Frustration

There's always an annoying side thing that needs doing...

I have changed my substack’s name in case you’re wondering who this is in your inbox. From ‘A Wandering Way’ to ‘Burnishing’.

Friday saw me attempting to take photographs of my pottery. I haven’t done this for a while and I’ve made a few new things things recently. My website is, there is no other word for it, languishing - ignored in cyberspace not only by its owner but all of person kind, poor thing. It desperately needs an update especially since I am now doing my best to spend less time You Know Where (not that one, I left there ages ago).

I am not a fan of taking photos of my pottery, it’s a lot harder than it looks to get it right, and I’m not even dealing with lights and all that palaver (I couldn’t even begin!). However, I don’t have the funds to outsource it, especially for my small side-micro business. On photo days it’s just me, my camera, various boards, props, and some Malcolm Tucker levels of swearing.

7am:

I woke up and thought “oh good, an early start” only to get side tracked by making Parmesan Parsnips (cheesy parsnips to us) from the inexplicable pile of them we’ve accumulated from the veg box. They’re very good, a Delia Smith recipie.

9am:

a) Where is the board I hang the backdrops from? b) and where are the bulldog clips I use to fasten the backdrop onto the currently missing board c) I do at least know where the camera is d) I hope I charged the battery! e) shall I just skive off and go for a walk instead?

9.30am:

a) behind the bench in the studio b) on a shelf in same, found on fourth attempt c) I do! d) I did! e) almost, but managed not to.

10am:

In the dining room, which has the good light, I have propped the big board up on the dining table with big cookbooks and other heavy things - those dumbells came in useful after all - and it looks stable enough to get going. I try to remember the ‘Rule of Thirds’ (not a Sherlock Holmes story) and ‘Z’ composition and wonder who actually manages to set up so “the object is 2 feet (feet!) from the background”, and can still fit themselves in the space to take the photo.

A big pot just not cooperating.

11am:

I have one decent-ish photo, sore knees from squatting down to get a decent angle and am disappointed in the Met Office who said there’d be an overcast but bright day, when instead it keeps being properly sunny. Properly sunny is not good for this kind of photograpy and I have to keep waiting for it to go in, so annoying.

This is always the danger time when I decide I’ll have a coffee and ‘a sit down’. I end up on photo backdrop websites (they are lovely but £££); browsing where I can buy A1 sized coloured card at a reasonable price - but I don’t want 10 sheets of it; looking up how much MDF is at Wickes and also tester pots of Farrow and Ball because I should make my own bespoke backdrops maybe? And doing micro- refreshers of a pottery photography course I did last year. OH, I didn’t finish it….hmmm.

12.05pm

And now I must go into town for lunch with my friend. We have second breakfast - sausage and egg baps, tea - and bemoan the state of our teenagers and the state of the world. Also what is going on in Severance? After that we go to Waitrose and buy Mini Eggs because it’s really too early for wine.

1.35pm

I move on to a different pot, I’m feeling quite weary now and there’s a whole box of pots on the floor which are actually laughing at me. There are also lots of seeds everywhere which have fallen out of the pine cones I use to ‘add interest’ to the pictures.

I eat a satsuma for the vitamins. The big board falls over and I FLY across the room to stop it from knocking the pot I left on the table onto the floor. There is swearing. Surely taking photos isn’t supposed to be so exhausting.

4pm

I have had enough. I did get a few fairly OK photos but it was such a slog. I’m sure there must be a better way to approach this.

Dear reader - I think that approach is a mindset shift (easier said than done eh!). I always go into a photo day pre-resenting the time I’ll spend doing it when I’d rather be in the studio with my hands on the clay. But if noone knows about the finished items and might even want to buy something, we’ll be crushed beneath them!

I need to find the creativity in this kind of photography - I enjoy taking photographs when I’m out on walks, I’d like some of that enjoyment to seep into my pottery photography - so working out how to do that is my next thing - I like learning stuff after all, so it shouldn’t be a door that’s closed to me.

One that came out OK, eventually.

Things listened to while this was going on:

I often have speech based stuff on when I’m making, it must go into a different bit of my brain from music, which I find really distracting. Now that I can’t cope with Radio 4 all day (too much news) I tend to the audio drama/book/podcast, which there are many excellent examples of these days:

Broken Veil - by Joel Morris and Will McClean. I love a spooky unsettling tale and this is excellent - properly creepy stuff.

The audiobook of A God In Ruins - by Kate Atkinson, read by Alex Jennings. Kate Atkinson is an amazing storyteller, I have read this twice, and now I’m less audiobook sceptic I like to have one on while I do stuff. This did not disappoint, Alex Jennings is of course a fantastic reader. It’s in my local library so do try yours before coughing up to Amazon or anywhere else that fills the coffers of bad men.

The end bit: Thank you for reading, I don’t have paid or pledges switched on because I’m still feeling my way here, but if you enjoy reading any of my substackings and you’d like to buy me a cuppa you can do that via Ko-Fi.

You can find me on Instagram - though not so much these days - @ficooper_ceramics (it’s not all ceramics) and I have a website where I sell my ceramics at www.ficooperceramics.com.