Steel Hares and Swarms of Midges

"I had someone turn up early at the preview evening wanting to buy one of the hares before anyone else could, based purely on your photo in the brochure!"

Geoff Forrest is a willow weaver in transition. Over the past year or two he's been doing less with willow and more with steel.

To someone like me it seems like a massive leap from one medium to another, but according to Geoff, many of the principles are exactly the same, even if the implementation of the techniques are different.

I've been doing bits and pieces of product photography for Geoff on and off over the past few years – initially in a studio environment, and then in galleries where he was exhibiting. A couple of years back we even had a go at doing outdoor shots down on the beach (see Baskets on the Beach).

I visited Geoff at last year's regional open studios event, Spring Fling, and saw these amazing hares he had constructed out of steel rods, sitting a little over a metre in height. Almost immediately I told him they needed to be photographed on a hill or in a field with the sun setting behind them. However, given the unpredictability of the Scottish weather, it seemed highly unlikely we'd ever manage to achieve it.

But towards the end of June we were having an unprecedented length of warm, dry, sunny days, with long, glorious evenings, and the weather forecast was predicting it would stay this way for a while to come.

I phoned Geoff and asked if he would like to have a go at the sunset shots we had talked about, up where he lived at Loch Doon – about an hour's drive from where I live, deep into the Galloway Hills.

So a few days later, one beautiful summer evening, I drove out to see him with my camera gear in the back of the car, the windows down and music blasting, thoroughly enjoying driving along the empty winding roads, over hills and through valleys.

As soon as I arrived I realised we couldn't do the shoot at his house as it was already under the shadow of the hill behind him, so after a cup of tea and a chat, we drove a couple of miles up the side of the loch to a place where the sun was still above the hills.

He could only fit the hares into his small van one at a time, so I photographed one while he collected a second. This all took longer than planned and I only managed to get the shots with the sun literally on the horizon, with only a few minutes to spare before it disappeared completely.





At this point, we were about 150m from an area of land which jutted out into the loch, and I realised if we could get down to the water's edge, then from that angle we ought to get the afterglow of the sunset reflecting in the loch itself.

We took one of the sculptures down and sure enough the setting was incredible.

However, mother nature has a cruel, twisted sense of humour, as the dense swarms of midges were horrific.

I had already coated myself in citronella, which did seem to stop them biting, but it didn't prevent them coating me the moment I stopped moving. Each time I crouched down to line up a shot, I was covered in the creatures, crawling all over me, including in my ears and up my nose.



I would love to have spent more time, and brought the second hare down to the water's edge as well, but neither Geoff nor I could take another moment of it and we had to leg it back to the vehicles.

Geoff used the first of the photos in this year's Spring Fling brochure and told me he had quite a few visitors who had seen the image and made sure he was on their list of artists to visit because of it. Which I have to say felt rather satisfying.

However, next time I want to do a sunset shot at the side of a loch in Scotland, I'll be sure to do it in the middle of winter...

Spring Fling – Studio 50 on the Orange Route

Do I lead with the fact you can buy a £100 photography voucher for only £10?

Or that I will be doing photography demonstrations with a smoke machine?

Or that I'll be open from 10.30am to 5pm on Saturday 25th, Sunday 26th & Monday 27th May to visit as part of the Spring Fling Open Studios weekend?

So many artists seem to start with their opening hours – I guess if you can't make those days and times then everything else is redundant.

In the Spring Fling brochure I my entry was "Smoke machine, lighting, live demonstrations of how to create awesome photos – on the hour, every hour while open across the weekend!" - in the hope it might get people excited about visiting.

But I'm also hoping there might be an uptake in a Spring Fling exclusive offer whereby I'm giving away £100 photography vouchers for only £10. Conditions apply, of course, but if anyone has ever considered the idea of having a photo session with me, then surely this is a must have?

Oh, the headaches of trying to work out how to market myself.


Lights! Camera! Smoke!

It's been 4 years since I last appeared in Spring Fling (see: Spring Fling 2015).

