Martha Morgan Country -- photography begins

A couple of days ago we made a great start to the photography part of the project with a day "on the road" -- so photos are now in the can from St Dogmaels Abbey, Y Felin, Rhosygilwen, Cilwendeg, Pentre Ifan and Nevern.  We were blessed with good weather, and our field party consisted of Rhiannon James (dressed appropriately as Mistress Martha), Steve Mallett the photographer, Kate Lindley from "Refreshing North Pembrokeshire", Rhiannon's dad Cllr Mike James, and me. 

Great thanks are due to Kate and the management board of RNP for supporting the project with a small grant and for admin backup.  Rhiannon -- who is currently Miss Pembrokeshire -- is perfect as Mistress Martha.  She's very patient, very feisty and very professional.  And Steve brings a real photographer's eye to the project, using very moody lighting for some shots and natural light for others -- that was all quite a challenge, given the low winter sun and the cloudy conditions we had for most of the day.  We have had a quick glance at the photos on the camera, and many of them are terrific.  The problem will be to decide which of the images NOT to use!!  Mike is a great member of the team too, since he knows everybody in North Pembrokeshire and knows how to open doors!  Inger's contribution was to organize a hearty lunch for the field party, to warm us up after a morning of photography.  So a big vote of thanks to everybody, including those whose homes we briefly invaded during the shoot.......

Another session is planned for next week -- and we just hope we can find a day of sunshine in the middle of this string of very wet depressions that seem to be marching in sequence from the Atlantic.

The Poldark phenomenon

With Poldark about the hit our screens again in 2016 for a 10-episode series, here's a nice pic of Eleanor Tomlinson, who plays Demelza.  Poldark and Demelza are very well portrayed.  The latest news is that the BBC is committing £50 million to a five-year Poldark project -- with one series each year until 2020.  That's an enormous financial gamble, given that the first series of 8 episodes was not an unmitigated success -- quite a lot of people (including me) didn't like it very much, and the reviews were not exactly full of gushing praise.  I thought the series was packed with cliches and entirely lacking in subtlety -- and many of the characters were crudely drawn.  A lot of the CGI was very naff indeed -- so the production company was trying to save rather a lot of money.  Somebody described the series as "historical fiction for Sun readers" -- and I can sympathise with that view.

There's a lot of very good drama on TV, so it's a pity when a landmark series like this is dummed down much more than it needs to be......

... and here's a very sexy Martha.......

This is a rather sexy image of a young lady (whom we can imagine as Mistress Martha) with a notebook and a quill pen.  I found it in a collection of Regency fiction book covers -- artist / photographer / model unknown.......

Regency images

I was doing some research on clothing and accessories for our forthcoming photo shoot for "Martha Morgan Country" when I came across these two ladies with their books.  Quite charming, both of them ..... and the lower photo is of course of Jennifer Ehle, who starred as Lizzie Bennet in the famous BBC TV production of "Pride and Prejudice".

Gearing up for "Martha Morgan Country"

The project about which we have been talking for several weeks is pretty well ready to go "live"....... grant aid is agreed, the model (Rhiannon James) is up for it,  the photographer (Steve Mallett) is ready to run, and quite a lot of locations are already sorted.  We have a meeting next Tuesday to finalise the details and sort out costumes etc.  Watch this space......

Waiting for the spring.......

I'm always happy to post paintings of Carningli, which seems to inspire painters nowadays as it always has done.  This paining is by Colin Finn, and it has a wonderful wintery, bleak feel to it.  If we like, we can imagine that the house is Plas Ingli........