Spent some time with my favourite art-buddy, the lovely Faye, yesterday. Yadda yadda yadda… seriously, I could have talked all day. We went out to a little farm & dairy shop that has a cute old-fashioned cafe on the side. Chequered curtains and vinyl table-cloths, with fake flower-pots on the tables. Slow but friendly service, and way too many tables crammed into a tiny amount of space, but it all seemed totally apt and appropriate.

I didn’t even flip and do my “don’t mess with me” attitude when the waitress asked us to move to a smaller table so that she could squeeze more people in (we had a cute little table by the window at first, and ended up squashed between two couples that both seemed to have fallen out with each other!).

And because we were out in one of my favourite parts of Dorset, I went off in search of some film-fodder after our lunch, and found this wonderful meadow of wild flowers.

Well, I discovered that English meadows look pretty good in black and white. I was surprised. I mean, the colour images are quite nice, but not as good as the mono ones.

And these are all taken with hipstamatic on my iphone again. I’m having lots of fun with this at the moment, and feeling less frustrated that I can’t get into the darkrooms or work on the alternative processes that I want to do.

The current phase of frustration seems to be finally coming round to the “clarity” end of the cycle, where I start to be able to put my finger on what the real problem has been. When I read this, on Ben Roberts’ blog, his advice really jumped out at me:

1. work out what it is you want to photograph.
2. photograph the hell out of it.
3. edit your work down to a solid portfolio that you feel represents what you are trying to achieve.
4. show it to people.

Although he was giving this advice to someone with a specific career focus in mind, I think it’s relevant to anyone who’s trying to find themselves or define themselves as an ‘artist’ (and for that, also read ‘photographer’).

Work out what it is you want to photograph.

This is the question banging around in my head lately. Last summer was all about exploring medium format film for the first time, playing with the holga, getting to understand Photoshop, and just having fun taking lots of pictures. I photographed anything and everything, and just got really stuck in at Flickr and with The August Break.

Now I realize that I need and want to push myself to be more focused, and to think about exactly what it is that I want to photograph. Be more selective, so that I can develop my skills and my style more deeply. Don’t go wide, go deep. That was the best advice to artists that I ever heard. Think it came from Chuck Close.

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