A Creative Outing to Cardinham Woods
I've not explored a whole lot of North East Cornwall. To get to the Bodmin area is at least an hours drive, and although that isn't THAT far, when you want to "pop out for a walk," an hour drive is quite a long way to go. That being said, Lizzie and I had been saying for weeks that we needed to get out of Falmouth, go location scouting, and take some pictures! I've been dying to push myself out of my comfort zone again; do something a bit daring. I wrote a post a few months ago all about being brave, and how empowering that it can feel. Well, you can easily go back to that comfort zone, and not really push yourself to do anything. I found myself pushing myself in some areas, and slacking in others. The self portrait/self expression area is certainly one of those things that I find difficult.
There's something about putting yourself in your art that's scary. It's like you're letting all the emotions of your past seep out of you. I've got so many things I want to express from my past that I don't get have the courage to. Lizzie and I discussed some of these things, and they're things that happened to me, things that I've felt, but wouldn't ever want to speak about publicly. But they are feelings and emotions that I don't want to oppress. I still want to get them out. I still want to express myself... but the beauty of art is that you can do that without words.
The images you see here, they're not saying anything particular. They're just me pushing myself that one step further outside of my comfort zone. They're also me playing around with images that I have floating in my head. The crown in this image is something I bought on eBay a few years ago during uni, and I love it, but it can definitely look a bit too tacky/fairy tale for most of my portfolio work. But I do think it's fun, and the Disney princess lover in me just wants to play with it. So although these images won't be going on my portfolio website, I do still love them. They make me happy! Nothing wrong with that, right?
These images were taken up in Cardinham Woods, near Bodmin. If you live in Cornwall, or are visiting, I highly recommend stopping to see the woods. From the little that Lizzie and I saw, they were stunning. We must have been a bit of a sight to see, though. Lizzie had an old fashioned suitcase filled with fancy dress items and clothes, we both had huge cameras, I had two bags full of stuff, and we were dragging all of this up into the woods. We were both pretty exhausted at the end of it. I'll definitely be heading back up to the woods sans wardrobe, just to stroll around and see them properly.
It's so much fun having creative partners to collaborate with. Lizzie's images will be shared soon, and I'll be sure to link to them on my social media. Being able to bounce ideas off someone, and feel no sense of competition between you is so liberating. I wrote a piece a few months ago about the importance of making friends with people within your industry... well, I'm just going to link to it here, because everything I said there still stands.
One thing that Lizzie and I had said was how much we wanted more professional looking portraits taken. So once we were done playing dress up and setting smoke bombs off (stay tuned for Lizzie's images...!), we got dressed into normal clothes again, and had some more normal photos taken. I think, because we're always behind the camera, we sometimes forget that it's important to have images of ourselves (that aren't just selfies holding our iPhones out in front of ourselves... guilty!) . So that's what we did. I'm normally extremely self critical when someone else takes a photo of me, but Lizzie knew exactly how to make me feel comfortable, and I love the images so much.
Have a lovely weekend everyone! x
