Uploads from Rob.Hudson, tagged nationaltrust, with geodata

East Coker.

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 10:00:43 -0700

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living.

T.S. Eliot, East Coker. From the preface to Skirrid Hill, by Owen Sheers, published by Seren.
Image © All Rights Reserved www.open-aspect.co.uk

Y Gaer (The Hill Fort) Study 1

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Wed, 25 May 2011 03:24:24 -0700

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

This poem is a matching pair with the previous one. It will make more sense if you read the poem, which you can do here www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=19032

Part of Skirrid Hill a project inspired by the of poetry of Owen Sheers.

Image © All Rights Reserved www.open-aspect.co.uk

Poetry © All Rights Reserved Owen Sheers. Skirrid Hill Published by Seren ISBN 1854114034

Comments and thoughts are most welcome, but please no images in your comments thanks.

and again I felt the tipping in the scales of us,

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 02:28:02 -0800

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

Skirrid Hill

....along the dry stone wall, its puzzle solved by moss
and out of those trees into that cleft of earth
split they say by a father's grief
at the loss of man to earth.

....and again I felt the tipping in the scales of us,
the intersection of our ages.

....and me reaching for some kind of purchase,
or at least a shallow handhold in the thought
that with every step apart, I am another closer to you.

Poem "Farther" from the book Skirrid Hill, by Owen Sheers.

Ideally I would present this project without explanation, simply as designed to be seen photograph and poem side by side, but as I have no wish to infringe the poet's copyright a few selected lines will have to suffice. I'm sure fellow photographers will understand.

A little context. The poem describes a walk with his father up the Skirrid, a small hill on the borders of Wales with a landslip on it's north western side that is said by local myth to have occured at the time of Christ's crucifixion.

Image © All Rights Reserved www.open-aspect.co.uk

Poem "Farther" © All Rights Reserved Owen Sheers, from Skirrid Hill Published by Seren ISBN 1854114034

Please no images in your comments thanks.

Tree Line 21. The end.

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 05:19:22 -0800

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

One tree two ways, part two.

It’s with this image that I intend to finish or at least temporarily postpone the Tree Line project. There is no good reason for suspension this time, save that three or more months on one location has left me somewhat scratching my head for further inspiration, there is just too much danger of repeating myself. Also I have an idea for a new project, one that will be a serious creative challenge, some of you will have seen the location in my Skirrid scouting trip images I posted at the end of the year, although I make no guarantee they will have any relevance to the project as it gestates. Anyway more about that project in the future.

I’d just like to conclude Tree Line by saying a few things, some of will be in answer to your questions and some of them represent creative learning from undertaking the idea.

Firstly although I wrote a prose piece as a sort of delineation of the boundaries of the project, it was also a project that was always meant to be developmental and therefore my understanding of my own motivations and subconscious explorations have revealed meanings and underlying metaphors to myself as it progressed. It was if you like a route map for defining my own motivations, creative spark and insights.

When I wrote about my image “Symbolism” back in June last year, there were some unanswered questions relating to my relationship between art and how meaning can and should be expressed. One of the main questions was just how far meaning should be expressed and this is an attempt to find those boundaries, to put a marker down for myself about the extent meaning should enter my work. I honestly can’t begin to express my conclusions in words, it’s all too subtle, and the photos will have to suffice.

But having said that, there was also the question of “Equivalent” – the idea that we are forced to engage on a deeper level through the apparent meaningless of an image and the balance that seems to be necessarily struck to gain initial viewing engagement. That balancing act between engaging the viewer by capturing their attention and allowing space to interpret engage and emote for themselves. Judging by the relative lack of feedback I’d probably have to describe that as a failure.

Lastly, of course, there is an element of autobiography, the personal inspiration that should always be the route motivation of our creative endeavours.

(Please forgive the excessive biography below!) If Memories, Dream and Reflections was about an attempt to reconcile memory and grief at the death of a loved one, the Tree Line set is a furtherance of that journey, both artistically and emotionally. It has become an attempt to reconcile the joy of being in the landscape with those previous experiences, a sort of journey out of grief if you will,

I didn’t solely choose this location for its beauty, but also because of its nearness to the MDR location, literally and metaphorically. So you see joy in the landscape is tempered by that knowledge, but the end message is one of the enhancement of our lives through the beauty of nature. Not just shallow prettiness, but artistic, vague, distracted, complex beauty, but for all its sharp edges, beauty nonetheless. It’s just one big metaphor for life in the round I guess, but I’m not sure I set out seeing it that way.

"As we grow older
The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living"
T.S. Eliot, East Coker

© All Rights Reserved www.open-aspect.co.uk

Part of my Tree Line project

Explanation

Tree Line 20

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 01:21:19 -0800

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

One tree, two ways, part one.

The following was written as a reply to a comment by Jason Theaker on my article "Thinking Like a Poet..." for Great British Landscape magazine (The article is now free without subscription for those that didn't want to subscribe initially)

Jason,

“The internal life is as important, if not more so, than the external” Alan Moore.

Now there’s a quote that can present problems for the photographer. Surely we can only take pictures of what is in front of us, only explore the external and the moment? So how do we progress towards art with such a restrictive tool as a camera as our sole method of expression?

