Pauline Rook, Professional photographer - open studio

Pauline is a professionally qualified photographer, living and working in Somerset. She specializes in portraiture but is equally well known for her rural documentary work. She has won many professional awards as well as appeared on the BBC Countryfile. Pauline’s principle passion continues to be working in the rural community in which she lives and has spent a lot of time roaming the Blackdown Hills.  Her work is very similar to that of James Ravilious who spent many years from 1939-1999 photographing farms and farmers around Devon on behalf of Beaford Arts.

Here beow is Pauline on the last day of the Somerset Open Studios week.  She is holding up one of her portraits of a local farmer who had agreed for her to take his picture.  What scared her was that he took her into his kitchen and proceeded to lock the door after her.  It all turned out okay as he just wanted to stop his animals straying into the kitchen and unlocked the door when she had finished.

Pauline Rook in her temporary studio

 

 Both images are (c) Pauline Rook 

Pauline will be showing some of her rural documentary collection at the Open Studio event in Somerset until October 3rd.  There will be some of her recent pictures taken at the sale of White Vine Farm, recent flower studies and outside some of the canvases which made up the first show at the Museum of Somerset.

Two of a Kind; Sandrine Kerfante; published by Chronicle Books; 2016

Sandrine Kerfante was not the author of the images included in this interesting little book but rather has edited pictures from a myriad list of authors.

I was more that a little surprised to find on looking through the variety of images that they consisted of more than just pictures of twins, be they children, adults or elderly people.  These images have taken a variety of scenarios where there are two items, people, shadows, etc., and put them together in an engaging way.

Images featured even include two cinema signs and two benches in front of a porch by Gaetan Rossier, duplicated shadows by Ray Carofano and two swimmers diving into a pool side by side by Florence Douyrou.

Here are some examples of the images included in this book:

(c) Aaron Ruell

(c) Matthias Heiderich

Ariko Inaoka

There are plenty of images of twins in various poses but it was quite eye opening to see such a variety of subjects put together in one book.  It has given me inspiration to try to take this subject to another level rather than just the usual female twins pictures together.

Dorset Arts and Crafts Exhibition 2016

The Dorset Arts and Crafts Exhibition is held annually in Wareham at the Purbeck School, utilising the whole school building to allow enough room to show all the exhibits at their best.

The exhibition itself had various categories including photography, original art, quilting and many other crafts.   It even included woodworking and metal work.

The photography section was my main area of interest, even though I covered the whole side looking at some most stunning craftwork.  It looked like the whole of the Dorchester Camera Club had entered work, as there were many names that I recognised having had contact with them in the past.  The pictures were wide ranging including wildlife & nature, land or seascape, monochrome, creative and an open award.  The public were allowed to vote for their favourite image over all the categories and the winner was announced at the close of the whole exhibition.

Dorset Art Weeks

One of the great things about living in the South West, ie, Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, means that there are always 'arty' things going on.  Lyme Regis is already preparing for its ArtsFest in September by laying out art trails of sculptures by local artists.

We, in Dorset, also have Dorset Art Weeks - this year from May 28th to June 12th where you can visit exhibitions, artists' studios and various other art locations around the county.

http://www.dorsetartweeks.co.uk/http://www.dorsetartweeks.co.uk/

I'm looking forward to visiting some of the venues next week where visitors can experience a varied collection of painting, printmaking, textiles and photography together with sculpture in the gardens from over 15 local artists.  They include night photography by Stephen Banks.  Stephen has been to my local camera club and explained how he creates his amazing night sky photography.  It's absolutely stunning.

Mother Teresa exhibition in Sorento, Italy

Found a very touching exhibition, called The Light of God, in a back street church in Sorrento,Italy. A photographer called Rafael Selantano was allowed to photograph Mother Teresa at her orphanage in India, something not many people were able to do during her lifetime.

The pictures were not just of Mother Teresa but of the whole orphanage. It was very moving see how the nuns all lived and worked together with the children

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I'm surprised, if you read the history of the photographer above, how he was given access to the nuns and watch them praying, eating and working. I would have thought a female photographer would have been more acceptable but who knows what motivates people.

Book: Women by Annie Leibovitz & Susan Sontag

This coffee table book by Leibovitz was featured in the manual accompanying the G&M course so I managed to get a copy from my local library to peruse.

The photos are beautiful and portray women from all over the US and with all types of backgrounds. There is also a short section written by Susan Sontag, Leibovitz's late partner, with background information about them.  The book helped me realize that there are lots of opportunities in life as one gets older. Many of the women in the book are old but they still seem very much alive. Most of them have done some astonishing things in their lives!

There are photos of actresses and other famous faces, but I prefer the pictures of "ordinary women" - the ones that we meet every day but don't pay attention to.  Whether famous or unknown each woman is photographed by Leibovitz to bring out their strengths. Image after image of staged and unstaged shots draw you through the book, revealing each woman. Ultimately it is a book which celebrates and empowers womankind.  The book is one I would like to own but its cost is prohibitive.

WCPF (Western Counties Photographic Federation) Members’ Exhibition 2016

This exhibition is one of the highlights of the WCPF’s year where 100+ of the best print images and a showing of all accepted images were on display for two weeks in May. 

I went with three other members of my camera club went to Buckfast Abbey yesterday (May 12^th) and enjoyed a wide range of images of all subjects. The WCPF award gold, silver and bronze medals to the images they consider the best in various categories.  There was also a display of 130+ images on a loop, the majority of which were superb.  

It’s certainly an eye opener to view such amazing images, especially when you can identify with some of the photographers and we all came away highly impressed with what we saw.