what inspires me? - gilly

mission: MUSE - "what inspires you?"

by guest muse gilly

For three months of the year I am almost completely uninspired. Down at the bottom of the UK, where I live happily most of the time, winters are not crisp, clear, white-snow-and-blue-sky affairs, but grey, grim and grungy. I lose interest – because what really gets me going is colour and bright light. Eventually spring does reappear, teasing me by peeking shyly round the corner at first, till eventually it gains the courage to come out in its full finery, and I start to perk up again.

I live in a small Victorian terraced house which was built to keep the elements out and to stop the sun fading the rugs and antimacassars. Even when a weak winter sun appears, it hangs too low in the sky for its rays to penetrate these defences, and the first sign of spring for me is when patches of light start appearing here and there on the walls and floors. Something as ordinary as sunlight on a wooden floor then becomes a reason to run for my camera.

I get obsessed with these patches of light, lying in bed in the mornings watching them move across the walls, and even photographing their progress (yes, still lying in bed). Eating dinner with my husband in the evening, I might suddenly grab his arm and say ‘LOOK!! Look at the light on that cushion!’ He’s a kind and obliging man and does his best to join in with my enthusiasms.
Neither was he offended when I told him that I took the following picture because of the shadows cast by the sun shining through his straw hat, and that they could have fallen on anything at all and I’d have been equally enthusiastic. But still, much-loved husband plus interesting shadows is a good combination.

This image is a rarity in my archives because it’s in black and white. I like looking at other people’s black and white photos – heck, I even subscribe to Black and White Photography magazine – but I’m so totally besotted with colour that I hunt it down and photograph it everywhere I go. During the sensory deprivations of winter I can get rather desperate about this, which often leads to some interesting experiments. Once, I took a plastic picnic glass and placed transparent coloured sweet wrappers inside it, then shone a very bright spotlight into the glass from above. This was the result:

Some colours are just so utterly delectable that I want to sink into them and pull them round me like a soft and exotic quilt, and that’s when I make them the whole subject of the photo. Ernst Haas once said ‘Colour is joy’ and for me it really is.

I can get rather manic about reflections too; I don’t mind where they appear – glass, water, metal, sun-glasses, whatever – it’s all good. I’ve spent whole days photographing nothing else.

If you add one more ingredient to this colour and light mix– water – I’m in a veritable frenzy of delight. Water feeds all my senses: I love the sounds it makes, the salty sea smell and the clean linen smell of rivers and lakes, the silky way it feels against my skin when I swim in it, and most especially the way the light sparkles, shimmers, and dances on its surface. Often I simply take abstract shots of light, water and colour.

And when I look at the next photo I can hear that wonderful rattling sound the pebbles make when the retreating wave sucks them in:

Nothing lasts forever, and ultimately the light and the colour begin to fade into the soft golds and rusts of autumn and my camera lies more or less abandoned (although not unloved) until spring comes round again. Winter is my time for processing and digital play; this year experimenting with textures has kept me going till those patches of light start appearing again.

gilly of www.gillywalker.com  and GillyinKent on flickr

"what inspires you?" is the the second assignment of the mission: MUSE series.

You may submit an entry to mortalmuses {at} yahoo.com.

We are still accepting "where i live" submissions.

where I live - canterbury, united kingdom

mission: MUSE - "where i live"

by guest muse gilly

Canterbury is a very beautiful, very old, and very small city in the UK. I’ve lived here for about twenty years – I came here to study for an MA at the University of Kent and liked it so much I never left. The city’s been in existence since pre-Roman times, and there are so many layers of history here that building work can take years because they have to allow the archaeologists time to excavate everything first. In Waterstone’s bookshop in St Margaret’s St, you can view the remains of a Roman bathhouse in the basement while buying your books.

This photo is taken from one of Canterbury’s parks, Westgate Gardens. It’s a long, thin park that runs alongside the River Stour, and the opposite end to the one you see here disappears into open countryside

The river runs right through Canterbury and although it’s really very shallow and not much more than a stream, there are punts operating along its navigable length. This makes for some idyllic scenes in summer.

Canterbury was once a walled city and you can still walk along much of the old city wall. Westgate Towers is the only remaining mediaeval gate to the city, and the road now runs through the archway underneath it. This is one place where the modern and the very old have an uneasy co-existence: double-decker buses have to inch slowly through the arch, occasionally getting stuck and entertaining passers-by. This photo shows the wider end of the archway – the far side is smaller and buses and large trucks only have inches to spare on each side.

Canterbury is best known for its Cathedral, which dominates the city and is a stunningly beautiful building. I’ve taken so many photos of the Cathedral and its surroundings that it’s almost impossible to choose just one, but this is my current favourite shot of it. You can see the Cathedral interior reflected in the sphere – this is part of the lectern right at the head of the Choir and it’s formed of a golden eagle which supports a bible on its back and holds this ball in its feet. It reminds me of some lines from Ted Hughes’ poem Hawk Roosting:

‘It took the whole of Creation

To produce my foot, my each feather:

Now I hold Creation in my foot’

I could fill a whole book with the huge variety of ancient and picturesque buildings we have here. The following picture shows how well the black and white timbered Tudor style buildings show up when we get a rare fall of snow. Although it’s often wet in winter and we do occasionally get light snow showers, it’s very unusual for snow to lie, so we don’t see this very often:

The snow also makes it easier to see the mediaeval ducking stool in the next image – you can spot it sticking out high over the river, just above the boat. The ducking stool was both a form of punishment and a way of testing to see if someone was a witch. It was used to punish nagging wives and cheating businessmen by dunking them in the river. However, more worryingly it was also used to determine whether or not someone was a witch. The accused woman would be strapped to the chair and lowered beneath the surface of the water for 2-3 minutes. If she survived then it was thought that she had used her powers to stay alive and she would then be burned at the stake. If the woman was dead when they brought her up again, then clearly she was not a witch and her name would be cleared and her family given an apology from the church. There are times when you just can’t win……

The main shopping streets are lined with loads of quirky and colourful cafes and tearooms. This is just one of them, but I particularly like it because of its brightly coloured chairs, tables and tablecloths.

This is just a tiny taste of where I live – there’s so much more I could have shown you – but I hope it gives you a flavour of the kind of place it is and how much history we have here. I fell in love with Canterbury when I first came here and I still love it after twenty years – it feels like home now.

gilly of www.gillywalker.com and GillyinKent on flickr

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