Inspired my 'off piste' walk the other day I returned to take a look down a different lane. On my way to the parking spot I passed some sheep activity and after leaving my car ambled back for a look. The action was over by the time I got to sheep land but at least I got to photograph a few lambs. No substitute for attending the autumn sheep sales, but still...
Retracing my steps I went down the lane I had in mind to investigate. Amazingly I'd never been down it before and it was a different world. On the edge of the mosslands it is more wooded and winding. I came a cross an off gate post decoration and made a couple of pictures. They looked okay on the back of the camera but back home I realised I hadn't made as good a job of hiding background distractions as I thought I had. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would have cloned the offending dark blob out in Photoshop but that's not my way.
I went back a couple of days later to make a better job of it.
A little further on the lane ends but the OS map shows a footpath continues on through a farmyard. On the first visit I didn't have time to go through as the circular route back to the car would have taken more time than I had spare. On the second visit I'd made allowance and braved the obstacle course of wagons, tractors and potatoes.
It's the sort of busy place where it would be prudent to ask permission to take photographs, but I did take one which has been in my mind for some years. The large wooden crates which potatoes get transported and stored in have always struck me as photographable.
Through the yard there were trailers lined up, some with crates on. The kind of thing I could happily spend half an hour snapping away at. I know. I'm easily pleased.
At this time of year there are always potatoes to be seen lying on the roads having fallen from the wagons they are being hauled in. Getting pictures of them on a busy road with traffic zooming past is more of a risk than it's worth. So far I'll settle for this lonely and forlorn spud in the middle of a farm track.
The rest of the route covers ground I have walked a time or two before and doesn't offer me much in the way of fresh subject matter. However I did get a picture of a turf field which I think is an improvement on previous attempts. It's minimalistic, which is the idea, but the wood provides a stop for the eye and there's a tree placed centrally which stands out from the rest, albeit subtly.
Later in the week I extended a late afternoon walk to catch the second post and passed some more potato harvesting. I was ill-equipped in the lens department so tried again the following day, but with little more success.
With the salad crops all but harvested there isn't much to see on the part of the moss I've been looking at over the summer and with autumn underway and winter approaching it'll be root crops which are the main focus of field work. Hence my seeking out potatoes to keep me interested.
Although concentrating on farming pictures at the moment I still keep an eye open for pictures which fit my other projects and themes, or which strike me as worth taking The light on this wall has caught my eye before but on this occasion I saw how it was striking the church spire. The church project is sort of still ongoing so I had a go at lining up the spire and the poles so they fell between the railings.
Not a project as such but patterns on tarmac still interest me.
Why people struggle to find things to photograph in their own locality baffles me. I can only imagine they have set ideas of what makes a picture worth taking. That mindset must come from somewhere. I guess it used to be the popular photographic press and now it's the multitude of Youtubers allpushing the same aesthetic. I look at a few, usually landscape or street, photography vloggers now and then. Within both genres the pictures are almost indistinguishable. And the advice sometimes garbage.
I watched a bit of one who had got viewers to send pictures for criticism. He then proceeded to 'edit' them. He meant 'process', obviously but it's a lost battle trying to change the new meaning of 'edit' in this digital age. On two pictures I watched him butcher he placed an element exactly on a third because it 'improved' the composition. One had been taken on an angle and that had to be straightened. I thought doing that actually messed the whole thing up. Then he was cloning things out and boosting contrast. A bit of a horror show. So bad I can't remember (don't want to) the vlogger's name!
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