Sally Wakelin – Studies in Creativity
Paintings, drawings, sculpture and writing
I recently wrote a short story about Langland Bay where I spent many long days on the beach as a teenager. This week I unexpectedly found myself there with only a camera phone to record the scene as the light faded and the low sun threw golden bands across the wet sand.
On the train going West in sunshine and rain. The English countryside is at its peak of greenery, the sun has not yet singed the green to brown. Majestic skies, rain clouds sweeping across the landscape in a veil of pearly grey, in the distance patches of blue and white appear, to remind us that it is summer.
These images were snatched from the streaming landscape as we rushed westward, the blue tinged reflections of the train strip-lights adding some false sense of dimension.
In the Barbican lecture hall I caught a glimpse of a man with the most interesting hair, he must have let it grow long all over and the had it sculpted like a topiaried box hedge. The dark angular shape stood out against the sculpted white plaster wall beyond making such a strong image that I felt I must attempt to record despite the fact that everyone was rising from their seats and pushing past. It was a fleeting moment and I only had a mobile phone, the low light and the urgency made for a blurry result.
I found another opportunity to try out photographing a subject through metal mesh, here the holes in the mesh are bigger and I was in the dark interior, the subject in full sunlight which gives the image a very different feel from the previous one I posted last week. I think they both have their merits, I would like to have more time to experiment with exposure and focus – both of these were taken on the fly.
Grey as a colour theme is challenging but I found a couple of opportunities during a flying visit to Aberporth, a small village in Cardigan bay in West Wales. Whilst we ate fish and chips sitting at the aluminium tables outside the “Caffi”, the sun played hide and seek but then went elsewhere, so the light was helping to show up greyness. The soft colours and lack of contrast drew my eye to these delicate stems, no doubt soon to be bedraggled by wind and rain, the fine incised lines in the smooth concrete wall behind providing an opposing yet supporting structure.
Inside I caught a figure fleetingly through the metallic grey of the mesh panel in an open door, the grey seems almost to draw a line around his profile and the white beard merges into his sweater which makes the image other-wordly.
Light falling through gaps in the floorboards after the plasterboard lining had been removed. I was intrigued by the way the light continues down from the joist over the wall, where it splays out and also over the door where it becomes more focussed. I wish I had moved slightly to the right but someone was standing there and then the moment was gone.
Sally Wakelin - Studies in Creativity 
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