Colours ….. Begin with Blue

At this time of year, the most ubiquitous blue to be found is in the woods … the bluebell woods, of which there are many in this part of the world. The woodlands of the South West of England are awash with these deliciously scented flowers during April and May. And of course, it is impossible to resist taking photos of them ….

the less trodden path

I should warn you though, it’s not all blue in here! Occasionally, one happens upon the white amongst the blue …

the white amongst the blue

Sometimes, blue is the only colour you want …

one blue balloon

This blue house in Torcross in Devon, with its blue moped, was just perfect for taking a picture of.

red white and blue

Along the coast to Seaton we shall go, where they like blue boats …

three blue fishing boats

A bright blue spring sky, peppered with fluffy white clouds, backdrop to the rolling hills of Dartmoor … it’s a happy place to be …

in a happy place

Another blue boat, chugging out of Brixham Harbour on a bright spring morning ….

out of Plymouth

“Now listen to me, young man, for I know a thing or two about this fishing malarkey”, said the man in the blue hat and apron …

the old man of the sea

And finally, another shot of the sea, again from the lovely little Devon town of Seaton, one of our favourite places …

slowing down the waves

If you would like to see more of my photographs, then please pay a visit to my flickr page. I hope that you like what you find there.

[There is a lovely blogger whom I follow called Kim, whose site “Living Vintage” is full of wonderful photographs, and great vintage finds. She does a regular blog called “Friday Favourites”, where she focuses on a colour as the theme for all the images she shares. Mostly these are photos by other people which she likes and finds inspirational. I thought it might be fun to do something similar with colours, but using my own photos. I’m going to start with the primary colours, and go from there!! (If you’d like to take a look at Kim’s blog, and I recommend that you do, you can find it here … http://livingvintageco.com/ ).]

 

2016 — My Year in Photographs

A fascinating journey through a fellow photographer’s year.

WordandLightSmithing

I was going to do this back in January. I can hardly  believe it’s March already. How time flies. And other cliches. I thought it might be fun to look back at my photographs over the past year, and select which of them are my favourites for each month. Or, at least, the favourites as I select them now. After all, I might prefer others in a couple of months time.

January

In January, Lizzie and I went on one of our bi-monthly wanders. We washed up, as we often do, on the Jurassic Coast, flitting between Seaton, Sidmouth, Budleigh Salterton and other small bays and river mouths in that area. Here, we were at Sidmouth on a grey, showery day.  We wandered around light, with our small cameras for a change. I was struck by the misty distances and the softness of the light on the red cliffs. Yes…

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2016 … My Year in Photographs

I didn’t take nearly as many photographs in 2016 as I would have liked to. A promotion early in the year had rather a big impact on my Redheadwondering-photograph-taking-alter-ego …. Partly good …. I gave myself a present of a new Sony camera to celebrate …. Partly bad …. Work became so busy and intense that the time and energy I would have liked to devote to photography was sadly curtailed.

I am now, thankfully, well-settled in to my new work role, so my New Year’s Resolution is to redress the recent work-life imbalance, and spend a lot more time having fun, and part of that will mean spending more time taking a LOT more photographs!

I also hope to do more blogging, and I thought I would start off by “rounding off” the old year just gone, and share my year in photos, one for each month.

January, Ianuarius, door to the year …

January saw us start the year in travelling mood, with a trip to Sidmouth in Devon. It was chilly, but fun! Dark brooding skies abounded, yet we managed to take quite a few photos. I particularly enjoyed the colours of Devon, as the dullness of the days seemed to throw the red, earthy tones into sharp relief. For my first shot of the year, I’ve chosen an abstract rendering of a reflection I saw on Budleigh Salterton beach.

in mourning for drowned Cypresses

 

February, shortest month of the year and meteorologically, the last month of Winter …

