Obsessions In Photography

Chris Sneddon is talking about her recent obsession over at Shutter Sisters today and she’s asking readers to share any obsessions they may have when it comes to photography. Her question made me think about why I photograph what I do. My photography tends to be closely linked to what I write about here on my blog. This would include images that provide a documentary look at topics such as the pasty competition posts from the last few days to photographs that are inspiration for personal essays and others that illustrate the mini short stories I’ve written for TMAST.

I take photographs to tell a story and there’s always a story. Whether it’s real or imagined, mine or yours, every picture has a story waiting to be told. My obsession is in the finding, first the photograph and then the words. I have included a few of the 32,000 photographs I’ve taken in the last two years.  32,000  photographs in two years … does that seem like an obsession to you?

I would love to hear what you like to photograph and if there’s any subject matter you think you get a bit obsessive with when you have a camera in hand.

And The Winner Of The 2010 Best Pasty Is

I wanted this so bad I could taste it, but the winner of the 2010 Pasty Contest was…

… not me! The winning pasty was made by Rebecca, the woman you see above. I have to admit her Scotch egg pasty was spicy and delicious and as you can see below, beautifully made.

Competition was fierce among 21 contestants and while I scored a respectable 120 points, the winning numbers were 139, 134, and 129. Second place was captured by Pauline who rushed in late and whipped up a Pigeon pasty that earned her a spot in the winners circle.

Robert and Ian, who made their pasties on the same table tied for third. Robert, who you see closest to you is rolling out the pastry for what will be his stuffed to the max haggis and potato pasty while Ian is almost ready to begin putting his rabbit pasty together with onions and a bit of mustard sauce. With key ingredients such as rabbit, pigeon, haggis, and scotch egg making up the winning pasties, you might wonder what of some of the others 17 varieties of pasties contained.

There were several versions of spicy indian mixtures along with lamb, beef, and chicken. A Christmas pudding pasty with cheese and chillies along with several fish pasties added options for snacking and included Helen’s smoked halibut, cod, and asparagus combination which looked really yummy. Several contained breakfast ingredients that included baked beans and black pudding. I must admit that I gave those a miss. I can’t yet get my taste buds around black pudding no matter how good people say it is.

That’s Len’s pasty ready for the fold over, but first …

…  he decided he needed a quick break below …

… for some liquid refreshment leaving his wife Mary hard at work on her own above.

We made pasties in shifts at the tables while others strolled around offering praise or advice while checking out the competition.

Robert gives his wife Jean’s ( that’s Jean, who sometimes comments on my blog) pasty technique a good look after putting his entry in the oven.

Next to Jean is Helen, who came up with the pasty-making party idea and did all the work to make it successful right down to making the great looking award you saw Rebecca holding in the photograph above.

That’s me in the apron working next to Kate. She made three pasties while I was still finishing up my first one, but she did say she used to make them in a shop so she’d had a bit of practice. My pasty took a bit longer too because I made something no longer seen in the area, a two course pasty with a sweet on one end.  It was the only two course pasty in the competition and Gary, one of the judges said later that he really liked the sweet part of mine in particular.

A two course pasty requires a little pastry to separate the sweet from the savory. Can you tell what’s inside mine yet?

After the making …

came the baking …

… and then the waiting …

… until it was time for the tasting.

The three judges went first. I need to add here that Gary, David and Griz each ate seven pasties over the course of the evening and the variety of ingredients made some less appealing to me than others so a big well done to all three judges.

As they came out of the oven, the judges took one pasty from each plate and split it three ways leaving two to be taste tested and judged by the other pasty makers who each had a chance to leave a number and a vote behind.

We’ll call it the people’s vote. It was only a small percentage of the total score, but seeing what your plate looked like after the table was rushed by the hungry hoards, did a bit to ease the disappointment of not winning later.

Number three on the end is my pasty sitting next to the scotch egg pasty that won first prize.

Here is a look at my plate ( number three ) after the other contestants had a taste. So while it’s not a trophy, I think the empty plate reflects public opinion fairly well. Some of us laughed about the competitiveness of Americans, but I think there were a few other people who coveted that trophy as well.

Now down to the nitty gritty, packed inside my Cornish pasty was a decidedly Un-Cornish set of ingredients. It contained a mix perfect for a tailgate party or a 4th of July celebration. With slow cooked pulled pork barbecue, a bit of coleslaw and smattering of cheddar cheese filling the main section, there was also a tiny bit of dessert tucked on the end made from a sweet potato pie mixture that included brown sugar and pecans. It really was pretty yummy or scrummy as one might say here.

