A walk in the woods

One hot summer’s afternoon I decided that if I was going to have my daily walk it would need to be somewhere shady, so I headed for Alsa Woods.

Naturally I took a camera along and on this occasion I decided on some slow photography. I had no fixed ideas about what I wanted to photograph, but just kept an open mind and looked for interesting subjects and views through the woods.

There was barely a breath of wind but I wanted some movement in this photo, so I created my own by blowing across the leaves during the 45 seconds the shutter was open!

A ghostly self portrait on the footbridge crossing the M11 motorway.

I intended to take another ethereal self portrait sitting on the tyre swing, but I found a teenage boy sitting on it next to his bike. It struck me this might be even better than my planned photo and fortunately he didn’t mind me including him in the photo!

Photos taken 24 June 2023

A misty Welsh morning

My thrice yearly visits to Wales always offer some lovely photographic opportunities and it’s wonderful to see the area around Llanerchindda Farm in different seasons. During my recent visit we had one particularly misty morning so I took my camera along for my brisk walk to the Cynghordy Viaduct and back.

Photos taken 9 May 2023

Murmuration in training

At this time of year our garden is often invaded by a large flock of starlings. We see them murmurating over the road behind out house in the winter - just a few dozen birds - nothing like the huge displays you see by the coast. By late spring this year’s youngsters have fledged but are still happy to noisily demand food from their parents when they can get away with it.

I was doing some gardening when they arrived en-masse so I left what I was doing to top up the suet ball feeder and to throw a few handfuls of mealworms on the ground. This was enough to keep them happy and allowed me to quietly sneak closer with my camera and sit on the ground nearby.

This garrulous gathering were so focused on their food that they barely noticed me creeping down the garden path, allowing me to get within a couple of metres of them, sitting on the ground in plain sight.

Click on any of the images to see them enlarged.

This youngster was so oblivious to me that it landed on the edge of the bird bath about four feet from me!

Our unruly visitors were so noisy that many of our other garden visitors stayed away, but it didn’t take long for them to return when something spooked the starlings and sent them fleeing, however briefly.

Mrs Blackbird foraging among the wildflowers.

Judging by his threadbare tail I think our visiting robin has been busy raising a family and he or she is looking rather worse for wear!

Photos taken 29 May 2023.

Photos as slow as nature

Following on from the digital photos from my Christmas Eve visit to Kingley Vale I can now share the pinhole images I took that day. Pinhole photography is a slow process at the best of times, but in the low dark spaces beneath the ancient yew trees some of my photos seemed to take almost as long as the trees did to grow!

I had a feeling the creeping forms of these trees might be a great subject for the otherworldly look of pinhole photography and I think my gut instinct was right. I’d be interested to see the same trees with some low, raking winter sun, but the overcast conditions were almost certainly easier to manage from a photographic point of view.

Click on any image to see it enlarged.

The ground was pretty bare beneath the trees but this fern caught my eye as an ideal subject for some close up photography.

My favourite tree is definitely this one, whose branches stretch endlessly outwards.Even my super-wide angle pinhole camera couldn’t encompass its full reach!

Photos taken 24 December 2022