Pictures & musings from Cheshire
Getting down low in Pott Shrigley, Cheshire. I liked the abandoned telecoms line heading up the side of the hill and ending with a cut off. This combined with a certain primitivist and abstract submersion in nature. The image has been toned to simulate the look of an old platinum print and some texture layers have also been applied to flatten out dynamic range.
The ‘top fields’ in Prestbury, Cheshire, a winter scene that was soon to be doused in snow. Trees are a favourite subject and I think I have said that many times before as I have rather a lot of pictures that prominently feature them. This image has been treated with orton layer effects and textures, an interesting way to cover blur anomalies in small details such as the moving branches and it has also been treated to give the effect of a platinum print.
A dramatic sky seen from the northwest coast of Britain. We often see stormy sky’s like this off our shores though this image has been slightly ‘dramatised’ with an HDR filter effect. I also wanted to add a texture layer to simulate the effect of the print on canvas. I loved the sunlight breaking through this bank of really very dense and quite menacing cloud.
Nikon D80, 50mm, 100iso, f2.8, 1/3000sec, August 8th 2013 – 18:50
Trees are a perennial favorite of mine, always a majestic and earth connecting subject. This photo was taken several years ago whilst out on one of my ‘all-day’ cycling treks around Cheshire. It seems to be surprisingly sharp considering that it was shot with a relatively cheap Sigma 10-20mm lens, actually this lens is not too bad at f4 and 8.
Nikon D80, 20mm, 200iso, f13, 1/100sec, April 8th 2010 – 17:30
A bit of urbex (Urban Exploration) or being in abandoned, dangerous, out-of-bounds or dilapidated places that one is really not supposed to venture into. I spent quite a lot of time exploring this long since abandoned house in a des res part of Cheshire. It has succumbed to many years of neglect, ingress of the elements, rot and fair few quite violent intrusions by other people. I found the experience to be both inspiring and also a little unsettling, the sense of this once being a lively and quite affluent home was still tangible and I couldn’t help wondering what had befallen its owner(s) – it is very unusual for real estate to be left or abandoned in this part of Cheshire as developers are quick to pounce on any available land and property owners sell their valuable assets as soon as they move on or when family member pass-away; it is quite a mystery.
The concept of urbex itself interests me greatly, in this age of photographic overload the urbex concept is one that manifests the possibility of of genuinely unique and engaging content, many urbexers seem to take great risks both physical and legal in order to get their pictures and I must admit that that all adds to the ‘value’ of the images obtained and shared. My work, however, is rather pedestrian in comparison to those who venture into abandoned military facilities and underground bunkers etc.
This picture was taken with bounce flash and I tried the colour pop as an experiment and liked it – so it stayed!
Trees are a perennial favourite of mine and I think they can often make very dramatic subjects or an interesting ‘focal’ point in a nature / landscape shot. I live in a very rural part of the country and so trees of many varieties tend to be abundant subjects. This picture was taken back in February hence the bare branches – I was impressed by the shape of the crown and the kink in the trunk. The idea of treating it with some rather laborious manual texture effects came to me later – originally I had it in Monochrome but I think the colour and texture has enhanced a certain surreal or even slightly other-worldly quality in the image and I quite like that.
Again, the original photo was taken with a vintage Nikon 35mm f2.8 AI lens which is pretty much never off my old D200 at the moment – a very nice and somewhat antiquated combo that.
