Wheat Field in the evening sunshine, Flecknoe, Warwickshire. June 2011
This image is from an evening walk near the village of Flecknoe in Warwickshire, as it was such a lovely evening it would have been rude not to go out with the camera. I really liked how the green of the young wheat and blue sky were so vivid in the evening light.
When I’m visiting family in Perth, Scotland I usually take a trip over to the harbour town of Arbroath in Angus, mainly to get Arbroath Smokies (a very tasty local speciality of smoked haddock) but also because its really photogenic, it’s a small harbour surrounded by brightly coloured buildings, there are sea defences being battered by the waves and the subject of this shot – the signal tower museum, although this image is black and white the building is white with red details, which always seems to go down well in photographic competitions.
For more images of the harbour, signal tower and sea defences have a look at my Arbroath album on Flickr.
Every Flickr account seems to have a picture of a random door, so when I spotted this whilst out with my Dad (Bob Craik LRPS) in Rothwell the bright blue door on the orange brickwork really caught my eye. It’s just a shame about the flaking paint…
Something I have been meaning to do for a while is to get a rogues gallery in my office of people that I don’t really see enough, so after collecting some prints (at the same time as a processed roll of Velvia!) from the lab, some frames from Ikea and a few hours cutting/sticking I have the following 4 pictures on my office wall of some people who are important to me.
Simon:
Ali & Webb:
Partho:
And of course, Jen:
This picture was taken on a walk along the canal at Union Wharf in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, with an old friend from school, Dan, who has just bought himself and EVIL camera (EVIL as in Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens, rather than with a plan to take over the world). It was good to take a walk somewhere that I’ve not been since the days when I was still shooting film, although I did also finish off the roll of Velvia that’s been in my film body for a while.
I took the usual boat reflection pictures, but it was this image of the smoking chimney after the sun had gone that was my favourite from the shoot as it’s a bit different to my normal style.
I’m back up in Scotland, which means, more landscape photography.
This morning we decided to head to Forfar to get some bridies for lunch and seeing as it was such a nice morning we decided to continue over to Arbroath to get some smokies for dinner.
Arbroath Harbour:
Dad at Arbroath Harbour:
The only downside to the trip was that it was perfect sports car weather, driving on perfect sports car roads, but both the sports cars are back down in the shire. Now it’s time to eat the smokies…
I’m now back in Rugby, after a nightmare journey down from Perth, featuring a closed airport and lack of customer service from the airline, luckily for my next trip I will be driving.
I hadn’t actually planned to shoot anything on Wednesday, I’d been snowboarding up at Glenshee, without the camera gear, it was another perfect blue sky day of Scottish snowboarding. After getting back into town, we went to the Shake Bar for a Scottish tablet milkshake, which everyone should experience in their life. We enjoyed the milkshakes overlooking the Tay as the sun was setting and for some reason, the Tay was flat clam making the reflections of lights from the bridges really vivid. So we rushed back to grab the cameras and these are the resulting images:
After a couple of days with rubbish light, we were able to get out with the cameras again, we decided to keep it fairly local and walked to Kinnoull Hill on the outskirts of Perth. I’d remembered about a pond, that was used for the sport of curling in the olden days, from a previous trip, so we took a detour to find it again. The pond was frozen and the ice was pretty thick, certainly enough to take my weight. (Don’t play around on frozen lakes etc, it isn’t big or clever)
The real reason for choosing Kinnoull Hill, was Kinnoull Tower, a derelict tower perched on the edge of a cliff, probably a look out post to spot people coming up the Tay from the North Sea/Dundee. Its well positioned to catch the evening sun and with the Tay weaving away in the background. This afternoon the Tay was fairly full, with hardly a ripple and I really like the way this image has come out.
Also in Kinnoull Woods there are a series of wooden sculptures by Pete Bowsher (aka Chainsaw Pete), this bird of prey (looks like an eagle, but buzzard sized) was up near Kinnoull Tower.
Seeing as I’m up in Scotland, amongst some stunning scenery it would be silly not to make the most of it, so along with my Dad we are trying to get out to take photographs each evening, when the light is good.
Our first evening we headed north up the A9, past Dunkeld and then left the car and headed up the hill towards a loch that we thought would catch the evening sun. After a few wrong turnings we came out of the woods into a meadow, where we should have stopped, due to the sun almost having disappeared behind the mountains, but instead we carried on for the loch, by the time we reached in the sun had already dropped. This was a great shame, as the loch was frozen and there was a pretty green cottage on the bank. I’m pretty pleased with the image below, but can’t help wondering how much better it would have been 20 minutes before.
This was me well and truly out of my comfort zone, no motorsport, or pre planned landscape shots, just a post lunch wander along the river with the cameras, which is a nice way to spend a sunny January afternoon with an old friend.
With the sun being quite low and directional getting the sun in the right position was crucial, I liked this image of the two swans, with the light coming in from the front right and semi back lighting the swans, although I’m less than happy that I cropped off the tail of the nearest swan.
I also liked this footbridge for portraits, my portrait style is heading very much towards straight lines heading off into the background drawing the viewers eyes into the subject at the centre of the frame, I need to try a few with off camera flash too, but for the meantime, here is a shot of Elaine on the bridge.