Now I need to say that I am really just teasing about being so disappointed in not winning … I had a great time and I learned a lot about making a local dish. In addition to a fun evening there was a fund raising element involved as there so often is at these kind of events. After the small expense of the village hall rental, and a few other things, we had 45 pounds left to donate to Shelter Box, an international disaster relief charity that has it’s headquarters here in Cornwall.

Thanks again to Helen and her partner Ron who did so much work to make the event run smoothly and to the judges Gary, Griz and David.

Cornish Pasty Competition – Bringing It To The Table

Today is a big day for me. I am going to be participating in pasty making competition here in the village in a couple of hours and I am so excited. When I told my step-mom Cullene about the contest the other day, she said, ” I never thought I would hear that you had entered a cooking competition.”  I worked so much when I lived in America that I barely had time or energy to think about proper meal planning and saved any cooking beyond the basics for special meals. So until a few years ago, I would have laughed at the idea too. Living in Cornwall has brought out some skills I didn’t know I had and the luxury of time to explore new areas is a gift I don’t take for granted.

Although today’s pasty competition is mostly an excuse for a party with some friendly competitiveness thrown in, I have to admit that I am taking it pretty seriously. The winning part doesn’t really matter as I have had such a good time preparing a taste of the American south to go inside my Cornish pasty, but you know … it might be kind of cool to win too.

I just finished a trial run to see if I could get the twisty fold-over thing down that you do along the edge. It’s a bit tricky, but I think I managed a respectable job. We have to make three identical pasties and we will be judged on taste, presentation, and innovation in the filling. It ought to be a fun evening and I will be taking lots of photographs to share with you later.

I’ll leave you with a little quote from a famous chef that is beginning to make more sense to me now …

“I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.”

~Julia Child

A Sweet Day Out

Thanks so much to everyone who left us a sweet message for our anniversary. Although the rain made it day to stay in, we ventured out for lunch to a special place to celebrate the day. In Cornwall, there are some places that receive a great deal of attention for their food and the place where John and I had lunch is one of those that people talk about. In addition to serving up yummy meals to please your palate, they also serve the community of Cornwall though a special apprentice program modeled after Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Foundation and restaurant in London.  Tucked away in a place called Watergate Bay, we enjoyed the sea views from our table even though we were not inclined to brave the beach as some of the people you’ll see below.

We had a front seat view of the ocean from our table for two by the window and while I usually stick to water with meals, I surprised John when I said,  ” I think I’ll have a cocktail.”

Mmm … a Cosmopolitan, just like I remembered from evenings out with the “Girls” back in Atlanta.

Here’s one of John at the end of our meal … well fed and relaxed.

There was a Tuscan theme to the menu this month as our food choices below reflect.

Cornish smoked mackerel with celeriac remoulade and wild rocket.

Pappa Pomodoro ( a rich tomato and bread soup finished with a good oil).

Roast fillet of pollock with Fifteen’s amazing squash caponata, spinach and aceto di balsamico.

Roast Cornish rare breed pork loin with oozy polenta, Savoy cabbage and salsa verde.

And we are back where we started …  well sort of anyway … burp … oops, pardon me.

After a quick picture and …

… a last look at the beach …

… we said goodbye to Fifteen and headed for home.

I wanted to say that John was completely surprised by my anniversary gift. He had no idea that the tiny heart was there and he suggested that I post a photo showing more of the building so you might see its size in contrast with the rest of the wall. If you are having trouble finding it, look to the far right and you will see it about half way down the wall. Adding to our lasting memory, Kristin over at Gypsylife has a sweet story of her own. It made me smile to see that my post had triggered a special memory for her … I wonder if you have one of your own you might like to share below.

One Year Later – A Shelter For My Heart

First wedding anniversaries are traditionally paper, but I have something a bit longer lasting for John than my words here today. Tucked in the corner near the edge of the new addition is a lasting reminder of how grateful I am for the love and life I have with him. It seemed a perfect way to express how I feel and the words that came to mind when he first told me that he wanted to build a space for me, a room of my own to do whatever I wished … a quiet place to find my words and rest.

A shelter for my heart was what I thought that day … he’s building me a shelter for my heart!

As lovely as the idea of a quiet place of creativity and retreat is to me, the reality of how safe I feel in this relationship is even more important. Safe, respected, and well loved … in his gentle way John provides a shelter for my heart everyday, by loving me as I am which is a gift far greater than one built of bricks and stone.

Last July when the rock walls were going up on the exterior of my new studio space, I took a small stone heart that I had found on one of our walks and pressed it into the still wet cement bordering the cornish stone on the extension. I hoped John wouldn’t see it until today so I could use it to illustrate just how much he means to me using this tiny bit of rock as a symbol and marker for our story.

