It seems as if I've been hibernating, as far as this blog is concerned. I've been busy though - building a new website when I can, doing some portraits. The website is taking far longer than I thought, designing and constructing it myself with the help of dreamweaver (building the pages, no templates) has been a steep learning curve, but I am now writing the code myself more often than not - oddly satisfying. Gradually it's becoming less of a mystery, revealing itself to be quite simple in the end. It's just finding the way through the undergrowth of the unknown initially. However it turns out, when it's finished it will be an achievement. The good thing is, having gone through this process, it will be very easy to maintain once it's done. I think it is ready now apart from editing, processing and uploading all the pictures. Although technically this is the easy bit, it is not in other ways; I find the editing very hard - easier somehow with a website with a total of under twenty images (as currently). Much harder really to delve into the work I've done over the last ten years and come up with something representative without being overdone. It can only ever be a selection - but the process of reviewing and making that selection is beginning to prove the most useful part of all - possibly even more useful than having the finished site.
I also had a chance, between Christmas and New Year, to do some more landscapes. I feel at last I have enough that tell something of the loneliness of the place, and with it the spirit of calm, and ....ancientness somehow, as if it's all on the very edge of something...between land and sea as it is, but somehow more than that, somewhere timeless. There's a lot of 'me' in the pictures too. I have processed all the film except for one (4 rolls so far, one of which is 35mm). Interesting the difference between the 35mm (with 28mm lens) and the 6x7 (with 110 lens). I like having the choice, and both to hand, but I'm also contemplating a wider lens for the Mamiya for landscape work, although I realise I would then miss having the immediate choice to hand that I have now (intensely disliking carrying spare lenses and fiddling in the field).
