The Days of September (part 1)

Last month I tried to keep up with the online class from Shimelle.com. But I ended up making most of the daily pages in October. With more free time and without the pressure it was easier to make new pages and work on the earlier pages that were 'finished'.

On a sunny day in September I managed to dye the fabric that I got as a gift. The dye solutions were made several weeks before and should have been used as soon as possible, but that did not keep me from trying weeks later.
Several pieces were tied with elastic bands, a few were hand-stitched in some fantasy forms and the rest was scrunched up before dipping them in the dye.
I learned that I made too much dye solution! There is still enough left to dye another batch of fabric.

The page about Healing was made after a visit to a massage therapist who managed to relax the tied-up muscles in my neck. The result: finally being able to sleep after weeks of interrupted nights. What a luxury!

This is the page with a picture that I took back in August, leaving the train after standing still for 2 hours while firemen and the technical service of the railway company cleaned up the train: someone had jumped in front of the train on purpose.
The idea that when the train hit the breaks so suddenly, someone lost his or her life kept me haunting for such a long time. People with plastic bags searching for the remains, checking the undercarriage with flashlights...
A few weeks after the incident I was meant to go the same route with the train. But that night I woke up around 2 a.m. and could not go back to sleep anymore. I did not travel that day.

It was not the first time that it happened - earlier this year my train was late and someone jumped before the oncoming train. We also had to wait in our train for two hours before the track was cleared and it was back then that the conductor explained about the procedures. The first priority is to find all the parts of the body...

A week after the sleepless night, I found my common sense back and boarded the train again for that same trip.

Luckily there were some very special enjoyable moments in September too. This day I was sitting in the garden, ignoring the usuable weeds and the work that had to be done.
The sun shone and I just love the sun in the autumn: warm and inviting but not so overpowering as in summer. The garden was filled with birds, bees and even butterflies enjoyed the weather.
This one probably thought I was a flower and landed on my shoulder while I was sewing a quilt. I did not move and could see him so well: his eyes, the long tongue that he rolled up. What a little miracle it was to have him near me.
Eventually he flew away, but stopped by every now and then to sit on the little table next to me to warm up his wings. It was then that I was able to take a picture of him - he was asking for it!

A New Month, a Better Month?

September has not been the best month of the year for me. The weather was umbelievably wonderful and kind, and did its best to cheer me up. But most of the month felt like being in a storm of little and big life events. At one point my hubby and I looked at each other and asked the same question: What is going on?
Where is this all coming from?

Anyway, I had started the month with good intentions: Doing an online class from Shimelle.com and trying to make a small page about the things you can learn from that day. It seemed such a good way of getting myself in the habit of actually being creative every day. But boy, did I overestimate my ability.
What I learned most, is that I can't make a page every day! Sometimes I can make 3 pages on one day, but most of the time I had to push all the ideas forward (I did make notes though). And this means that up to today I have finished 17 pages, including the cover, which BTW might need some extra work, and makes me probably the slowest student of the class.
Is there an award for that?
Or maybe I should say that I just prolong the fun?

Here are the first two actual pages that I made. The other pages will get a place on this blog as well. Even though I did not follow all the prompts and ideas. In retrospect, I might have skipped all the prompts after the first week...

More photographs processed

It seems that the holiday in Norfolk is my most productive holiday photograph wise! I took so many (different) photographs and still have not all images processed! I shoot always in RAW, a digital format which you could see as a digital negative that has to be processed (adjust colour, colour balance, contrast etc.) before you have the final picture that can be shown on the web or be printed out.
Creake Abbey was a wonderful place to be. I liked the tranquility of the place, these old crumbled down buildings, still standing as a testament for the people who lived here and tried to make life easier for the older people.
The abbey was built in as a home for several old men who needed care. The building was extended over 300 years till a plague killed all the inhabitants except the abbot, who was the only survivor.
How devasting this must have been. The abbey was abandent and left to fall apart.
This goes not so quick with these old buildings with those thick walls.
Lucky for us that they are still there - to enjoy them.

