In a Bar (or several) on 1st March

So, it turns out that I spent most of Sunday, 1st March in a bar (or several). Purely in the interests of literature, of course. It had nothing to do with alcohol.

Anyway, while conducting a writing group and promoting my new novel, Old Light, at various drinking establishments, I took some random and rather colourful photographs. These are them.

Sunset. Sunrise.

Okay, it’s that time of year. The old year is dead. Long live the New Year.

It’s become tradition, if you can call something that’s only been happening since 2014 a tradition, that I write something to herald in the New Year whilst reflecting on the old. Last year I deviated a little in order to reflect on the link between my photography and my writing. This year, I’m not going to do that. Nor am I going to list the posts I uploaded in 2018. If you're interested you can check back to see for yourself. They're all still there. Waiting for you.

Instead, I shall simply leave you with a few photographs I took of the landscapes close to my home between 1st November and 31st December 2018 as a brief salute to the fade out of 2018.

As for 2019...? Well, let’s see, shall we? With a bit of luck there should be a few more photos and maybe, from time to time, some words.

Photographic Word Connectivity

It’s that time of year, the turning point and the time when I reflect on the preceding twelve months of this blog and/ or look forward to the next twelve. On previous occasions I’ve even produced a summary of photos from the outgoing year. I’m not going to do that this time around. If you want to see what I’ve been posting, you can always flick back through my posts for 2017. They are there and waiting.

This year I am going to approach things a little differently. I’m going to use my “annual reflection slot” to contemplate why I’ve subtitled this blog “a photographic experiment with words” when really it is mostly the photographic part and the words only get an occasional look-in.

I make no apologies for the prevalence of photos: first and foremost this is a photo blog – a chance to share my strictly amateur photographic experiments. Words, however, are important to this blog, both the relatively few posted on this site and those directly and indirectly alluded to, echoed or stimulated. In other words, there is a link, sometimes immediately obvious, sometimes not, between the photographs in this blog and the writing side of my life (check out www.jswatts.co.uk if you are not sure what the latter is).

Obvious connections include photos of my book covers  and images of locations within my novels . I also post the occasional poetry album where I upload a poem together with a collection of photos that I feel resonate with it.

In addition to the above, I attend literary events, such as the annual In Other Words Literary Fringe Festival in Cambridge, that I capture photographically and share here.

So far, so obvious. Less directly obvious, perhaps, is the fact that I photograph things I see around me: locations, objects and places, nature and wildlife and these things impact on my writing. As an example, I take many photographs of birds and you will find flocks of birds scattered across my poetry. Similarly, you can find echoes of the landscapes I photograph within my novels, short stories and poems.

The funny thing about echoes is that they just keep on echoing, even when you can no longer hear them. The images that don’t immediately relate to my writing or appear within it, still impact on me. They are the things I see, sometimes daily, and which shape my thinking, however obliquely.

The photographs in this blog provide a flavour of my world and my experiences within it. These are the things that colour my writing, both in large primary colour blocks and more discreetly muted tints. Basically, either overtly or hidden and sometimes only for me to know, there is a coming together or connection of images and words.

All being well, there will be many more images and some related words within this blog during 2018. Please feel free to pop back from time to time in order to check them out and share my echoes.