[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 19 December 2023].
rievaulx
[I originally posted this entry as early access for my Patreon patrons on 18 March 2022].
Rievaulx is a lovely little spot in the North York Moors.
Visiting there in 2012 (when these photos were taken) inspired me to encourage my parents to visit there during their visit in 2017.
Unfortunately, on that visit, we had sleet and rain instead of smatterings of snow.
It was a lovely spot to visit on Valentine's Day.
world photography day 2020
The internet: Today is World Photography Day!
Me: Every day is World Photography Day in my world…
of frostbite and food bellies
Day seven of The 100 Day Project.
Did I mention I'm also a fan of the absurd?
I had big plans for a new instalment of my postcards from another's life series today.
But then I had a bit of a lie-in. I spent about two hours on Skype with my dad. I did some chores. I joined a Quaranteam session with Marianne Cantwell. And I had to work on 'this' despite not knowing what it was going to be when I started.
My big plans have been rescheduled to tomorrow. But I already have an idea of what tomorrow's collage and my next 'pfal' will be.
Illustrations:
Behemoth by Louis Le Breton from Dictionnaire Infernal
Frostbitten sun by Gustave Doré from Wunderbare Reisen zu Wasser und Lande, feldzüge und lustige Abentheuer des Freyherrn von Münchhausen wie er dieselben bey der Flasche im Zirkel seiner Freunde zu Erzählen pflegt. Aus dem Englischen nach der neuesten Ausgabe übersetzt, hier und da erweitert und mit noch mehr Küpfern gezieret
traffic lamb
now playing: the kinks - celluloid heroes
truck show
now playing: bloc party - so here we are
lune head farm
now playing: david bowie - because you're young
warcop ranges
now playing: clouds - souleater
signs of winter
now playing: nick cave & the bad seeds - loom of the land
snow day
Almost a week after the snowfall captured in my previous post, we had another overnight snowfall allowing me to capture the portraits of Kyle cavorting in a local park the next day [also in a previous post], and to capture the snow up close and personal, rather than from the warmth and dry of my home.
Below are some of the other photos I captured.
For those who might be interested, I have work available for sale as open editions on RedBubble [unframed photographic prints, matted framed and canvas prints], as well as postcards, greeting cards, and calendars.
Calendars are available for any starting month, and I'm more than happy to create custom calendars of my work, should you like!
Most of my self-portraiture is only available as limited edition prints, so please contact me directly if you're interested in any on RedBubble that are not for sale; or if there are any other images of mine you have seen on my blog or website that you would like to purchase that aren't on RedBubble.
Additionally, if you would prefer a signed print or a limited edition print, please also feel free to contact me for details
now playing: beirut - st. apollonia
snow patrol
I'm from a country where it doesn't snow in the cities.
If you're lucky it might snow in some alpine areas a couple of hours out of the city (see Victorian and New South Wales snowfields), but mostly you only see snow if you go hunting for it, and rarely do you ever see it actually falling. If need be, the holiday resorts manufacture their own snow so they can maintain a ski season in years when the snowfall isn't up to par.
I think the first time I saw snow was in about sixth grade when my parents took us away for a day to the Victorian snowfields, and my brothers and I had our first experience of throwing snowballs at each other, making a snowman, and just generally mucking about in the snow. I can't recall ever attempting to ski, but my memory may be fuzzy on this.
Apart from that, and being sleeted upon in November 2006 whilst tramping around the Tongariro Crossing area of New Zealand (I wasn't brave enough to climb the scree with my friends, Hugh and Jamie, who subsequently got properly snowed upon), my heaviest actual snowfall experienced previously was pretty piddling: a flurry in Birmingham city centre a couple of weeks after arriving in the UK in 1999, and a similarly brief 'white Christmas' in Newcastle a few weeks later.
Even in the two and a half years I lived here previously, most of the snow I experienced was already on the ground. This included when I had to work between the Christmas and New Year holidays one year, and I walked out of my front door in Reading and stopped on the doorstep, utterly perplexed at what confronted me. It took a good couple of beats before my sleep-deprived brain registered "It snowed!" Having snowed overnight whilst we slept, I had still not been snowed upon, good and proper; and since I had to work, I left my housemate and my then-boyfriend to run around in said snow in their boxer shorts throwing snowballs at each other, whilst I attempted to venture into town without falling on my arse.
So you can imagine I was pretty excited by actual snow, actually falling, at the start of February right outside my house. There were a few preliminary flurries over the weeks leading up to it, but I'd managed to blink and miss every single one. And given the windows to my bedroom are quite high up, and mostly obscured from view by the sloping ceiling when I'm sitting at my desk, it was only because I was talking with my housemates at the time and my landlady mentioned it, that I even noticed.
Suffice to say, despite the cold, I grabbed my camera and wandered out to try to catch some photos. Some at the beginning of the snowfall from the footpath outside my house; the rest from the warmth and dry of my bedroom, the landing, the kitchen and lounge.
I even woke at random points through the night to check if it was still snowing (e.g. 4:30am, and again at 8:30am), and shot off some more photos.
My landlady and housemates were not so excited by the prospect of snow, with concerns about driving and potential flight delays. And though I worried about the impact it would have on Kyle's arrival (it caused slight additional delay); and knew the novelty would pass once I had to venture out, once the snow had turned to sludge, and when the pure white snowfall was discoloured by so many neighbourhood dogs' urine, I think my inner tourist was showing.
now playing: snow patrol - chasing cars
fucking tourist
I've been a little absent from the online world the past few weeks, primarily because Kyle arrived for an all-too-brief visit, albeit approximately 25.5 hours later than scheduled, making it even briefer.
A technical hitch delaying his flight from Mackay in Queensland to Brisbane by two hours (originally cited as being due to bad weather) caused him to miss his connecting flight from Brisbane to Singapore; and though eventually Qantas found him a seat on corresponding flights exactly 24 hours later (after feeding him and putting him up in a hotel overnight), by the time he reached Singapore, snowfall in London had impacted on flights landing at Heathrow, causing his British Airways flight to be cancelled, and him to be placed on a Qantas flight another hour later.
Thankfully the brevity of his visit didn't take away from the excitement and enjoyment of having him here with me in London, and getting to show him the sights, as well as a trip up north for a week to explore Yorkshire, Cumbria and County Durham.
Having snowed here on the Friday night, by the time Kyle arrived in the early hours of Monday morning, a lot of it had turned to slush and ice, but having never seen actual snow before, seeing the houses, train tracks, and parks coated in the stuff, Kyle felt it was all a little surreal [not dissimilar from my own experience around Christmas 2000 when I woke to find it had snowed overnight].
He had also been led to believe it would be extremely cold here, being midwinter and coming from midsummer Queensland humidity and heat; but being still fairly mild here at that stage, he was wondering what all the fuss was about.
So after a relaxing pub lunch [the first of countless consumed by us during his time here], he insisted I photograph him barefoot and in a t-shirt at a nearby park, showing him enjoying the mild weather. The original image is below.
As luck would have it, the following Thursday night it once more snowed, allowing him to wander out in it with his camera almost as excitedly as I had done the previous Friday night, and for us to take a second shot the next day of him enjoying the 'mild' weather, this time going for full effect with him donning shorts, a 'wifebeater', and armed with a can of Carlsberg.
All he was missing was a barbecue.
After 'basking' in the morning sun, he also decided to do a barefoot lap of honour:
now playing: jason segel & walter - man or muppet