Ah, February – the month that I was offered the promotion at work and, not being of a particularly patient bent, I decided that I couldn’t wait for the first pay cheque, and immediately bought myself a new camera to celebrate! (Thank you, Mastercard!!). At the first opportunity, we were off to Salisbury Plain. This delightful barn owl kindly posed on a fence post for me.

belonging to the night

 

March, named for Mars, God of War and guardian of agriculture, beginning of Spring …

One of the very enjoyable Flickr groups I am part of is “12 Months of the Same Image”, and this year, like the one before, I decided to use as my subject one of the lovely routes I can take to work. Consequently I took lots and lots of shots of this road to Rudge. I didn’t actually use this one for the March entry to the group, but I rather liked the other-worldly feel of this Kodak Ektachrome 100VS rendering from DxO Filmpack.

Wiltshire or another planet

 

April, it did put a spirit of youth in everything …

In April we took a trip to Devon, but this time we ventured to the north coast, rather than to one of our usual, more southerly haunts. After a trip to Woolacombe a while back, I became enchanted by the name of a nearby town – Westward Ho! (yes! It really DOES have an exclamation mark!!). We knew we’d have to visit there one day, and in April we did just that. We had the most glorious view from our apartment, which could not have been more of a “beach-front property” if it tried!! This is the view from the bedroom window. It was a fine sight to wake up to!

balcony triptych

 

May, month of potent blood …

Of the two of us, my husband is the one who most often photographs birds, as we wander around Salisbury Plain. He is so much better than I am at manual focusing quickly enough to catch the many lovely birds we see in our travels. In May this year, however, I too seemed to capture many of our feathered natives and visitors. (Note that most of them very obligingly sat on fences, or stood still in fields, long enough for me to get them in focus!). I managed to capture several swallows at rest (and lots of swallow-shaped blurs in flight). There were yellowhammers and goldfinches galore. I even had the good fortune to see a couple of great bustards and got close enough to get photos of stone-curlews, two species which are extremely rare. The bird I’ve chosen to share for my May picture though is very common: a corn bunting. Common it may be, but that does not detract from its loveliness. It’s a jaunty kind of bird, whose jangling song is an absolute delight to hear.

corn bunting and blurry sheep

 

June, when Summer begins and flowers bloom …

June was the month of wildflowers on Salisbury Plain. All around us, the Winter-etiolated grasses were replaced with greens of every complexion, and the flowers began to carpet the landscape. Blues and pinks, purples and yellows, reds and whites. There was one particular day in the middle of the month that was my “Wildflower Day”! I simply couldn’t stop photographing the flowers, and for a change (for me) the Sigma 28mm miniwide manual lens stayed on the camera, and macro after macro was taken. There are many flower shots on my Flickr photostream for June, but what is uploaded there is but a fraction of the hundreds of photos I took that day. The Umbelliferae in particular captured my eye and my imagination.

like a Victorian wedding bouquet

 

July, hot and sultry, my favourite Summer month …

We tend not to go on our travels in the Summer months, preferring our “holidays” to be quiet affairs, not interrupted by other tourists (or children on their school hols). July and August are usually the preserve of Days Out Locally, rather than Nights Away Further Afield. This July though, we couldn’t resist a sneaky trip to Dorset, just for a night, just for a two-day blast of seaside and sunshine. On our journey down to the coast, we wandered the roads of the New Forest. We stopped now and again to take photos, of course, and on one of these occasions, I put on our Sigma 50mm lens, because the heather and flowers looked so enticing. One of my favourite macros ended up being this close-up of one of the New Forest Ponies. These docile creatures are so accustomed to people getting up close and personal, that they barely bat an eye.

pony’s eye view

 

August, Lammas, time to start harvesting and feasting …

Although this year we didn’t have the hottest of Summers, come August, the world was turning golden, as fields of barley and wheat stretched all around, and mellow sunsets made the world feel warm and welcoming. One hazy evening on Salisbury Plain, my eyes were drawn to the lines in the barley, as they snaked off through the gold to the blue beyond.

