From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace

Course:   Applied Digital Photography         

Venue:           UCC

Lecturer(s)/Co-ordinator: Stephen Bean/Regina Sexton

Comments: please comment on the following:

1. What did you like about the lecture sessions?

First, the style: relaxed, humorous, a bit sloppy, unpolished and edgy, thought-provoking, opinionated and friendly, at time charmingly unsure of how he was coming across.

Second, the challenge to think about photography from the point of view of the fundamentals: not so much a digital photography lecture as a photography lecture.  Wonderfully succinct and inviting me to think deeper into my practice.  I found myself asking myself questions during lectures, questions like ‘what assumptions am I making about the nature of image making? What’s the difference between what my eye sees, what the camera sees and what I can let the camera see? What do I want to photograph?  What’s my style of photographing? What’s it becoming? What do I really think of image bending and editing?  What do I know about what went on in darkrooms?

Third, the ease with which the lecturer took and encouraged questions.  The way in which he didn’t cut me off even when I had loads of unasked questions?  How he thereby cultivated my curiosity.

2. Where [typpo?] you satisfied with the course content and its delivery?

Very satisfied. 

3. Where you satisfied with the level of individual or group participation?

 Yes

4. What improvements you would like to see made or what suggestions for improvement can you make?

When presenting PhotoShop: don’t write on blackboard.  Instead use projector to show what is seen on computer screen.  Get one of those infrared beamers to point round the projection.

Speak out instructions in a particularly loud voice: I’m ‘hard of hearing’ and found it too difficult to follow the editing sessions, so I spent my time purposely enjoying the opportunity to study various photographers.

Make it clear at the start what relationship, if any, exists between this course and a certified course.  Maybe also give a synopsis of what’s covered on a degree course – I’m thinking of  doing some further study of photography.

5. Did the course match your needs and expectations?

Yes and no.  It met my needs and exceeded my expectations.

6. If this course was offered for credit would you be more or less inclined to enrol of the programme? Please explain your answer.

Yes.  I’d go out of my way to study with Stephen Bean.

We cooked yesterday.  We ate with good friends last night.

• Toasted bread rubbed with garlic, topped with tapenade and tomato, grilled - as nibbles

• Mixed olives and gerkins - as nibbles

• Drunk down with Grifon Prosecco (northeastern Italy, sprakling wine, made by the Charmat method)

• Buffalo Mozzarella, fat tomatoes and basil, with olive oil from Puglia, Italy (The Real Olive Company)

• Cork beef (O’Mahony’s @ English Market) from the rib, cooked very rare, with a gravy simmered for hours

• Broccoli and green beans, steamed

• The best-looking roast potatoes I’ve ever made & seen

• Brie de Melun,  and two goats’ cheeses - from Abbeyfeale & Charleville

• A Billy McAssey (spelling?) from Douglas lemon cheesecake with Murphy’s Chocolate ice cream

• Two bottles  : Chateau Bois de Cadet 2005 (80% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Sauvignon) & Chateau Tourenne 2006 - thank you David.

• Biscuits & sweets

• One half glass of Redbreast (12 years old) before bed.

I know Adrian & Cindy enjoyed it.  The meat was too rare for the Wiffe.  I was in my element.

Cindy read  two of her recent poems, "Time" & "Peace feels like…" - which began :

"Peace feels like …

A pair of old soft slippers mounded to the shape of our feet who

welcome us home with their warm embrace.

  I read

By the fireside

on the warmth of an embered evening,

eyelids heavier now

weighed down

craving after sleep,

I look into blue coals…"

Cindy sang bits of Aura Lea, Battle Cry of Freedom, and a long slow song with Shiloh in the title.

That was the first dinner party with friends (who weren’t family) in our house. [And, no, the Wiffe didn’t sing.  Her voice is awesome and she’s shy with it.)  Grace was no trouble, ate the meat and went off to sleep in our bed. Cindy & Adrian stayed overnight and went off at about 0900.  The boss is gone to town.  I’m still in my dressing gown and better get organised to go swimming with Grace.  I so love cooking.

I’ve never really liked them.  Always inclined to feel a duty to read them. Couldn’t bring myself to write one - even though I’m inclined to write at the drop of a hat. I’m a pretty kind person but the genre makes me cringe.

Until now.

Until I got one this year from one of my brothers… containing these words:

"… Travel is the ultimate leveler, the means of opening one’s eyes, the way to see others, the best book, the most scrumptious meal and we did it, Around the World, amidst the onset of the doom, the worst summer in memory and we survived to tell the tale!

"From the beauty and majesty of Botswana to the education and intimacy of Kruger to the noise and serenity of Bali, the colours, the smells, the seas, the architecture and peace throughout…. [his dots] to the simplicity of Hawaii, the diversity, the freshness, the values and awe of creation, to finally embrace SF, the commercial, the buzz, the laughter, the familiar and the value of family and friendship - we were so lucky and stand united in our thanks for being able to witness AND still be talking and loving one another."

This blew me away… the stream of consciousness, the rush of the senses, the celebration - Whitmanesque - between commas and the punch in the lines.

My great brother has changed my life, irreparably.