March miscellany

Recently I travelled to Jersey for a few days to judge the photography section of the annual Jersey Arts and Crafts Eisteddfod.   It was an honour to be chosen as Adjudicator, and I was well looked after by the organisers.  I was kept very busy writing individual assessments for each image, so I didn’t have much chance to see the sights.

I was able to pop out early one morning and visit the harbour in St Helier.  One striking thing was the sculpture called “Jersey Girl” at Liberty Wharf.  It’s by an artist called Rowan Gillespie, and was unveiled in 2010.  Very cleverly she is suspended by cables from just her left leg, with no other means of support.  To simplify the composition I made sure the image I captured on my phone had only the sky behind it.  I edited out the cables, and converted the image to high-contrast black and white.

A little nearer to home I saw this rainbow-striped bench in a park in Malvern, Worcestershire.  It’s in a little covered area, and clearly had been used for a few folks to have an al fresco drink.  I was drawn by the the bench’s range of colours against the off-white background, the interesting arrangement of bottles, and the way that the label colours of some bottles match the bench’s colours.

This final image was taken in my own garden, so there were very few “image miles”.  The little fly was playing hard to get by being deep inside a yellow tulip.  I eventually got myself into a position where I could capture it with my OM-1 and 60mm macro lens.  I cropped the image so the fly was in a strong place in the composition, with lots of “negative space” above and to the left of it.

Next time there may be a consistent theme, so do pop by and read it…