the gold and the blue

 

September, when Autumn begins and love blossoms …

This is our anniversary month and we like to mark it with trip back to Devon. This time we stayed in Brixham, overlooking the sea. We were blessed with fine weather and there was no shortage of photography, nor interesting subjects. I even had the opportunity to do some experimenting with night photography, which was great fun. One of my personal favourites from this particular trip was a shot I took in Torcross, of the gift shop and the house next door. I couldn’t have set up a more pleasing shot if I’d tried. The combination of colours and shapes was, well, a gift.

red, white and blue take #1

 

October, the month where all the world turns red and gold and brown and the days grow shorter …

By October, I was really beginning to notice how little photography I was managing to squeeze in around the long days at work. I did manage to get out a couple of times to take advantage of 2016’s glorious Autumn colours. There’s another blog post all about Autumn in Wiltshire this year, if you care to read it! For my October picture though, even though it is of trees in all their Autumn glory, I’ve decided to share a black and white version. This little copse is one of the Charlton Clumps, on the northern edge of Salisbury Plain, and it’s one of our favourite subjects. There is something extremely pleasing about this little stand of trees – their shapes and symmetry provide no end of inspiration.

one of the Charlton Clumps

 

November, November, a time to remember …

And so we come to our final trip of the year, this time to Shropshire. Thirty years ago, my husband took me to Shropshire to visit his oldest friend. In 2016, we returned to this very pretty county, and spent a wonderful weekend by the banks of the River Clun. We saw our first snow of the year up on the Long Mynd, a wild and desolate place of such beauty, that I don’t want to wait another thirty years to visit it again.

a tiny tarn

 

December, Winter time and short days …

My final shot of the year is, quite aptly I feel, a sunset on Salisbury Plain. Happy New Year! Here’s to health and happiness and lots more photography in 2017!

light through yonder windows

Autumn in Wiltshire

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

George Elliot

Autumn this year has been particularly lovely here in Wiltshire. The colours are a rich blend of oranges and reds, russets and gold, ambers and ochres. On a Sunday evening in mid-October, driving around our local haunts, we saw the forest and countryside start to give a preview of the golden days to come.  I drive on this lovely road to Rudge quite often, as it is very close to my place of work, and on this particular Sunday, I had to stop and take a shot of the harvested fields.

The Road to Rudge

I liked the muted tones of this evening light, and the building clouds only added to the interesting sky. This road is the subject of my current “12 Months of the Same Image” project on Flickr, and when the year is done, I shall take you on another journey through the seasons. 

A week later, after a jaunt to Salisbury, I decided to come home across Salisbury Plain, for you never know when you might see something interesting there. It was clear that Autumn had well and truly arrived. One of my favourite copses (and there are many!) is this delightful little stand of trees near Charlton, quite perfectly known as one of the Charlton Clumps. I have taken so many photographs of it, in all weathers and seasons. I like it best when it’s stark and bare of leaves in Winter, but I was only too happy to capture it’s Autumnal outfit.

autumn comes to the clumps

I have a short, but very beautiful commute to and from work (which you can see many shots of on my Flickr page!), and this road, which meanders through the tiny village of Chisbury, is one of my favourite routes. It’s kind of a long way round for a shortcut, but it’s usually worth the extra five minutes of driving. There is nothing arduous about “commuting”, nor about having to be at work early, when one is able to see a sunrise.

a sunrise on the way to work

The only hard thing about a misty, golden morning like this, is not being able to just carry on driving, stopping to take photographs when something catches my eye! Or just stopping to look and be glad I live here.

sunrise touches leaves

This little avenue of oak trees is home to several jays. At this time of year, they are busy collecting acorns. One of these days, I’ll actually be quick enough to catch one with my camera! On this crisp morning though, the only things I captured were contrails and sun rays. I’m not complaining!

