On Foot Through February

got off the bus at Linton / rucksack / map / camera, of course / through the streets / down Mill Lane / 

to the mill / now a restaurant / between the buildings / under the arch / over the ford / cross the busy road /

lanes and field edge paths / flocks of goldfinches / a little stubborn snow remains / sun splashes down / rebellious clouds heave themselves across the sky /

into an ancient lane / twisted trees and mud puddles / tractor tracks and hoof prints / a green woodpecker loops off over the field /

farm road and a bridge / a railway bridge / but the railways been gone for decades / the bridge hasn't noticed yet / sshhhh....don't tell

on into Waltons, the big house in the village of Ashdon / glimpse into the garden / a place familiar long ago / but I've never been here / enigmatic /

little suns / yet to explode into yellow stars / the way continues / past Place Farm / the big barn /

picturesque cottages / Audis in the drive / Ashdon is a straggling, scattered village / footpaths criss-cross the fields and dive between houses /

across the fields to the old post-mill / 1757 / the whole building can revolve to face the wind /

follow the little River Bourn / past allotments / an old house / a very old house / a crooked house beside a crooked stile /

past the pub / along a delightful path / a path with snowdrops / but a path that leads me the wrong way / who cares? /

work out a way back to where I want to be / meet this fellow / someones little pony

muddy lane to the church graveyard / next to the church the old guildhall / it's a private house now /

at the end of a lane an old railway carriage / you just wait here said his friends, we'll be back later / still he waits /

piling up junk is a neglected form of agricultural sculpture /

on I travel / as clouds pile up / meteorological sculpture / but with an exquisite soundtrack / for an optimistic skylark flings his music over the land /

then into the town of Saffron Walden / wait for another bus / for home 

Take care.

The Day The Music....Came Alive!

Mum was doing the ironing. The radio was on the Light Programme. Suddenly a piece of magic; music like I'd never heard before. Mum said it was a man with a strange name - Buddy Holly. They played several Buddy Holly songs that day. I didn't ask why.

I'm sitting by the open window listening to "Pick Of The Pops". I'm writing down the Top Ten. The record playing is "Rag Doll" by The Four Seasons. I pestered my parents for a record player but they cost lots of money. Linda Pearce had a record player and a Cliff Richard LP. She put it on when we went there once.

At primary school boys started talking about The Beatles. Some of the boys had televisions at home and had seen them sing on Thank Your Lucky Stars. We didn't have a television, but our friend Tim's big brother, Alan, had some Beatles records. 

Then in someone's house I saw this lot on the telly. I couldn't take my eyes off the singer, wild and energetic. Dad said I couldn't grow my hair long. Dad said the Rolling Stones would soon be forgotten. "They won't be jigging around like that when they're 40", Dad said.

Then one Christmas I got a record player. A Dansette Viva with autochanger and tone control. £14.14s.0d. in Kays catalogue. Records soon followed: Colours by Donovan, Get Off My Cloud by The Rolling Stones, Mirror, Mirror by Pinkerton's Assorted Colours (oh dear!). 

I wanted a guitar. I learnt the words to the latest songs. I used to run away when Mick Taylor came to the house to cut my hair. Eventually I got hold of a mouth organ and tried to play 5-4-3-2-1 by Manfred Mann. I thought I could play it too, near enough. 

Then I began discovering the delights of record shops (I've never grown out of it!). Millers in Cambridge was the specialist shop, but my friend's brother's girlfriend worked in the record department of Boots and allowed us to spend half the afternoon in the listening booths without any intention of buying, till the manager came and turfed us out.

The world was changing fast. Our tastes were running to obscure songs that never made the charts.  Albums became more sought after than singles. The shops couldn't keep up. But Andy started selling albums (as we learnt to call LPs) by obscure bands (as we now called groups) from a stall on Cambridge market. And another savvy young man started advertising in Melody Maker and selling albums by mail order. He was called Richard Branson and he called his operation "Virgin", you may have heard of them.

Take care. 

Trimming The Whiskers.

Yesterday's post "Frosty Whiskers" featured mainly straight photos, which is to say that I hadn't fiddled about editing them. Well, not much anyway! I could get involved in all kinds of photographic,  philosophical and artistic arguments here, but instead of waffling on while your eyes glaze over lets look at some other photos, also taken yesterday, which I felt needed a bit of extra enhancement, manipulation, mutilation.

This little bridge is on the footpath behind the church has always attracted me. With the snow it made me say "Wow, look at this!" which is about as intellectual as I get before reaching for the camera....

....but when I looked at the picture on the computer screen it wasn't what I'd expected; the snow was dirty and the other colours were mostly various muddy shades of khaki. It didn't look like that at the time; my brain had filtered out the detail it didn't want to see; what I'd observed wasn't the reality but the difference between the usual scene and the changes caused by the snow. Black and white and a little extra contrast cured the problem.

A photo of the church tower seen through the frosted branches posed similar questions....

....but changing to straight monochrome still didn't have the frosty, delicate feeling I was seeking. This blue tint gave what I think is a pleasing image even if the composition is odd or perhaps even wrong.

The weeping willow took all sorts of jiggery-pokery before I was satisfied....

....there's some added flare, extra contrast, subtle vignetting as well as changing to black and white (and lots of dead ends which led me nowhere).

I've always loved the photos of people like Bill Brandt who made a virtue of the grain of the film and contrasty materials. I like the idea of trying the same thing in colour. So I knew what I wanted to do with this picture before I even pressed the shutter....

....gritty and murky. That's what I was after.

These posts and stones are left stranded in an arable field. I take lots of photos here and even toyed with the idea of a blog post about a post! I took a few more yesterday....

....and another...

....this proud old post reminds me of the rather stiff, formal portraits of yesteryear. Hence the treatment.

It was a misty day with sun breaking through, occasionally lighting up objects and bringing them into sharp focus....

....never say 'never', but I usually only use soft focus on selected parts of a picture; my eye needs a secure place to anchor itself. The blue tint emphasises the cold conditions, I think.

Every now and then I need a dose of cold, hard reality....

....though actually there's a lot more tidying up, sharpening and other tweaking than in some of the earlier shots.

And finally....

....heaven knows where I was going with this one! It's just some frosted chicken wire. One of those roads less travelled - and maybe just as well!

Take care.

Frosty Whiskers

The temperature last night was -10C and not much warmer this morning. Not only that but a generous helping of freezing fog too! And of course the remains of the snow, now welded icily to the ground. A grand day to go out for a walk then! I took some photos of course....

And just to show you that the horse wasn't the only one with frosty whiskers, take a look at yours truly....

....OK, some of it is grey anyway, but there's a lot of frost and ice in there! Brrrrr!

Take care.

Administering The Antidote

Flat, grey skies. Remains of grey snow. The temperature, like the economy, is flat-lining at around zero (degrees C). Time to administer the antidote. Time to journey back to the colours of summer and some photos taken when visiting Wimpole Hall last August. The formal garden, the parkland, the walled garden and glasshouses. Always meant to show you these but never did. So buy an ice cream, put on your floppy hat and lets wander awhile.....

Take care.