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These two men are making rope, using a traditional fixed frame (visible) and a walking frame (behind the camera). One of the frames has to move, as the length of the final rope is shorter than the strands that were twisted together to make it.
Seen in Lublin
Available as a print at: www.saatchionline.com/art/Photography-The-Ropemakers/9419...
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Three older ladies share some bread and soup. I have done some of the finer finishing on this image, as can be seen by the harder, better defined images. Still a long way to go, though.
Here are my images available for prints: www.saatchionline.com/TrevorButcher
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This is a cat we came across on our travels around the region, one winter's day.
Here are my images available for prints: www.saatchionline.com/TrevorButcher
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This is a slightly different piece from normal, it is an experiment I have put a fair amount of work into.
Here are my images available for prints: www.saatchionline.com/TrevorButcher
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I was quite pleased with this image, as I finally cracked how to deal with straw! The style combines a traditional local style with my love of abstracts. Notice how the shapes look right at first glance, yet they are 'often 'wrong' when you look closely.
Prints of this image available at: www.saatchionline.com/art/Photography-Thatching-the-Well-...
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Just something else I have roughed out, except for the sky. The building is actually a well, hence that large wheel.
This is at the village museum in Lublin, Poland.
See my prints at: www.saatchionline.com/TrevorButcher
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This is a rough draft of something that I have been working on. This guy was making something in straw, but it was a decade ago I can no longer remember what.
See my prints for sale at: www.saatchionline.com/TrevorButcher
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Three cylinder engine, rather agricultural engineering, saloon and pick-up. This is one of the latter, and the version that I prefer, although perhaps not in such a state of decay.
See my prints for sale at: www.saatchionline.com/TrevorButcher
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when was young I used to dream that I could fly, and this may have something to do with the amount of time that I spend on the different swings I came across when I was young.
this image is available as a print at: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=334149
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This is the latest of my images involving heavily edited people. The original image was taken merely to show my wife what she looked like in a skirt and jacket combination in a clothing shop's changing rooms. We bought the skirt. I later noticed the picture and cam e to see its worth. I believe it is one of the best I have done so far.
It is available as a print at: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=333761
Via Flickr:
This is the latest in my series of abstract people, basically this is me in a shoe shop, trying out winter boots. I am quite please with the way it turned out!
This image is available as a print at: www.saatchionline.com/art/Photography-Store-Warrior/94195...
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This is a field of drying out corn, ready for harvest we passed yesterday on our day out to Naleczow. Wifie took the photo, I edited it.
Here in eastern Poland the weather is getting cooler, but there are still some really sunny days when it is a pleasure to be out. We had a good walk along a country lane, seeing many cottages and the newly built houses of the nouveau riche.
When you are creating a business, there are places to spend your time, and other places where the return is less than the effort required to fix it. Which is rather an obvious statement.
Let's, though, take another look at the issue, see it from a different angle.
The picture shows the corner joints of a cottage, and at first glance it looks fairly basic, with rough-hewn timbers. But look closer - those joints are cut at a difficult compound angle so that the wall timbers are trying to slide down and inwards. That is traditional technology, and these joints will not fail until the timbers rot away.
The effort has been put into the joints, but what if the timbers had been squared off, the ends trimmed. How would the cottage look then? Well, like any other.
The parts left in their rough state give the cottage its character, it won't look like another. The same should be true of our business, it should be distinctive. So how do we make our business distinctive?
It might be easier than we imagine, all we might need to do is to do less work in the right places. Imagine that, more time to work on the important bits, and your character makes itself.
The trouble is, we might not recognize the important, character stuff. We might be so conditioned by society's expectations we may be working to eradicate the potential without realizing it. We may have been conditioned by life to believe that the core structure of our business must contain more than we need.
For example, take a look at this image. The original was taken by an early digital camera, at 640x480 pixels, and what you see here is just one small section of that image, I have cropped away 70% of the image. Do you miss those lost pixels?
I have only invested around 40 minutes on this image so far, less time than I have spent thinking about and writing this blog entry. I will spend another 6 hours to make this image 6000x6000 pixels and sharpened up ready to print. By practicing not doing things unless they are essential, I get better at only doing the things I have to do. What I have as a result is a distinct product, easy to make.
Via Flickr:
I often miss opportunities to take pictures of trains, when I have my camera in my bag I forget how much I like working on the resulting images.
