In this post, Mick Thurman shares his struggle to produce a piece for On Your Doorstep Magazine. You can see the story and images in Issue 7. Just go to the Magazine page.

When K asked me for my reflections series, off the back of its minor success (third place) in our local camera club audio visual competition, the thought of giving over the images and seeing them in On You Doorstep Magazine posed absolutely no problems. But, this came with a request to support their publication with words. Woah! “It’s okay for her”, I thought, “she for who words just seem to flow from fingertip to page”. Not so easy for me, a chap from the East Midlands, who, like his forebears, is not given to explanation of creative outcome, deeper thinking or expressions of emotion, let alone writing them down! Now there’s an issue! “Oh, you’ll be right said” she said. “Just write about where you took the pictures, or what inspired you make them. Easy.”

Anyhow, out walking Ollie, our madcap lurcher, over the hills on our doorstep in rural Bedfordshire, I got to thinking about what to write. As usual, the thoughts went all over the place. And then, in the peace and quiet of the countryside, a lightbulb moment! Why not jot down my mind’s ramblings around the images? Why not share with you my reflections on my reflections? So that’s what I’ve done.

Initially my thoughts were that I might impress by stepping outside my comfort zone and demonstrating a degree of literary prowess about the images and how they came about. I could bring to bear my academic learning on being a ‘reflective practitioner’, developed through the ‘later in life’ study in my ‘50’s with the Open University (I completed a MBA and BSc (Hons) - in that order). Through this, I surely must be able to talk about the images in a highfalutin’ way. Something like; they are the result of a process which, through the physics and chemistry embedded in modern digital cameras, have synthesised momentary conjunctions of ocular, geospatial and atmospheric occurrences. These moments combined with a conscious combination of spontaneous transcendental and metaphysical inputs coerced from the natural environment and influenced, no doubt, by the traumas I suffered as a child have produced echoes that are, on the whole, dark and mysterious!

There is a problem though. I didn’t suffer any childhood trauma. Really! Save for the normal stuff: tripping over someone’s head and breaking my arm, being shot in the cheek with an air-pistol, falling twenty feet down a wall when the safety rope, a piece of washing line, snapped, and being knocked over by a car (outside the ambulance station). In-fact, I reckon I had the best of childhoods; loved deeply by my parents, two great siblings and the freedom and encouragement to explore and come to grips with the world around me.

As I contemplated this, it dawned on me that while this sort of writing might pique the interest of those disposed to higher thinking, you know, those who wear linen jackets (with suede elbow patches), dickie-bow ties, button-down collars and slip-on shoes, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t cut the mustard with the broader readership. Trash that idea.

Okay then, why not go with K’s suggestion and play to my strengths, I thought. As someone who makes a living writing dry, technical documentation, I could give chapter and verse about each of the images – the what, where, why, when and how? That’s sure to please - a few lines about each one will satisfy the needs of most readers. Or will they? Inside my head, a little voice was saying that although these jottings might satisfy the serial workshop attendees (and don’t get me wrong on this – workshops do have a place in our creativity). You know that clique of people who derive their creativity and kudos from travelling long distances to archetypal locations and who slavishly follow the technical and compositional direction of the ‘master’. I feared that the article might then become simply a listing of locations and technical gumpf. The whole thing would be in danger of becoming dry and, to a greater or lesser extent, rather meaningless as an exposition of the story behind the pictures. Strike two.

So, third time lucky. To start with, though, it’s worth saying that despite mostly being shot when we were out making pictures for our On Your Doorstep exhibitions, were it not for the local camera club audio visual club competition (we are both members of the Harpenden Photographic Society), the images may never have seen the light of day.

Why, you ask? Well, first of all of the images were made as my response to a deep personal connection with the time and place of their making; of being ‘in the zone’, of the mindfulness brought on by being out in the peace and tranquillity of nature, as seen in the image of mist on Loch Beinn A’ Mheadhoin. Second, they are also part of my digital memory bank – an archive of times and places past that I am creating for later use. For old age, when K and I sit quietly in the evening, outside on the veranda glass of wine, or port, in hand and look back on the experiences we shared together. For example, the early morning view across Loch Maree to Slioch when we climbed out of our ice-covered tent when wild camping in the Highlands of Scotland in December.

These pictures are also the result of a lifelong desire to be close to water, the sea in particular. That could be something to do with being a Scorpio - one of the water signs. In the early ‘rose-tinted, days of our relationship, this was one of those things that could have caused some upset. My expression of a desire for the veranda with a sea view where we would be doing this reminiscing was countered by the yearnings for trees, hills and mountains of a girl who grew up in the concrete jungles of the Far East. As we’ve travelled the UK though, in the beauty of the lochs and lakes in valley floors we seem to have found the happy compromise that begets great relationships.

Or, as you may see in Cloud Sandwich, When Autumn Comes or The Worm, it could have absolutely nothing to do with any of this and may simply be that l am intrinsically drawn to water’s fluidity, forms and textures, and the opportunity it affords for creating, much as do in my other photography, abstractions and other images that demand a little more of the viewer.

Over to you!

Jottings, Ramblings, Reflections