A quiet life

Fotopub

Off to Fotopub on Saturday and looking forward to running the multimedia workshop with Mike Lusmore. Starting to pack up my kit and got that nice feeling of going to somewhere I've never been before. I'm really looking forward to seeing Brenda Ann Kenneally's work. Women of Troy is a particularly interesting piece made in collaboration with In verse who are "a multi-media project that combines poetry, photography and audio footage to create documentary poems" and is about the working women of Troy in New York. I really like the brilliant poetry by Susan B. A. Somers-Willett that accompanies the images. It's a layered and powerful piece.

Pippa

Fotopub 2011 in Slovenia

Along with Mike Lusmore I'll be a mentor at this year's Fotopub in Slovenia for the multimedia workshop. I'm extremely excited to be asked and really looking forward to the experience . It looks set to be a great festival with some very interesting workshop leaders including Brenda Anne Kenneally, Ed Ou, Espen Ramussessen and Uros Abram. Hope to see some of you there - that includes you Marcia Chandra, apparently there's a nice river swim to be had. Thanks duckrabbit for the recommendation :-).

The Legendary Dougie Wallace

Shame this is black and white - that pink wig was gorgeous!

Make Hay while the sun shines...

Got back from the Hay Festival on Sunday after a few very nice days gathering material for a photofilm commission. It's a very civilised festival with big camping pitches and a view of the hills - also lots of panama hats and Telegraph newspaper readers. It was lovely and sunny for a few days and there were starry nights above our rusty white van. We were working on a piece about opera and comedy which I saw around six times and still found very very funny.

Work took priority so I didn't see any talks but did pop up the road for the HowTheLightGetsIn festival which was apparently where the 'hip' people were hanging out. Feeling decidedly unhip I saw a very nice acoustic set by Jim Moray who sang some beautiful folk ballads.

As usual I have gathered far too much audio and way too many pictures, so now going to shut myself away for some serious editing.

Decompressing after our wonderful workshop

Back at home now and still coming down from the workshop. It started with an idea and grew to a full blown amazing experience. It surpassed all my expectations and all the hard work in the lead up was well worth the effort. It's been a roller coaster of emotions I felt exhausted, energised, overwhelmed but over all so, so happy we were able to create a space for the participants to learn new skills and go away feeling they had value for money.

Myself and Mike are passionate about good food, sharing skills, the great outdoors and good company - The Hinterlands workshop bought all this together and so much more. I feel proud to have been part of the team and glad duckrabbit agreed to come along and collaborate with us. The training was outstanding and Benjamin and David bought an amazing amount of energy to the five days.

There were also some brilliant speakers who I feel are well worth a look and want to say thank you to as they provided a wonderful interlude to the hard work and were truly inspirational. They include; Tessa Bunny, Jonathan Worth, Nick Hand, Georgina Cranston and of course David White and Benjamin Chesterton from duckrabbit.

Now away from the Devon hills and back in my terraced house with brown roofs to wake to and no birdsong, I am feeling more than a little separation anxiety from the people who I've laughed with, eaten delicious food with, learned with and worried over!

Those who are close to me know these last few months have been hard since the death of my father, but I feel he would be proud. So thank you Dad for everything you've done for me in my life. x