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Chocolate Shadows
Chocolate shadows?
What colour are shadows, actually?
When I was a kid, and the only cameras available used actual film – no such thing as digital cameras then, oh no – you had to shoot in bright light. Well, not strictly true – but if you didn’t have the means to buy an expensive camera and an expensive film that could be used in low light, well, you simply had to shoot in bright light. That’s why so many of us have old black and white photos in our family collections that appear to be over-exposed, burned out or with far too much contrast between the blacks and the whites. Too much contrast and you loose the detail: those subtle textures and structures that lurk in the shadows.
In Beanley Wood
In Beanley Wood where I sat down
One day I sat in the wood…
Across the River
Across the River Breamish
The river moves, but it follows a path. When it tires of one journey, it rubs through some rock to forge a new way. Hard work, but that’s its nature.
Kekla Magoon
Cotton Grass
Cotton grass at Beanley Wood
I’d mentioned recently that the dominant yellows of early Spring were now being accompanied by reds, blues and whites in the valley. Well, other than the currently flowering hawthorn, if you want to see carpets of white you may need to climb a little higher and onto the heath land.
Stonechat
Stonechat at Harthope
Yipee! Since the UK Government’s easing of the ‘once-a-day exercise’ guidance I took the opportunity to make a visit to our sister valley: Harthope Valley. And, like the Breamish Valley, it currently looks stunning with the drifting mounds of yellow gorse:
The Red, White and Blue
Red, white and blue in the Dene
Early Spring in the Breamish Valley seems to be dominated by yellow: great stretches of coconut-smelling gorse follow the course of the River Breamish and now it’s showing up in the flower heads of the oil seed rape in the fields around us.
But other colours are now beginning to participate: reds, whites and blues in particular are now easy to spot.
All Pylon
Pylon works
Prior to Wednesday 13 May, when I was still doing my once-a-day exercise, I was still walking or cycling the same routes as I had the previous few weeks of the UK Lockdown. And, always attempting to see something new in the landscape to photograph – to offset that Groundhog Day feeling – I happened to see these chaps working on the pylons that pass through the Breamish Valley.
Some Little Birds
Little Birds in the Breamish Valley
Having been looking up and not failing to notice the larger long-legged herons and the bulky greylags flying over the Breamish Valley, I thought it was time to champion some little birds.
