Glass Blowing

Today was the first day of the four day Patchings Arts Festival, an annual event which I haven't really been able to attend before because of commitments to Gothla. Well, I left Gothla last year and am now free to go to Patchings instead.

It's an Elysium for artists with representation from all the companies making artist materials. Well known artists come to speak. The day opened with David Bellamy talking about botanical illustration. He had some beautiful water colours on display.

They've even allowed in photographers. Bit tricky as to whether photography is art, but they've given us the benefit of the doubt. The photography marquee is sponsored by Outdoor Photography magazine, which is the only tog mag I buy these days other than Amateur Photographer which allows you to catch up with a bit of chit chat and which I usually throw away after perusing it for 20 minutes.

If you know Outdoor Photography magazine, then you know that the emphasis is on landscape photography with wildlife photography thrown in as well. Creating beautiful pictures.

I'd gone specifically today to hear Doug Chinnery, whose work I greatly admire. He specialises in intentional camera movement and prints the works of Valda Bailey and Chris Friel.

I was inspired not only by the work he showed but by the way  he demonstrated how his photography had developed from the days when he had a Canon 350D. It was a revelation and I could identify with it. In Glencoe, shortly before I met him for the first time for a mentoring session, his tripod head had broken. He had had to resort to hand holding his camera, and you know what? It had worked. Abandoning the tripod freed his vision and his ability to capture that vision.

Since I met him in 2013, his work has become more obviously impressionistic. It really works. A speaker who came on at the end of the afternoon had evidently been following in his footsteps. Trouble is, everybody wants to get in on the act now, including me. Must develop my own vision.

Points to remember: aperture f5.6 to f8. Exposures of 1-2 seconds. Minimal but obvious camera movement. Round nd filters. Continuous mode shooting. I asked him about the filters he used as I said I didn't think it could be Lee filters. He laughed. He uses Live View. He freely admits that he can come back from a walk with 500 images of which just one may be viable. And there's me grinning from ear to ear.

As you can see from today's photo, I didn't just stick to the Photography marquee. I also popped into the glass-blowing demo. That globule of glass which the lady is holding is probably around 700C. She's cooling it with a wad of seven folded newspapers soaked in water. Sends shivers down my spine. A portable furnace was on site.

Excellent gluten free egg sandwiches and a pot of decaff tea in the cafe for lunch.

When I got home I discovered that the front seam of my trousers had busted from waist to crotch. I have no idea how that happened except I had a tendency to manspread while sitting in the front row. I'd been wearing decent Granny knickers but I wish they'd been black.