes rather than historic items in a museum. Of course, there was the fictional history of Middle Earth with costumes from the first, second and third age of each race and I felt that this made the collection sit quite nicely and it didn’t feel out of place in the museum.

Website Revamp

Well, it has been a long time coming but finally the new look website has been launched!

I have been working on this new look site for quite some time now but due to computer problems, it has taken me a lot longer than I had hoped.

The colours have been changed to a light blue and white making the site far more crisp and clear than it was before. I haven't been happy with the old site for some time as it seemed rather dark, heavy and unwelcoming. Finally, all that has changed!

The basic structure of the site has remained the same with the same simple navigation bar on all pages (except flash gallery pages) so it should be just as simple as the old site to find your way around.

The banner has been replaced with a lighter, much simpler logo. I had a bit of a struggle developing this idea. The signature in the background was been a work in progress for a few months now that I just wasn't happy with or it was pushed to one side due to other commitments so its a relief that I am finally happy with it.

As my website was initially built for a university project but as things progressed, my freelance work was integrated. Now the site is more segmented, focusing on my professional freelance work. Personal work can still be found on the 'links' page but it is no longer as dominant on the site.

I'm much happier with the site now. It seems far more professional and smarter than it did previously.

Children's Portraits: Jack & Jess

Images form the second children's portrait session the other weekend.

I'm quite pleased with the images of Jess, she was very good and quite happily let mw take her photograph. I'm not as happy with the images of Jack (the older child) though. He was quite happy to have his photo taken at first but was a little over excited and became restless very quickly which made it rather difficult to take photographs which was a shame.

However, it was a good experience and I did get some rather nice shots.