What an Idiot...

Brancaster Golf Course from Titchwell - Titchwell, originally uploaded by Guthlac.

Well that is me. I used to be so good with time and dates - always on time - never miss an appointment. However not any more. I seem to be getting worse. this time I missed my good friend David Manley's coffee morning - I thought it was today - instead it was last Friday. What a complete clot I am. If you read this David I am very sorry.

Strange Day...some good and some...well

The day started so very well.   I spent the morning with David Manley, a colleague from my course.  We spent a great few hours setting up his printer and then playing around with cameras.  We also found time to put the world right.  As usual we felt better but no doubt it had little or effect on the way the world worked - no butterfly effect here!

After dark I decided to work on some more photographs for my project.   There are two floral memorials for deaths around the village that I have found very compelling images to capture.   I spent more than two hours working on the photographs and felt I had captured something interesting and well in keeping with the No Title/No Rules theme.

I then started to work on the files in my study and then read one of the notes left on the road sign of the scene of one of the fatal car crashes.   This had a deep effect on me as I read it.  I cannot see all the text but I will repeat some of what I could see here:

It's been a long year without you

The pain still lingers

Our heart ache for the person

As the pain gets harder

You light up our days with a smile

In my heart the pain is raw

No one can ever take you away.

Now I don't know who wrote those words, if they're lyrics to a song; a poem or what but they have had a profound effect on me.   It makes you question what you are doing and why.  This is someone's deep felt heartache that you are examining and I suppose to a degree manipulating.  It is also a tug at the heart to any parent - the raw pain on show can almost be tasted.

So will I continue the work?   I think the answer is yes - but now with greater humility.  This commemorates the death of a real person.  This is not some abstract that you can debate. I don't have the stomach to be unaffected anymore - my Weegee protection has gone and the sadness and hurt is felt all too easily.  A sad end to the day.

Saul and the road to Damascus

If week is a long time in politics clearly 12 hours is an eternity for me.  I went to university this morning thinking that I knew where I was going with my project.  I had sorted out in my mind what I was going to do - there was harmony in my collective (Sorry another Star Trek reference!).  Then bang.  A thought struck me.  Bad things thoughts not usually good things - tend to rock the boat.

Isn't it funny where ideas come from.  I was sitting in the journals section of the DMU library paging through back issues of Photoworks.   I came to some work by TONK and this idea plopped out...

'why not break the rules of flash photography?'

I thought about this for a while longer then I thought 'No titles/No Rules'  Suddenly everything started to fall into place.  Last week Paul Hill had asked my what I now called myself as I was no longer employed.  "Student but I don't really feel the need for any title anymore.  I have had 32 years of that" was my reply. No Title.   My previous work was all to do with rules and I am sick to the back teeth of that. No Rules.  It made sense.  No Titles/No Rules.

I know this sounds a little anarchic but what better way to experiment.  No Title/No Rules.

This is a little much to compare this to what happened to St Paul.  I am pretty sure I will not be motivated to shape a new religion but it does make sense to me at least.  So there it is No Title/No Rules.

Display 2007 - Helen Sear

Interestingly we had a talk by Helen Sear, much of whose work would appear to be challenging perceptions.  For me the lecture could not have come at a better time.

One final thing.  The photograph is of the rather excellent  cake that  David Manley brought in.  Paul Hill asked me to take a photograph which I did.