Langt síðan síðast!
(long time no see!)
I have committed sins against blogs and general website upkeep for quite some time now, a year and two months to be exact, fuck! It´s not to say I haven´t done anything Hassy related in that time or that nothing has happened worth writing about it´s purely my own shitness at being consistent with my passion. I do also blame starting a new job straight after the launch of the Analogue Upcycle project, then a couple of months later moved house and it was rather intense there for a few months but it´s bullshit if I tried to pretend like that was enough of a reason why I went off the grid a bit. To tell you the truth it´s more a case of I lost my mojo for while and it´s taken time to get it back again.
2021 was a year of pushing myself forward more with my photography again after a few years of side lining a bit. I started writing at the very start of it and wanted to pursue that further. Then when those articles started getting traction I thought why not make a website, i´ve been planning on it for so long and build the instagram and work on more printing projects etc etc. I did it for me, to feed the passion and give it a new lease on life, especially at a time when the day job was at it´s peak shitness. Some of it worked and some of it didn´t but I was having a good time finding out. I never intended to drop off the train but between November 2021 and March 2022 Hassy laid in a cupboard untouched and I dealt with every day life instead with no real desire to do anything else. I suppose after a push of a year to put myself out there having a bit of a rest was good but it was definitely hard getting that mojo back. I honestly don´t know how these artists do it on Instagram where they´re constantly pushing out content and reels. It´s not me, i´m not that kind of creator and honestly it just makes it less fun.
Everyone knows Instagram has gone a bit downhill over the last couple of years, especially for people like me who aren´t doing this for business but still use it as an outlet for creativity with no real other place to put it out there. This website was supposed to be my place to build and break away from Instagram as much and the other socials which i´m thankfully not as active in. I´ve gone backwards in time, i´m slowly rejecting the digital world and wanting to go more analogue. I think i´m becoming one of those grumpy old bastards that spout on about “things not being as good as in my day”. But yet here I am typing away on a computer onto a digital interweb space that i´ll probably put a link to in my instagram story. I´m in it as much as anyone but i´m rebelling at least in mind anyway. I know that the problem is not necessarily the technology or the corporations. I have been around long before these things were prevalent in the world, in the so called golden age of analogue processes (a.k.a physical shops and magazines etc) and i´ve not managed to secure a seat at the table in those times either. You read stories of people who were around at the start of instagram, who got in at the golden time and became huge and by design it makes you go well fuck why couldn´t I have done that and the answer is I could have but I just…didn´t! I was there, I could have but I didn´t. I was there at a time where I could build a physical shop for my brand, I tried it, I was in it, but it didn´t work out. Both are true, I was there and didn´t try and I was there and did and the results are the same. Stuck in the middle.
I don´t think it´s the platform or even the art that you´re producing but you as a person that makes the things happen. I´ve finally been able to admit to myself in the last year and out loud to the Hobbit that I do actually think i´m a good photographer. I know that “good” is subjective but I look at my work and i´m fucking proud of it, I think it´s good and I see how far i´ve come and can finally say out loud with no embarrassment and shame that I am a photographer and a damn good one at that. I might not make a living from it or even trying to because i´m not but that does not make me any less of a photographer. It´s who I am at my core and i´m happy to say it out loud and everything. The Hobbit is my unwavering champion but I know he´s frustrated as all hell with me because I don´t try to put myself out there as much as I should. He says I give up too easily and he´s not wrong. It´s not like i´m thinking oh this one thing i´ve done didn´t sell loads of prints or whatever i´m touting so i´m going to give in. It´s involuntary, I don´t even know i´m doing it. I get disheartened sure, but at the same time I don´t have the ability to keep going at the rate of some of these content creators on Instagram.
I love to make my photographs and the whole process there, I also enjoy this new found thing to me of writing but the truth is I absolutely HATE selling myself. I just cannot do it. I feel like I sound like the fakest bitch ever, it´s a reason why i´ll never get into making the reels thing, it´s just not authentically me. Of course there´s a level of imposter syndrome there, doesn´t everyone have some of that after all, but it´s a level of self confidence that I just don´t possess. So I don´t do it, simply put. I often dream of hiring a person that can do these things for me, that I can just make my photographs and prints and that someone else can do the selling part for me, tell the right people in the right places and point them in my direction. I have no idea what that would look like because it´s not like I want someone to take charge of my socials (or lack there of) because that would break with my “authenticity” rules to have it not come from my voice. So what then, what is it I do want? For a time I toyed with the idea of being a “full time artist”. Again i´m not sure how that would look but after mulling it over in my head for a few weeks I thought why would I want that? It would require me to really have to sell myself on a daily basis and put myself out there or not get paid. That´s far too much pressure to put on someone as flakey as me (in my personal passions that is, not in real life). It would kill the passion for sure. No, what I want is an outlet for my photography and creativity, as it´s always been, earning from it is not the goal, it´s a Brucie bonus that adds to the validation of keeping going.
