Category: Landscape

Compositional Errors

Landscape, Photography, Sculpture

Barnards Farm

Its so easy after the event to see where I went wrong. I was using my brother’s Canon 70D, much heavier than my 350D and with an unfamiliar lens but no excuses, I must have left my sense of composition in my other bag.

What interested me was the pylon reflected in the water but a vertical shot which included at least some of the pylon against the sky would have been much more interesting. I do like the feint imperfect reflection with the broken cables rippled on the surface but it might have been better to move around so I had more water and less tree reflection at the far edge of the pond. There is a bright red spot of a man’s sweater top left and a dull spot of an Elizabeth Frink steel head sculpture in the top right, both of which I could have made more of somehow.

 

Thomas Heatherwick Sitooterie II

Architecture, Art, Landscape, Photography, Sculpture

Sitooterie II

Sitooterie II

I am a great admirer of Thomas Heatherwick’s work and this week had the chance to see his Sitouterie in an Essex garden.

It is a hard subject to photograph but I went for the simple approach, looking in from the outside and looking out from the inside of the same corner. The metal spikes are hollow with amber translucent material at their tips so showing tiny spots of amber light on the inside. A young girl who happened to be there at the same time called to her grandfather “Grandpa, come and see, its the best bit of art I’ve ever seen” (I think she might have been 7 years old at the most!)

Evening Light

Landscape, Photography

On the north side of the Thames estuary near Pitsea, Essex, the mud banks, marshy grassland and still water at low tide made for a magical scene of light playing on the water, deepening shadows as the light faded and the promise of the sounds of sea birds calling – a quiet place of reverie – an example of the south Essex landscape that my brother loved so much.

A difficult subject, looking across water and expanses of wet reflective mud towards the setting sun – I only had a phone camera but did some tweaking in Camera Raw afterwards. Unfortunately it is slightly out of focus but it has captured a moment and much of the detail of the scene, the paraphernalia of the crane, the wire fencing, the jetty, life buoys and all the complicated outlines of the boats. A tripod and a digital SLR would have made a better image and I should have included the top of the crane but I did successfully capture a moment in remembrance of my dear lost brother.