Trevor Butcher
See my images on: www.saatchionline.com/profiles/portfolio/id/94195
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Storks are one of those subjects where the thoughtlessly excitable in a nation get excited over 'their' national thing. I love storks, and I love the way many people put up poles upon which they can build their nests in safety. However, they are only here for a few short months, then they are off back to where they live in Africa for the rest of the year.
And they don't give a flying feather about some lunatic humans who want to pretend that they are 'theirs'.
Trevor Butcher
See my images on: www.saatchionline.com/profiles/portfolio/id/94195
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I have been watching some old Polish films, from the 1960s and 1970s. This image reminds me of these films.
Trevor Butcher
See my images on: www.saatchionline.com/profiles/portfolio/id/94195
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This is one end of the square, where it rises up to the church. Beyond the church is the castle, a classic location for many Polish films.
See my prints at: www.saatchionline.com/profiles/portfolio/id/94195
I have always wondered why people like to ogle pictures of beautiful young women, and yet dress like did not consider themselves worthy of notice.
One of the issues I see in design is the understanding that a significant segment of the consumers are older people, and that they, like all of us, will only get older.
In a way I was lucky because I have suffered from a skin condition that leaves flecks of dry skin everywhere and arthritis since I was about 30. Lucky, because it gave me a perspective on what it must be like to get old long before I arrive there.
I need a flooring system that is easy to clean and without things to trip over, cupboards that I can reach, places where I can steady myself, and, potentially, room to manoeuvre such items as walking frames and wheelchairs.
And I need my home to remain stylish at the same time.
There are two general paths that design takes - the traditional one that leaves you difficult to clean furniture, and the modern one where there is a plethora of low level surfaces to negotiate. These are not especially good choices when you find movement difficult.
My answer was to have good natural lighting so I can see where I am going and cleaning, a cupboard system either wall mounted at hand height or fully meeting the floor or ceiling to avoid dust crevices below or above that I cannot reach, and no table other than a bar for food preparation, work and eating purposes to free up space and cut down on furniture legs.
The key to good design, as I see it, is not to rely on the past for the overall shape, type and location of furniture but to use it as a source of styling. My apartment does not say 'old people's place' or 'weird' when you look around it, but do you notice something when you have to clean it - it's done quickly.
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I have noticed that we are creatures of habit in what we talk about, and that it is incredibly hard to break these habits and talk about something else. And secondly - we put rather a lot of faith in people in positions we respect.
In terms of the European Union and national governments, we endlessly talk about the information furnished to us via the media. What the media talks about, we talk about. This is not to say that I do not trust the media, it is just that newspapers, television etc. are there to tell us what is going on in government and sport, at home and abroad - with some 'high' culture and tourism information to round out the experience.
However, if we compare a national newspaper with a local newspaper, what we see is different, with more focus on local people in the local paper than the in the national. They talk mostly about issues that relate to their audience.
So, why do we talk endlessly about national issues and so little about our issues, since we are our own audience? That is not to say we should not talk about national and international events and the players involved, just why do we not figure in their as well?
I mean you and I, we are both valid members of society, so why when a subject of national or international importance comes up, why don't we talk about our roles in them?
I believe the reason is our reliance on habit - we are presented issues from a specific viewpoint, we trust the viewpoint to the extent that we learn the habit of passing on what is said. Trust leads us to limit ourselves by habit, and the habit does not involve talking about our personal involvement in the events unless the trusted source tells us to.
I often talk to people about different things, and they keep wanting to pull the theme back to what they have been told over and over again, anything to avoid breaking a habit and being seen to have no opinion.
You can get a canvas print of this image at: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=234261, not just on paper - but on canvas and on phone cases!
Via Flickr:
A woman in blue leaning against an orange wall, the woman has been eroded. The wall I used was not orange, but it was easily made so, a case of seeing the possibility in the surroundings when you take the photo, and then getting them out.
By Trevor Butcher
You can buy this image as a print, on canvas or on your fone case, at: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=310463
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Sometimes I believe I use too much color, so today I decided to cut back on my screen filling color. Less can be harder though, you have to take more care with where things join.
When we take pictures it is too easy to become so enamored with the subject we forger to notice the distracting details in the background. Which is rather like life - it can be so easy to pay attention to the person we think is important than we forget that other, less strident people are alos important.