Since there were hardly any people visiting here, I had loads of opportunities to take pictures from all angles. This one was taken with me lying on the freshly mowed grass, a lovely experiece!
A perfect afternoon: feeling the spirit of time, beautiful structures with such a beauty, ever changing weather with gloomy skies and rays of sunlight spreading out.
How do you capture the essence of such a wonderful place?

Well, this is one of my efforts!

Altered Book: Artistic Expression

This was the last book of the Altered Books Round Robin from our ABEurope (Yahoo) group that I received to work in.
Serena had chosen the theme: "Artistic Expression under Pressure"

I did not manage to get all the text into one spread, so I added another spread to finish the sentence:
Expres your inner vision - no fear - without limitations.
I just hope that the English words that I used these way were correct! Anyway, Serena is an Italian artist, so with a bit of luck she will not notice any problems with the grammar! :-)

For these spreads I tried to use much layering and different techniques, trying to get rid of some old habits and developing new ways of communicating ideas.
I have been using acrylic inks, paint, paintsticks, stencils, alphabeth stamps, spraying, hand made stamps and embellishements and drawings in pencil!
The book will be send to the US, since Serena recently moved away from Germany. (Normally we keep the Round Robins limited to Europe because of the cost and time of snail mail).

My own book "Truth, Secrets and Lies" came back homely. I thought there would be loads of pages to work in, but the book is filled with artwork from our members. Quite a treasure!

Evening at Cromer Pier

While we were in Norfolk, John from the EPZ website organised a mini EPZmeet with EPZers Kathy, Vince and me with hubbie in Norwich. Not the first EPZ ers we met on our holiday - on our first sunset at the beach of Hunstanton we had also met Jules by chance!
Since we could not get enough of EPZ members, we also had a mini - mini - meet with Kathy and Vince at the Pier of Cromer the last week of the holiday.

The Pier was much smaller than I thought, but had wonderful features. I liked these old benches. The sunset was obscured by clouds, so we had hardly any colour in the sky. At home I decided that I could add my own colours to the image! I opted for these soft colours and a pinhole effect.

Before the sunset, there was enough light to just walk around and take pictures of the Pier without our tripods - the unused tripods were worth a shot as well!

And guess what? The girls were wandering around with the biggest tripods...! :-)

Peaceful Place

While in Norfolk, we went out to the Broads because my hubbie wanted to photograph the mills there. During our search for these mills, we came across this little church and overgrown old graveyard.
It was late afternoon, the sun was just coming over the top of the trees which surrounded the church yard.
The white flowers of the weeds were catching the light, swinging on the light breeze. The old tombstones were scattered around the yard. Some were still standing up, others were leaning over. The stones were quite old, often covered in patterns of lychen.
I stood in the shadow of the old trees and overlooked the scene. It was such a peaceful moment, the light, the breeze and the mood of the yard. Untouched for such a long time, undisturbed for years.
Despite all the photographic rules, I took this shot into the sunlight, hoping to capture that peaceful moment.
When I look at this photograph, I still remember that feeling, the peace and the quiet.

Bird with Attitude

Normally a photographer won't take a picture of a bird who has turned his back to the lens. Because without the head, the eyes, there is often not much to look at.
But this was not true for this bird. Look at him, can you see how he is walking? Like a model on a catwalk. This is a bird with attitude, I'll tell you!
I was working at this image while the radio played the song: "I am walking away from the troubles in my life" by Craig David.
The perfect title for this image.

The Hunger Book

TJ, an American artist from Studiomailbox and member/moderator of the ABEurope Group made a book from brown shopping bags for the Round Robin by stitching them together.
Adding gesso and glueing food wrappers in the book to make a statement after seeing people in Berlin begging for food.

One out of 6 people in the world is hungry. Not just having a craving for food, but really hungry because they are too poor or live in a place where no food is available.