The winds this weekend will most probably denude a lot of the trees, so I am glad that yesterday was fairly bright along with the breezy, and we were able to roam and ramble in our mostly-leisurely manner around the Wiltshire countryside. I say “mostly”, because there was one brief episode of not the least bit leisurely motoring, as we hurtled along a very bumpy byway, in hopes of another sighting of the male Hen Harrier, who had just given us the most spectacular hunting display! Poor Fieldfares didn’t stand a chance against such a speedy and skilled Skydancer. He was far too fast for me to get a shot off, but my oh my, was he stunning. (If you’d like to read more about these beautiful birds, I can recommend the RSPB site!).

So no bird shots for me this week, but the trees in all their Autumn finery did not disappoint. This avenue which grows along the Chute Causeway is an echo of the ancient forest which used to cover these slopes and Downs. It’s definitely worth braving the cold Autumn wind for.

a sunlit avenue

If you would like to see more of my Autumn shots, please feel free to browse my Flickr album.

If you would like to purchase cards inspired by Wiltshire, please send me a message on my Facebook page.

You can take the girl off the farm …

I grew up on a farm, and although my family were not the farmers, the farmers were like my family. And the farm was my world, my playground, my home; it was the place where my daydreams came to life, and I could be whatever I wanted to be.

It was a proper, old-fashioned mixed farm. There were dairy cows, that were still milked by hand when I was very young, and there were beef cattle, which were locally butchered and then sold from the farm. There were pens full of piglets, reared for the table; and sheep bred for their meat and their fleeces. I remember watching the shearing, and marvelling at how the fleece came off in one piece, and the skinny little sheep looked so funny without all that fluff around them! Oh, and there were two huge hen houses and a big flock of hens, so we had a never-ending supply of fresh eggs.

Right outside the windows of our home, there was the most amazing fruit garden, with rows and rows of raspberries, which I still remember the taste of … two in the basket, one in the mouth! And alongside the raspberries, grew strawberries, gooseberries and rhubarb, all of which tasted wonderful and were made into the tastiest of jams.

There were fields of corn and barley, and acres of tatties and neeps (that’s potatoes and turnips to those of you not au fait with the Scottish vocabulary!). The farmer was a proper old-fashioned farmer, who loved his land and his “beasts”, and took care of them well; his wife was the perfect farmer’s wife – she baked and cooked and cared for her family, the real one and the “adopted” one (us!), with love and a no nonsense attitude.

Growing up on the farm was fun, it was an adventure every day. It was climbing on haystacks and riding on tractors; it was following the potato harvester through wet, pungent soil and filling my wire basket with tatties.

old Ferguson in a hedge

 

Trees were for climbing up and sweeping out of, on scarily high rope swings. And there were miles and miles of fields to roam around, dry stone dykes to clamber over and balance upon, and streams and burns to paddle in. There were masses of outbuildings and barns to play in… a girl could stay hidden from sight all day long, while she went about her games of make-believe.

old barn

Summers were long and hot, and nothing tasted better than tea out of a thermos flask and homemade cake, sitting in a field of stubble with my back against a newly-bound bale. (This was Scotland, so I’m sure that in actual fact it rained a lot. But it’s the sunshine and the smell of fresh cut hay that I remember when I think of summer on the farm.)

golden memories

 

I missed the farm, when I had to move into a town. I’ve always felt more at home in the country. And although I live in a town now, it’s a very old market town, which nestles in the Wiltshire countryside, and all around us is farmland. Everywhere I travel, everywhere I stop to take a photograph, I can see the handiwork of farmers, the product of their labours.

a fine sheep

 

I see herds of cows and flocks of sheep; I drive along byways hemmed in by fields of crops, or stretches of newly-ploughed earth.

wide wale corduroy

 

Around these parts there are plenty of pheasant and partridge farmers who grow their birds for the shoot, which many people abhor; but the abundance of fowl means an abundance of food for the birds of prey and the carrion-eaters, so that Red Kites and Buzzards can be seen hanging in the air and spiralling on thermals every day; carrion crows and rooks and jackdaws populate the skies by the score; and on still days, the distinctive “kraa” of ravens can be heard high above.

