Postcard from Chelsea - One

This week for the first time ever my husband and I went to the Chelsea Flower Show . The primary reason of this, other than it was on my bucket list, was to get inspiration for planning our tiny courtyard garden (somehow it seems much more difficult to plan a small space than a large on as there is no room for mistakes). Naturally I took my camera as well.

The challenges of taking photos at Chelsea are immense. First there are the crowds which mean that you are lucky to get close enough to any of the exhibits to see them never mind photograph them. Then there is the fact that you can't spend half the day fiddling with your camera settings as you will (a) annoy those people jostling for position to view the gardens and (b) annoy your companion who is, after all, here to look at the gardens himself. If you then throw into the mix difficult lighting conditions around some of my favourite exhibits ,it seems a wonder that I took any pictures worth sharing at all! But here goes.

I'm going to start off by sharing one of my favourite gardens in the Fresh gardens category which represents the cutting edge of small concept gardens

This is the World Vision Garden inspired both by the beauty of the rice fields of Cambodia, and the fact that many children are existing on 2 bowls of rice a day. The golden rods represent the rice and the dark water the fear of hunger.

Other dangers lurk beneath the waters for those who work in the paddy fields and these are represented by bowls of cacti

Hope blooms in the garden too, represented by the Irises and other delicate flowers that are able to thrive, as Cambodia's children must.

This Garden appeals to me on multiple levels. I love the colour and the visual impact, but I also travelled to Cambodia a couple of years ago and visited Honour Village, a children's centre founded by a friend of mine. This foundation is doing much good work to help children and families in Cambodia.

From Study to Studio by way of Baltimore!

Today I am one step nearer to having a studio. We have just finished the transformation of our study by having it painted and plan to start calling it the studio from now on.

This room has always doubled as a spare bedroom as it has an ensuite shower room but I sold the big sofa bed on eBay and replaced it with a smaller transportable solution which can live upstairs and be brought down for the dozen or so nights we need it each year. Instead I have a comfy chair bought from our local independent furniture store and a wide set of drawers from Ikea which will take art paper.

Lots of stuff from Ikea in the room including the heart lights,

and these two kitchen trolleys for storing paints etc. I first saw them used for this purpose in a picture of the art studio Kelly Rae Roberts, Flora Bowley and others have opened in Portland Oregon and just thought wow! (at least I think I did, but don't seem to be able to find it now)

Of course everything in the room isn't new, the desk bookcase and the filing cabinets have been there for years although the contents of the latter have changed significantly over the last 18 months

Books are an important part of my world and these are some I have been exploring recently.

In terms of decoration I have imported objects with meaning from other parts of the house, the Buddha I bought in Cambodia, the glass heart is from St Ives Cornwall where I used to spend time every summer with my son and one of my best friends. The candle holders are from our local agricultural show, the little pot from a family holiday in Turkey and the vase was a gift when I left my first social work job in 1979 to go on to start my training. All are treasured and seeing them brings back happy memories.

This little paper boat I bought at the Museum of Visionary Art in Baltimore just after 9/11. I was in Baltimore to attend the First International Conference of Appreciative Inquiry and after the conference had ended I spent the last day prior to my evening flight sightseeing. I ended up at the American Visionary Art Museum which was dedicated to showing the art of people who had no formal training. Sadly it was mostly closed in preparation for a new exhibition. I got talking to the lady in the shop and conversation predictably turned to the tragedy of 9/11 as every conversation did when you met someone in those days. She told me she had received an email from a friend who lived in Cornwall which said 'now you know what it feels like' said that she had not, until that moment, considered that the IRA were terrorists; which as I had been living in London at the time of the IRA terror campaign in the seventies and actually heard the Old Bailey bomb go off, rather shocked me. However it perfectly illustrates the old adage that 'one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter'. Having chatted for sometime the shop lady decided it was terrible that I couldn't see the exhibition and got the security man to take me round which was a real delight. I bought the peace boat (made by a local elderly lady) as a reminder of my visit to the museum and my conversation.

And finally I bought some new goodies to decorate the studio including this magnetic angel and inspirational magnets from Kelly Rae Roberts

And this banner (not in place yet) also from Kelly Rae

and finally the string of leaves from my favourite shop in Winchester

I hope you have enjoyed your virtual trip round my new studio

See you soon

xxx

A Sense of Place - Week ONe

I have just started Kat Sloma's course 'A Sense of Place'. In this first week Kat has posed the question 'Do you travel to photograph or photograph as you travel?'

Thinking about this question I realise I photograph as I travel. However I try to take my camera with me most days as you never know what unexpected treasure you are going to find, even when you are somewhere you know well.

Both these sets of pictures were taken during an impromptu lunch hour walk last summer.

I derive a lot of pleasure from coming upon things unexpectedly so would not always want to plan my travels around things I have identified that I really want to photograph. I also think taking photos of famous monuments is often very difficult, unless you are able to spend days in preparation. Thus my recent photos of Angkor Wat were not particularly successful whereas I was really pleased with a picture of the captain of our boat on Halong Bay that I couldn't have planned for in the same way.

