dreams and nightmares - no. 83

 kitchen garden

Our homework this week is to produce a picture in homage to one of our favourite photographers.  I chose the fantastic Gregory Crewdson.

Crewdson's images are often surreal in nature, sometimes disturbing and always challenging. Their hallmark is an intricate, beautifully-lit, cinematic setting. Clearly I can come nowhere near his level, but for this series of photos I chose to focus on three elements of Crewsdon's inimitable style, namely surrealism, setting and light.

As regards the first, I decided to create a mini-garden within my kitchen - a play on words. The setting was created using a perspex sheet on the floor which I covered with grass-cuttings and leaves from the garden and compost from the potting-shed. Various pot-plants and flowers from around the house completed the background.

I wanted to use a natural light but had to wait a little while for the sun to move round the house until it provided a shaft of light through the kitchen window. You can see this on the right-hand side of the photos and it's particularly effective in the shots where it lights up the tread on my wellington boots.

I really enjoyed taking these photos and may well return to the theme at a later date. I've already spotted one or two things I would like to improve but for now, what do you think?

dreams and nightmares - no. 82

the owl man

You really couldn't make this one up!

Yesterday, whilst having lunch at the house of an old-friend, there was a knock at the front-door. Exactly how do you react when you discover a white-bearded man outside dressed in authentic Elizabethan costume and holding what looks to be a turbo-charged TV aerial?!!

To cut a long story short he was the falconer at a local Shakespearean heritage site and his barn-owl had been attacked by a clattering of jackdaws. The poor bird, who we subsequently learned was called 'Arwen' after a character in Lord of the Rings, had taken flight in panic. She was now hidden somewhere in my friend's garden.

Fortunately, barn owl and falconer were successfully re-united, as can be seen from the photo above.

meeting mogul the puppy

top ten albums - no. 5

Dear Sheddists,

those of a certain age will be familiar with the term, 'mix-tape'.  It refers to the recording of favourite tracks onto a cassette tape, usually with the purpose of impressing either less knowledgeable aficionados or the current teenage crush of the recorder.  From such crude early beginnings sprang a vibrant, new phenomena known as the DJ mix.

Pre-eminent among the early exponents were the pairing of Welshman, Alexander Paul Coe (better known as Sasha) and a native of Hastings called John Digweed.  Cutting their teeth at the legendary Renaissance club they became superstars of the emerging electronic dance music movement with the release of the first of three mixes under the Northern Exposure banner. It's a truly magnificent work in which songs flow seamlessly from one to another.

I've always loved electronic music with a passion from the early works of Tangerine Dream to the modern-day sounds of Floating Points and Ulrich Schnauss so the free-flowing Northern Exposure mix was an obvious choice for my top ten albums.

dreams and nightmares - no. 81

the censorship of art

or the art of censorship?