Standing outside yesterday as I took the picture above, I thought about who might see the heart shaped stone years from now and if they would wonder how it came to be placed there. I could almost see them, younger than we are, but full of the hope that comes with new love, happy for the chance to create a story of their own in this space … a place with a permanent heart shaped reminder, that love that once lived here.

If you would like to see some pictures from our wedding day and read a bit more about our love story, I have few links you can follow below. One year ago today, John and I made a very public declaration of a lasting kind. It was a lovely day filled with family and friends and unexpected surprises like this one found here. With no fears and no doubts, we said I will and I do, making legal the commitment we had made earlier while standing here, alone, on a bridge built to last forever.

Like Wrapping A Gift

Back when my studio space was mostly an unfinished shell, we decided to use an Ikea single (twin) size bed as a daybed. For months I had been struggling with just what to put in my space going back and forth between a sleeper sofa and a daybed of some kind. I wanted to avoid anything that took up too much space and most of the traditional daybeds seemed a bit heavy and bulky. As to the aesthetics of the piece, it needed to be a bit on the contemporary side and I wanted it to have interesting legs. The daybed needed to be comfortable for napping or to act as an extra bed should we have more overnight guests than the guest room could accommodate. Since its primary function would be a place for me to rest or read, I was intent on it looking more like a sofa of sorts than a bed.

Below you can see some of the stages it went through in its transition. I’m not finished yet and I have a design question for you at the bottom should you care to share your opinion.

Here you see it upside down, resting on its thin Ikea mattress ( see the 2.5 inch pad underneath the larger frame)

This one has the contemporary legs I was looking for in my design.

Do you remember when I gave you a preview here of the  fabrics I brought back from my Thanksgiving visit to Atlanta?

It would be easy to wrap the bed like a package if you laid it out length-wise like in this picture.

Well, the easy way is rarely found in my vocabulary and I wanted the swirly waves in the design to move in an upward motion when you looked at the piece rather than across. Taking the pattern across would have required the least amount of work, but would have changed the energy of the fabric design so I got out my scissors and sewing machine … disclaimer here, I’m not very experienced with this machine (or any machine) and by no means what you would call a seamstress, but as is my way, I worked it out.

If you look closely you can see the seam where I joined the two pieces, but realistically who’s going to inspect it that closely besides me.  I managed to get the upward motion of the pattern and after laying it out and lots of back and forth measuring and calculations, I set to work making it a more permanent part of the Ikea bed frame.

Armed with John’s staple gun, I went to work stapling it snugly to the frame tucking my corners so tightly that I almost felt as if I were back in the military. I moved back and forth from side to side in an effort to keep things balanced and did my corners (the end pieces) last.

It was important  to me that both corners looked as close to identical in image as I could manage and I was pretty pleased with the results.

This was what it looked like at the end of my efforts. It really was a bit like wrapping a gift. Now remember when I said I that I needed a little help from you? Here is what I’m trying to decide and I would love to hear your thoughts. I have some fabric left that I want to use to make pillows. In keeping with the upward motion of the pattern, I have enough to make four good-sized pillows about 24 x 24 inches, but I want to use another fabric on the backside of each one. These are my choices below … green or orange. Both colors look great with the front facing patterned fabric, but I’m still not sure.

I considered backing all four with same color or mixing it up with two of each. You should know as you are making your decision that I intend to recover a chair in the green fabric and it will likely sit near the end of the daybed. I’m giving my bathroom a finally coat of paint today and then I need to get my pillows done this evening or maybe tomorrow.

John has done such a brilliant job with my bathroom that I can’t wait to show it off. Yesterday, he built a perfect wooden sink stand based my specific design requests. I am so pleased with how he was able to build it just as I described. Plus, I don’t know if you noticed in the pictures above, but there is a dark hardwood floor now that John put down where there used to be a raw builders floor waiting to be finished. I can hear the table saw from the garage where he is working on something … bookshelves I think, since he’s building them for my space and finishing the inside of my closet this week. After that, I’ll be ready to unpack my things and settle in. Please help me out with a suggestion below regarding the color for the back of the pillows and thanks for your interest and help.

Going In Different Directions

We are the boat, we are the sea, I sail in you, you sail in me

~Lorre Wyatt

I wish I lived in a world where people were not so angry and afraid. Lately I have had trouble reading the news or watching it on television. Everyone wants ‘it’ now whatever that signifies for them personally. People in general seem to have no desire to work for change for the greater good if it means sacrificing in any way. Their sense of entitlement supersedes everything else and anyone daring to suggest another way is judged as weak and ineffective.

