Life Observed

Autumn: Season of f og and pallid fruitlessness*. The fields haven't been very fruitful this year and the farmers are not happy. The poor yield has pushed grain prices up, so there is some small comfort there. Currently it looks too wet to put next year's seed into the ground. This was the scene in the village a few days ago. No sunlight, no shadows. No distinct outlines. But this is good. You can't buy lighting like this. Sorry about the f in fog.

Do Poppies do this on purpose? Is it part of their grand design? I think they look at a large and featureless field of wheat and say to themselves: "What this needs is a splash of colour right here " Whatever the reason, I was pleased to find this one patch of red on a quarter mile spread of crop alongside the footpath yesterday. BTW. This view is what remains of this field after the harvest monster has been.

I took the wrong road to work recently. The right road is shorter but uglier, while the wrong road leads over the downs and through rural fields. I sometimes do this on glorious sunny mornings (remember them?..) when I expect it to rain for the rest of the day. It's a kind of mental recharge before the day's work begins. I stopped with the camera for five minutes R+R and this backlit crop framed by a hedge caught my eye. Lovely!

These are the weeks when the cleared fields turn into geometric shapes, showing the wheat stalks arranged in the lines made by the seed drill way back last Autumn. Towering over them are box shapes made by giant straw bales.  In days gone by you could pick up a bale by the two lengths of twine, and with a push from your knee you could get it up on to a trailer or a wall. Not any more.  No, you have to get out the old Matbro loader to move these babies.. .

Sounds like a folk festival. No, it's a field of wheat waiting its turn with the combine harvester. In this case I have given the picture the Orton treatment to sprinkle some magic dust on an otherwise conventional scene. I also narrowed the depth of field with a layers and layer mask trick that I've used before to focus attention on the cereal crop.

I finally managed to catch one of the local combine harvesters in action. Monsters like this Lexion 600 (at one time this was the most powerful combine in the world apparently) can cut nine meters at a pass and move at a brisk walking pace. The corn lorry has its job cut out keeping up with the process. Another sign of the times is the process that occurs at the blunt end of the combine, where I noticed a larger than normal cloud of dust and chaff. In years gone by farmers would simply burn the straw (which is now illegal) or bale it for bedding. Straw is not very valuable and these days it is often not worth baling and moving. This combine has a straw chopper and spreader in the rear, so there is no sign of a swath behind the machine.  There is nothing to collect, burn or bale. In fact the straw will get ploughed back into the ground as added nutrient for next year.

The recent rain brought the harvest to a temporary halt, and for a moment you could see fields lying half cut all around the village. You can't work when the soil is wet, the combine harvesters prefer firm ground. If the crop has too much moisture it may germinate in storage which is also a bad idea. With this picture I was looking for the right lighting, the combination of three colours and  of course, the shapes left by the combine. This enforced pause won't last long. As soon as the moisture has subsided the big machines will be back. Here's a panorama of the valley near the village one morning. The graceful lines of straw left by the harvester serve to emphasis the sweep of the ground. Click for larger version...

It seems to me that the harvest has come around early this year,. Some of the local fields were cleared in late July while others stand golden and ready to cut. It makes you wonder just how many grains of wheat there are in a field like this. Answers on a postcard please... The local farmers use agricultral contracters with their huge harvesters which can cut and bale a whole filed in a single day. Scarey stuff, especially down the local narrow country lanes.

Here's something that shouldn't be there. Hidden in the monoculture of the wheat field is this interloper... I would keep my head down if I were you, mate. That crop looks almost ready for the combine harvester. No deep message here, just a shot taken for a laugh...

Here's a mean and moody shot of a storm threatened crop.  Well, all is not quite what it seems, as I took my portable sunshine with me and created the mood myself. It was an overcast day, but I felt the look needed enhancing. This is a standard strobist trick. I used an off camera flash to put light down onto the corn from overhead, giving the look of a shaft of sunlight. It is then just a matter of adjusting the flash power and the camera exposure so that the background goes dark while the foreground is over-lit. The trick can also be used in a more subtle manner. In this case the post box has a small splash of light to lift it, while the background is once again allowed to be dark and brooding. In addition to the lighting trick, narrow depth of field also separates the post box from it's background.

The generic term for cereals here in the UK. This is wheat, I think. here in the South, there has been enough rain for a decent harvest. I guess the farmers will now be in search of dry weather to ripen everything, then more dry weather to be able to harvest it. This constant worry about the weather and the fluctuations in prices and Government policy probably explain why farmers are rarely happy.. .