Bamburgh Castle from Lindisfarne

Bamburgh Castle from Lindisfarne

I am slowly working through the photo shoot from last week - it just keeps getting better. By the end of the week I will try and put another slide show together.

What travels a third of a mile an hour?

Sand Dunes - Lindisfarne,

Some days it feels like me but the answer, according to the national treasure and iPad fanboy Stephen Fry, is spring*. I believe this having driven back from the frozen north of England to the relatively balmy East Midlands. One sign that spring is here is the dawn chorus of birds. In Seahouses there was none but back home the birds are on fine form - a joy to wake up to - especially after the long journey.

So I am back home, refreshed and raring to go and what a lot the spring has to offer. Exhibitions to visit, competition to enter and disappointments to get over, historical facts to unearth and who knows what else? So lets start with a disappointment. My book. I have no idea why but the production was a total disaster. Not only was the dust sleeve not produced but also the reproduction of the photographs was appalling. Over the next week or so I am going to work out what went wrong and I am sure I did some things wrong but I am also sure I did a lot of things right. I will not pontificate any further until I have undertaken a full post mortem.

Enough bad news. On a more positive note I got round to producing a couple of photographs last night from the visit to Northumbria and the results are most encouraging - perhaps I might be able to produce a photograph of Lindisfarne which is not a cliché after all - lets hope so.

*I always get my vast amount of useless information from QI - a veritable vat of such things.

Shooting a cliché...

So how do you capture something that is so well known as to make anything you make a cliché? I'm still working on that and I suspect that I will take some months until I have something like an answer. The two days I have spent of Lindisfarne have produced very mixed results. The bird photographs have been excellent. This was something that I had hoped would have happened but until you are there you just don't know.

Back to cliché. One way may be to follow in the illustrious steps of Thomas Girtin. He painted the castle at Lindisfarne back in the late 18th century and took an approach that was more expressionist rather than realistic. Indeed I saw the painting at the recent Turner exhibition at the Tate and commented that it was not that realistic. Now I know why. Girtin had taken the elements and exaggerated them for artistic effect. The result was a wonderful example of the his artistic talent.

Another would be to out cliché the cliché. I am not sure whether I approve of this but it is an option. I could have done a Joe Cornish clone - perhaps I have above I am not sure. However, I suspect I will find a middle way when I get back to my study and can really work on the images I have captured.

It is just such a difficult place to get a handle on. On one hand it is this hugely important early medieval site; it reeks of history and intrigue. The flip side of this is that it is such a tourist trap that everywhere you go is oldie worldie this and cream tea that. The weather hasn't helped - although I am not sure what I had expected.

So in the end I have to hope I can pull something out of the fire when I get back home. At the moment the saving grace has been some very compliant Curlew to make the whole thing worth while.

Cold, grey and curlews...

Boy it was cold on Lindisfarne this morning. Worse than this it was dull and grey. Then only real highlight was capturing a Curlew going about its business. One of the things about cars is that most animals don't see them as a threat so they can be a really useful hide - certainly more comfortable.

The rest of the morning on the Holy Island was dull. However I will work on the images over the coming weeks and lets hope something might come out of it.

After lunch we indulged my other passion - Anglo Saxon history. We went to Yeaving, the site of one of the most impressive Northumbrian palaces. This was the site that Paulianious introduced Roman Christianity to the pagan anglians. He is supposed to have baptised them in the near by River Glen, well if it was a day like today then he wouldn't have been that successful!

Preparing for Northumbria...

Northumberland Gallery

So just what photographs do I want to make when I am in Northumbria next week? This is an interesting question as I usually am trying to capture birds and nature when I visit. This time it is different - whilst there will be opportunities for wildlife photography I am more interested in landscape and wild places rather than wildlife. To start the process I put together the above gallery of really interesting photographs of Northumbria on Flickr. They are stunning.

But what do I want to do? Well the Flickr collection would suggest that the range is between Joe Cornish or Michael Kenna with the sample skewed towards Cornish. Is this what I want to do? Well as part of the preparation I have been going through last summer's photographs and the following give a good guide as to what I am thinking.

Embleton Bay - Low Newton

This is hardly Kenna's style, in fact it is nothing like his photographs, however I have been influenced by him whilst making this photograph. At the moment this is the type of landscape photography I am producing.

Farne Islands in the Evening- Seahouses

This is more in the Cornish style - long exposure, super saturated colours - usually at dawn or dusk with an emphasis on on a flowing form throughout the picture leading from one element to the next. So which style to follow? well it is not that simple. Both of these photographs were made months after they were taken and had a significant post production element. I guess what I am saying is that I am trying to find inspiration for the initial capture phase - after that I will let my imagination and and other influences fly. Really rather exciting.

One final thought. The castle at Lindisfarne has been captured in countless photographs. However, very few are very good (the link is a notable exception) and this will be an interesting challenge to try and produce something new and interesting - will mine be derivative or fresh and new? Only time will tell.