west lane baptist church

February 27, 2024

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 24 February 2024].}

so he brought them to the haven where they would be

February 18, 2024

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 16 February 2024].}

untitled #136 [cambridge, cambridgeshire, england, 2017]

cambridge cycles

January 23, 2024

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 17 January 2024].}

untitled #83 [cambridge, cambridgeshire, england, 2017]

taste and see that the lord is good

October 31, 2023

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 29 October 2023].}

hertford town church [hertford, hertfordshire, england, 2021]

helmsley

February 21, 2023

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 16 February 2023].}

untitled #123 [helmsley, north yorkshire, england, united kingdom, 2012]

parish church of st cuthbert

March 15, 2022

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 10 March 2022].}

we come from the earth, we return to the earth, and in between we garden

January 23, 2022

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 16 January 2022].}

fell into the sea

October 24, 2021

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 18 October 2021].}

Hello, my lovelies!

I'm ever so sorry for the radio silence! It's been a manic week or more, and I'm desperately trying to catch up at the moment.

Please bear with me over the next couple of weeks while I'm completing two more kitteh-sitting gigs and working from the laptops of my clients.

I'm fortunate to own a 27" 4K iMac, but I'm currently working from a standard 27" monitor and a 13.3" Macbook Air screen. Neither of which are calibrated. So apologies if things look awry (though I'm sure I'll notice the issues more than you!)

My current wards are two devastatingly cute but mischievous characters who are only five months and one year old, respectively. So they require more wrangling and attention than my last gaolers. As a consequence, it's taken me a while to get myself back on track after relocating last Thursday afternoon, even though I'm only an hour's commute from my home.

After a false start at the beginning of September, I now finally have an excellent new flatmate joining me on 1 November, so the past week has been busy with the admin required to make that official.

I also spent a chunk of last week completing some design work for a client.

And I managed to sneak in a self-portrait shoot in the second bedroom in my flat before it becomes occupied again. I look forward to sharing some of those with you in the coming weeks! It's shocking that I've lived in the flat for about five and a half years but had not managed to shoot in there until recently because it was almost always someone else's space. And when it wasn't, I was away from home.

I also have quite a few self-portraits remaining to share with you from my time in Shepherd's Bush.

I may manage some self-portraits in my current location in Wandsworth. But I'll have to see how confident I feel about putting my camera and tripod at the mercy of two kitties prone to cutting laps in hot pursuit of each other.

I'm also hoping to get out and about one day this week to explore the local and Battersea areas.

My next kitteh-sitting gig - starting straight after this one - will take me to Wales! My first time back in another of my ancestral countries since 2001!

That holds the promise of potential self-portraits but also the opportunity to explore the area a little. And the company of two "furry idiots" I've been assured are low maintenance but prone to bringing "gifts" to their owners in the form of moles and mice (another potential photo opportunity for me, of course!)

Meanwhile, tonight I'm sharing a full-length photo of the grave at the Holy Trinity Church in Bosham I shared in a previous post, going overboard. The inscription aroused quite a lot of interest across my social media accounts a couple of weeks ago when I shared it there.

It reads:

In Memory of
THOMAS son of Richard and Ann
BARROW, Master of the sloop Two
Brothers who by the Breaking of the
Horse fell into the sea & was Drown'd
October the 13th 1759. Aged 23 years.

Tho Boreas's Storms and Neptune's waves
have tos'd me to and fro
Yet I at length by God's decree
am harbour'd here below
Where at an Anchor here I lay
with many of our Fleet
Yet once again I shall set Sail
my Saviour Christ to meet.

going overboard

October 10, 2021

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 3 October 2021].}

048 intersecting

March 20, 2021

Day forty-eight of The 100 Day Project for 2021.

I know it's lame. But this is really all I had the energy for in the last hour of yesterday. And I didn't even get the perspective from the photograph right.

The source photograph was taken in 2017 in the church in which my great grandparents married.

Except not really.

Because on the third night of the London Blitz, at 22:20 on 9 September 1940, a bomb destroyed the majority of St Mary's Church in Islington, London. Leaving only the tower and spire intact.

A church by the same name still stands there. But, in reality, it's not the same church.

I visited the church with my parents in 2017 when they were in London last.

This was a photograph I took with my phone of the flooring inside the church. It made for a simple subject for today.

I wavered about shading it but decided not to.

The initial sketch was drawn with a 4H pencil. I went over the lines in 4B for the edges of the blue circle, 2B for the yellow one. And HB for the edges of the cream shapes (or whatever colour you want to classify them).

heaven or hell

September 21, 2020

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 14 September 2020].}

This is another photograph I submitted to issue #149 of Shots Magazine.

Like encrypted, this photo was taken in the ossuary housed in the crypt at St Leonard's Church in Hythe, Kent.

It's a fascinating place for people like me, but maybe not up everyone's alley...

This was taken about 14:00 one day in summer. The mixture of daylight through the window of the crypt and the artificial lighting overhead creates a nice contrast of red and gold light on the shelves of skulls facing each other.

time for reflection

September 18, 2020

^{[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 11 September 2020].}

Last week I submitted some of my photographs to issue #149 of Shots Magazine. The theme for the issue is open, so work on any subject can be considered.

This was one of the images I submitted, though the version I sent through was black and white as the magazine is printed that way.

I took this photo of the Church of St Peter and St Paul, the Appledore Parish Church, in Kent on 20 June 2016. It was taken mere days before the referendum on Britain leaving the European Union.

A short walk around the town revealed posters, placards and flyers proclaiming many of the town's residents as proud Leave supporters. Conversations overheard while we ate at The Black Lion confirmed we were in prime Leave territory.

Fast forward four years and the UK has left the EU, but we're still figuring out what that means.

About five months after the UK referendum, Donald Trump was elected.

The passing of time since then has revealed the world to me as seemingly the inverse of what I had believed and hoped it to be.

I felt we were moving forward as a global population. But since 2016, I feel like we've gone backwards in every way except time. Honesty, compassion, empathy, rationality, sanity and logic all seem at an all-time low around the world right now. At least compared to what I've seen in my lifetime.

Though gender and racial equality has made leaps and bounds over time, it feels like notions of equality are bending back into shapes of the past.

Two steps forward. One step back.

Or, more accurately, two steps forward, three steps backwards, another two, another two, another one for good measure...

I often feel like I'm staring at a weirdly inverted, sideshow-mirror-reflection of the world I thought I knew.

Though I've (perhaps foolishly) not 100% discounted the thought of having children, I've seen so much in the past four years to make me thankful for not having children up to this point. And fearful of what they might face if I were to have any.

On a day when everything feels alternately raw and jagged or dull and numb, this photo feels like a metaphor for the disorientation I've been feeling more and more lately. But perhaps it appears calmer than my feelings.