Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside

Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside

This week’s challenge has given me a great opportunity to travel back in time to 1994. These were part of my days at art college when I was blissfully shut away inside the darkroom, experimenting with abstract photography.

The Black & White photographs were originally shot on Ilford HP5 400 ISO film on my old Praktica, inside the Earth! I don’t think that I would dare to take a modern DSLR underground with me. Too much sensitive technology that could be damaged! The Praktica was such a robust SLR, it really did me proud. I still have it although it’s been a few years since I last used it.

In my teenage years I enjoyed caving, among other outdoor activities, and a bunch of us regularly went to the Mendip Hills in Somerset. These images are from GB Cave, a locked cave (entrance only with the Charterhouse caving club) that is well known for a large Gorge passage, made by an underground river, with a rock bridge that leads into the vast Main Chamber. The impressive stalagmite and stalactite structures here are all part of the largest continuous void under the Mendips.

All these photos are lit only by torches and our head lamps. I loved the way the light glistened on the damp surfaces of the calcite formations. I really felt like I had stepped into the very bowels of the earth! The structures are so organic and fluid that I came to see the caves as a living, breathing entity. The Earth is as beautiful on the inside as it is on the surface!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Window

Weekly Photo Challenge: Window

Photographs are windows into the photographers world. Often they are windows into precious moments from our past.

My featured image is a photograph from 1995 of my friend Rachel posed by a broken window in an abandoned factory near the village of Gomshall. My second image is from the same photoshoot. Both photos were taken on film and developed by myself in a dark room. I miss doing that!

My third photograph is of Charlotte, taken at Stokesay Castle in 2008, not long after I’d started dating her father, Simon. I love our visits to Shropshire! I love them too of course 🙂

My last photograph for this weeks challenge is from 2013. This is my goddaughter, Rosie, and her brother, James, at Mansion House in Leatherhead, eagerly awaiting the marriage of their grandmother, Chris, to Trev. I don’t photograph many weddings but this was family, special. Both the children also had their naming ceremonies at Mansion House!

These portraits by window-light are visual links to some of the most precious people in my life. The invisible strings that run though their lives are tied to many loved ones. I can see them all when I look at these photos. They’re just through the memory window of my mind and tied to my heart.