I did it for several years, but the problem was I could never be sure it was actually a worthwhile investment.

It's very easy for artists who sell their creations – artists, potters, jewellers, willow weavers etc – to see a direct connection between how much it costs them to participate, and how much income it generates.

However, what I offer is bespoke experiences – photography created uniquely and exclusively for individuals, groups and businesses – that are discussed and planned in advance. You don't just come along and buy a photo sitting in a print-rack.

As such it was impossible for me to see whether the time, money and effort was worth it.

So after 5 years I decided to take a break and instead visit some of the other studios over the weekend, along with my daughter, Meg. It was so much fun, we did it again the following year. And the next year too.

What got me thinking about it this time, was the “Peaky Blinders” themed shoot I did last year (see Peaky Blinders at Rosefield Mills). If you watch the behind-the-scenes video (at the bottom of that page), what strikes a lot of people is the difference between the ambient light of the warehouse, and the dramatic lighting of the photos.


Peaky Blinders themed shoot at Rosefield Mills in 2018

When using off-camera flashes, with coloured gels, and not forgetting a smoke machine, at the point the camera goes click, light gets captured in a way the human eye doesn't see. So what appears in the back of the camera is very different what you see in real life.

I started to think how much fun it would be to do demonstrations of this. I could tether the camera to a screen and have people take photos on their phones, literally over my shoulder, and what would appear on their screens would be completely different to what would appear on mine.

OK, so that would help prove why just taking photos on your phone isn't always going to be able to match what a professional photographer can do, but what I really needed was a way to see if the kind of people who visit the studios over Spring Fling weekend are actually the kind of people who would part with money for my skills.

So then I read about the idea of making a "compelling offer". Quite simply, if getting £100 off a Kim Ayres photo shoot for only £10 isn't going to make you open your wallet faster than superman getting changed in a phone booth, then I'm not the photographer you're looking for.

However, regardless of whether the offer has any appeal or not, it would be lovely to see you over the weekend if you can make it along.

I'm not operating from home as my place isn't big enough to do the demonstrations, so my good friends Carolyn and Ken are allowing me to use their outbuilding which is the size of a small village hall. It has plenty of room to do the demonstrations and show off photos from shoots I've done before.

As you leave Castle Douglas, head south on the Dalbeattie road for 1.2 miles (SatNav: DG7 1NS), then turn left, turn right and head up the hill, following the signposts. You can't miss it!

Mr Pook's Kitchen

"So if we take the photo from this corner of the restaurant, we could have Ed in the foreground looking in command, with customers and waiting staff in the mid-ground behind him, and the kitchen and bar in the background. And if we could get some flames coming up from the kitchen area, that would be pretty cool!"

Fuelled by strong coffee, enthusiasm and receptive clients it's easy to get ambitious with my photography. Of course once everyone is on board with the vision comes the more complicated bit of working out how on earth we're actually going to achieve it.



Mr Pook's Kitchen opened up in the old Clydesdale Bank in Spring last year and is very different from any of the other restaurants locally.

The first thing that strikes you is there is no fixed menu. Sitting on the wall outside is a sample menu where it becomes immediately clear that tonight's options will be created with whatever the best of local produce Ed Pook could source – from local suppliers or even foraged from the Galloway coasts and landscapes.



If you're wanting a standard burger, macaroni cheese or chicken-in-a-basket, you'd best go elsewhere.

This isn't just food, this is about the experience of food. As much attention is paid to the visuals on the plate as there is to the textures and tastes.



Celebrating their first anniversary, they have now found their feet and begun to become a fixture of Castle Douglas. A good set of photos were needed.

Increasingly over the past year or two I've found myself doing more and more in the way of creating image banks for businesses.

Attention is focused on creating a signature photo – one that helps reflect and define their image. But I also do high quality portraits, in-action and details shots for them too.



This allows them to have a stock of magazine-quality photos that can be used for promotional articles, press releases, brochures, posters and/or social media.

