I study the weather charts intensely to try and select optimum conditions for making my Edgelands work. This week has had some perfect conditions but circumstance or me being a bit dull or under the weather has meant missed opportunities. Friday presented perfect lavender grey clouds that render perfectly in Kodak Portra emulsion but I had to be in London for a board meeting. These skies are a feature of the Suffolk sky-scape and I love them especially when the foreground is well lit but the sky has an ominous yet attractive density to it. Today was calm enough but too bright. I like some cloud in my early morning shots.

This week I was able to catch up with Alastair Bartlett who graduated with me from UCS last year. He won the Metro prize and it is good to see new work emerging from him. What is both surprising and unsurprising is that we have both been eying up the same locations as potential for both our series’. We have yet to bump into each other on location but that would be hilarious if in the gradual penumbra of pre-dawn we should should suddenly come across another stepladder and Manfrotto 161 with a large format camera on top of it!

I’m looking forward to seeing more of Alastair’s work as it comes out of the Metro printing process. I know we are drawn to the same subject matter at times but even using the same film and similar cameras our work is very different. I have a major exhibition looming and I see no end to my ongoing Edgelands series and I’m sure Bartlett has an endless mental list of what needs to be recorded also as we take on other parts of the county and beyond. It would be good to have an Owens and Bartlett hang sometime in late 2016 or early 2017. In the meantime we shall just have to bounce our emerging portfolios off each other. Seeing a talented artist’s work alongside my own is an inspiring way to make my work better. This was a day-to-day taken-for-granted activity whilst at university. Now I suppose we will have to try and fit that in virtually.

There is however nothing like seeing the print on the wall. I have just had some work framed at MF Frames in Ipswich. We have used them for years along with other framing galleries in Ipswich. MF is under new ownership and doing a very good job indeed.

In 2013 I approached Sam Mellish for a donation to the Lux Locus auction that raised £2467.50 in funds for our degree show. Sam was the first person to donate and I was lucky in that Mrs O bid for for and won the Blue Sky Cafe signed photo that he donated. I already had his book ‘Roadside Britain’. Well, I finally got around to getting it framed and here it is. Not necessarily in it’s final hanging place but it is on the wall.

I had two Felixstowe images framed whilst I was at it. One from the D810, one from the Toyo. During April I shall have a display of my work in one half of MF Frames shop front.