This weekend I had 3 opportunities to get out with my camera, but all three were cut short by the ever worsening weather than we have had over this weekend. As you regular readers will know I am part of the OneLandscape photography Group run by Chris Sale, and each month we have challenges. Helpfully Chris has published the next 3 months in advance so we have a chance to think and shoot in a more considered way. The November challenge is Colours, largely aimed at the changing colour palette in the landscape due to the move through Autumn. The December challenge is black and white and the January challenge being Urban photography.
So on Friday I went out locally with the intention of capturing a typical autumnal image, colours of all those seasons.
We have also been talking about images having a narrative, a story if you like. I have been trying to make sure my images as far as possible do have a narrative and aren’t just a picture of something. So as I wandered around Abney Hall Country Park, which is near me, I wanted the images to have a narrative as well as colours that reflect the changing season. It’s no easy finding a colourful image as most of the leaves have fallen and either naturally or due to the high winds we have had of late. You can see from this image that it’s a memorial bench nd someone has been sitting g on it and have left a Childs drinking bottle, which is very colourful. Who was sitting here, was it family or was it just someone taking in the scenery. Couple this with the mixture of colours greens, browns of various shades and I think this image definitely fits the brief.
Sunday’s walk was at Pennington Flash, which is near Leigh. This has a huge lake (flash) as its centre piece as well as multiple walks and trails. The heavens opened as we arrived which meant we had get the waterproofs on, except poor Charlie, we forgot his coat. I didn’t know when we decided to come here the the Leeds Liverpool canal ran alongside the park, and we soon came across it as we walked. This narrowboat was the first thing we came across when we got on the canal bank, but this image I took on our way back to the car. I like this image and decided it was going to be a square crop with the boat right in the centre. All elements within this image draw your eye through and give it a sense of movement through, if you didn’t know any better you’d think it was moving away from the camera. I like this image.
I wondered what these were as we walked up to them, and then suddenly realised that they are old lock gates. I’m not used to seeing them out of a lock and usually submerged in water. I did try a number of different angles to try to include some of the canal to give extra context but that just made the composition a bit muddled. Plus it was raining hard at this point so I decided this would have to be done on another visit.
My Monday shoots tend to be in the hills more often than not, and this last Monday was no exception. The road between Holcombe Brook and Helmshore cuts through a section of countryside that I had spotted a good few weeks previously, so I decided to check out the hills above the road. The OS Map showed that a layby existed across from the entrance to Buckden Wood, so thats where I headed. There are several trails according to the OS map but I wanted to get to the highest point, so straight up I went. I hadn’t gone very far when I spotted this scene. It’s a funny image in that you dont expect to see a bath in this sort of location. Although if you’ve been walking for any length of time you will have come across this scene quite a few times. Bath anyone?
Once I got to the top of Beetle Hill, I could see on the OS map that there was a monument, and this image is of Pilgrims Cross monument. This image shows the monument in the wider landscape, which I quite like. I’ve already set out that the December challenge is a black and white challenge, coupled with the request from Chris sale for me to start to use black and white images more when shooting in the middle of the day. I have to say that the processing of black and white images isn’t second nature to me and I’m still experimenting. I do like the black and white version of this more than the colour.