Houses and gardens with style

After my not so successful photos from Nymans last month I returned on my next journey down to Sussex for another try.

The house and Nymans suffered a disastrous fire in 1947, destroying a lot of the internal structure. Some of the rooms were restored, but a large part of the building remains just a shell to this day.

My ultimate destination was West Dean College, where I was due to tutor a recorder course. Naturally my camera got some exercise there too, especially around the gardens.

Two early morning photos of the River Lavant from a stroll before breakfast.

I’ve photographed this huge curving sculpture before but this time I got really close to accentuate the lines - my camera was just a couple of inches from the end of the structure!

A ghostly self portrait under the arch in the garden. In a couple of months time this will be covered in climbing plants.

During our morning playing session my group of recorder players gave me permission to capture a slow motion group portrait, which took forty minutes!

After lunch on Saturday I explored the glasshouses. The first image looks quite bare at the moment, but these strawberry and peach plants will soon be covered in fruit.

A much more verdant scene in one of the tropical glasshouses.

Photos taken 10 & 11 March 2023

Surprises in every negative

Pinhole photography is an unpredictable art at the best of times and sometimes things don’t go to plan. On this occasion a glitch with my camera during a stroll around the grounds at Nymans let me with much stronger vignettes than usual on my photos.

Several of my photos were unusable as a result, but in some cases I really like the dramatic fall off of light - every cloud has a silver lining!

Photos taken 25 February 2023

St Audrie's Bay

Have you ever had one of those days when you can’t quite decide where to go? I had just that experience in Somerset earlier this month and my solution was to open up Google maps and see what jumped out at me. AS luck would have it, this led me to rediscover a pin I’d dropped in the app last year marking St Audrie’s Bay as somewhere I should visit - problem solved!

My reason for saving the location was the waterfall which tumbles off the cliffs there. I’d seen photos which had piqued my interest so I parked up at the caravan part on top of the cliffs and began picking my way down the steep path to the beach. It’s a private beach, but the owners of the caravan park don’t mind welcoming visitors and on this winter morning I pretty much had the place to myself.

The only access from above is a rocky pathway down the side of the cliffs so I was amazed to find a lot of man made structures (albeit in an extreme state of weathering) dotted along the beach. I can only assume the raw materials must have been brought in by boat many decades ago in a futile attempt to tame the sea.

The waterfall comes from a stream which runs down the hillside and simply falls over the edge to the beach below. During the summer months it often disappears entirely, but the recent rain ensured a steady flow of water, which I made the most of in my pinhole photos.

The beach was riven with streams of water, heading for the sea, so I was very pleased I’d put my wellies in the car. To get this photo I was sitting on a small man-made stone wall with my feet in a stream, while shooting in the opposite direction across a rock pool - I couldn’t have done that if I’d be wearing shoes!

I was fascinated by the rock strata breaking through the beach - a very visible glimpse into the way the earth’s crust is pushed and pulled by the forces beneath.

This may look like a deep chasm, but it’s only about 4 inches deep - the magic of getting down really low and really close with a pinhole camera!

I’d brought my large format pinhole camera along too, which gave me a different perspective on the beach’s features, both natural and manmade.

Photos taken 3 February 2023

When things don't go to plan

During my recent visit to Somerset I made a diversion to Weston-super-Mare to walk along the Grand Pier and take some pinhole photos. Well, that was the plan!

I arrived around 2pm and wandered along the beach from my car, making photos whenever the fancy took me.

Who knew mud could sink?!

I inadvertently walked into my own photo with this one (I’m the shadowy figure on the right) - one of the dangers of wide angle photography!

Beneath the pier, enjoying its structure.

The days are now getting longer so I figured I’d have at least an hour on the pier when I arrived there at three o’clock. Sadly that wasn’t to be. They’d already half pulled the shutters across and were actively encouraging people to leave so my stroll along the pier with a fish and chip supper to follow was not to be!

To make up for the disappointment I continued my explorations, heading out of town along the seafront, where I found some dramatic views across the harbour.

Further on I found Weston’s other pier - the Birnbeck Pier. This one has seen better days and is slowly crumbling into the sea, but somehow that made it even more photogenic!

Photos taken 2 February 2023

Six days later...

