Projects have figured heavily in my photography over the last 12 months and you can see the results of this on the projects page of this website. Regular readers will also know that I have been friends with Chris Sale, the Pro Photographer based in The Lake District. Chris holds regular webinars for his social media followers and folk who have been on his workshops and 121 sessions. The subject of one of these webinars was a quote from Henri Cartier-Bresson the famous photographer who is quoted as saying that to get 12 “significant photograph” a year is a great output for a years photography work. Chris used this quote as a basis for a Photography project which will yield 12 significant photographs, in 12 months. So 12 locations, 4 seasons, 48 images in total, and the best 12 will be displayed. It’s fair to say that I’ve had a slow start to this project as Chris has already identified his 12 locations and has scouted at least 10 of them. Given the UK is in lockdown Chris decided that the 12 months could commence on 1st march 2021, for those who needed it, which includes me. This weekend I set off in search of a location where I could find a significant image.
Werneth Low Country Park
Little did I know that Saturday would turn out to be a glorious weather day, in fact the whole weekend was. My mind was more focused on my sons search for a house, so I hadn’t really thought much about locations. I ate lunch following a visit to view a property, and decided the good weather would not go to waste. For some reason I decided that Werneth Low Country Park was the location for Saturday afternoon walk. I found a parking space in an actual car park and off I went following the Viewranger app, that showed a Cenotaph was one one of the trails around the park. I’ve walked around parts of this park before but never following the trails, I was surprised how nice the views were and felt optimistic that I might bag a couple of good images.
Views over Manchester
From the main trail I spotted a bench part way up a short hill, benches aren’t usually located in a location for nothing. The view over to Manchester is great from the bench but I spotted the tree in this first image and the ubiquitous dry stone wall, both favourites of mine. The wall takes the eye down towards the tree, and then the eye gets caught in the wider vista of the panorama that is Manchester City Centre skyline.
The Cenotaph in Context
Its hard not to spot the cenotaph as you walk along the trails but there is good signage as well that told me I was headed in the right direction. It’s unusual to find a war memorial on the top of a hill, they are usually in towns or villages in prominent places. This one certainly has a good location for folk to visit and as you can see from this longer view there were a few folk around and about. Its not hard to socially distance in this sort of environment, and I kept my distance.
The “Dead Tree”
I took quite a lot of images of the cenotaph from all sides, and decided to move around the wider area to get a differing perspective on the memorial. As you can see from this image this tree is quite close to the wrought iron fence that surrounds the memorial, and it has some interesting shapes and textures. I’ve called it “the Dead Tree” in the caption but it clearly isn’t, it just has great lines. I was so taken by this tree and its proximity to the cenotaph that I explored further and to my delight there is a great composition involving the two that will be my first picture in my 12 Significant Images project. You will have to wait to see that or visit my Instagram page. (See link on the contacts page of this website).
Finding My way
Literally no more than 30 years from the cenotaph is the small way finding stone that you can see in this next image. As you look out to the far horizon the metal plate tells you what you can see in the far distance. As you can see this one was placed in 1980, and when you walk around the countryside you will fiund these sorts of things dotted around, giving explanations as to what you can see. I have already subscribed to an app on my phone that does the same thing, but this is a much better way of finding out what you can see. I really like this.
Sun Star
My viewranger app told me that there are lots of paths and trails to explore in this country park, so I decided to explore a little. The sun was really quite high in the sky and the scene in this last image caught my eye. Leading lines up to trees, my usual suspects on this type of walk. I thought I would try something a little different and see if I could get a sun star (flare type thing) by shooting directly into the sun. Perceived photography wisdom tells you that the smallest aperture of each lens is prone to this type of thing as the light is entering through a really quite small space and the light rays converging cause this star type effect.
As usual on my walks around I had my Sony A6600 with the 16 to 55 f2.8 G lens with me, so I stopped the lens down to f22, and took a shot. The colour version of this image has lots of lens flares that are very distracting, and off putting but with a little work in Lightroom I was able to take a good number of these out. You probably wondered why I bothered given that this image is Black and White but that’s the beauty of Lightroom, lots of profiles to try. I really like this image and its not bad for my first attempt.
So all in all a good afternoons walk, my first location found in my project, a significant image in the bag and a bit of experimentation. As per usual hunger and football got the better of me and off I headed home.