Additionally, I am sick to death of talk radio figures elevated to positions of minor deities who spew venom into the airwaves to be consumed as a regular diet by sheep-like creatures. People that have been so disappointed in life or by life, that they follow the leader who shouts the loudest down the paths of extreme, thinking somehow that a mob mentality of hate and disrespect will somehow elevate their stature.

It appears I’m not the only one out there who feels this way.  Anniegirl1138 is a writer that I read regularly who has a post well worth reading here and Katherine Dunn, one of my favorite artists had some words here that made me feel more inclined to post what I have been feeling this past week. It appears many of us feel as if we are in the same boat and there is a small comfort in that for me. Reading their words, I feel a bit lifted up in the knowledge that I am not alone, out there in my little boat upon what frequently looks like a sea of inhumanity.

We may have all come on different ships, but we’re in the same boat now.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr

All This And Each Other Too

Yesterday, after a working on my studio space which is almost ready for its big unveiling, John and I took a little walk. We went out the door with a clear mission seeking the first signs of spring. We were hoping to find Snowdrops, the flowers you see below.

Pushing through the earth on an old grave in the churchyard, we caught our first glimpse of the green and white flowers.

Moving farther down the hill, we went to a secret place we know of that will look like a carpet of green and white in a few weeks as the snowdrops raise their heads and begin to open. Most of them are still budlike and new, but if you go in close for a better look, scattered among the green stalks with their bowed heads of tightly closed petals, you can see a few opening with centers that look almost etched with color in vibrant shades of green.

We follow a familiar path as we walk through the buttercup field and cross over this water. As I take this photograph,  I comment to John that this is the shade of green I wanted to duplicate in my studio space when I bought the fabric to recover an old chair.  I promise you these are real colors saturated by nature, not Photoshop that light up like this even in the late afternoon light of a shadowy wood.

More shades of green with a leaf tucked in the space were it fell last fall.

The bluish purple of this water always calls me to this spot and I have tried to duplicate it in my studio color scheme. It is one of the many colors in the fabric I used to recover my daybed.

It was about here that John took my hand and said, ” We are so lucky to have all this and each other too. ” I often think the same thing and have said it myself. It’s lovely to know that we share an appreciation of our space and each other in such a similar way.

This celtic cross marks the way into our village and behind it you see a stile I cross over sometimes on my way through a farmer’s field. It’s from this field, I was able to photograph a snowy view of our village a few weeks ago with the church tower in the background.

These horses always come to greet me when I pass by. ( I must remember to bring the sugar cubes I bought for them )

After our walk, we stopped by the pub for a cider for John and diet lemonade for me before heading for home. I gave a few dogs in the pub a good cuddle and we chatted with some friends before stepping outside into the evening light. I couldn’t help but snap a few pictures trying to capture this peaceful scene as we walked up the hill towards home.

The Gifts Of Friendship – Delightfully Delicious

Yesterday I spent a few hours with a lovely group of women. My running buddy Tina, who knows how to give a party and even more importantly, how to relax to enjoy it while it’s happening, had a lunch for some of her friends and invited me to join them. While already an artist, Tina went back to school full time recently for an art degree and with five year old twins, you might think it would be all she could do to manage school and family without throwing mid week lunch parties especially since much of the time she does it all on her own. Her husband Henry works in the music industry and is usually on the road, so she just carries on with school and family life alone when he’s gone, always making time to meet up with friends or teaching her girls things like the pleasures of surfing. Whereas I can be a bit of a hermit, she seems always on the go with a full schedule of social gatherings and activities for herself and the girls that I sometimes envy.

The friends she had gathered around her yesterday are some that she has known for years and while I had met and chatted with a few of them at previous events, this was the first time I felt I could relax and really begin to get to know them. It was an afternoon that I needed having been in a bit of funk this week, a little soup for the soul, delicious and warm, along with the laughter of new friends to help me nestle down a bit deeper into the life I’m creating here.

The comments I’ve had here at GOTJ this week have been uplifting as well and while we haven’t had a chance to break bread together as we did yesterday at Tina’s table, I want to say again how much I appreciate my increasing circle of online friends and your encouragement and support.

Seeing The Boundary Stones

Scattered around our village are boundary stones. They surprise me sometimes, showing up in places where I’ve walked before, never noticing them until one day they stand out so clearly it is as if they might have pushed up through the ground overnight. These are the times when I think … how can I be so unaware of something so clear to others?

I wanted to say how much I appreciate the support of all who commented on my post yesterday. My tendency to live in my head and frequently over analyze certain situations makes it difficult at times to see what is right in front of me. I’m still watching the river, but today it seems less out of control … thank you.