Here in the West we have lots of food to choose from, every day again. We often eat more than 3 times a day. We snack in between meals, we drive through 'drive-ins' to get our fast food even faster. In the meantime we are faced with a generation that is overeating or eating unhealthy food.

On the other side, commercial ads and fashion shows models with size 0 on the catwalk and in fashion magazines. Girls growing up are faced everyday with these images and long to look like these so-called role models. The diet market worldwide is worth billions of dollars and a market that is still growing every year.

Looks like we live in a world that's upside down...
In the spread that I made, I used a pizza box to make the super model. Behind the title, my view on the subject is written. Tags with the calory overviews (now mandatory in the Netherlands) of different foods hang from the top of the page.
Tip-ins of the boxes of different foods that I like, are added too.
And yes, I am a vegetarian. I can choose to be this because I can afford to eat every day and have a choice from different vegatarian products.

Pictures from Norfolk

I haven't started yet to process all my pictures from our recent holiday to Norfolk, England. As usual I am wrapped up in paperwork which seems to reduce my creative energy by the day.
Here are a few that I managed to do.
The first one was at our first evening in Hunstanton. We went to the beach, hoping for a beautiful sunset but the clouds were hiding the setting sun. Still trying to get the most of the evening I tried several positions, but one other photographer was also on the beach and kept his place, keeping showing up in my frame. So I picked up the tripod and bag and splashed through the water past him to set up the camera again.
While passing him, the man asks: "Are you by any chance an EPZer?" Yeah, of course I am! What a coincidence to meet another photographer from the EPZ website while spending an evening on the beach! What a small place the world can be!



This shot was taken the next evening on that same beach. The wind was blowing pretty hard and the waves were quite high. Since the tide was in, it was not easy to take pictures while fiddling with the filters and in the meantime escaping the bigger waves, jumping from rock to rock, or running away.
Soon one of my boots was filled with water! No time though to do something about it since we had some colour in the sky and the light changed by the minute, so pressing the button on that camera and trying different positions and compositions was more important.
Too bad that I did not know about this 'salt spray' thing at the seaside. I managed to keep the filters dry, but did not notice that the salty air was polluting the filters anyway. So in the end most of the shots of that evening were ruined by the tiny specks of salt which were sprayed into the air...
This one had the least spray on it.



The Norfolk coast is filled with little creecks and tiny harbours. We found this wreck near one of the nature reserves. Just a little boat, left behind for years and neglected. Though I took a nice picture of the wreck with good evening light, I found that combining it with different shots and elimanating the colours the image was much stronger.
Hope to get more time to process the other pictures too!

Last Painting of the Course

This month we had our last lesson of the painting class I started in January. I managed to finish this painting of exotic fish. The photograph of this painting is a bit different from the reality - I took the shot in the garden on an overcast day - which should have worked, but did not...

I used acrylics on a canvas that was primed with gesso first. The source of inspiration were some poor photographs of fish in the Burger's Zoo (Arnhem).
I took those photographs despite knowing that the use of the high ISO and the camerashake caused by the long exposure time would be of low quality. What I did not know, was that some of them would turn out to be quite mysterious and eerie - often because of the movement of the fish.
The green, blue and yellow colours in the images also added to the atmosphere.
So these pictures became the inspiration for the painting. I started with the fish in the middle, and later added the second at the left hand - just peeking around the corner.

The course will start again in September. Hope though that I am still able to do some more painting this summer. But I will surely miss the help from the artist who teaches us!

Holiday in Norfolk

This year we had the luxury of going on a holiday for two weeks, instead of the ususal one week getaways.
I felt that I needed to take all my artmaterials with me, hoping that I would be able to spend time painting. But I was too restless.
Luckily, I also brought my photographic gear with me, including my macro lens. This one is kept usually at home because of the extra weight to carry around and the lack of space in my photobag.
I took the time to capture the last of the bluebells growing near the cottage we had rented - at the edge of a grand estate.
There were also some 'Columbines' growing - I like these flowers for their complicated shapes and wonderful colours. This shot is one of my favorite - I like the warm hot colours! Too bad that the weather was a bit chilly. But it provided some dramatic skies to include in the landscape photograpy, and that is always a bonus!

