Life Observed

Oh dear me. Minus one on the way to work this morning.  A proper negative number. The freezing fog hangs over the empty fields like a giant frozen  foggy  thing . I find myself wondering maybe the Winter tyres should finally go on the car? Should I wait for proper snow to arrive? I learned a lesson last November: Cheap Winter tyres may be great on snow and Ice but they are not at their best unless it is properly cold. 

Yes, "f8 and be there" used to be the old press photographer's saying. There's a lot of truth in that. You have to be there to get the picture. Here's my behind the scenes picture for the sumer sunrise I photographed in June. It was a huge effort to be there at 4:30 am and I did indeed set the lens to f8... But the rewards justified the hard work...

Summer Solstice: The Longest Day, or very near to it.  This is the time of year I force myself to get up at 4am and head off to the top of a hill to photograph the sunrise. What a magical experience it always is. How does the sun know it should be exactly there at exactly this time. Amazing. This is the smallest of several unprintable panoramas  I made this morning. I don't seem to learn from my mistakes. BTW. Click on the picture to see a larger version.

First movement, first breeze, Silent sky: Empty trees The first bird, the first flight First cloud, first light.

Aaah, the P+S camera. The Point and Shoot camera, that is. Much derided and scorned by real photographers. I keep one in the car. It's an early Olympus fixed lens item, three megapixels, from 2004. It was £120 new but you get them on ebay for ten pounds or less. However it still takes great pictures, in it's own way. So, driving to a job first thing yesterday I was much impressed by the clear blue sky and the sunrise, so I grabbed a sequence of shots out of the car window. Aperture: f2.8 to f6. Speed, about seventy miles an hour.   P+S. Pick it up. Point it and Shoot. Simples.

Atmospheric early morning pictures take some planning . Without proper planning they can involve driving around country lanes like a maniac at dawn in search of the right light and the right scene. The problem is that the best lighting is to be had just before sunrise, as with this first image. It is the all important misty element that gives the image its depth , and although mist appears to hang motionless upon the air *, in fact it is always on the move. So if you spot a spectacular scene, by the time you have parked the car and walked back to the gateway, it's quite likely the image is vanishing before your very eyes. All the time the sun is rising and washing the magic away... Who said landscape photography is easy? *Echoes

When did you last see a great sunrise? By "see a sunrise", I mean standing in one place and waiting for the sun to appear over the distant horizon. Its a truly magical experience and a great photo opportunity. To arrange to get a picture like this poor example requires distinct strategy.   First of all you need to have a particular site in mind that has an uninterrupted view to the East and North (or some other direction if you are in that other hemisphere).  I can't help you there, you need to do some site scouting. Next you need to know exactly when the sun will rise and in exactly which direction. For these second tasks I suggest the Photographer's Ephemeris. Its a fancy bit of software that tells you where the Sun and Moon are in the sky at any time and place of your choosing. Now you need to start paying attention to the weather forecasts. I start with a synoptic chart like this one . You are looking for a large high pressure settled over t...

Aah. The English Lakes. A mighty fine part of the country, wrought by glacier, time and tide. We had a nice break there one summer recently and went in search of a suitable hotel for our first night, near Kendal. We booked one of those Travelthing premier lodge generic hotels, and then set about finding exactly where it was. It turns out we were staying at the Killington Services on the M6, which did not appeal at all. Ah well, we paid the money and its only one night.Well, let me say I have never been so pleasantly surprised. It is set well back from the motorway and backs on to a moorland reservoir, with a fabulous view out of the back. I woke with the dawn and poked the nose out of the bedroom window - and this is the view.... Not exactly Watford Gap, eh? So, dear reader. I could have told you I did a 15Km hike up Scraggaw,  set up my bivouac overnight at 1500 feet, abseiled down the Devil's Groin with my five by four plate camera  and wooden tripod to get thi...

We live close to a gravity stabilised unshielded nuclear fusion reactor . So close to it, that you can make out its disk in the sky. Surely this is clearly a risky strategy for a planet with a paper thin atmosphere* but I guess that's how its been for a few billion years. Midsummer Sunrise (a favourite subject of mine) at Hampstead Marshall, west of Newbury near the river Kennet. This giant and potentially lethal reactor rises above the horizon. Sunset, Spring Equinox. I once lived in a house where my view to the horizon between the houses was due west. Every year the Sun would set in the gap at the right time. How does it know it should do that, eh? Here is one from just last night. A January sunset from the end window at the office over North Hampshire. Our neighbourhood fusion reactor gives the clouds a golden lining, while the rooks perch in the tops of the trees to survey the scene. I confess have some previous form with nuclear fusion. My first...

Water can add a great deal to a picture. The perfect reflections of a pond or still stream, the violence of a winter sea storm, or a spectacular waterfall can all contribute to the feeling of place conveyed in an image. This first picture (rescued from tobacco excess) features a land drain on the Kennet flood plain at Hampstead Marshall. This was taken just before dawn at about 5 am on a lovely still day. Continuing the dawn and still water theme. This is the ford over the river Pang at Bucklebury in West Berkshire. These days the Pang is generally dry in the summer but I was fortunate to find the ford full and undisturbed. This classic small waterfall picture shows the river Swale below the bridge at Richmond, North Yorkshire. I used the conventional tripod and long exposure method to create the smooth look to the brackish water that drains the Dales above. Higher up into the dales we have the Old Gang Lead Mine in Swaledale. Here the remains of our industria...