Not as it seems

In response to the WordPress Daily Post Challenge H2O

I didn’t want to post a “conventional” photo of water for this challenge. I have lots of pictures of the sea, of waterfalls, streams, lakes and such like but the challenge was about doing something different.

I was at our local lake and the water was still and flat. Looking down showed a perfect reflection of the sky. The picture tries to make it look like I’m looking upwards at a very tall tangle of plants, looking to the sky, instead of down on the water.

Not my usual kind of thing but I thought it was fun.

I liked this plant and its colours and textures so I took some other shots. I liked the way the drops of water lined up on the blade like little jewels in the first.

Daily Post Challenge – Edge

In response to the Daily Post Photo Challenge Edge

These shots were taken on Saturday from one of my favourite mountains, Tryfan in the Glyder range in Snowdonia. The route up is a classic and highly popular grade one scramble. The views, not surprisingly, are fantastic.

The central mountain in both photographs is Y Garn, part of the Idwal Horseshoe.

The first shot is what I think of as a straightforward head-and-shoulders portrait of the mountain. This kind of shot is all about bringing out the character of the hill that is the central subject. I can look at shots like this endlessly looking for lines of ascent, climbs and scrambles and planning future adventures.

Daily Post – Mirror

In response to the Daily Post challenge – Mirror

In landscape photographs I don’t often use mirrors but I don’t always take landscape shots. When I used to work for a living I’d often walk around town during my lunch break and I used to like shots of plate glass windows because of the contrast between what’s seen through the window and what’s reflected in the window.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Mirrors also make for selfies, in the days before camera phones. Here’s me with my trusty Xatnep DSLR and a bit more hair than I’ve got now. You could probably date this shot from the amount of hair, like measuring tree rings.

An Icy Shroud

In response to the WordPress Daily Post photo challenge Details

After we moved to Todmorden in 2010 we had some incredibly cold winters. Not good for our water pipes (which burst on Christmas Eve) but some great photography. This shot is of some moorland grass (which has a name that I used to know) encased in ice. Each stalk has its own coat, an incredibly delicate sculpture.

Grass encased in ice in a very hard winter

 

Daily Post Challenge – Look Up

In response to the WordPress Daily Post challenge <a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/look-up/”>Look Up</a>

Contrails in the sky outside my house

Sometimes you get a truly gorgeous sky but without some other element to make a picture I rarely feel justified in shooting just the sky. When I saw these jet airliner contrails though I knew I had the elements for a good photograph. First, the clouds are wonderful in the winter light. Second, the contrails, each one going in a different direction but together feeling like a modernist poster extolling the virtues of technological progress.

Trails like this are more usually a problem for a landscape photographer of the traditionally picturesque but in this case they make the composition.

Photographs are always real

In response to the WordPress Daily Post challenge <a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/photo-challenges/abstract/”>Abstract</a&gt;

Abstraction is difficult to achieve with photography. A photograph made in the normal way is always of something real. The thing is there in the real world. An abstract painting on the other hand does not represent reality but is genuinely new and original, a thing that has never before existed in the universe and never will again. An abstract painting can be free of presuppositions but a photograph always has the burden of our interpretations of reality.

Anyway, enough of this artspeak guff. I don’t normally take abstract compositions so I made an effort while out walking to see what I could make and here are three choices that could be viewed as more than just a scene.

In the first image think of the arrangement of shapes in the frame and how they work together to make the composition. Don’t think of farming, don’t think of landscape.

In the next, again don’t think of the form of trees and wood, think of Jackson Pollock and the way the tracery of twigs and branches leads you around the frame.

And finally, you could marvel at the amazing richness of sandstone, lichen and moss but instead think purely of patches of colour.

This is generally not my preferred way of composing but it’s nice to try new things.

Summer’s a bummer for landscape shooters

In response to the Daily Post’s photo challenge on the subject of Dinnertime

This shot was taken at about 8pm – dinner time – in the week after the clocks went forward. I’d had to wait for three hours for this light to happen. It’s much easier in winter because the sun sets earlier and then you can get home for your dinner and some telly before bed. Now that night time is coming later and later my photography habits are getting more and more inconvenient and I don’t get fed until bed-time.

 

Winter also has the advantage of so much colour on the hills and the bonus of snow. In summer everything’s green.

As the days and nights get warmer I’m hoping to compensate by doing some wild camping and being there for both the sunset and sunrise but I don’t know what I’m going to do for dinner…

The picture was taken from near the town of Ingleton and looking roughly west. I had been out taking shots for one of my allocated grid points in the Yorkshire Grid Project, which I’ll publish later.

An image of the future

In response to the WordPress Daily Post challenge Future

The picture below is, I hope, part of my future.

It’s my stall from my last art market at West Didsbury.

I’ve been doing art markets and art shows for a fair old time while having a full time proper job. A couple of years ago I gave up the proper job to spend more time taking photographs. Since then I’ve been fairly seriously taking and making. Working out what I want to say, what pictures I want to make. I’ve also been working out how to make the art markets a success. Joy and I both have pensions but it would be good to top them up and I hope that photography will be a sustainable source of income well into old age.

Doing art markets and shows is so much fun. Almost everyone you speak to is nice, they’re all interested in your pictures and you get a lot of oohs and aahhs, which is lovely. And if you’re lucky, a bit of spending cash as well.

WordPress Daily Post Photo Challenge – Treat

In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge: “Treat.”

Joy and I (mostly me) have a lazy streak (OK, just me). A big treat that’s a major part of a day walking for me is coffee and cake. Two places that are BIG on this treat are the alps, with the wonderful selection of mountain huts, alms houses, and hill-top cafes, and the south-west way along the Somerset, Cornwall, Devon and Dorset coast. These have some of the best cafes in the country, rightly famous for their clotted cream teas. I usually can’t resist taking a picture of the refreshments, often in progress or fully demolished. A great cup of coffee, a delicious cake, wonderful surroundings, and a good book. Heaven.

Zermatt

Zermatt

South West Way

Wales Coastal Path

Austria

Mallorca

Zermatt

Zermatt

Austria

Austria

Austria