They don't then have to worry that when they have something to promote, they end up having to rely on either a press photographer who doesn't share their vision, or the camera on their phone.



And so was the situation with Mr Pook's Kitchen. We spent a long, intense day creating photos of action in the kitchen, close ups of the plating up process, customers being served (friends and suppliers called in to help out on a day the restaurant was actually closed), all before we got to the signature image.



When doing the shoot, I called upon the help of Brodie of Donohoe Media, who did the behind-the-scenes video for my shoot for Kasama last year. Once again she used her skills to shoot some footage for me, which I edited into a short (less than 2 minutes) video that gives you a sense of what the day was like:



And in the latest Dumfries & Galloway Life magazine (June 2019 edition), not only have they featured a couple of the photos in a feature about Mr Pook's Kitchen, but the story of the photo shoot itself has become part of the article!

Body Image and the Older Woman

Should a woman's value primarily be attached to a narrow ideal of youth, impossible physical attributes and perceived sexual availability?

If this idea makes you feel uncomfortable, then good, it should.

And yet we are bombarded with this notion every single day in every media to the point where it has become normalised.

From teenagers and young adults obsessed with doing their make-up right, to brands of skin moisturisers that "visibly reduce the 7 signs of ageing," to the multi-billion pound diet industry ruling the lives of most of the women in the western world, and beyond. Women are expected to try and make themselves thinner, smoother skinned and younger looking, in order to be perceived as more attractive, and therefore give them more value in a society obsessed with these things.

Even adverts or programmes that appear to challenge the norms, such as the Dove "Real Women" campaign, or Gok Wan's "How to Look Good Naked," still buy into the idea that they are empowering women by helping them to look more attractive – younger, thinner, and smoother skinned.

Are they really empowering women, or are they actually embedding these ideals even deeper?

In the world of art, the "art nude" has a long history – stretching back at least as far as the ancient Greeks in their statues and decorated earthenware. But, again, they almost always conform to a youthful ideal with a hint (or more) of sexual availability. An object of desire.

So unquestioned are these ideas that when artists such as Lucien Freud, and more recently Jenny Saville, have painted larger bodies, uncompromising in their depiction of flesh as we more commonly experience it – with fat, cellulite and stretch-marks - they have been perceived as shocking.

Take a moment to ponder this point: the depiction of impossible female bodies bombard us everyday as an ideal all women should be aspiring to, and yet bodies as they actually are – as we experience them in the everyday – are to be hidden away and never referred to.

Against this backdrop, I decided to start a photography project with a working title, "Women Over 50."

This project is about creating a series of nude photographs of women in this age group, that are neither vulnerable, apologetic, nor seeking the approval of the male gaze.

Bodies as they really are, with nothing enhanced or adjusted in Photoshop.

Each woman looks directly into the lens, unapologetically owning the body she has.

Starting this Sunday, as part of Luminate – Scotland's Festival of Ageing – I will be showing some of these photographs before joining a panel discussion, aimed at exploring many of the ideas and questions they raise.

There will be 3 of these events across Dumfries and Galloway, called Body Image and the Older Woman:



The first is on Sunday 12th May at Thomas Tosh in Thornhill 7pm-9pm
The second is on Thursday 16th May at The Stove in Dumfries 7pm-9pm
The third is on Friday 17th May at The Print Room in Wigtown 7pm-9pm

Each event will be hosted by DG Unlimited Development Officer, Maggie Broadly, and joining me on the panel will be playwright and poet, Carolyn Yates, and artist Denise Zygadlo, with playwright, Dr Jane Sunderland (Reader on Gender and Discourse at Lancaster University), joining us for the one at Thornhill.

Maggie will begin with introductions and an opening question, but then the idea is to open up to questions from the audience.

An interesting, thought provoking evening awaits!

Hope you can make it along.



If you feel you would like to take part in the Women Over 50 project, then do get in touch. I can send you more information and we can meet up to discuss the project before you make your decision.