Don’t forget to enableLoad all images, or equivalent, in the message to see the pictures!
Hello there
In a (modest) act of taking-back control, I recently removed the Guardian and Instagram apps. from the home screen of my ‘phone. Facebook went long ago. The Guardian has been banished not because I don’t care about what is happening in the world but because I’m wasting mind-time on things over which I have absolutely no agency. It’s spirit-withering. And Instagram - well, we all have different reasons to loathe the algorithm, but I’d rather an experienced editor curated what I could see than some uninterrogable code with who-knows-what agenda. Let’s be honest: Insta. has never been a serious platform on which to share and view photography, what with its shrunken images and prescriptive framing. But it’s a compromise we don’t have to live with: people are still creating beautiful websites to display their work properly (check out Ira Hilger’s new one here). I’m happy to forego Instragram’s fast-food photo feeds to search for a more substantial meal elsewhere.
You know what? The scrolling habit wasn’t hard to break and not long after, new ideas started to get through again, rather than becoming tangled up in the gossamer of on-screen nonsense.
We hope you find time for creativity this summer and give it the priority it, and you, deserves. If you need any convincing that creativity is something to be taken seriously, listen to Tracy Calder’s podcast interview with Janine Vangool over on We Need to Make Things. Making things, especially beautiful things that have never existed before can, should, be more than just something to do once the day’s work is done. It’s creativity that makes work more than just a function that can be performed by a machine.
We hope to see you soon - and ideally, here in Burgundy!
Charlotte and Niall
S and S abstracts
S and S? Well, we needed a name for this new set of pictures. So we settled on a summary of the process that creates them - swirl and slice. The idea popped out of the ether during an on-line lesson when I was showing Claire from Melbourne the detail of in-camera, multiple exposure Kaleidoscopes. When I Zoomed in to 100%, I saw pictures within the picture I’d never noticed before. Very interesting…not in any conceptual sense, not as narrative elements supporting a story, just something interesting to look at. Definitely not art, obviously. Heaven forbid.
IF you like the look of these, and want to make your own S and S’s, you need to know a few things first. The pictures you see here are sized to A3 (420 x 297 mm) and each slice is a 100% extraction from the original file. That means you need a file with a LOT of data in it if you want to make anything other than small prints. My Nikon produces files that are 5502 pixels high but by the time you’ve zoomed in, there is only enough data left to print a small part of an A3 sheet. Ideally, you want a camera that is capturing upwards of 45 Mp.
You will also need a lens with a tripod collar so you can rotate it around its axis to make the source Kaleidoscopes. Just as importantly your camera needs to be able to capture an eight-element multiple exposure, with control over the blend modes. There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth over Nikon’s failure to implement RAW multiple exposure capture in its mirrorless models. And while I’m a dinosaur with a D series camera, I’ve processed multiple exposure JPGs from guests’ Z’s and not found any significant degradation or comb-like histograms. It’s not ideal, but so long as you export a TIFF, it’s not a deal-breaker.
When I choose a slice to extract from the Kaleidoscope - the fillet steak if you like - I realise I can never avoid a degree of repetition, but I try to make it as inconspicuous as possible. So, normally, I’m finding my fillet at the edge of the picture. This then informs how you shoot the Kaleidoscope…but that’s a story for another day - or a Retreat.
Since each Kaleidoscope offers up only a modestly-sized fillet steak, I like to present them in packs of three. It gives the viewer more to savour, after all, and challenges us to find images that can be paired with one another.
S and S now forms part of our Kaleidoscopes on-line class. Who knows; your next idea might happen during a class, too.
New food and cooking Chez-nous
Even if shopping, cooking, baking, eating in the sun and drinking fine wine aren’t your idea of fun, perhaps you know someone who would relish this. If so, we’d love you to pass this on to them- and earn yourselfenough to buy a case of decent wine when they book. Or a pretty fancy dinner out. Just since you won’t be here…
Our Chez-nous Food Retreats do for foodies what our photography ones do for photographers: they give you the space and time to indulge your interests, broaden your skills base and be looked after for a week in the heart of the Burgundy countryside. And if you want to learn a little more about photographing food, we can help with that too. Apart from teaching this, Niall’s role is principally to take out the peelings and not get in the way too much. It’s very much Charlotte’s show - which means it will be a lot of fun. And she’s well-qualified. Not only has she cooked for groups of photographers all over Europe, often having to improvise in challenging circumstances, but she has been a Masterchef competitor and is the recipient of three Great Taste Awards for her chocolate work.
