I'm just back from the fabulous Call of the Wild Soul art retreat at Croydon Hall on Exmoor. The retreat is the inspiration of Erin Faith Allen and was just amazing. My only regret is that it was only possible to take classes from 3 of the 4 wonderful teachers there. I have decided to write a separate post for each class starting with day one when I took Madelyn Mulvaney's Persisting Soul class, which was based on photography rather than painting. It was a relaxed and gentle day with words of wisdom interspersed with exercises in pairs and a post lunch photo walk.
During the first exercise we were looking and embracing and releasing and went out into the slightly damp and misty garden to take photos.
I also used the opportunity to take some of the wonderful moss covered tree trunks in the garden.
Back in the classroom we looked at examples of manifestos and began to brainstorm some ideas for our own - here is mine which I finished on my return home.
After a delicious lunch (would certainly recommend the food at Croydon Hall) we went on a photo walk. There was so much to capture even though we went a relatively short way. This is just a small sample of the photos I took
The second theme of the day was journeys and destinations and my workshop partner and I took various photos around the house and garden.
In between all the other activities we also played around with vintage Polaroid film which produced pictures with a soft light and interesting striped effects. I can remember these from my parents Polaroid owning days when striped photos were not seen as an interesting, artistic or desirable outcome, rather the reverse! Still finding it hard to get my head around this!
Finally we did the self portrait section of the class. Each choosing how we would like the other to photograph us and then choosing a feature of the other to shoot. my partner chose to have a photo just of her foot with adorning anklet and I chose to take a photo of her amazing eyes.
