My year in photographs … 2017 …

2017 … My Year in Photographs

When starting to put this blog together, I read last year’s “My Year in Photographs” …. Oh dear! I did NOT achieve my aim of taking more photos this last year; in fact, 2017 was probably my worst year yet for photography. Huge upheavals in my personal life, some amazing, some devastating, meant that my photo-mojo took a heck of a battering. But I hung on in there, and I managed to end the year with camera in hand (although the tail-end of a stinking Christmas cold meant that most of the shots on the last day of the year were taken through the car window!).

So here is my year in photographs; I hope you enjoy looking at them as much as I enjoyed taking them!

January, Ianuarius, door to the year …

I shall open the door to 2017 with a shot from Salisbury Plain, by far our most-frequented place for photography. And this spot, one of the Charlton Clumps is one of my favourite places. There are several small copses on Salisbury Plain up above the hamlet of Charlton, hence the name the “Charlton Clumps”. Me and Steve have probably taken at least a thousand photos of them, in various lights, at various times of the year, and they never disappoint. I don’t often go for a close up, but when I spotted the little owl in his hole, I had to go for it!

owl in a hole in a bole in a tree

 

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

February can often feel like the harshest month of Winter; bleak and cold and wet. But one bright spot in this melancholic month is the appearance of the snowdrops. So many of the winding Wiltshire back roads have swathes of them on the verges. We came across this sweet bend on just such a winding back road near Easton Royal.

at a bend in the road

February was also the month when we had our first jaunt to the seaside. We stayed in Axminster, just up the road from one of our favourite places – Seaton. We always try to stop off in Seaton on our way back from South Devon, and it was nice to be based quite close to this lovely little seaside town. We are particular fans of the Axe Estuary, a fine tidal river for spotting wild fowl and waders and gulls …. Lots and lots of gulls! And of course, no trip to Seaton is complete without a shot of Sarah Jane!

good old sarah jane

 

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

March was kind of dull … weather-wise and photography-wise. I was working long hours and didn’t get out with my camera nearly as much as I would have liked. Still, I did manage to catch Martinsell Hill on one rather lovely early spring day.

Martinsell Hill

 

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

At last! April swung around and I got a spring in my step! And I got out there with my camera. There were walks around the local paths, early morning sunrise photo-ops and, of course, trips to Salisbury Plain. Here is one of the lovely Charlton Clumps again, this time with a bit of selective colouring, to show the mysterious red box in its best light….

the red box and the sheep

 

In April we headed down to Devon again, this time back to one of our other favourite spots – Brixham. We stay in Fishcombe Cove when we go to Brixham, and it’s just about as perfect as a holiday spot can be. There’s Marridge Wood on the doorstep, there are great walks along the South West Coast Path, and there’s a lovely walk down in to the town itself. Yes! I did do a lot of walking on this particular trip! On one early morning perambulation, I decided to venture out onto the Breakwater. Now there’s bracing for you! Brixham looked just grand in the morning sunshine, all pretty colours and interesting contours …

all the pretty house

 

May, month of potent blood …

One of the many wonderful things about living near Savernake Forest was the great abundance of bluebells we were treated to each May. There is something rather enchanting about walking through a swathe of bluebells, with the spring sunshine making the new leaves on the trees glow.

the enchanted forest

 

June, when Summer begins and the world is all green and blue and yellow …

There are many awe-inspiring landscapes to photograph on Salisbury Plain. It is always changing. No two days are ever the same. The quality of the light, the clouds, the sun (or lack thereof) … these make every view look somehow new, even if you’ve photographed it a hundred times before. Just so with the views from the edge of the Plain across the Vale of Pewsey; this is Wiltshire; this is why I love it here ….

so very Wiltshire

 

Now, we don’t usually manage a whole weekend away in June, but fortune favoured us this year, and we had an “extra” trip, this time to Ilfracombe in North Devon. Sadly the weather was really grim. Wet and dull days meant we spent a lot of time in the car, driving around, jumping out every now and again to take a shot or two of something interesting, diving back into the car for cover. We headed down to Fremington Quay again, and I was quite pleased with my “tilt shift” on this little red boat, pulled up on the bank of the river.

red boat white picket fence

 

July, with its evenings stretching out to allow long meanders home, is usually good for some sunsets and interesting skies …

We are writing a book, Steve and I, about the roads which crisscross Salisbury Plain; this is a shot of the old road from Salisbury to Marlborough. The clouds were almost as beautiful as the landscape, and I like the way they seem to lead the way home, a perfect balance to the leading line of the byway.

taking the old road home

 

August, Lammas, time to start harvesting and feasting …

Summer on Salisbury Plain means FLOWERS! Lots and lots of wildflowers. With a carpet on yellows and pinks and mauves at your feet, and dreamy, fluffy white clouds above you, you could almost feel as if you were walking into an Impressionist painting.

meadow

 

September, when Autumn begins and the skies are still blue

September is one of my favourite months, not least because it’s our anniversary month! It’s also the beginning of Autumn, when the world starts to take on golden hues, yet still feels “summery” with its blue skies and bright days. We normally head to the seaside in September, but there were big changes afoot in our lives, so we stayed close to home in Wiltshire for our photographic outings. Of course, this meant trips to Salisbury Plain, and journeys along the old roads. This is another favourite spot of mine, the finger post … one way to Lavington, the other to Devizes…..

two old roads

 

October …

Loss. I can say no more about this month. There was only one photo, for the photo-mojo was subsumed by other, more urgent needs.

le chat noir

 

November, when Autumn is in full swing and Winter is just around the corner

Autumn has painted Salisbury Plain with a golden palette, as the grasses and the leaves have begun to die. It is no less beautiful.

under autumn skies

This year was turning out to be one of extremes of emotions … highs and lows … and by November, I was completely exhausted! So my love took me to the sea, to give me room to breathe and space to just be.

a sea scene

 

December, Winter time and short days …

… and at last, the mojo is returning … a new life is beginning …

a new view

My final shot of the year is, quite aptly I hope, a sunset on Salisbury Plain. Happy New Year! Here’s to health and happiness and lots more photography in 2018!

goodbye 2017

If you would like to see more of my photos, please do have a look at my Flickr page!

