How do you feel?

This is not some deep reflection on grief or the weird alienation that even after two years sometimes hits me as an expat in Austin - an aerial freeway? A drive through donut shop? Turning right on a red light? Post on a Sunday? None of these things seem real. But they are here. No...

Guiding the Eyes

What makes see things the way we do? Can I push my vision of the world on you? Let's see. First I'll go easy on you.   What is it? A single image resting in the frame. No tricks. The apple is the apple. The dog a dog. The sign a sign. The fungus an...

Light and Dark

I struggled with this. My task this week: look for high contrast settings to over or under expose. To create joyful high key photographs flooded with light and dark photographs of mystery and tension. What I got was something slightly different. But it has been hard to over expose in the muddy greys that have...

Photographic Ode to my Tumble Dryer

Can you see beauty in an everyday object? Transform it from function to color, sweeping line and artistic abstraction? That was my aim with my overused tumble dryer.

A failure of focus

I learnt a lot this week. Not from my great success at my depth of field homework. Which actually left me with 9 photos - shot at three different apertures for three different focus objects - that were virtually indistinguishable..... Despite this I do know I can actually shoot one object out of a line...

Musical moments

Another School of Rock weekend whiled away at the North Door club in East Austin watching my son play bass this time. It was awesome. Here are a few frozen moments of music, my son's serious concentration and the interplay of audience and band as the guitars serenaded and the singers held the stage.  

Wood Walking

Its supposed to be restorative wood walking. Natures antidepressant.  So I took my son into the healing calm of green leaf and brown bark, out of the bustle of the city and the stress of school. It was for a while, till the world reasserted itself - sending warning noises through the branches: dog barking,...

Dog doing fine – fun in the creek

My dog is all better. Just a stomach upset. Which upset everyone probably more than him. Still, having been so worried about him, the relief of seeing him back to normal added additional delight to watching him splash through the sun shimmering water to chase sticks while I tried to use a fast shutter to...

Fire and Fish

It's late Saturday night. Music playing. Glass of wine on the coffee table. Light low in our sitting room. I am frozen in place DSLR clamped stiffly in hand. Arms braced against my sides to minimize the wobble during the long exposure - 2 seconds. I'm doing my photography homework. Playing with time. I try...

Days with dad

Dad left yesterday. Soon he will be over 4000 miles away.  I won't see him for months. This is the expat burden. No popping round to friends and family for coffee or Sunday lunch. No casual meet ups at the cinema or spontaneous trips to the seaside. I dropped Dad off at Austin Bergstrom Airport...