As with our photography Chez-nous, the programme is made up to fit with what you want to do, arranged in advance during a Zoom call. If you fancy a chat about doing a Food Chez-nous, please just drop us a line. We have availability in August and September.
If a photography Chez-nous is more up your street, Niall will be more than happy to put down the peeler.
We have also published the Winter 2025-26 Chez-nous brochure for photographers. There are limited slots so secure your place as soon as you can.
For people who really don’t like to click on anything in an email, our MENUettes - current and past - are now viewable on our website. (but we’ll also continue to send out this monthly mail-shot). This is something we’ve considered for ages but were always put off by the time-consuming prospect of having to rebuild a newsletter as a blog post in Squarespace.
If you’re in a similar position, let me be the first to tell you that there is a fiendishly simple way to get the entirety of a Mailchimp campaign - pictures, links and all - to display just as it does in the campaign, on a Squarespace page. Corks are popping.
In the first instance, create a new Blog page on your Squarespace site. We call ours “Latest”. On that Blog page, Add [a new] Post. In the box that appears, enter a title for the post then click the + on the first insertion line you come to in the “Write here…” box. From the options that display, select </> Code. Nip back to Mailchimp and open the campaign you want to post on your website. Amongst the tabs displayed above the campaign is HTML source. Click on that then select and copy all the code. Return to your site, paste the code into the Content box that appeared when you selected the </> Code option. That’s it. All done. And with hours saved.
We Need to Make Things podcast
It was a pleasure, recently, to discover that one of my former editors at Outdoor Photography magazine, Tracey Calder, has started a podcast. Tracy is perhaps best-known these days as the force behind The Close-up Photographer of the Year Competition but this podcast has what it takes to gain a profile, too, with a bit of encouragement. It’s ahead of other photography podcasts because the episodes are put together with the structure and discipline you’d expect of someone from a journalistic background. That makes it eminently more listenable than many. But I also like it because she has a knack for selecting guests with something interesting to say about creativity - both the theory and the practise of it. And its title, We Need to Make Things, I think, is a simple statement of fact. She has just completed the first series of six episodes and you can find them, as they say, wherever you get your podcasts. Even better, help it along with a 5 star rating.
If you’ve not yet taken the opportunity to enjoy these free 😳 e-books already, click on the button to access them.
This month, another image from the 2020VISION project, made in 2011, the theme this time, Scotland’s freedom of access. In putting together the words and image, I learned several things. In the first instance, how to use typefaces to create visual puns. The font used for the heading, Mesquite Std, has definite associations with the America West and yet those aren’t the “Indians” I refer to (they come at the end of the list). Likewise the word, “reservations”, is used ambiguously. Toying with the viewers expectations keeps them with the piece for longer as they run through it for a second time, knowing the tricks this time.
The other useful lesson for anyone who wants to put words in a picture (perhaps to clarify its context) is to keep awkward compositions - they might just provide the space needed for copy. The same goes for the picture-with-the-hole-in-it of the turtle dove at the top of this MENUette.
In case you’re not familiar with the location, the photo of the mountains and rainbow was made in Assynt in North West Scotland, showing Suilven and Stac Pollaidh. This is our favourite mountain landscape in Scotland, offering opportunities that can’t be matched anywhere else in the country.
MENUette is always
Such as is available to us.
We appreciate that you allow us to keep in contact via these mail-shots -and to let you know what we're up to.
If you can think of anyone else who might enjoy MENU-ette, please encourage them to subscribe.
Many thanks,
Our best wishes, Charlotte and Niall
Copyright (C) 2025 Food and Photography Retreats Ltd. All rights reserved. We're sending you this as you were kind enough to sign up for our newsletter from our website
