Life Observed

Upwey is a little village inland from Weymouth.  Weymouth is where the river Wey meets the sea, and Upwey is where the river Wey leaps fully formed from the ground at the foot of chalk downland. I suppose that makes it a spring line village. See: A free Geography lesson.

It is uphill, you are old and tired and it feels that the best of the day is behind you. We are all, if we care to think about it, on the Long Walk Home.

Weird white stuff. Something from earlier in the year: The snow, the sunshine and the clear sky produce white highlights and slightly blue shadows. It's a trick used by artists to reinforce the impression of snow in watercolours.

What could be more traditional than the humble anvil? The working tool of that magician of metal, the Village Smith. Even though it may seem that all anvils are the same, this is not true. They vary in detail depending on their application.  Take this one for example: It is a small model with a Hardy hole but no Pritchel and some odd variations. It is in fact a Farrier's Anvil and is quite small compared to the item in the local smithy. You don't walk your horse to the Smith any more.  These days the Farrier comes to the horse with a pocket sized gas forge in the back of his van.

More dull dismal weather. In fact it has been so dismal for so long that I ventured out with an off camera flash and a set of wireless triggers yesterday.  Here is a result. Not one of my better images I'm afraid.  Using this equipment properly brings with it the risk of looking like some sort of photo ninja :  You stand with legs splayed, bending forward. The camera is held between the legs at arms length down at ground level. The flash is held with your free arm high in the air aimed at the snowdrops.  To compete the effect you should shout " Eye-eeee-yaa " just before taking the picture. Well, that's what I do anyway.

As you see from the evidence below, Hampshire is experimenting with this new fangled  horizontal snow . Snow that arrives horizontally has several advantages. Rather than accumulating inconveniently on roads and roofs, it piles up on walls, posts and hedges. However there are clearly still some technical issues to address.

At last the days are getting longer. Sun sets at about five pm, so we don't work the final hour in darkness, always a depressing prospect. However just a couple of weeks ago we were in the grip of proper cold, and here is a picture I snapped then. Icicles. Aren't they great :-)

As you know, I do like life's little details. A long time ago a blacksmith made this iron latch for the churchyard gate. The bar is wearing well but time has not dealt kindly with this part, t he twisted wrought iron is pock marked with decades of rust. How many hands has it felt on it's gate, how many brides have there been?  How many infants has it brought in to church, how many coffins seen?

Catching the Easterly gales, this little cottage weathers the cold snap with some style: I've never had a thatched cottage. I wonder if they are actually that warm. Furthermore, the idea that the expensive and inflammable roof is home to all sorts of flora and fauna is a little disturbing.  You have to admit, they do look nice however.

Here is a favourite view of mine. For the past three years I have seen this view on the way to work each morning. Sometimes the spire is outlined against a blue sky, sometimes it is shrouded in mist. Every now and then, the churchyard is rendered white by the winter snow. Lovely. I shall miss our little village. BTW Blogger. There's nothing wrong with the word favourite. Stop underlining it.

Oh, timeless image of an old country church on a Winter afternoon. Is this an old church? Yes, most certainly, it dates from the Saxon era with long and short work. So, is this an old wall? No, I'm sure it's not as old as the church.  Well is the window old? Hmm. The masonry looks quite old. The version on the other side of the church is so crisp that it must have been replaced or restored. On that basis I guess it might be medieval. What about the leaded glass then? No, I'm sure that's Victorian. So, the old oil lamp... I suspect it's fake. It has been converted to electricity or perhaps it never was an oil lamp.  And the nice glow of an incandescent bulb? No, I'm afraid that is one of those new CFL lamps  Oh dear, nothing is as it seems, it seems.

Well, after three years in our rural idyll, the company will be leaving the rented barn in a little village for a modern unit on a small trading estate. I'm sure the heating, ventilation and general building design will be much more appropriate to a technology company, but we must leave behind views like this. We also leave behind the gentle rhythm of the agricultural year, closely observed. The farm lane, the horse paddocks and the old Saxon Church make a classic almost perfect image of an English country village. Long may it remain unchanged.

It was one of those crisp bright blue sky mornings. As I drove to work I saw rolls of mist curling over the Hampshire Downs. It was no surprise to arrive at work up on the hill in fog and low cloud and see the attenuated Sun low over the leafless tree. It was just a matter of timing, waiting for the right cloud to pass across the Sun. It's a scary thing, the Sun.  Here we have a huge gravity stabilised and unshielded nuclear fusion reactor right on our doorstop. It's so close we can see that it's a sphere not a dot. Just be thankful mother Earth has a magnetic field, eh? 

Down among the ivy, something stirs.  This strange inside out mushroom decorates the hedge next to the village sports field. Once again the low shot is courtesy of the fold out rear screen on the E-M5 camera. It may be poisonous. Fear not. The village children are in no danger: They never use the playground or the football pitches, I imagine they are all indoors with their tablets and iphones, protected from life's dangers. Apparently fungus is the hidden network infecting the ground. What we call mushrooms and toadstools are just the fruiting bodies of this unseen fungus.

Plenty of moss on this stone. Well, it isn't rolling is it? Actually it is the well cover on the village green and this odd angle was taken with the camera held high overhead using the rear screen to frame the shot. Another trick the E-M5 offers that would have been near impossible in the old film days. November sun provides the low angle lighting that emphasises the shapes and textures.

"I really wish I had asked for an en-suite room now..."

Another cheap trick to emphasise the depth in a picture is to use a low angle together with some feature in the foreground. In this case the folding rear screen on the E-M5 allows an old man to get the camera down on the floor, while a wide angle enforces the drama between foreground and background.

Here is a three shot panorama of the churchyard at Hannington. The old (Saxon) church is surrounded by a sea of leaves at this time of year. A splash of sunshine would have been nice, but we make do with whatever light we can get. Click on the picture to see a larger version. I took this using ISO 800 without a second thought. Low light holds no terrors these days the E-M5 camera delivers nice reasonable noise free pictures at ISO 800 of course. My old but classic E-1 would not fare so well. This is progress.

As a follow up to my previous post , here's an example of mist and fog adding depth to a picture. This three image panorama (click to see it larger) gives a better impression of the horse paddocks than a plain sunny day picture would.

We had a day of sunshine and showers this week.  I spotted this contrasting shot of white sunlit cottage with huge storm cloud from way down the street. I proceeded briskly* towards it in order to get better framing (so called foot-zoom method) and came up with this rather nice result. *"A gentleman should walk and never run".