Thursday 24 December 2020

One project wrapped up

Much to my surprise I got the bug to complete my look at all teh bridges and locks on the canal. I had to contend with the weather and light again. either bright and in my face or deadly dull and wet. But I pressed on and got it done. There's still some mileage in a canal project if I can find a way 'in' and get motivated. Here is a Flickr slideshow of the locks and bridges in numerical order, which is not the order I photographed them.

Locks and Bridges

It was an interesting exercise in a number of ways. Planning it out, looking for pictures and evaluating the not-so new lens. I'm glad it is only a short canal as I'm pretty sure I'd have got bored if it had been much longer and wandered off, metaphorically, to photograph something else. It also got me out of the rut of walking the same routes around the moss and seeing the same old stuff. A change being as good as a rest.

Not often did I feel the lens limiting. When I did I reached for the wide zoom. Or on one occasion when I put the wrong lens on my second body a standard zoom. As I suspected, 24mm is usually plenty wide enough when I need wider than 35mm. I think the cull has been decided. Although why I keep hanging on to my collection of single focal length lenses has more to do with clinging to an idea than a practical choice. The idea of doing it 1970s style with two focal lengths on the bodies and two more in the bag is a romantic dream. One (almost) superzoom is an easier option!
 
I've tried to progress the on/off night time project without any success. I thought Christmas lights might make it worthwhile venturing out after dark, but they didn't. Or I failed to make anything of them. The best pic I managed was of a dog poo bin.

With the canal pictures boxed off and no great ideas how to take that subject any further, until the days lengthen, it was back to the moss and meanygates. Not much had changed along my usual route, but sprouts were being cut one dismal afternoon. No doubt heading towards Christmas lunch tables.

 

A sunny but cold Christmas Eve tempted me and a few other people outside. Having managed to get out fairly early I set off for a slightly longer trudge not expecting to see much new in the area I've not visited for some time. How wrong I was. There is a serve yourself produce stall which wasn't there before. I guess the increased pedestrian traffic from locked-down folk who don't usually go walking about the meanygates prompted this to spring up. It's not the first I've seen appear locally this year.

I'd seen some machinery loitering in a field for some weeks but took that as a sign its work was done, so hadn't bothered taking a look at it. That was the case but thanks to the sodden land there were still remnants of the carrot crop to make it clear what had been harvested. A few more pictures got added to the files.



While poking about the carrot field I saw some bright red figures approaching in the distance. As they got closer I left the carrots and headed in the walkers' direction. It was a cheery surpise to find Mrs Claus and two of her elves taking a stroll. I guess Santa had set off on his journey and their work was done for another year!

 
This may be a short post, both in words and pictures (although there are fifty odd in the slideshow) I feel like I've achieved quite a bit lately. Maybe not taken any great pictures or advanced my photography, but getting the canal mini-project done felt good.
 
The editing of meanygate pictures has gone quite well and I'm now at the zine designing stage. More of a selection and sequencing stage, I suppose. I've got a cover and title sorted for the geometric crop pictures and have done a first draft selection which revealed some shortcomings in my first edit of pictures. I'll need to go take some out and bring some more back in to get the feel to the zine I'm after. Provisional cover below.




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