Life Observed

The tail end of another year. Finally the days are getting longer. There's just by a minute or two extra to start with, but the improvement gathers pace through January.

Here's an odd thing. I wonder what befell this tree, alone and bare among its fellows this summer. (Click on the picture to see the full width version composed of four images stitched together). This view would capture the imagination of a landscape photographer, and makes him dream of returning at midnight with camera and tripod to capture the scene by moonlight. Unfortunately that kind of activity could get you arrested. This is private land, owned by a school.

Winter on the Berkshire downs. The low sun lights the chalk fields and the last of the leaves. You need to take care when the sun is this low. I may have got part of my shadow in this shot, but I think we can ignore it.

Will it snow? That is the question.  I had a nasty moment with my recently fitted cheap Winter tyres last week. As a result I took them off again and fitted fresh Summer rubber. In the same way that Summer tyres are no good on ice and snow, then Winter tyres are no good when the temperature is above 5 degrees. So, the tyres wait in the garage. The daily question remains, will it snow?

Philip's friends stood around for years waiting for him to return. It was all a bit of a mystery.

Well, the big storm, long predicted, swept over perfidious Albion this week leaving leaves and twisted trunks in its wake. At work a small tree fell prey to the forces of nature, but the rest of the wood seems OK. This shot was taken with a camera that dates from the five megapixel era with a modest autofocus lens I bought on ebay for £12. You don't need the latest and greatest if the lighting is right.

This is that time of year when woodland show its true shape. Outlined against the sky you see the bones of each tree. Thousands of twigs combine like some giant fractal to divide and sub divide the trunk to a feathery prominence. I can't wait for the days to lengthen and the leaves to return, in the meantime we appreciate the bones in the sky.

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? 

Further to my previous discussions , another way to indicate depth is to include something in the picture that the viewer will understand as being very three dimensional.  Here is a good example. It is Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber's front drive, and you will recognise the depth cue because I'm sure it looks a lot like your own front drive. In this case the impression of depth is enhanced by the use of a wide angle lens, by the receding scale of the leaves and trees and finally by the morning mist that mutes the distance towards grey. In fact this picture has most of the depth cues that nature offers.

Well it certainly was blustery yesterday, here are the Big Trees with their leaves all bent back. This is just the sort of weather that brought down Owl's House and meant that Eeyore had to go in search of a replacement house for him, if you recall* *Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. In the original book by A.A.Milne, not that wretched Disney film.

They cut down the smaller trees in this hedge and piled them up untrimmed. I suppose this makes a microclimate or supports the macroenvironment or attracts a European grant. Either way the bark has started to peel making for an appealing scene down at ground level. Catching pictures like this can prove challenging to the older photographer surrounded by nettles, but we persevere in the face of adversity.

Looking for all the world like some Mediterranean scene, this churchyard Yew frames the steeple and the lovely clear sky. This tree was trimmed severely last year, just leaving the trunk and thick branches. Once it got over the shock, it has set about sprouting new growth from more or less everywhere.  I can't imagine what shape it will be in fifty years. There's a thought.  Yews are slow growing and notoriously long lived. Does it look down at me each day and say to itself "You might have invented the wheel, war and the atomic bomb, but I'll see you out"

I must have words with the Estate Staff clearing this woodland.  Don't get me wrong: I do appreciate the nice even spacing of these huge bonfires that have been burning steadily for a week now. I also like the way their smoke leads the eye towards the thinned trees. No, I must tell them they need to place the fires just a little further from the trees to create the best composition. I can see what they are trying to say, but it's just a little crowded for my tastes. Tsk! People can be so unartistic sometimes... Actually I missed a fantastic photo opportunity here last week with dusk fires and smoke, but in photography there's always one that got away...

I know it's still January, but it seems like a long Winter this year.  We finally had our first thin layer of snow today but the days are getting longer, and it is light at five most evenings. However there's a long mountain to climb until it's Spring. So here as compensation are some bare twigs I false coloured earlier.

Yesterday's post dealt with nanoseconds. Here is a picture of a solid state data log that measures in centuries: This huge but healthy tree was blown over in the gales recently and was sawn up to recover the paddock where it fell. Careful ring counting shows that this monster was about one hundred and twenty years old. It remembers Queen Victoria, the first motor car, the invention of the flying machine, Penicillin and the Atom Bomb and more wars than you can shake a stick at. It is only fitting that such a heritage be presented in sepia tint .

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

The Winter gales proved too much for this monster. Fortunately it fell in the paddock and missed the resident horse. It seems to me that tree roots are clearly not big enough. When they fall over like this, they reveal just how puny the root system is compered to the height of the tree. Someone should explain basic mechanics to them.

I know that trees can look great in Autumn , but I think you only get to see trees properly in the depth of Winter. It is only then, stripped of foliage, that they reveal their true shapes. How do they manage to look so random yet so regular? Each tree seems similar but they are all individual.  This example has clearly been experimenting with fractal mathematics... I shall call it Julia.

A biting cold westerly wind greeted me yesterday on by short walk round the village. Westerlies are not generally cold, so there must be something odd going on up there. Here's a big sky picture aided by my new ultrawide* lens . If you place the horizon at the bottom of the frame, then the view at the top of the frame is almost directly overhead. I rather like the range of colours in this one. Even at this time of year the Sun can still show the promise of warmth for the months to come. *If this lens were any wider, there would be a danger of getting your ears in every shot :-)

Artists will tell you that when the leaves drop, you are left with the true shape of the trees. Artists may also mention that it's a right pain trying to paint hundreds of twigs. It takes a real craftsman to paint a convincing winter tree. This is when you wish you had taken the impressionist route in your artistic career.. Anyway, it's a lot easier for us photographers, we just have to choose the right moment to portray the tree. Mist is your friend with trees, it adds depth to the view and places all those twigs against a plain background. In this case the misty start seemed to last all day.  By the way: My definition is this: If it is still misty at lunchtime (as below) then it isn't mist, its fog...