I’m not one for grand new year resolutions or gestures of abstinence that you see being heralded on social media, but I decided that the new year means a new Photography Project. I’ve wanted to be able to have a project that was locally based, that didn’t need a lot of driving to get to, but could also be easily accessed if I have a spare few hours and the weather unexpectedly decides to play ball. So, after my walk last weekend and the success of the shoot I had on the River Mersey, an idea started to develop in my head, so base a project on the River Mersey.
I had my one to one with Chris Sale on Friday, as part of the coaching that he provides and we discussed what I would be focusing on in 2024, and I launched the idea to Chris. We spend a few minutes debating the idea, and Chris suggested that the best way forward was to scope out the location and given its a long River maybe have a section of the River to limit the range of the project. I have it in my mind that I will produce a book maybe hardback and electronic which includes a range of images from a variety of scenes along the River. The image below is a “snip” from my OS map, that shows the start and end points for the Project. Cheadle bridge in the West and Stockport Town Centre in the East, both marked with Black circles on this map extract.
There are a diverse range of locations along this stretch of the River Mersey, sections are semi rural, sections are urban along with a chunk that is industrial, both past and present. There is easy access to this locations, at both ends, as I live in the area marked Cheadle Heath on this map extract above. To prove my point around the ease of access to this location I had two hours spare on Friday afternoon and decided to have a walk along a section of the river and do some scouting. I always carry my iPhone 15 Pro Max anyway, and decided to take along my Sony A6600 crop sensor camera with a 16 to 55 f2.8 G lens. This is an ultra compact camera and I carry it in a Peak Designs 5 litre sling back. Nothing heavy, no bulky tripod and choice of lenses, just a small sling over my shoulder, but with decent image quality. What follows are a selection of images that I took on Friday, I only managed to walk half of the area I selected but I think there is plenty of scope for a diverse set of images.
All of these images have been minimally edited in Lightroom, with my usual workflow preset, and then the odd tweak here and there. This is about scouting, rather than working each location. These images are all low resolution images that I exported from Lightroom that I have added to my tracker for discussion with Chris at my next 1-2-1. You will see more of this project as the year progresses.