This tyre was dumped in the verge of the road next to where I entered the field to take the photo I posted here yesterday. I spotted it as I entered the field and made a mental note that it might be worth making a picture on the way back to my car.
It was a little awkward to get a good angle on it without a lot of the road itself creeping into the shot, as you can see on the right of the frame (and I’ve cropped it a bit to remove even more). The best angle for a good composition would have been to stand on the road itself but the location is on a tricky bend on a slope and the risk of getting wiped out by an unsuspecting or inattentive driver wasn’t one that appealed, so I took the photo while standing on the verge instead.
This abandoned farmhouse is an interesting subject to photograph, but you need to pick the right time of day, and I don’t think I did that here. At this time of year the sun is low in the sky and there is a wooded area beside the field where the structure stands (off to the right of the photo). As a result, the building had only limited direct light falling on it. Later in the afternoon when the sun will cast light directly onto the walled side of the building would be better, or even perhaps earlier in the day and photograph it form the other side.
I rarely have the luxury of picking what time I get to photograph such things unfortunately, and even then I’m at the mercy of the weather, so sometimes it’s a case of taking whatever I can get and making the most of it.
A couple of people commented that this image looked like an overhead shot of rice paddies. It is an overhead shot, just taken from a couple of feet overhead, and it isn’t paddy fields, but a frozen puddle at the edge of a farm field. It’s odd how the brain interprets things sometimes, especially without the information that the photographer has regarding the actual subject matter.
The spread of ivy on this tree gives it a strange, unbalanced, top-heavy appearance. It stands within easy eyesight of a road I travel sometimes and I’ve thought about photographing it on more than one occasion while driving past, but this was the first time I’ve done so.
Almost four weeks ago I went out for a walk to get some fresh air and to try and clear myself of the cold I had (having read that light to moderate exercise could help). Being me I also took my Olympus Trip 35 with the intent of finishing the half-shot roll it held. The latter task was achieved. The cold-curing part didn’t work out so well and I had to take a couple of sick days, although I think that would still have been the case had I not gone for the walk. Even now I still have the cough and don’t expect to see tha back of it any time soon.
At least I got some photos, including the two shared here today. The first is the wooded area below the crags of Birchen edge, and I think this picture has turned out very nicely. The second was taken after I climbed atop the edge. On the edge of the rocks can be seen Nelson’s monument, a three metre high gritstone obelisk that was erected in 1810 to commemorate Admiral Nelson. The three large boulders to the right of the image are called the Three Ships, named after Nelson’s ships: Victory, Defiance and Royal Soverin, each of which has their name carved into one of the outcrops.
This is one of those posts where I present my entry for whatever theme the monthly photo contest I take part in has selected. This month the theme is “Decay”.
I was starting to think that I might not get anything to enter – my output has been somewhat low over the past month or so – but on Friday, knowing I had a few frames remaining on this roll of Delta 400, I decided to get out the little mini-studio thing I have. It’s basically a collapsible lightbox into which you can put small objects to photograph them. It has a set of LED lights built in which provide plenty of illumination, plus a set of foam sheets in a variety of colours to use as backdrops.
It’s not very sturdy, but it didn’t cost very much either and I’ve found it to be useful within its limitations. It works better when I use a macro lens and a smaller subject as the edges of the backdrops can start to creep into the frame – as happened with this picture as the close-up lens I used on the Yashicamat doesn’t allow me to get too close and resulted in my cropping in to remove the “behind the magic” rubbish at the top, bottom, and sides.
It worked well enough for me to photograph this bunch of maple leaves that I picked up in the back garden.
Yesterday I posted about my encounter with what I thought was a wallaby. It actually turns out that it was a kangaroo!
After posting about it on social media, one of my friends alerted me to the fact that someone living not far from where I’d sighted the animal had reported their pet kangaroo missing. There were a whole series of photos of the creature spotted in various locations around the local area. The kangaroo is named Duncan.
Thankfully, by the end of the day he had been found and reunited with his owner, who I assume will now be re-visiting the security of Duncan’s enclosure.
As is becoming a bit of a habit, here are some photos that bear no relation to my story whatsoever…
The weather forecast over the past few days has been forecasting fog and mist for this morning, so I made pland to try and go out and do a bit of photography. I’m a big fan of misty conditions but don’t see them as often as I like – mostly because I’m at work five days out of every seven, and my luck dictates that it’s generally during those days that the mist will appear. I put little trust in weather forecasting apps any more – I’ve been let down by them constantly – so treat whatever they say with a large dose of skepticism, but today they were spot on and I awoke to a lovely misty morning.
I decided to head out to the Moss Valley and walk from Eckinton up in the direction of Ford as I figured there would be plenty of woodlandy scenes to take advantage of, with the added bonus of it only being about ten minutes drive away. I had the GW690 with me, loaded with a roll of HP5+ that I rated at 1600asa, plus a roll of Kodak Gold. In the end I shot both rolls (although one of the HP5+ shots was lost as the shutter button must have been accidentally fired while in my camera bag). It was good to get out on a lovely morning, everything coated in thick frost and with a beautiful soft mist adding further atmosphere.
The most memorable thing wasn’t photography rated at all though, it was this…
While walking along a path between two rows of trees I suddenly saw what I first thought was a kangaroo come bounding around a curve and along the path towards me! It spotted me and froze, sitting in the position you see it in above (please excuse the poor quality – it’s a grab from some zoomed in phone video). A face off then took place with us both wondering what the other would do until, after a couple of minutes, I decided to move forwards. After a few steps it turned tail and hopped back up the path and out of sight again.
I felt quite elated by the experience. It’s nice to come across wildlife while you’re out and about, but to spot something that is so alien to the local environment is quite the thing to witness. I expect that it’s a wallaby rather than a kangaroo (although I’m no expert) and I know that there are some wallaby populations here in the UK that have evolved from captive animals escaping and going feral but, as far as I know, there are none in our local area. Perhaps it was another escaped captive, or maybe one of the existing wild groups has expanded its territory or something? Whatever the case, it made my day. 🙂
Again, apropos of nothing, here’s a picture I took in the Peak District a few weeks ago. There were no wallabys to be seen.
Another large format attempt. This one is possibly my favourite so far that I’ve shot with my Chroma. But it’s still not as good as I want it to be.
There are two main issues with this picture. One, not visible in the image you see, is that I think I put too little developer in the tank as this picture and another developed at the same time both had a thin strip of underdeveloped negative along one of the short edges. I was sure that I’d used 475mm of solution are required by the tank I was using, but clearly not. This resulted in my having to crop the image. The second issue is the focus at the left side of the frame, which is soft. I think I must have had a little bit of swing taking place and it only seems to take an imperceptable amount to knock the focus out. I am going to have to take much better care over this in future.
Apart from the above-mentioned issues though, the image is very sharp and I’m quite happy with it.
Eagle-eyed viewers might recognise this scene (and tree) as the same one that I attempted to photograph on large format film. Recognising that there would be a chance that my 4×5 picture might not work out, I took the opportunity to photograph it with the Olympus Trip 35 I also had with me. In fact, while my large format camera took up the bulk of the gear I was carrying, it was finishing the roll of HP5+ in the Trip that was my primary goal.