the perfect landing

 

There are fields of wheat and barley, which give the world a golden glow, and attract the crop-circle makers! There are great expanses of yellow oilseed rape, and small pockets of blue and purple, where linseed or borage are experimented with.

purple and gold on the road to Rudge

 

Alongside the cultivation of crops, run strips of carefully-stewarded land, where wild flowers grow, and birds and bees and butterflies can thrive.

a curve in the road

 

All of these things that I see as I go about my life in Wiltshire remind me of how much I love living in the country. You can take the girl off the farm, but you can’t take the farm out of the girl! Every day, I’m grateful that I live right here. But it’s harvest time that really stirs my memories of that long-ago farm. It’s when I see the combines at work, and grain pouring into trailers, or stacks of bales and lines of stubble, that I’m right back there, in my world, my playground, my home.

harvest time in the Vale of Pewsey

 

If you would like to explore more of the lovely countryside of Wiltshire, as seen through the eyes of this wandering, wondering redhead, then please come and visit my farming life album on Flickr.

If you would like to purchase cards inspired by Wiltshire, please send me a message on my Facebook page.

Inspired by Inshaw

I know that I had seen some of Inshaw’s work in the past, and had liked its mellow Englishness, but it was not until I started living in a home with Inshaw prints on the wall, that I really started to know his work. As I sit here and write, I raise my eyes and I can see his cricketers and his badminton players. It is the painting of the cricketers, with the gently rolling Downs and the little copse of trees on the hillside which I like the best, because, although he actually painted it in Dorset, it is reminiscent of Wiltshire, where he spent so much time, and from where he seemed to draw so much inspiration.

Living in Wiltshire, and seeing the beauty of the landscapes all around me, I am reminded of Inshaw’s paintings all the time. If you care to spend some time, wandering the roads and byways I travel, then I shall share some to that lovely, quintessentially English countryside with you ….

sun shine and cloud shadow

The Road to Rudge (which I shall, one day, write more about), with its golden fields and its purple patch of Borage and Wild Heliotrope, is typical of the landscape around my home, and this is the land I drive through every day to get to work. Not a bad commute!

 

byway to the golden vale

Looking down on the Vale of Pewsey, from Salisbury Plain, is like looking at your own private Inshaw painting, laid out before you, basking in the evening’s golden light.

 

wonky shed

I always thought that there was something surrealistic about the shed, dipping in the middle. Often, David Inshaw’s renderings of the real world have a surrealistic edge to them.

 

a make-believe land

Sometimes I have to mentally pinch myself, just to be sure that I actually live here, in this splendid and beautiful land, which rolls gently around me. It’s like a place from a very lovely dream, which leaves you warm and glowing with contentment when you wake.

 

copses in the sunshine

You can almost see Inshaw’s cricketers enjoying the sunshine of a lazy July afternoon. The hills and downs of the Alton Barnes area are Inshaw all over!

 

making the lines

These lines and shapes could have been painted onto the beautiful Marlborough Downs.

 

my version of an Inshaw complete with digger

This is another shot, taken near Avebury, in which I tried to emulate Mr Inshaw. I felt that the digger added a certain je ne sais pas quoi?!

inspired by Inshaw

And finally, the one which inspired this post … taken on Salisbury Plain this summer.

And if you would like to read about David Inshaw, and see many fine examples of his work, then I can recommend a visit here.

If you would like to explore the lovely landscapes of Wiltshire (and Devon!), as seen through the eyes of this wandering, wondering redhead, then please come and visit my Landscapes album on Flickr.

If you would like to purchase cards inspired by Wiltshire (and Devon, of course), please send me a message on my Facebook page.

Genial

A languid and lovely read, for hot summer days and memories.