Altered Book: Illustrated Poems

Eileen from the ABEurope Group started the book 'Illustrated Poems' for the current Round Robin. Before it arrived I was on the lookout for English poems that I liked. But there was one that I could not get out of my head.
I did not want to use it because it is such a sad poem, even though it is so powerful and written from the heart. It is the poem called: I Am, written by John Clare (1793 - 1864) while being admitted to Northampton Asylum. Certainly not the best place to write happy or light hearted poetry!
In the end I could not find another poem that I would love to use. Despite his despair, the last three lines are probably appealing to everyone at certain moments in life: safe and without any troubles.
I wrote out the poem on a harmonica folded paper and glued it to one page. On the other page I tried to transfer a digital collage. Despite using a transparancy, the image did not transfer well and was not recognisable.
So I gessoed over it, leaving the title of the poem uncovered, and added a transparancy with the collage over it using eyelets. It does not photograph very well because of the reflection of the plastic.

I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,
My friends forsake me like a memory lost;
I am the self-consumer of my woes,
They rise and vanish in oblivious host,
Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;
And yet I am - I live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;
And e'en the dearest--that I loved the best--
Are strange--nay, rather stranger than the rest.

I long for scenes where man has never trod;
A place where woman never smil'd or wept;
There to abide with my creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept:
Untroubling and untroubled where I lie;
The grass below--above the vaulted sky.

John Clare

On YouTube you will find the poem being used with the software 'Crazy Talk' which makes it possible to move parts of a picture to make them 'talk'.

Painting Classes

I gave up on New Year's resolutions a long, long time ago. But for 2009 I was serious about finally taking up painting again. Since planning time for myself is so difficult in our family, a painting class seemed the answer. This would force me to go out, away from all the other distractions at home.
The class I joined, was a group of women who had been painting together for years, but they made me feel very welcome right from the beginning. The teacher, Alexandra Steen, is also very well known around here.

Since it had been quite some time since I painted, I decided to take up an old painting that I never finished. That did not work out very well, there was a very good reason that I never finished that painting!
Still unsure about myself I thought that painting an abstract would be easy. Abstracts don't have to look like anything, don't they? Just throw some paint in strange shapes on a canvas and you have an abstract, right? Well, it seems that it is not the case, painting an interesting abstract is quite difficult actually!

So the next try was painting one of my own photographs in a different scene. A painting that I wanted to do for a long time and could not get out of my head.
It took 2 lessons and some encouragement of my art teacher to paint the little girl lost on an empty beach on the canvas.
At last a painting I felt good about! I am still looking for a good way to handle my brushstrokes and painting styles, so I am sure that I will experiment in the next few paintings. In a few years time I might paint a completely different version of this scene, but for now, I am quite happy about it.
In the meantime I started painted a fish, but am still working on that one!

Celebrating Spring

At last - spring has arrived! We had a week with lots of sun, such a welcome change from the normal grey skies.
And here, just a simple picture of a tulip from the bunch which my daughter bought for me.

Aboriginal inspired paintings

My sister is an expert at interior decorating on a budget. She has all the patience and persistence to find the perfect fabrics, affordable furniture, coordinate colours of fabrics and paint. And she even upholsters some of her own furniture as well!

So when the giraffe fabric finally gave up on her lounge chairs - thanks to her cat's claws - she was in the market for a new couch. Since she also sews her own curtains she felt it was time to invest in a major makeover of the living room.
Within a few weeks she had found everything she needed - except something for the wall. We were exchanging ideas over the phone about painting the wall. But then I got a call from her after she had visited an art gallery where she had seen Aboriginal paintings.

