Slowlived Summer Photography

Victorian style photos that look like paintings are my current interest and folly.  Photography is my main passion, although I am very enthusiastic about a lot of things as you probably realise. Photography opens another sense, it bring an awareness for light and detail, composition and placement.  It is my motivation to get off my butt and see the world, (or maybe even just a few hours away).

I stayed in the most amazing Air bnb this weekend and the location just lent itself to more photos inspired by old paintings. We had such a typically English feel set on a farm near Petworth, that Victorian style John Constable influences were in abundance.

The old farmhouse is surrounded by lovely gardens full of roses and fruit trees, meadows and ponds. 

To make the photos more atmospheric I applied some effects using Florabella.  With these applications in your photoshop you can mess about with filters and overlays, adding sun, flare, brown tones, hazes and so on. You can see a few of the effects here ...

this photo has actual real lens flare which happened at the time of taking it.

Shopham Bridge Farmhouse Petworth have three places to where you can put your head down and unwind, the Hay Loft, where we stayed, A shepherds hut and a converted horse box.  Set alongside a stream with weeping willows and a hammock, the setting is like something out of a painting. So we took lots of photos in the style of old English painters, part of a series that I'm working on.

I can see why Mary is a Super Host, as I've never been to such a well equipped and well provided for Air bnb before. I didn't expect to be writing a blog review of Shopham Bridge but we had such a magical time that it would be impossible not to recommend.

By taking the dslr out of auto mode, I am shooting more dark and moody photos at the moment, however, despite the fact that I learnt on manual cameras some forty years ago, I still find the digital settings confusing. In fact dslr's are so advanced that they can be overwhelming to someone who just wants to take photos and not get bogged down with instruction manuals and techno babble.

Deliberate lens flare adds a sparkle of magic. Sometimes it's good not to get too technical or controlled.  When I shot on film I would use a black and white film which I would then get processed in a colour developer, the results were extremely random, Sepia tones, and, of course, you didn't know what the results would be until after you had the prints developed. 

The wind blew the willow branches across the frame .. the sunlight streamed through the tree catching highlights of hair and hand.

And with a slightly sad heart to leave, we packed our bags and set off to the a secluded beach at Clymping.

The clouds looked like they had been painted in the sky and the wind blew away the cobwebs. 

I hope this may inspire you to take up photography and play with the idea of unusual portraits, ones with atmosphere and memories.

To find the Air bnb I stayed in search for "Shopham Bridge Farm House Petworth" they have three listings on there.  We stayed in the Hay loft and it was ample space for two and includes the roll top bath seen above.   The coast was about 45 mins drive away.

Antiques at Loseley Park

When Arthur Swallow Fairs asked if I would like to go to the fair at Loseley Park I just jumped at the chance, firstly to rummage at beautiful old battered and gnarled treasures, secondly it was another excuse to make a weekend of exploring with my step-daughter.

This fair had a lot of French influence, the traders having come from across the water, like Gaelle who specialises in dyed linen. She has brought together two things, the skill of finding really old French monogrammed linen and her art of dyeing.  Gaelle is in the process of moving her showroom and setting up new websites etc. Look out for the name GZ Bad Boys.

These fairs are called "Decorative Home and Salvage" and can also be found at Ripley Castle and Cheshire Showground, for me the perfect combination as I love distressed, battered and chippy things. I found some lovely shutters which I will just use as a wall decoration, they are weather beaten with green paint peeling off and they will stay just that way.  I look at them and wonder what building they came from, imagining a cute little farm house in Provence, with chickens outside the door.

If I had a bigger house I would collect glass domes, you can put anything under a glass dome and it looks brilliant.  The creepier the better !

Gaelle also sells china from all different periods, so beautiful you would have to put it on show on shelves or dressers.

Here is a photo of the linens, I bought a bed sheet in pink which will either be a table cloth or a throw.  My step-daughter also got some gorgeous shepherds smocks to wear as dresses. 

Many styles of vintage and antiques are sold here, farmhouse rustic, faded chateaux chic and reclamation from buildings, all displayed with much love and effort. Arthur Swallow have curated a really lovely collection of sellers, many of whom I had a good laugh with, they were such a great bunch.  

I picked up cards from the following, if you can't make it along to the fair itself.

Gavin at Aspire Antiques, Lucy Vintage Lifestyle, Grown By Design, Brocante_Antique, brocantedecorative.com, Simon from Antiques & Inspiration Chester, The Old Yard, Jane from French Vintage & Country (Leek market most saturdays). Sawmillvintage Macclesfield, Violetgreydecorative (Violetgrey.co.uk), Insitu_mcr, Bridgemontvintage, 

Have a look on Instagram #asfairs and you will track down many more.
Here is Meg wearing one of her linen smocks from Gaelle. 

We stayed in the best Air bnb I have ever come across and it deserves it's own blog post, so expect to see that soon.

Happy hunting good people. 