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OK, here is the second Zuk van shot I have been working on. Since starting work on this image I have seen a picture on the net showing a Zuk with a V8 engine doing a burnout :)
I have actually shortened the van, when my wife saw the original van I could not turn my head far enough to see it clearly, the edge of my glasses distorting my view, shortening the van. So I thought, why not use that idea. The burnout is an idea from one of my nieces, who keeps posting pictures of drifters on Facebook. Finally, the shop background is the soon-to-be-demolished former restaurant in the village of Puchaczow. It is from the late 1960s, early 1970s, pure communism, surviving for as long as it did more on alcohol sales than food from what I could see.
By Trevor Butcher
This is available as a print, on canvas or on a phone case at: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=308484
Via Flickr:
059: Half Dressed Tuesdays.
The suitcase exists to help take us on our travels, but for most of the time it simply gathers dust and stores things that we probably do not really need. I like to relive past journeys and plan new ones, and what better companion on these memories and dream trips!
Oh, and half dressed? Don't you remember the sixties series "Man in a Suitcase"? Perhaps not :)
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I see that many people don't enjoy themselves enough in the changing rooms while shopping. Somewhere between dressing up as a child and choosing clothes as an adult, something is often lost.
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Here is a later Zuk (note the double slot above the headlamp), set against a tower block - both the van and the block should be instantly recognizable to any Pole ;)
I spent about a week working on this one, from a small picture I took with my Samsung phone camera. It has been a while since I have done any Zuk images, and I have several ideas that I want to work on using them.
by Trevor Butcher
This image is available as a print, on canvas, or on your phone case at: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=306430
Via Flickr:
A woman wearing a red necklace made of very large beads, an artistic image that becomes abstract on close inspection.
This is the third, and quickest to make, in my new series of half portraits, intended to focus not on the face but on what is being worn around the neck. I have found a way of using my camera to do some of the hard work, the rest is down to my steady hand on the mouse :)
by Trevor Butcher
This image can be bought as a print, canvas or phone case at: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=304696
Via Flickr:
This is the first in a small series of portraits without heads, letting you fill n the missing bits with your imagination while I show the part I would like you to see.
There is a very seductive temptation to treat your audience as rather delinquent children, who need all information supplied before they can understand what you are showing. In my experience that more often leads to the situation where the audience switches off or they don't learn what you wanted to show but all the supporting information instead.
On the other hand I know that some people won't understand what I am trying to show, the gap between what I and they know is simply to great to be spanned by anything I might write here. Neither of us can help that. But at least this is here if they choose to try.
by Trevor Butcher
Buy this as a print, canvas or phone case at: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=303321
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If you look at the rails, you can see that this is on a narrow gauge railway. In a country that values knowledge primarily in their education system, people end up not feeling confident that they can take part in activities outside their skill training. So things fall apart, and it is blamed on a lack of money. Sound familiar?
by Trevor Butcher
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This is a Dennis lorry rebuilt from what anyone else would consider scrap metal, from parts sourced from as far from the UK as Australia and New Zealand. The original photo was taken by one of this man's sons.
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Life can be more than one can deal with.
This was actually taken using the webcam on wifie's laptop when she was in Chicago running a course for teachers. The hardest part is trying to figure out what is going to work and what will not. If I played it safe then it would be just another rendition of other people's work, and if I take too much of a risk it would be so different it could alienate people. Ever wondered why artists get drunk?
By Trevor Butcher
See this and other images for sale at: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=299257
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A portrait of Ania based on an image taken with a phone camera, edited to make it an abstract expressionist work.
There is a trend these days for artists to fully damage the face of an otherwise normal portrait. I see them everywhere. To me, I have always damaged the images, but the whole image, and not because it is trendy and might increase any sales I might have. My images scrape along with the minimum amount of detail to produce a distinct image, everything else being abstract.
I would rather encourage people to open their imagination further than their wallets or purses.
by Trevor Butcher
This image is available as a print, on canvas or on your phone case at: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=296808
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Eastern Poland has far more traditional cottages than other regions of Poland, but many are in advanced states of decay and there is little support available for their owners.
On close inspection it looks that the better condition left hand end might not be original. The first clue is that there are two chimneys - usually there is one, about 1/3 of the way across the roof due to the standard layout of a cottage with one living room and a cross passage behind the fireplace/stove. Where the window is in the side is where you would expect a door to be, and to the left are white painted wall boards, and the remains of white-painted walls to the immediate left. All the brown walls to the left of that is the later extension, including the chimney on the line where the two parts join.