Well, first of all, you have to want to engage in that battle, to appreciate the restrictions are also the opportunities, it is within that limited frame of reference that the subtleties can be found, not despite it’s limitations but because of those limitations. Does the power of the Equivalent as expressed in Steiglitz’s cloud pictures exist because it is a picture of nothing that forces you to engage or because it is a photograph of nothing that forces you to engage? Well of course we all have a visual language of photography, rules that we subconsciously follow to “read” a photograph and these are confounded when presented with a near empty abstract sky. Where are the hooks, the leading lines, the POV, the angle, the land? These are swiftly confounded when we look at them. But more than that it is because it is indeed a photograph that we question the image, it is the very vagueness of the image that confounds our understanding of a photograph and how much can reality be bent to art in photography.

So while it is true that the camera can only capture the present, the image in front of the lens, the interpretation of that image lies in far more complex waters. As a photographer we are made up of far more than the finger that presses the shutter. We have to choose what we photograph and how we interpret it. That isn’t merely the game of point of view, angle, and position, but also through our influences, be they 18th Century Romanticism or Ansel Adams, we cannot escape the fact we are influenced.

On top of that, for our creativity to progress we are required to move beyond our influences, to find our own interpretations and ideas. And for that to mean anything to us it means we represent from our own perspective, our own memories become entangled in our work, we seek to express who we are, why we are unique through our photography. That is about more than having a personal vision as a defining construct to separate us from our peers, it is something much more fundamental and satisfying because it is about who we are. We are much more than the present and what the camera reveals is about us is much more than the instant the shutter is pressed.

© All Rights Reserved www.open-aspect.co.uk

Part of my Tree Line project

Explanation

Tree Line 19

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 05:20:22 -0800

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

Birch tree in a blizzard 2

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 22:54:09 -0800

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

The last from my Skirrid Fawr scouting trip and a happy Christmas to all my friends and contacts on Flickr.

© All Rights Reserved www.open-aspect.co.uk

Tree Line 18

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 06:39:17 -0800

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

Tree Line 17

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 01:23:13 -0800

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

Tree Line 16

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:06:41 -0800

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

It's taken me three years to think and write about my approach to landscape photography and those thoughts are now published in Great British Landscapes magazine. There I am next to Joe Cornish :o). The article explains the importance of a project based approach, the latest developments in neuroscience's understanding of creativity and how our understanding of the landscape is formed as a child and the influence that has on my work.

You can find the article here How thinking like a poet can inspire creativity in landscape photography

© All Rights Reserved www.open-aspect.co.uk

Part of my Tree Line project

Explanation

Tree Line 12

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 04:34:02 -0800

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

The Wake

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 10:24:27 -0700

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

He looks me straight in the eye,
ninety years old.
folded in his favourite chair

and tells me he doesn't want this,
to watch himself die, to have the doctor
plumb any further in the depths of his scarred lungs.

He who himself spent so many years
holding the chests of others to the light
to forecast the storms gathering there,

the squalls and depressions
smudging those two pale oceans,
rising and falling in the rib cage's hull.

Excerpt from the poem The Wake. Skirrid Hill, by Owen Sheers, published by Seren.
Image © All Rights Reserved www.open-aspect.co.uk

Mametz Wood - Study 2

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 03:42:45 -0800

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

As if the notes they had sung
have only now, with this unearthing,
slipped from their absent tongues.

Part of Skirrid Hill. A project inspired by the book of poetry of the same name written by Owen Sheers.

Mametz Wood was a First World War battle on the Somme which by some strange fluke was attended by a whole host of artists and poets and writers including Siegried Sassoon, Welsh artist Christopher Williams, Robert Graves and David Jones. It has shaped the way we see the First World War.

In his poem Sheers describes the discovery of a mass grave of 20 soldiers.

Rather than me mangling Owen Sheers' poetry any more by selecting certain lines you can read it in full here (and listen to the poet read it) www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=...

Skirrid Hill Published by Seren ISBN 1854114034

Image © All Rights Reserved www.open-aspect.co.uk

Comments and thoughts are most welcome, but please no images in your comments thanks.

and lay instead an ancient child

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 01:19:07 -0800

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

There was only one measurement
I needed anyway, which you gave,
triggered by the connection of my kiss
against your paper temple.

From the poem "On Going" which describes visiting his dying mother in hospital. A sufficiently recent experience for me that it brought tears to my eyes on reading it.

You may see ghosts.

Part of Skirrid Hill. A project inspired by the poetry of Owen Sheers.

Poem "On Going" © All Rights Reserved Owen Sheers, from Skirrid Hill Published by Seren ISBN 1854114034

Image © All Rights Reserved www.open-aspect.co.uk

Please no images in your comments thanks.

Mametz Wood - Study 1

nobody@flickr.com (Rob.Hudson) — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 23:31:50 -0800

Rob.Hudson posted a photo:

Part of Skirrid Hill. A project inspired by the book of poetry of the same name written by Owen Sheers.

And even now the earth stands sentinel,
reaching back into itself for reminders of what happened
like a wound working a foreign body to the surface of the skin.

Mametz Wood was a First World War battle on the Somme which by some strange fluke was attended by a whole host of artists and poets and writers including Siegried Sassoon, Welsh artist Christopher Williams, Robert Graves and David Jones. It has shaped the way we see the First World War.

Rather than me mangling Owen Sheers' poetry any more by selecting certain lines you can read it in full here (and listen to the poet read it) www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoem.do?poemId=...

Skirrid Hill Published by Seren ISBN 1854114034

Image © All Rights Reserved www.open-aspect.co.uk

Please no images in your comments thanks.