This blog has been shortlisted for an #IBA16 award, please vote for me by clicking on this link 

http://www.interiorblogawards.com/vote/janice-issitt-life-style/

Meet The Blogger - Tamsyn

Everyone has a story to tell, but life isn't always sunshine and lollipops.  I had the idea to talk to some other bloggers, who, like me, may come across as having the most idyllic life, yet underneath the perfect instagram photos, they have experienced just as many traumas as the next person. I'm hoping that this series of 'meet the blogger' will bring up for discussion some interesting points.

Taking time to talk with others face to face is good for the soul and the brain.  Bouncing ideas off each other, sharing advice, we all need that in our lives and for me here, it opens up some interesting areas to talk about. 

The beautiful world of bloggers can often be mis-understood, I don't believe that any of us are deliberately trying to pretend to have a perfect life, it's just that the very act of blogging can be a great way to focus on the positive.  For some we just like to take and show photos of things we have created, or small meditations on the beauty of the simple things.  The reasons for blogging are as varied and numbered as the stars.

This week I visited Tamsyn Morgans who was the winner of my first hashtag competition for Be Home Free.  I cheekily asked if maybe I could deliver the prize in person so that I could photograph her house, and because Tamsyn is such a warm and generous person she agreed. So I packed the car and set the sat nav for Norwich. What was to greet me in a quiet little victorian street overlooking the city, was a dream.

Tamsyn is the force behind the blog 'The Villa On Mount Pleasant' - it is a virtual pastel world born out of the imagination of a stylist extraordinaire.  For Tamsyn has the most amazing eye and feel for her interior decor, picking up only the right shades of pink, blush, teal, mint and turquoise and transforming everything with paint and elbow grease, she is an awesome talent.

But life hasn't always been a bed of roses for Tamsyn, as not so long ago her heart was broken and she became a single parent. We had the chance for a good old girly chat, swinging from the serious side of life to less important issues.

Like me, Tamsyn also took on a project home, just at the time of trauma in her life, she re-focused all her energy into making a damp and dirty, neglected and crumbling house into her vision.  It takes quite an eye to see through dodgy decor when you are buying a place, but chances are, that if you've tried your hand at DIY before you can see the possibilities.

Not only did Tamsyn take on a project house but also started a new job, so found herself painting and scrubbing away at the floors and walls after she finished work in the evening. Painting furniture was nothing new, as Tamsyn had previously had a small business doing just that and her skills at mixing colour and applying the paint clearly shine through in this house.

There is so much to talk about I could make this a three part blog, so I hope the photos will do some of the talking for me. 

The house is a terrace Victorian property with some lovely period features, like ceiling roses, fireplaces and wooden floors.  The furniture and collections are mostly picked up at car boot fairs, and I think you will agree that this lady has got an eye for a buy. With the help of her Dad, the kitchen, although tiny, has been fitted out very cleverly.  Instead of fitted modern units they found some free standing furniture and wall cupboards, open shelves and doors made from pallets.  There are quite a few similarities to my home, I also like the kitchenalia on show, particularly if you have some lovely enamel ware and tins.

In the garden is a cute little summer house, with a wrought iron bed, lovely prints and furniture . Then, just when you think you have been wowed enough, you see the upstairs and the view from the double fronted bedroom.

Roses are definitely a theme, Tamsyn is drawn to finding these lovely old prints which look great framed and un-framed.  Normally I don't like prints pinned directly onto the wall, but here it works so well, somehow this lady just has the knack. She has given me so many ideas.  Someone should give her a book deal.

Sometimes when things get tough, amazingly you can find the strength to move yourself along, and I hope that some of what I write hear can speak to anyone going through a rough time. Please trust that it won't last forever.  

Tamsyn packed her bags and moved from the posh side of town to a little run down place that needed gutting. Her two children were not particularly impressed and it's taken some time for them to see what their clever mum is capable of.  I think it's a great role model for children to see a mum who works and, at the end of the day, pulls on her overalls and gets down on her knees to scrape the grime and paint off the surfaces, to reveal the beauty underneath. 

The results are plain to see here, doing all the work herself, Tamsyn is proof that there is a new life waiting when it all goes awry, providing you put in the work.

I know what a labour of love it can be.  Days spent painting woodwork turned into months for me, sitting on my own and developing hand cramps from holding the brush for so long. A person can go quite bonkers! Perhaps though, doing up a neglected house is a way to literally show how we are re-building our lives from scratch. For me that was true, both my parents died and I decided to leave London for a completely fresh start.  This is pretty much the same for Tamsyn. The house has become a symbol of the new beginning, the space in which we now inhabit speaking of who we are now and who we want to become. 

The craft work room is, like everything else; glorious!  Lovely stacks of vintage fabrics, mood boards of paint colours, and little clippings for inspiration. 

The pastel staircase half way down the hall is like the climb to a fairytale castle at the top. The bedroom has a bay window with a view and space for chairs, using old french garden furniture indoors is also something I've done too, complete with rust.