If so, it is the earlier part of the cottage that has succumbed first, unsurprisingly given that both parts are built with the same kind of materials.
A sign of impending doom was there in tarmacadam roof - originally this was undoubtedly thatch, and anyone with the money and foresight would have typically replaced this with asbestos tiles or steel sheeting. Or plastic roof tiles, I suppose, if done recently.
by Trevor Butcher
I have similar images for sale as prints, canvas or phone cases at: www.photo4me.com/canvasprints/trevor-butcher
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This might look like the Fiat 600 original, but this one was known as the Yugoslavian Zastawa 750. The Italian original is very rare here in Poland, and the Zastawa has almost disappeared as well, but there are now quite a few enthusiasts around.
I just love the shape, and the colour with the added racing stripes was simply a bonus. I was surprised by how much time I spent on this image - first removing the cars on either side of this one, painting in the missing parts of the car where it had been obscured by another, then deciding to crop the image, minimizing and making consistent the background, doing than then redoing the grassy bank in the foreground and then fine finishing after blowing the image to a larger size.
However, the result is that the sales version of this image, see link below, can be blown up very large, which was the point of a lot of the effort. Roughing - 2 hours, Refining - 20 hours.
by Trevor Butcher
This image is available to buy as a print: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=247509, not just on paper - but on canvas and on phone cases!
Via Flickr:
Long ago, when I had a large website that included Polish vehicles, I had to keep my images really small, about 300 pixels wide, to ensure they loaded onto the page. Such was the reality of life on the slow internet of the 1990s. The image had already been scanned in from a print, so the loss of quality was significant. However, these days the internet is incredibly fast in comparison, and now large images are possible - but I no longer have a scanner. The answer was a challenge, could I turn the 300 pixel wide original into a 6000 pixel wide monster.
And I succeeded! Well, this version has been resized back down to 640 pixels wide, but with a whole lot less compression - the 6000 pixel monster is for sale as a wall print, and I would not want to casually leave a print lying around on the internet that is pin-sharp at 50 inches wide when on your wall, would you?
by Trevor Butcher
Buy this as a print, on canvas or phone case at: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=292091
Via Flickr:
I just can't stop with the driving subject, there are so many ways of showing what is great about driving without sparkling poses and speed images. The trick is to separate the experience from the car because, no matter the raves of the public and press and personal feeling, you don't yet know that car you will love in the future that has not yet been designed.
The pleasure of driving is not the car, it's what goes on in our heads.
by Trevor Butcher
See my images for sale as prints, canvases and phone cases: www.photo4me.com/canvasprints/trevor-butcher
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This is a side street in the old town of Lublin, for a long time in an area one would not normally go at night - but since they finally reopened the old theatre and also opened a restaurant nearby it has almost become de rigueur to visit.
I hope to get some more night time old town pictures this summer.
by Trevor Butcher
This is also available to buy: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=254331, not just on paper - but on canvas and on phone cases!
Via Flickr:
A timber framed and clad cottage perched on the edge of a hill near Naleczow in Eastern Poland, late on a winter's day. Since the soil is predominantly sand-based, building so near the edge carries some risk. However, if it is all the land that you own, then build you will.
Many of the roads on slopes suffer erosion after the snow melts.
by Trevor Butcher
This image is available for sale at: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=259649, not just on paper - but on canvas and on phone cases!
Via Flickr:
I keep forgetting to do some more black and white images, they are a challenge all of their own.
In any part of life it is all too easy to believe that you are doing the proper thing, and that the proper thing is the right thing to do. 'Proper' is a holding action prior to the disintegration of a system - the moment you start believing in it you are condemning the future of your organisation.
It works like this: Any system is designed to suit the situation at one point in time and likely deviations, based on past experience. The present is always changing, and you cannot stop that change because every single action you take changes the present. EVERY action. Even breathing does it. Imagine you decide to have pizza - the action of buying ingredients will be sensed by all those people involved in the ingredients, and even gathering the ingredients from your garden changes your garden, a garden that will be different depending on whether you choose to grow tomatoes or grass.
Since we cannot predict safely all the future, there is no such thing as a proper action predefined before the present takes place. 'Proper' assumes that you know the future, and can make it as the present. But you cannot, eventually the present will veer further and further from situation in the past.
