When Lockdown Stops Your ARPS Panel .......

......... then you just have to adjust your plans.

My ARPS panel has been in the thinking about, developing ideas, stage for a while and I hoped to start working on it this year but one essential requirement is the ability to get to my chosen locations numerous times per year and preferably without a lot of people about. 

1. With the current Lockdown rules, travelling to any of the prospective locations is forbidden as it wouldn't be for a permitted reason.

2. Until Furlough ends and/or people can do something other than visit the countryside the odds of several locations being people free for the amount of time required per shoot are highly unlikely.

My planned final images will hopefully combine the techniques of the photographers Pep Ventosa and Stephen Wilkes.

Rather than waste time kicking my heals for numerous more weeks/months I have decided to explore the techniques I plan on using in the studio.

Tulips Day 1 Hour 1

 

Whilst the final image from this session probably won’t end up in my panel, as the other shots should all be landscapes, it should at least give me the opportunity to develop my Photoshop skills. It will also give me a chance to work out how I’m going to start to compile the hundreds of photographs that I will be taking just to get the one final image that will make up one of the 15 images required for the complete panel.

 The image above is just the first session of several that I will be doing to end up with my hopefully final images showing the tulips from when they first arrived in the house to when they die. It also currently only comprises of ten layers, but I still have another potential 36 layers from this shoot to add before I start deciding how many layers and at what opacity I should start working at.

Steep learning curve ahead.

Let's Move Another Holiday

I'm sure we weren’t alone in having to cancel and rebook holidays last year and I really hoped that now we have a vaccine that having to move holidays was coming to an end.

Last year we rebooked one holiday 4 times - it is now planned for October 2021, having originally being booked for March 2020. In fact maybe I should issue a national alert for Lockdown 4 to begin in October 2021 as so far every time we have rebooked it the start date of this particular holiday has coincided with the start of a Lockdown. We also cancelled or rearranged a further 2 trips last year. We did actually manage to squeeze two short 3 and 4 days breaks away into September and October but that was the total holiday time we had in 2020. The October one was extra interesting as we were stopping in a hotel and actually got sent to our rooms at 22:00 as instructed by Boris I hasten to add, not the hotel. That’s an experience I hope to never enjoy again.

Hope to enjoy views like this again in October

We normally camp in the summer but I didn't even want to attempt risking that as campsites at the best of times, no matter how well maintained, aren't the most hygienic of places, add Covid into the mix and no thank you. I'd rather live to camp another year.

This year we were looking forward to three of the cancelled 2020 holidays taking place and also adding in another short break at the end of March. The break in March isn't looking too hopeful now, it looks like we will be cancelling that one soon, but never mind we have optimistically booked a replacement holiday in November. 

 

One of the views it looks like we will be missing in March

Camping, which I was hopeful may return this summer, is now debatable it will very much depend upon how much the Covid figures drop and if everyone who normally goes abroad does so instead of filling up the UK campsites they normally go nowhere near. I suspect at best we will get to camp in September or more likely in 2022.

You have to love the game of spin the holiday booking, makes getting away on the actual holiday feel like a real achievement.