To make a long story short: I got three canvasses from her, a piece of the curtain fabric for the colours and some pictures of the paintings that she loved.
I decided not to copy the designs of the paintings, copying is just not my style, but to design different patterns. I felt that the Aboriginal paintings looked like simplified bird views of different landscapes and used that as a guide for the design.
Every coloured part of the painting has been lined with little dots - how I did that will remain a secret, well - more or less...
By using gesso, sand and loads of layering of paint, the pieces have a visible texture when you view it up close. This often makes people wonder whether it was made from leather or fabric.
Anyway, she loves her new art in the living room. And I am glad that I do not have to paint her walls, even though it would have been so much quicker...

Altered book: Historical colours

Last month I received Julie's altered book from England. She had found an old book with the title: A tint book of historical colours suitable for decorative work.
The book is divided into chapters that refer to different cultures, ceramics and textiles, and their colour schemes. What also makes the book special, is the handpainted colour chips that show different colour schemes 'suitable for decorative work'.
Julie asked us not to cover the colour chips completely, so that the original part of the book still remains visible.
I chose to work in the spread with the Beauvais Tapestry colour scheme. I would have loved to add some tapestry stitches to the pages too, but that would have destroyed the back pages and their colour chips.
The book has been wrapped now and is ready for shipping to Germany.

Altered Book "Doors"

This month I received two books for the current Round Robin (from the ABEurope Group - Yahoo Groups) to work in. First on the list was Maijkens book: Doors.

I was thinking of making layers of doors in her spread, so when you open a door, a new one would appear which you will have to open, only to find another door.
I browsed through my collection of photographs that I took of doors (and windows) in France, Norway, UK and Spain (yes, I have a complete folder dedicated to those pictures) and started to combine some of them in Photoshop.
Viewing the results, I changed my mind and printed out the digital collages. I blended the images in the book with paint and added stamped words.

The book has arrived in Germany now and an Italian and Amercain artist will work in the book before it leaves for England and Scotland. In a few months it will be back in Danmark!

Intruiging Novel

"Families have secrets they hide even from themselves."

It is my habit to read good books very quickly, sometimes ignoring all my chores to read the book within a day or so.
The book I just finished reading: 'The Memory Keeper's Daughter' , written by Kim Edwards, had just the opposite effect. The story is so fascinating and the way the lives of the characters are described is so well done that after each chapter I had to lie down the book and try to absorb all that I had read. I felt like I was becoming really involved with the book's characters.

The book unfolds the lives of one family affected by one big secret, even without knowing about this secret for years.

The author knows very well how to describe the feelings, thoughts and emotions of the people. Showing that by keeping a secret, one influences his life and that of those around him without even realising the impact.

I bought this book while we were on a city trip to Stavanger, Norway, last August. My husband had won the trip as a prize. Since we had several days to spend in that little town, and because I get bored easily, we bought some English books that I found in a bookstore.

Stavanger: the old part of the town.

But it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I picked up this book to read. Soon I was mesmerised by the author's art of storytelling. This book really draws you into the story of the two families and the secret that shapes the lives of each individual.

This is the cover text on the back:

"It should have been an ordinary birth, the start of
an ordinary happy family. But the night Dr. David
Henry delivers his wife's twins is a night that will
haunt five lives for ever.

"For though David's son is a healthy boy, his daughter
has Down's syndrome. And, in a shocking act of
betrayal whose concequenses only time will reveal,
he tells his wife their daughter died while secretly
entrusting her care to a nurse.

"As grief quietly tears apart David's family, so a
little girl must make her own way in the world
as best she can."

My favorite books are "The Mermaid Chair" by Sue Monk Kidd, "Something Migh Happen" by Julie Myerson and the books of author Barbara Ewing. Seems that this book will join the ranks of this list!

Three Wise Owls

Yesterday I uploaded this image that I made from my photographs to Ephotozine.com and it was awarded with one of the EPZ awards: the HC!
Quite an honour! This is only the third HC I received on the site for my photography (and digital manipulation).

