I decided this week to make a start on the April 2024 challenge in the OneLandscape group. That was to reflect the change of season from winter to spring in a single image. Easy I thought, just take images of bluebells! Wrong, not sure why but my part of Greater Manchester has not yet had any bluebells bloom, at least not where I’ve been looking.
So this weekend we set off to Haigh Hall Country Park in Wigan, a new location for both of us. Sadly the world and his wife also decided to attend, but I guess thats you get for going out on the first nice day for ages. Having decided to not need my satnav, we overshot the main carpark by a good couple of miles and in the end we got there and managed to find a spot in the very rammed but huge car park.
This collection of images are a few from the 50 or so I shot as we explored this really nice location. Any thoughts of a bit of culture by looking at the Hall were squashed as soon as we got out of the car park, as the hall itself is undergoing some form of restoration. You will see the image in the set later on, it’s a building site at this point.
I’m a sucker for a good pond, this one is a pretty decent one and I do like the colour of the Lilly pads.
Pond alternative edit, and crop. I like the fact that you can see some of what is below the surface of the water.
This is my attempt at the change of seasons image so far. I like the vivid colours and I got really close in. This type of flower bed represent spring!
I walked into this as it hung down from the tree. I like the reds as they pop.
The research I did told me there was a narrow gauge railway, and that it was used for entertainment purposes. What I actually found as a disused track but this scene caught my eye, wonder what’s in that shed.
I really have no idea what these things are and what they were used for but I liked the look of them.
Not quite the cultural experience I had envisaged. This is Haigh Hall the building site years!!
Where do you think this leads to. I’m not the greatest fan of black and white images but I thought this scene works best as a black and white image.
I’ve been playing around with various film simulations on my Fujifilm x100V, and all of these images have a simulation as the basis for them, with some additional tweaks in Lightroom. I quite like the look of some of them, they have a muted colour palette and this is helping me think through how best to use colours, rather than just boosting vibrancy and saturation.