While I was away in Somerset recently I left my little Puck pinhole camera on the windowsill of my study, capturing life on our street over the course of six days. It uses photographic paper to capture the scene, so lots of light is needed. Fortunately, the sun came out from behind the clouds during my absence so, while people walking down the street are invisible, you can clearly see the path of the sun across the sky.

Photo taken 1- 6 February 2023.

St John's in colour

While visiting St John’s Church in Duxford recently I took the opportunity to finish off the roll of Kodak Portra 400 film I had left in my pinhole camera from Christmas. When I arrived the sky was cloudy but those clouds swiftly parted, allowing sunlight to flood into the church - what a wonderful sight!

These shafts of sunlight threw some beautiful pools of light onto the floor and walls of the church - such a magical effect.

Click on any image to see it enlarged.

Photos taken 27 January 2023

Out and about in Duxford and beyond

A couple of weeks ago I visited St John’s Church in Duxford once again, this time with two of my pinhole cameras in my bag. I started in the church, using my large format camera to capture some beautiful views of the way the light falls on this wonderful ancient building.

I also took a view of the exterior, although unfortunately it features a curious smudge - I can only assume it’s a quirk created by a problem with that particular darkslide containing the sheet film. One of the joys of film photography - you never quite know when it’ll go wrong!

From there I decided to take a stroll around the rest of the village, using my 6x9 camera to photograph sights which caught my eye.

Click on any image to see it enlarged.

A brace of self portraits - one as I enjoyed lunch in the local cafe, and the second in one of the village’s many handy footpaths.

With a few frames of film left over I departed Duxford and went in search of somewhere to use them up. I was surprised and delighted to find a ford crossing a quiet lane near Hinxton.

Soon after I stopped there a car went racing through the water, creating a spectacular bow wave. That made me realise a passing vehicle could make a good pinhole photo so I set up my tripod out of reach of any splash and mounted my large format camera. Ten or fifteen minutes later no more cars had come through so I was about to give up when as Sainsburys delivery lorry camera along the road. He slowed down by me and I noticed his window was open so asked if he might be willing to hang on for a few seconds so I could set my tripod up again. He kindly agreed and when he slowly drove through the water I opened my shutter. The result isn’t as dramatic as the other car, but his cautious technique probably allowed me to capture a greater sense of movement.

Eventually I ended up in the village of Hinxton where the low winter sun was illuminating the church beautifully. I used my final sheet of large format film to capture this and then headed inside. There I managed just one successful image before the sun dropped below the nearby buildings so I took that as my cue to head home after a successful day’s photography.

Photos taken 27 January 2023.

Last Christmas

One of the quirks of film photography is that delay between taking pictures and seeing the developed negatives. I’m able to minimise this by developing my black and white film at home now, but colour films still have to be sent off.

Over Christmas I popped a roll of colour film in one of my pinhole cameras to take some festive long exposures and I finally completed the roll a couple of weeks ago. The negatives arrived back while I was away in Somerset so I’ve only just had an opportunity to scan them and see how my experiments turned out. Two of them were long exposures of our festive meals, on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

I took a pair of similar photos as we unwrapped our Christmas presents on the two days - one from a high vantage point and one from a much lower perspective.

My final experiment features some of the baubles on the Christmas tree, albeit with a twist. I made a double exposure, with a change of composition between the two shots so the final image shows both views. Making double exposures is an unpredictable affair, but I’m pleased with the way this one has turned out - enough to encourage me to have a go with some different subjects in future.

Photos taken 25 & 26 December 2022

Glancing back

Although we’re now firmly into 2023 I still haven’t share all my photos from 2022. This final set is a collection of pinhole images from a visit to West Wittering beach on the afternoon of Christmas Eve.

Having spent the morning in the dark confines of the yew trees at Kingley Vale it was great to be out on the open beach, with more light to play with. I’d come armed with my wellies so I could be fairly brave in how close I got to the waves, and I just avoided the water overtopping by boots.

A closer look at the structure of the groynes

This flag warns off would be swimmers but I don’t think there would have been too many that day!

Getting down low among the marram grass.

I’ve often wondered what these posts set into the beach are for - I’m no closer to finding the answer!

Click on any image to see them enlarged.

Photos taken 24 December 2022

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