Oliver Holms — Notes

# Week Notes 002 — W/E 15 April 2023

Apr 16, 2023
  • On Wednesday I shot installation pictures before an evening event in the cloisters and garden at Westminster Abbey. It was a such a beautiful environment to work in, particularly when the late afternoon light broke through the clouds, slicing through the arches and warming the stone. I loved the feeling of standing on ancient paving slabs, smoothed and rounded by hundreds of years of footsteps. Even amidst the buzz of activity, a sense of peacefulness and quiet suffused the space.
  • The cloisters reminded me of my favourite Serpentine Pavilion: Peter Zumthor’s 2011 black box which concealed a garden at its centre. I love architecture that is open-centred; that wraps around a tranquil, contemplative space. Think Moroccan riads, Mexican courtyards and Zen Gardens. I particularly like courtyards with cloisters. They blur the boundary between inside and outside, creating a transitional space to rest in or pass through.
  • I’ve enjoyed following Jack Cheng’s progress through the Building Beauty course, which centres on the design and architectural principles of Christopher Alexander. In another life I might have been an architect, so it’s been so fun to read about the assignments that he’s been set and how he is working through them (and of course thinking about what I would do in his place!). My favourite so far is A House for Oneself — a project to design your dream house, anchoring the plan to your ‘project jewels’, the five to seven elements of a home that are most important to you. The post covers the whole process from staking out the site, scribbled plans, and on through building models of progressively increasing complexity. I love the approach of working through ideas using models not computers. The crudeness and inaccuracy of working with cardboard is a feature that one can harness to steer their creativity. It encourages experimentation with volumes and areas in search of a harmonious whole, without getting distracted by details and precision. I think that the ideas about balancing different elements, solidifying the relationships between them and enhancing natural centres have a lot of parallels with successful photographic composition and image editing and sequencing.
  • The edit was pretty brutal to turn around, even with a couple of days to do it. Lots of multi-hour straight-through editing and grading sessions. I was pretty square-eyed by the time I finished on Friday evening. Everything seems slower and harder to achieve with a baby, or maybe you are more aware of all the time that you aren’t spending with your new (beloved and sometimes nightmarish) addition, so the time spent on a project has more ‘weight’.
  • lots of baby viewings towards the end of the week and over the weekend. Great reviews from all.
  • ran errands in town on Saturday then walked back through the park. Decided to walk between all of my stops so that I could make use of the beautiful light and shoot some street. As it’s harder to go out for the whole day with baby, I’m trying to use the gaps between errands/appointments or the journeys to and from them, to shoot on the street and keep my eye in. A long time ago I read a (potentially Austin Kleon?) post about building margin into your day and using that time for your personal creative work. The writer gave the example of ordering food and immediately leaving to pick it up so that you can write in your journal or sketch while you wait at the restaurant. Not only do 10mins here and 20 mins there add up, but this approach has the positive side effect of making your life less stressful — you have some padding built in for life’s delays. Since I adopted this approach I’ve gone from being a pathological Latey-Matey to being early or punctual 90% of the time.
  • I’ve enjoyed posting random pictures and thoughts to micro.blog. It feels less precious that posting to my Instagram grid, which has to remain more of a curated professional space. This blog is intended to be looser and more playful — a place to work in public.
  • I keep trying and failing to make time to play around with the headless version of the Dirtywave M8 that I have set up on a Teensy 4.1. I’m looking forward to seeing how the tracker workflow fits with my brain. Who knows what the results will be, but I am very excited about the prospect of making some music.
  • The big goal this week: not to let work drift into the evenings when the flat is quieter, but instead use that prime time for personal creative projects or reading and unwinding. Likewise, I need to carve out some time for exercise and longer meditations as I’ve been letting both slide and they keep me happy and functional.

Music

Lots of great music this week:

Watched

  • You People — so bad that I can’t link to it in good conscience.
  • BEEF — one episode in — not sure how I feel about it yet. It feels like it could pick up steam, but at the moment I’m a little ambivalent.

Reading

  • The Creative Act by Rick Rubin
  • The Path of Aliveness by Christian Dillo