A month of adventures and workshop planning…
Suddenly it’s the last day of February and despite best intentions of aiming to write a bit each week, of course that didn’t happen and it’s the deadline of the month-end looming that pushes me to hit the keyboard! It’s been a busy, whirlwind of a month with little spare time to reflect on what we’ve been doing.
February started with our long planned and much postponed road trip to the Outer Hebrides. It’s a place that we’ve both wanted to visit for such a long time but even as we made our final preparations nothing seemed to go quite to plan. Car problems before we even left home, changes and then cancellations of ferry crossings due to the adverse weather conditions, challenges in finding places to stay with the campervan that we’d hired – at times it felt that conditions were conspiring against us and yet we finally made it! The beauty and drama of Harris and Lewis, heightened by the frequently changing (and often challenging) weather conditions gave us an experience that was filled with awe and wonder. It was an extra bonus to bump into Margaret Soraya, Mark Littlejohns, Rachael Tallibart and Verity Milligan along the way – I wonder what the collective noun might be for a collection of super-talented image makers? We will certainly be going back for more, although probably not in a campervan in midwinter!
Returning home, there is always plenty of work to be done. Adrian has had a diary filled with on-line one to one sessions and group workshops. He’s currently working on an update to his workbook, ‘Lightroom Classic’ to reflect the big changes in Lightroom in the major updates last year. We’ll also be working on dates for additional workshops (both virtual and face-to-face) in the next few days.
Alongside that, we have also been doing the background preparations for more of our face-to-face workshops that are scheduled for the coming months. It’s been exciting to work with the brilliant Paul Sanders to put together the ‘Image and Word’ creative residentials scheduled for April and September, both of which were fully booked within 24 hours. I’ve spent some time this month introducing Adrian to the pleasures of bookmaking in preparation for this. My next task – a pleasure rather than a chore - is to spend some time rummaging in the virtual shops of Ratchfords and Shepherds to source some lovely binding materials for our guests. If you are interested in joining a future workshop, make sure you click the ‘waitlist’ button so that you hear about new date announcements at the earliest opportunity.
Our next Astro workshop with Jen Rogers is due to be released in a few days and there is just one remaining space on our April Infrared residential. We also still have some spaces available on our Black Arts residential – an exciting collaboration with two other local artists – Al Brown and Stephen Raff. Participants will have the opportunity to experience working with the wet collodian process with Stephen Raff, learn about painting with a local pigment – Bideford Black – with Al Brown and refine skills in capturing, editing and printing black and white images with Adrian.
Head over to the residentials page to find out more.