OPPORTUNITY WILL ONLY KNOCK ONCE

Evening all. Between working my day job and trying not to go insane in the studio I haven't had much spare time of late; so I'm making use of this "day off" (sort of) and making one or two last blogs before the summer holidays.

First of all, I did carry forward the theme of doors - went round a few streets and photographed as many as I could, then cropped them all on photoshop so they were more or less the same size.

and here they all are, sitting beautifully in a row. I made a couple of interesting composites out of them by editing all the doors into one image:

not really sure what possessed me to make these images but I must say I'm quite happy at the result; there's an ethereal kind of feel to them which I wasn't expecting. Raises questions too - what's behind the doors? is it there to keep us out? or to keep something in?

This train of thought is fairly relevant; for a long while I had just a tiny print of that white door from the installation room on my wall (see my earlier posts) - reflected pretty accurately how I felt; everywhere I looked there were doors closing on me, opportunities missed, inspiration that wouldn't come, trapped behind doors in the mind, locked by a lack of self-confidence. In this respect the door became something more sinister - it ultimately represented how trapped I felt. I would sit in my studio space or at home, deep in thought, staring at that door for hours. For a long time I didn't even pick up my camera, or work on anything arty. I had photographed and edited a whole series of doors, but my shitty state of mind wouldn't let me print them - and so I ended up wallowing in apathy, unsure of everything.

However, after the Easter holidays I finally managed to get my shit together long enough to actually print these images and stick them on my wall, and my tutors really loved them. This gave me the confidence to get my work moving again. Some advice from Michael, one of my tutors - "Just be aware of everything. The way the sun plays on the surface of a puddle, the shadow from a passing car, that person's surprisingly colourful shoes - let the world wash over you. Don't let a day go by when you haven't taken at least a hundred photographs of everything around you."

That's all the inspirational shite I have time for today unfortunately everyone; I am working on a new set of images based around the theme of "holes in things" - a start that is sort of related to my practice of observing things, but I plan to make it the first series of many that will basically document my experience as a human being, alive in the 21st century.

Keep it real people.

- Padfoot