Tag Archives: wild

Outtakes from the Camargue

The time has come to sort my archives. Beautiful archives full of data…terabytes and terabytes. I start with a sentimental batch. The Camargue, where fond memories of falling in love are as vivid as the hues of the southern french skies in some of these pictures. The Camargue horse is mystical and magical to watch, as I think these images show. Shooting at dawn on a late summer’s morning, mosquitoes and gnats and mud and marsh and sprightly spooky herds of horses gave me probably one of the most memorable shoots I have imprinted in my mind…

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Animal magic in the desert

Oh what a joy! A morning spent with some fabulous animals at a fabulous set up – Al Ain Zoo. I enjoyed shooting them, as there was no one else around and I think there was a certain level of intrigue on the animal’s part – who was this odd person sitting with a big camera on the other side of the glass. Lunch? Mmm. I didn’t get much action as I had hoped to catch feeding time, but I got some wonderful looks and a certain admiration from some of the animals I think! Pictures can do the talking…

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Welcome to America

My arrival in America has gone somewhat smoothly, although not without its challenges. The flight from London Heathrow into JFK all but empty, I bag four seats all to myself. Good food, good entertainment, some carefree creative editing, a glass of wine, a nap (horizontal, of course). I land, cruise through American Citizen channels with American passport to hand, and collect bag which awaits patiently on the carousel. I collect my hire car (third attempt after realising I had forgotten to print out the rental voucher which tells me which company I had booked with), realise out my Spanish maps are still on my TomTom and therefore proceed to navigate confidently yet somewhat naively through a ton of spaghetti junctions, ending up on freeways heading East to Long Island, West to the Bronx, and finally North to Westchester County on the VanWyck Freeway where I am supposed to be…realising at that point that my black impossible-to-see-in-the-dark Chrysler is even more well-disguised without the beams on. Oops. It’s only 10pm local time but it feels like more than the 3am it is back home.

My first day is broken in gently with a romp through the wilderness on horseback courtesy of my wonderful hostess, Nicki. We get a good gallop through post-hurricane-tree-fallen woodland, and a stomp about in the cold-but-sunny winter’s morn before I head off to meet the Savannah cat. The Savannah cat who gives me a welcome that I will never forget. We take a while to bond…or so I think. Only at the end of the shoot do we realise that the cat had marked its territory and peed not only on my scarf, but also IN my peli case…

Here is the culprit. I shall entitle this top picture “Happy Hour”.

 

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The art of procrastination

I’m sitting here trying to work, but because my work is visual, I keep needing to dip into my archives. So in I dive, searching for an image. There it is! I find it, result. So the picture jerks a memory. The memory involves a person, place or thing that urges me to reach out and say ‘hi’ to a special person who I am reminded of when I remember the moment I took the picture. So I email them, reaching out and saying hello and sending love across the continents.  Ping. Back it comes, in my inbox. And half an hour later I am glad I have made contact, glad to have shared a short moment, a memory, a time that only can be recalled and remembered between me and that person I was there with when I took that picture. But somehow I seem to be back where I started an hour ago and wondering what I was meant to be doing. The phone rings. The dog barks. Oh gosh look at the time. Squash o’clock.

Here is the image that I was distracted by today, taken on the island of Assateague on East Coast USA. I was staying with a wonderful friend Sue Sheridan with whom I have just reconnected. Sue gave me a warm welcome in Washington DC, my first port of call on a 5 week trail around the USA in search of many of the world’s most wonderful breeds of horse. The day I took this was miserable, as you can tell. A wash out. A murky and wet wash out. I was drenched, water cascading off the tip of my camera. I’d already changed clothes once in the car, and had by now resorted to rolled up soggy trousers and bare feet, plastic bag attempting to protect my poor old Nikon. So now I have digressed, written to Sue, been distracted by the desperate need to blog about the Art of Procrastination, I really must get back to the task in hand…or the tasks, should I say.

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