I have all I need for this. I have a neglected website that I can zhuzh up a bit, I have an instagram that has over 3,000 people who´ve chosen to follow it (mostly people i´m sure) and which has brought me multiple opportunities, I have a good day job that affords me to be able to play in an ever increasingly costly medium of film photography and travel around capturing beautiful landscapes and most of all I have a champion Hobbit cheering me on from the sidelines while clapping his hands shouting “DO SOMETHING KEN!” *. Well my beautiful hungry hippo, I´M DOING IT, SEE!!!!!
In the meantime here are some things that have happened while i´ve been neglecting the website, maybe even share some plans for the future (in the spirit of doing something Ken!).
September 2021 - Blast from the past!
This one happened just before the Hassy blackout but is more of a boost for me rather than any great achievement. As I mentioned above, I dabbled in selling my wares in a shop for a couple of years in the heart of Lincoln´s Cathedral Quarter. This was before Hassy times and so I was mostly on digital at that time with my trusty Canon 30d. Anyway I had a number of stock images that I produced into framed prints, post cards, ornaments and even key rings (painstakingly put together by me on mass!). One of these images was one I called the Snowy Tennyson which was one of my personal favourites as it felt more “professional” if you like.
Anyway I digress. Now you have the back story, fast forward to September 2021 and I find a random message through Instagram from a very nice man called Andy. Andy made my day with this message as you can see here. I of course obliged and now Andy has a fresh printed Tennyson to replace the battered postcard of old and i´m happy in the knowledge that it´s not all for nothing, that I left at least some mark with the shop and in turn with the more recent article writing.
In case you´re wondering what a Snowy Tennyson looks like then here you go. I like to think he´s picked something up off the floor and him and his dog are trying to figure out what it is. Nothing good I expect.
January 2022 - Published in Lonely Planet magazine
I´d been approached by a chap called James Martin on Instagram about an article he was writing for Lonely Planet about the Westfjörds of Iceland and was wondering if I´d be interested in contributing a picture and a small paragraph about it concerning weather conditions over there. I was more than happy to oblige and so did my thing. It was supposed to be published in 2021 and then got pushed into “early” 2022 and I thought it was dead. Turns out it wasn´t and here it is.
If you want to read the whole article you can see it here but here´s just my part below.
November 2022 - Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!
Everyone loves Analogue Wonderland (no relation), they´ve grown into one of the front running film photography film suppliers in the UK in recent times. So when I clocked they were running a summer photography competition with Kodak I jumped at the chance to enter. Not least because it´s main entry requirement was the images must have been taken on Kodak Ektachrome film and that was my primary slide film of choice in my fling into colour (i´ve very much cheated on it with fuji but what it doesn´t know won´t hurt it). Anyway I chucked some of my favourites in the ring and that was that. The competition was open all summer up to the end of September and then when October came and went I just assumed i´d not got anything, oh well. Then imagine my surprise when they popped out the competition results in the video below in November and I found out that not only had I got into the top 20 with one of the images and was happy over that to then discover i´d won 2nd place as well! I´m thrilled to bits to have placed 2nd (always the bridesmaid and all that) but i´m more than happy with my subsequent pile of Kodak film i´ve received through the post for it as well! Not too shabby for Laura!
2022 Travels and the return of the Mojo
To try and jolt the mojo back into action I booked a few mini weekend roadtrips over the year along with another bigger one in the Eastfjörds again. Perhaps i´ll write about these in more detail later but here´s a selection of my favourites from throughout the year. I´m actually not finished developing and editing from 2022 either shockingly enough so there´ll be more popping up from time to time. I had a hard time narrowing these down as well so if you´re thirsty for more images you can always go to the gram.
One thing I will say that has sprung to my mind now looking back through my images of 2022 so far, I think the mojo came back with a vengence and i´m more than happy with what I managed to get out of Hassy when it did. I think I need to look back through my images more often, keep the wasps in my brain at bay!
As for 2023 and the future at large. We´ll see if I can live by the words of the Hobbit and just keep on “doing something Ken!” *
*disclaimer for anyone wondering who Ken is…