Exmouth Boat Trip, August 2019

By shendyNo Comments
At the start of August I headed down to Exmouth for the annual naturist boat trip up the River Exe. I've done this quite a few times now, and always still find something slightly different to photograph.We were fortunate with the tides this year, as we were able to go right up as far as the Princess Weir bridge - as far as the boat is able to go - rather than turning round just after Topsham. The day after, I took a trip to the Devon Sculpture Park - I don't think it's been open that long, as I'd not come across it before. As the crow flies it wasn't far from Exmouth (you could probably actually see if from where I was staying), but I had to drive all the way up to Exmouth and back down the other side of the estuary to get there - and then it takes a bit of finding as it's well out of...
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Quenington Fresh Air Sculpture, June 2019

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Back in June we made our second visit to the Fresh Air Sculpture exhibition at Quenington in Gloucestershire - held every other year. It's held in the large (and lovely) grounds of the Old Rectory, with modern sculpture works spread all around - as well as some lovely art, it's also a really nice place to simply wander around. We'll definitely be back there in 2021...
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Hauser & Wirth, May 2019

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As I had a random day off, we headed out to Hauser & Wirth in Somerset. We had discovered that their current exhibitions had finished the Sunday before, but we went anyway to see their other galleries and their grounds. To start with, the other galleries and the main shop were closed as the space was being used for bits & pieces while they took down the exhibitions - which meant that there was pretty much nothing to see.About the only thing there was a couple of Don McCullin originals - his landscapes. On sale for a mere £8250 plus framing plus VAT. But there were still the gardens (designed by Piet Oudolf), which were actually quite nice. There's an odd modern building at the top of the garden though - you'd think something like that would be quite out of place in a rural setting like Hauser & Wirth but it doesn't grate and it is photographically quite interesting - its's...
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Going Back to Film

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Long and a bit image heavy... I was about to post something about getting back into taking and developing my own black and white film when I realised that I haven't actually posted anything at all about starting off with large format photography, which was where the whole film thing started - so this is going to be a long post with quite a few photos. This dates back to late 2014 when I heard about a Kickstarter project that was launching an affordable 5x4 large format camera, the Intrepid Camera Company. That's something I've thought about a few times over the last 20 years, but it's always been way out of my league - far too expensive. But suddenly this made it affordable, so I signed up. It took them quite a while to get production sorted and I didn't get my camera until mid-2016, and it's been a slow process getting used to it. I started with some cheap film,...
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France 2017

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We went back to France for our summery holiday, after a slight aberration last year when we spent a few days in a caravan in Cornwall - any mention of that holiday now gets us both whistling the theme tune to Peter Kaye's Phoenix Nights, given the quality of the evening entertainment the caravan park laid on... We went back to a gite we've been to a couple of times before - it's nice, it's a good size for the two of us, it's quiet, it's very close to the local wine producer and it's got very clear views of the night sky. So here's a few different sets: Giverny On the way down through France, we stopped off at Giverny to visit the Monet gardens - we'd been a couple of times about 15 years ago now and thought it time for another visit. The last image is a little different - not taken at Giverny but fairly close by. Slightly inspired by the...
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