The first HC I received was back in 2006 when I mainly photographed flowers with a macro lens.
The second HC was for my (reworked) version of the waterfalls of the Buachaille Etive Mor (Glencoe, Scotland). It was only after removing some branches that the picture was awarded the HC...
It took quite a while to clone away the branches in Photoshop without any traces. You can find that picture in my blog in the entry of 1 december 2008:
http://exploringart.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html
Scroll down the page to view the picture.

So these owls have received my third HC award. Now I even have to work harder to achieve the Premier Award, the highest award on the site. It might take a couple of years or so to achieve that top award!

Neglect

I am still working on processing pictures that I took from our last trip in November to Scotland. Because I shoot in RAW, it leaves a lot of room to play with the picture before the final result is achieved. That is a lot of fun, but also a lot of wondering what I should do with the image. Which parts of the image should be a bit darker, which parts need more light, how do I crop the image, is this composition boring... etc...
Loads of thinking is involved and a lot of decisions have to be made. After all, I want to get the best of the picture that I took.

I really like to get involved so deeply in an image, but so now and then I just need to play! This is what I often do with the digital collages that I make. Often there is just a word, a mood, a sentence from a book that triggers an idea that I want to translate into an image.
So with some photographs that I took while we were in France a few years ago, I made this collage with the concept of Neglect.

This boat symbolises for me what happens when we neglect important things in life - whether it is about feelings, relations or important events. When we ignore them, we tend to not take care of them and often the results are like this boat. It gets broken, the paint peels away and the wood rots away. In true life neglect can result in loss and wounds. Sometimes even beyond repair...

Sad news, sick people

Last week we got the news that this beautiful red deer stag of Rannoch Moor was shot repeatedly with an air rifle in the head. The animal was so bleeding and in pain when it was found, that it had to be humanely killed due to it's injuries. Another stag, in the nearby Etive area suffered the same fate.

It seems that several young men were the ones who thought it was fun to go out and wound these defenseless animals on purpose and leaving them to suffer in pain.
Sick!

This stag was famous in the area since it was a bit semi-tame. He was the one that I wrote about in my blog in november 2007. I nicknamed him Jack.
Last november when we were in Scotland, we went to see him again and I found him in the pouring rain in the dark. I did not want to disturb him by taking pictures while using flash. Little did we know that it would be his 2 last months on his favorite spot.
I have some great photographs that I took of him, and always had fond memories of our encounter, a magical moment in a golden sunset. Now I can feel only sadness when I look at the images.

A Winter Wonderland in the Netherlands

Last friday we woke up in a beautiful world. Everything around us was covered in a thick layer of frost, turning the landscape into a christmas card. The sky was clear blue - no grey clouds - and the sun was shining.

Time for some photography! Walking around in this winter wonderland was wonderful - the white cover made even look the most common bushes special.
I felt like walking in an infra red landscape - just turn the blues in the photo into black and it seems almost like infra red...


And this weekend it was clear that the ice was safe. A little lake between the dyke and the river was frozen solid. People from our little village were ice skating and even playing ice hockey. I had no time to take real good photographs, but here is a quick snapshot of the scene.

What was I thinking?

When I started with this quilt, several years ago? It is just black and white patches, no colour, the design is not working and the size is huge!
Although the quilt was named after our cat Pico (yes, the b&w cat) who already tested the softness and the quality of the fabrics I used, in reality this is my frustration quilt. I only work at it when something is bothering me, when I am frustrated or am wound up.

There is something calming and relaxing in hand-sewing quilts. With small patches you build a block. When you start to sew the blocks together you get this large top of soft cotton. Baste this top, a soft padding and a backing fabric together to form a textile sandwich and then start with the most tedious work: hand stitching through these three layers - the real quilting.


And that is where I made the mistake. I was so eager to make a new quilt, something to do that would be relaxing and calming because I just needed that. So eager that I completely overlooked the importance of the design process. Instead of carefully selecting a design, I just took an old design which was tucked away in an old folder (that is the reason it was tucked away of course - the design was just not good enough). Not even bothering going through all kinds of colour decisions, and picking out the bunch of black and white fabrics that for some unknown reason I had been collecting, I started - just wanting to get going.