The right action is the one best suited to the present. Not the proper one.
by Trevor Butcher
This image is available as a print, on canvas and on phone cases: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=227874
Via Flickr:
I love trees, although not in a way that makes me want to hug them. The way they silhouette against the sky, the way they move in the wind, the shade they give on hot summer days, and the sound they make on a stormy night. When I am ill I often lay in bed or on the sofa watching the trees blow in the wind in the afternoon light, and I remember climbing different trees with my brothers when I was young.
Trees.
by Trevor Butcher
Buy my prints, canvases and phone cases on: www.photo4me.com/canvasprints/trevor-butcher
Via Flickr:
Murals on wall were once common here in Poland - sometimes political, often abstract, or advertising a product, service or similar. Until the political changes in 1989 there was a huge network of narrow gauge railways, carrying goods between rural areas and the mainline system.
Neither is much valued these days.
This is the side of a pavilion-style local shopping centre in a village, a common sight, a now unloved but once brave attempt to bring modernity to those living in the countryside.
by Trevor Butcher
I have other images for prints, canvases and phone cases here: www.photo4me.com/canvasprints/trevor-butcher
Via Flickr:
Home isn't just a place you live in, or a place to show off to your friends and family, it's a place where you can do the things that you like doing.
I have done several updates to this image since I made this version, ad I still think there is more that I can do. One of the advantages of Black and White is that you are not forever limited by colour matching issues.
by Trevor Butcher
This image is available as a print, on canvas or on a phone case: shop.photo4me.com/picture.aspx?id=119344
Via Flickr:
Memories are those events where we feel like an individual participating in the world. If you don't consider the participation then you become selfish, if you don't consider the being an individual then you become invisible.
By Trevor Butcher, Artist
For my images as prints, canvases and phone cases: www.ltpphotography.wordpress.com
Via Flickr:
Ever wondered what life might be like when you've gone? Your way of life today is what many people were afraid of in the past, and in the future it will probably seem antiquated.
Learn to fall forward - it hurts less than falling backwards. And you get to see where you're landing.
By Trevor Butcher
For prints, canvases and phone cases: www.photo4me.com/canvasprints/trevor-butcher
Via Flickr:
I did this mostly to show that any photograph has potential, even if blurry after being taken in a poorly lit corridor. The only thing I have added are the lights.
Don't get me wrong, I like the way people take sharp images using lights and real models, I just think that there are other things one can do with photography, especially if you cannot afford specialist equipment.
At the end of the day, I like to encourage people to do things that are worthwhile without having to go down the route of large investments.
See my other images for sale: www.photo4me.com/canvasprints/Trevor-butcher
Via Flickr:
Ania had her hair cut shorter today than she has ever had it before. This is in a cafe shortly after.
I often wonder how many group hugs one can have in life and yet not be moved to take action that may help prevent the need for such hugs. Facebook is full of such 'hugs' over different images.
Come together in shock at a picture, walk away washed of all guilt.
It cannot be just me that sees the blame is elsewhere, but here. Can it?
www.photo4me.com/canvasprints/trevor-butcher
Via Flickr:
This is another in my cycle of summer road shots - finding pleasure on the way to and from work.
We waste so much time and energy hating the modern world, but I say it is time we learned to appreciate what we have created in spite of its imperfections.
There are two general types of photographer - those who wish to capture everything with the lens and alter nothing to the image thereafter, and those who have no fear of damaging the image after capture - and many people who do both, of course.
Capture is about retaining the past, destroying is about creating a new future. And yet it is the practice of destruction that safeguards our ability to cope with unavoidable changes, while capture eventually destroys what it seeks to protect because change will come.
See my images for poster, canvas and phone case: www.photo4me.com/canvasprints/trevor-butcher
Winter is a great time to go out with a camera, especially early in the morning - the combination of clean light, no leaves, and, in this case, people trying to stay warm, makes for some interesting ideas. You do not need a large camera, or expensive lenses, the most important thing is to look at the world and not photograph the first thing that comes to mind.
Things that come to mind first are primarily things placed there by society and are not your own thinking. Because these ideas come from society, they appear in most people's heads as first thoughts too. So, learn to resist those first thoughts, and instead keep on looking and experimenting. You will get there, but it just might just take some time.
See my images for prints, canvas and phone cases: www.photo4me.com/canvasprints/Trevor-Butcher
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