We chatted quite a bit about paint as you can imagine, and I was telling Tamsyn about how to mix the chalk paint by Annie Sloan. We had been given little tester pots in our conference goody bags, only Tamsyn had red which wasn't exactly her colour. I suggested that she gets a tin of old white and some other tester pots, so she can mix the red into a perfect pink shade. Her eye for the perfect shade is clearly displayed in this house and many of the artworks on the walls are also by this lady. Sticking to your guns and only accepting a certain colour palette is quite an achievement, so mixing your own colours becomes quite important for the finished result.  

Hopefully she will have time to do more of this soon as Tamsyn has decided to become freelance as a stylist. Now that most of the house is done, she has found the confidence to leave full time employment and push herself once more into following her heart.  

I'm completely convinced that Tamsyn is just the right sort of person to go it alone in work, she is lovely to be around, gracious in manner and fun to chat with, but freelance work isn't for everyone. You need to have good contacts, be very reliable and put in one hundred per cent. Myself and Tamsyn are both pretty good at self-motivation, you have to be when renovating a house! It's an essential in self-employment. Chatting about the future got me thinking about what it takes to be successful and get your life in balance, not always the same things.

Giving up a job that sucks the life out of you is probably a familiar scenario for many and not something to be done lightly. Use this time to learn and plan, if you manage to save some money and get all your connections in place, then the work you want to do will hopefully come your way. I got to thinking though, that 'people skills' should not be underestimated. Tamsyn has these in bucket loads and life experiences can teach you a lot on this front, so never imagine that someone's beautiful life has just happened over night. 

Freelance work means that you are representing yourself, so you really need to know how to promote your own skills effectively. Face to face contact and an easy manner doesn't come naturally to a lot of younger people I've noticed, too much time spent on the web can leave them lacking in social graces. This can be quite a downfall if your job involves contact with other human beings, especially if they are the ones paying your wages, and it won't help you in stressful times.  In some areas of business now it is considered acceptable to pop onto social media for promotion purposes, but this is a very tricky area.  Picking up your phone and looking at it when others are in the room and need to be attended to, is not professional, full stop. 

Freelance work can be a minefield if you don't have a good solid background of the basics. Those menial jobs after school, junior positions after college, they will pay dividends later.

I think that having a lot of followers on instagram or twitter may delude some people into thinking they are popular and it gives them a false sense of importance. But these followers don't pay the rent. Upset three people in person and you could find yourself a thousand pounds lighter in the wallet so be careful about becoming self-employed if you have any doubts about your own abilities to communicate or be polite.  

So here I'm trying to keep it real.  Doing up a house when life has hit you the hardest can be too much for some and cathartic for others. Leaving a PAYE job to go freelance is great if you can rely on yourself but not if you can't sell yourself in the right manner. However, if you can find the strength to make life changes you won't regret it.  Ask for help when you need it, and talk to people, not just on the net but face to face.  

As a man once said 'Be the architect of your own destiny.'

Tamsyn Morgans is a true inspiration in every respect, please show her some love by finding her on Instagram and Pinterest, she is the living proof that nice things happen to nice people, but only after they have put in the groundwork!


This blog has been shortlisted for an #IBA16 award, please vote for me by clicking on this link 

http://www.interiorblogawards.com/vote/janice-issitt-life-style/

Making Memories

This week for me has definitely been about exploiting the 'free' part of Be Home Free. I've been exploring the local area, finding some new places and managed to do it all without getting rained on.

Magical places have been found on my doorstep. We made some beautiful memories.

Buckinghamshire is such an abundant county and sometimes it takes a lot of travel to realise how pretty England is.  I moved out of London nearly ten years ago and have made a concerted effort not to get complacent about the rolling hills, fields of gold, red and blue, spectacular stately homes and gardens, winding lanes and wildlife.

This year my plan is to get out more, to visit friends all over the country, stay for odd nights in Yurts and Air bnb's, mooch about previously unexplored towns and shops and have some adventures. Sometimes you don't even have to go very far to witness the spectacular, and this week was one such example.

Through a friend on facebook I heard about the poppy fields at Chesham, so we packed a picnic, took a book to flick through and headed off up a winding lane until we saw the flash of scarlet on the horizon.

We couldn't believe our eyes, it was so incredible that it felt unreal, like being transported into a painting or film.  And not for the first time that week either because a few days earlier we found Castle Ashby.

Situated in Northamptonshire, I had spotted something about this place and wondered how we had never stumbled across it before, even my step-daughter who lives quite close had not come across it. 

The Orangerie is like something from a Pre-Raphaelite story, you can see Rossetti setting up his easel, a stunning model playing Beata Beatrix or Ophelia languishing in the warm muggy atmosphere of this indoor greenhouse.  Light dances around the lush plantation, for here things thrive and the soul is fed with possibilities. We wanted to stay, to move in and live there ...

Proving that sometimes, it's the little things, the free stuff, the nature around us which is the most marvellous of all. For me a day in a poppy field is worth more than a week in a hotel, get out there good people and ... be home ... free ...