Creative crossovers

River Mersey, Liverpool

When I think about creativity and my own leanings there is so much crossover. I think words and pictures sums me up. I love taking photos and quite often they poetry in their own right. Images create words. My story ideas often come from dreams or things I see. I usually visualise my scenes before I put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard).

My preferences for photography are sky, water, shadows, reflections, sunrise, sunset and moon. I've been known to stop a conversation in mid flow to capture a passing cloud form. I've been found leaning out of the bathroom window in the middle of the night to get that moon shot. Often in the evenings I have one eye on the window to see what sort of sunset we are to have, and if it's good I'm in and out of house like a jack in the box.. I live in a built up area with light pollution so it's not always easy to avoid the light of an advertising hoarding and the bright beam that shines on the car repair forecourt. I will venture into the garden in the frost or snow still in my nightwear to get a shot that might disappear before I've got dressed and I love it on a warm summer evening to sit in the growing darkness in the hope of spotting the bats (yes, despite where I live there are bats).

My back garden is a tool for my photography and my poetry. Many an idea has been got from my window staring! There is a tree in the alleyway beyond next door that I watch it changing throughout the year (I call it my tree because I take photos of it so often). Then there are the birds, squirrels (even a rat once) and mice that frequent the garden. Not to mention the butterflies and bees. As a child I'd pick up worms in my hand without thinking. Getting muddy never bothered me (when did that change?). I kept woodlice in a box (outside, my mother would have gone crazy if I'd brought it in!). I studied ants as they moved their eggs when their home was disturbed. My brother and I even rescued two pigeons and kept them in my dad's shed until my mother got wind of it! So the love of animals has always been there. We had dogs when I was growing up. We also, over the years, had a budgie, hamsters and goldfish (that was a rescue one too!).

When my eldest son was young my parents bought him a hamster for his birthday. He was over the moon and still talks about it all these years later. I think it's good for kids to have contact with animals and we've had hamsters, fish, guinea pigs and now rats. Photographing animals and writing poems about them seems natural. They have features somewhere in my writing.

So here are a few photos of my favourite subjects.

Gravesend

St Mary's Church, Kingston

Kingston

Morden Hall Park

Bridge over the Wandle river

Taken from my back garden

Brighton, remains of west pier

Brighton

Spot the ball!

Squirrel in the garden

My tree (November)

Autumn from back garden (November)

This mouse discovered a slice of pizza we threw out. It dragged it to a hiding place
to devour it!

I can't quite claim this one. I couldn't focus properly.  My son took this.