Similarly my attempts to capture the Temple of Literature in Hanoi weren't crowned with success but I was very happy with the pictures I took of some of the young people I saw there.

When I came to look for photos to illustrate this point, I realised I had already deleted most of the more general views of the Temple of Literature!

It will be interesting to see whether, as I get more deeply involved with photography, my perspective changes on this!

A Visit to the Village

As part of our recent trip to Vietnam and Cambodia we were thrilled to be able to visit Honour Village, a childrens village founded by Sue Wiggans a retired school teacher from the Isle of Wight. More info about the village here

The first challenge was to get to the village from Siem Reap, where we were staying in order to visit the magnificent Angkor Wat temple complex. Sue had sent us detailed instructions which we proved to be incapable of conveying either to the hotel receptionist or the tuk tuk driver. The solution was to ring Sue who asked one of her Cambodian staff members to instruct the driver on our behalf. Then we were off, bouncing along the hot and dusty road sometimes, but not always, missing the inevitable potholes! After about half an hour and a couple of wrong turnings we arrived, hot, dusty and pleased to be there.

Our first impression of Honour Village was of happy smiling children - one that has stayed with us!

After a Welcome from Sue we were taken on a tour of the village. There are over 50 resident children ranging in age from under fives to older teenagers. These are children who have lost their parents or whose families are unable to care for them at present.

In addition to the resident children, more than 300 children come for lessons from the surrounding villages to supplement the education provided by the Cambodian state. It is normal in Cambodia for parents to pay for additional lessons for their children to ensure they pass their grades which with class sizes up to 60 can be a challenge for some. Many parents cannot, of course, afford this and the lessons available at Honour Village help to fill this gap.

Sue told us that they were hoping to get a government sponsored teacher to work at the village and that this would make a significant difference to the status of Honour Village. In the meantime as we walked round we saw several classes in action teaching Khmer and English. Some children were using the small library and others were playing in the garden. More classes would begin at 2 including Sue's kindergarten class.

There was also evidence of the challenge of keeping house for 50 plus, I was glad the washing wasn't my responsibility - as it is there is a line for each of the houses and the housemothers are responsible for the task.

As we were leaving Sue and the Honour Village manager began to look at the children's grade cards from the local school - the idea that education can provide a way out of poverty is a central tenet of the philosophy of Honour Village and the children are given all the help and encouragement possible both in terms of their work at the local school and their lessons at Honour Village.

Honour village is doing great work helping children and families in Siem Riep if you would like to support them in this work you can make a donation here.

A lotus flower is the logo for Honour village together with the words

TRUTH - TRANSPARENCY - INTEGRITY

a visit to Honour Village allows you to see these values in action

Holiday Snaps?

We have just returned from a wonderful holiday to Vietnam and Cambodia, our first major holiday since I became really passionate about photography. This has presented me with a number of challenges, the first being why I am taking photographs? What is the purpose of it? The 1,800 or so pictures I’ve taken they can probably be broken down into the following categories:

Photographs of things I want to remember I’ve seen.

These come under the heading of traditional holiday snaps, not necessarily things that are intrinsically beautiful or fascinating, but things that appear ‘different’ or unusual that I want to record so that when I get home I know I haven’t imagined them.

The photos were taken at the tomb of Tu Duc at Hue where dressing up clothes are available for anyone who wants to play at being emperor and concubines. We were lucky enough to arrive just as this group were ready to have their photo taken.

Photographs of famous monuments / beauty spots.

Tricky this on several counts, when you're on a group tour, as we were, you don’t get to pick the time of day or light in which you see places. Plus I’m still saving up for a wide-angle lens. Plus you can almost always get a postcard that is better than anything you can take yourself unless you can inject another point of interest into the photo (other than yourself!) to make it a little different.

The top picture is one of the temples at Angkor Wat in Cambodia, the bottom one is from our cruise on Halong Bay - both of these are UNESCO World Heritage sites

Flowers, colours, shapes that may or not speak directly of the place you have been visiting but have a universal appeal

I love these lotus flowers for their colour and shape as they unfurl - they also happen to be the national flower of Vietnam as well as India

People, the life of the country. Photographs of people wearing local dress, national costumes, doing every day tasks or on special occasions

Luckily for photographers most people in Vietnam seem happy for you to take their photo and will often smile and wave to show their approval if, for example, they are passing on a motor scooter (more about traffic in a later post)

The first of these pictures was taken on the Meekong Delta. The other two of women tending rice paddys and a herb garden were taken on the drive to Halong Bay from Hanoi.

‘I woz here’ photos

I’ve never taken very many of these and have always felt slightly baffled by the number of people who seem to feel that a photo of a monument isn’t valid unless they are in it as well, to prove they’ve actually been there. That said, I did take a few of this type of photo this time mainly with my iPhone to pop on to Facebook.

These were taken outside Ho Chi Minh's mausoleum in Hanoi, at the Cu Chi tunnels in Siagon, demonstrating exactly how small a space the Viet Kong were living in during the war, and enjoying a fresh coconut drink whilst travelling on the Mekong Delta