And when I started piecing the blocks, it got so addictive that I kept making them - all 224 of them. By the time the top was completed, I was convinced that I had truly made a big mistake. And there I was, with this huge quilt top that I could either disregard or finish. Seems that I am not the quitting kind of person. So I keep on quilting, pulling the thread through these layers, bonding them together. Regretting that I did not take the time to make a better design cause this one is not working. Regretting the choice of black and white - I know that I am not a black and white kind of person anyway. Regretting the size...

What was I thinking when I started this quilt? The point is, I was not thinking at all.
Just wanted to get something going. Did I learn something from this? Maybe. Probably. The next traditional quilt has already been designed in my head. I know which colours will be used and the quilting design is planned as well.

I might not have planned this time-consuming quilt - I might do that with the next one. But so now and then, I just need to get things going. Spontaneous. Not taking too much time to think about it. I dared and it did not turn out so well. Maybe the next time it will?

Maggie Ayres, Textile Artist from Scotland

Just when I really convinced myself that I needed to focus myself on photography and 3D modelling and let my interest in texiles just rest for a while, I stumbled across the videoos on YouTube from Scottish textile artist Maggie Ayres.
And thus spend most of my afternoon browsing her gallery and viewing her YouTube videoos.

She creates intricate, but in my opinion, delicate texile pieces that speak volumes. She has no problems with showing her emotions in the work - which makes it a very personal encounter as a viewer.
What I also like is that despite the complexities of textures and the variety of tones and colours there is a sense of openness and lightness in some of her pieces.
But you really have to see for yourself!

Anyone interested should check out her website:
www.maggieayres.co.uk
there is also an option to subscribe for her newsletter on this site.

On YouTube you will find several videoos by Maggie about her work. You will find an overview on this page:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=maggieayres&view=videos

Here is a small overview of one of her shows:

A Little Bit More of Scotland

This is one of the landscape shots that I took in the Scottish Highlands. The mountain is called Bauchaille Etive Mor, or also known as the Black Sheperd. Depending on the weather, this waterfall is a small stream, or is a strong force of water.
On this particular day, the snow on the Bauchaille looked like powder sugar, the mountains far back in the background were completely covered in snow. The sky was often just gray, but because the weather changes so quickly up here, one can always wait (in the car) to see if the weather turns around. And it did! The rain was mostly gone and suddenly we had even an empty space in the sky where the blue came poking through. A magical moment!

I had found a spot, a bit lower, and balanced on a small rock which stuck out from the side. It was hardly enough space for my feet ánd tripod. But it gave me a good view on the waterfall itself and hopefully the viewers a sense of the power of the waterfall, the wideness of the scenery and the roughness of that piece of country.
It was only later when I climbed back that I realise that the rock I stood on was not very stable. Don't think that I will ever try to repeat that!


Getting lost in Scotland happens to us more often than any other country I have been too! But it has the advantage of taking you to places that you would otherwise not have found! This shot of horses as taken on one of our 'little detours' thanks to the Scottish way of using roadsigns...
We drove a while into a very deserted place and spotted these horses. At that moment is was so cold that I could not even keep the camera steady - I was trembling of the cold.
With an iso of 800, and placing the camera on a wooden post, I was able to get some shots - but because of the amount of noise, I processed the image into Black & White and added a soft tone too.
I just loved the way they were interacting with each other - so playful, even jumping around so now and then. Too bad that they became a bit shy in front of the camera!

Altered Book: Truth, Secrets and Lies

The new Round Robin has been organised on the Altered Book Europe Group on Yahoo. It took a while for me to get to work on it. I intended not to sign up for this Round Robin since I still have loads of work to do, untill I saw the first pictures being uploaded by group members...
The books they had altered were so beautiful that I wanted to join anyway! Luckily I had already a book prepared for altering and a list of themes I would like to work with.