 

 

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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

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.

A Road Through the Seasons

At the beginning of 2015, I joined a rather interesting Flickr group – 12 Months of the Same Image. As the group admin describes it “The challenge here is for you to find a subject of your choice and then photograph it from the same position roughly on the same day of each month over the next 12 months. Then we can all compare how the subject alters over the course of a year.” A fantastic challenge, I thought. There aren’t many members in the group, but they are all interesting photographers, taking their photos in interesting places, and they are all jolly nice people to boot.

I mused for a week or two on just what I was going to photograph for this challenge. Steve and I travel around Wiltshire a fair bit every weekend. An awful lot of the time, we head southwards to Salisbury Plain; sometimes it’s the west that beckons and we make for the Avebury area. Sometimes the pull of scarily-muddy, scarily-steep byways is too much for Steve to resist, and it’s off to the north we go, to explore around Liddington and Barbury Castles. We’ve even been known to venture to the east, and go on photographic excursions in darkest West Berkshire or even Hampshire!!

So where to set this image, which I’m going to take from (roughly) the same spot, on (roughly) the same day each month, that was the question!

In the end, I chose a spot which isn’t actually that far from home … despite the fact that we do travel to many different parts of Wiltshire, we do also spend a lot of time travelling the byways and backroads of our very local area! I had stopped one morning last January, on my way to work, because the sunrise and the frost on the fields were just too gorgeous to resist, and I wanted to take a few photographs. One of the (many, not few) photos I took that day became Image #1 in my 12 Images series ….

Winter

I decided to use this particular image as my first entry in the group, partly because of the fact that it is a road that’s close to home and is on my route to work, so I knew it was going to be easy for me to get the required shot each month. But mainly, I chose this particular shot, because this road to Chisbury is such a beautiful place! The fields on either side of the road change throughout the year, as the farmer plants and reaps his crops. And these oak trees, which line the route, look just beautiful … especially when the jays are flitting between them, collecting acorns!! I love taking photographs here, so I knew it was going to be fun, recording how this scene changed with the seasons. This photo, for me, IS winter in Wiltshire!

2015 was rather a “grey” year. The winter was not that harsh, nor that cold; it was simply rather dull and grey. The transition from winter to spring was seamless – cold and grey days lengthened into slightly warmer grey days – but suddenly, in May, it was as if, finally, spring was here! The leaves were green, the sky was blue and the hedgerows had burst into flower. This shot, taken very early one morning, made me think that a summer of long, hot days was on its way ….

Spring

The promised brightness and colour had appeared, but sadly, the long, hot days didn’t follow! Of course, there was sunshine, there were hot days; but summer did not really seem to make much of an impression. There were rather too many windy days, and a few too many grey days for there to be any chance of indolence! When I took this shot for July’s entry to the group, it wasn’t so much a season I seemed to be portraying, but rather, a feeling of timelessness….

Summer

Taken a little later in the morning than my usual shots, this one has the sun higher in the sky, so there are interesting tree shadows on the road. It struck me as I was processing the photo that this road probably hasn’t changed much in years. These trees will have grown, but they probably replace older trees that have long since gone. The crops may have changed a bit (not so much oilseed rape a few decades or centuries ago!), but I imagine that the land is essentially the same as it’s been for a few generations. These thoughts inspired me to go black and white that month.

October’s photograph gave me the perfect autumn image! The weather had continued to be grey and non-descript, but then, a few days before my “12 Images …” deadline for that month, I stepped outside to a perfect, misty Autumnal sunrise. In a week of wet, wet, wet weather, the morning light was ethereal, a golden mist all around as I drove to work…

Autumn

On the day that I took my November photograph, the one you saw at the head of this post, we had the first frost of this winter. It was a really gorgeous morning, and well worth getting cold for … it was the first time this winter that I’d had to scrape the ice from my car, and part of me thought I must be a bit mad to be leaving for work so much earlier that I needed to, just because I didn’t want to miss the sunrise! It was worth it!

And so winter was well and truly with us again, and the end of this extremely enjoyable photographic project was in sight. One last shot to go! It got to the week of the deadline, my last week at work before the Christmas break, but I just didn’t get the opportunity to take a shot when I was on my way to work at all – I was either way too busy with the pre-Christmas workload for such dalliances, or it was raining, or it was dark!! However, when I got up one morning just before the year’s end, I opened the curtains to see a beautiful red sunrise, and knew that, at last, I could get my final shot of the year ….

Winter Returns

And now, this week, I’ve just taken Image #1 of 2016’s set! Yet another one of the roads I can drive along to get to work! If you’d like to see all 12 months’ worth of shots from last year, along with this year’s efforts, you can look at my Flickr album here.