The cover is very textured. It first started out as a painted cover with 3D letters glued to it. But I felt that it was not good enough - so I started glueing down all kinds of threads and yarns. Very messy work since the glue sticks more to the fingers than to the yarns and covers of course.
To keep everything together, I added pieces of tissuepaper to cover everything and added again some layers of paint.
As usual the picture does not bring out the textures that well...
I choose the theme Truth, Secrets and Lies. My intend was to write down little truths, secrets and lies down and cover them with layers of paint and collage - leaving bits to be readable and let the viewer decide what was a truth, a secret or a lie.
Guess I am not ready yet to do that - instead I started with some quotes about Lies and Truth.
The book will be send to Germany, and then travel through Europe to France, Danmark and the United Kingdom for other artists to work in.
When the book gets home, there will still be some pages left for me to write down my truths, secrets and little lies... For my eyes only... :-)

Just back from Scotland...

Just got back from an EPZ (Ephotozine.com) Meet in Scotland. Fifty photographers sharing one hostel at the shores of Loch Lomond! Literally chasing the light in the Highlands because of the rain, sleet and snow.
A lot of fun in the evenings, but quite exhausted after the meet... We made some new friends, met old friends again and met people in person that we only knew before from the website, often just the avatar name!

For the first time I tried my new Sigma 10-20 mm wide angle lens which is perfect to capture landscapes. But it also distorts the view which made it harder for me to compose good shots.
Back home reviewing the photographs that I took, I felt that I better also had used my old 18-55 mm lens...

Scotland is a great country to be in. I like the remoteness and the roughness of this country. Nature rules here and you simply have to adjust to it. I was so glad that I brought some waterproof boots, warm gloves (thin enough to fiddle with the dials on the camera), warm silly hat, waterproof pair of trousers and a windproof jacket lined with a fleece!
Otherwise I would have had to shelter in the car most of the time. Especially since we spent 2 days in Glencoe.
The weather changes there by the hour. Which gives one hope - is it raining, you can wait in the car untill it stops (maybe even for just 10 minutes or so).

This was the last EPZ Meet at Rowardennan that Davie organised. Still I hope that it is not the last time that hubbie and I visited Glencoe, Lomond and the Trossachs. There are so many beautiful places to capture!

Autumn...

Summer certainly has gone. It is not that I know this only by nature colouring the leaves and shedding them, but also because my agenda gets swamped again with appointments and paperwork is piling up again.
Luckily we managed to get away last week for an afternoon and spent some time in the woods. Not for walking of course, but photographing mushrooms!
It must have been quite a sight: both my partner and I, lying on the damp ground, looking through the camera with these large lenses to capture even the smallest mushroom. That alone might have been funny, but if you knew how much gear we had with us... Photobags, beanbag, reflector, tripod, different lenses (though I only used the macro lens). A jogger even stopped and asked if we were professionals - oh no, just some crazy people trying to get away from the pressures of our life and trying to relax! :-)
Well, not all pictures turned out so great in the end. But getting in touch, literally, with nature was a rewarding experience.

Blind Fool

I finally managed to work on the next digital collage. Blind Fool is the title of this collage.
I think everybody can relate to that title so now and then. Obviously this falcon has been blinded by his owner, but sometimes we blindfold ourselves hoping that some problems will solve themselves if we just don't look at them or don't think about it.
Ahhh, blind fools we are...

Digital Collage: "Empty"

One digital collage of the 'Journal' series. All the images used are my own photographs: landscape and sky from The Netherlands, seagull from Scotland, window and shutters from France, and the chair was shot in my backyard. The old 1830's paper was folded and scanned.

The weather has changed here in Holland: it is pretty warm, too hot to sit in front on the computer, too hot to do anything except sitting in the shadow and reading a good book!
The ideas for a next collage is already forming in my head, but I am heading for the garden now!

Jane T.: I make these collages in Photoshop. I have been using the program since version 3 so I feel that I know my way around this piece of software. For this collage I used Layers, Layer Modes and Layer Masks only. These features, as far as I know, are also available in Photoshop Elements and Corel PhotoPaint.