Hey everyone, recently a lot of my photography has been Central London based, so I wanted to explore local for a day. Armed with just my Nikon 50mm 1.8G lens myself & Reiss went on a cold, windy & muddy walk cross country. Below is a map of the route we took, the colours match up to the title of the post section & relevant photographs.
First Shots
The first location on the map where I felt inspired enough to take my first picture was alongside the M25 motorway, an unlikely spot I know. I saw the structure above the motorway and climbed the earth bank to get my shots. There was probably some more angles available to me for another few shots, but I was very aware that being so close to the motorway edge attracts unwanted police attention.
Along the river(sewer) side
As we walked further along through the fields we crossed over a small stream, which I believe serves as a make shift sewer system. Wandering along this stream we had a field of green crops meeting the sky to our left. It was a perfect opportunity for a photograph as the clouds had parted just enough to let some of the blue sky through and the sun was beaming from behind me. This photo is again in keeping with my minimal style, although unusually it consists of natural, not man made, objects.
Trains
All along these fields there is a train track which runs the C2C commuter route from London Fenchurch Street to Southend. There are various bridges of all different shapes & sizes along the route, I’ve always wanted to attempt a shot of a train just as it comes through the bridge and this was my chance. After a steady wait for the train due to off-peak timetable services one finally came, I only had a split second to capture the train as it went under the bridge and although I could hear it approaching it was more guess work as to when it would expose itself. So crouched uncomfortably in some brambles on the side of the tracks I snapped away nervously and this is what I achieved.
It isn’t the best of photographs, and I would certainly like to attempt it again, maybe next time I will avoid sitting on thorns and getting tangled up in the brambles, much to Reiss’ amusement.
Gravestones
After the train, we had a long climb up a steady hill. The mud kept attaching itself to the bottom of my boots and made my feet feel twice as heavy, after much banter from Reiss about how I had an entire field of mud attached to my clumsy self we reached Church Lane. At the end of Church Lane there is a small fence that you can hop over into a tiny woodland area. Inside here you will find various graves all stacked up against a brick wall. All of them that can be found today are from the 19th Century, the earliest I believe was 1819. The actual church doesn’t exist any more as it was demolished in the 1920′s and as far as we could tell the only remains are the graves themselves. To find out some more information on the Old Great Warley Church you can visit this website, it is certainly an interesting read and has quite a bit of history dating back to the 13th Century.
Machinery
After exiting the woodland there are various farm buildings which have a variety of interesting photo opportunities surrounding them. This photo of some old machinery was my favourite.
New Church
The last photos of the day were taken at the church built to replace the old one down Church Lane. Follow the same link as before to find out more information on this Church.
After taking pictures of this church we continued down the road walking past various fields, farming & industrial areas. We were stopped by a rather angry man in a Range Rover who asked if he could help us quite aggressively, we just said we were walking down the road and he said “it’s a bit strange to be walking about with cameras isn’t it?” neither of us really knew how to answer this question which was sort of spoken rhetorically, Reiss said “it’s what we do” and I backed it up with “photography”. He claimed he saw us in the CCTV cameras further down the road, which would have been true, but then asked if we had come across the field next to us. If he had seen us in his cameras we could not possibly have walked across the field which was another 100 metres down the road, so I’m not really sure what his problems with us was as it is a public road. He eventually drove off, although not after another guy had shown his presence by getting out of the car. This is probably what ended the day, we were quite confused by the situation and didn’t want to get into further issues that we just stuck to the main roads and headed back home.
Thanks for reading the post, please leave a comment below stating your favourite photo and if you have come across people in situations like ours.
Thanks,
Tom out!
Frustrations of the Blogger Photographer 1 – The “like” button
17/12/2012I would like to start by saying, I don’t consider myself a great photographer, maybe the term photographer shouldn’t even be used to describe me, even if describing myself as bad. What I am, is a person who owns a camera, who finds enjoyment going out at the weekend to random locations, walking around and taking photos of what I love about this world.
In the last year I have become a big fan of minimal photography. Minimal photography is about expressing the beauty I find in the details that surround me, and I try as hard as I can to get the best possible results. I don’t post to my blog any photos that I consider not worthy or a waste of my readers time. I am my biggest critic and am yet to be fully satisfied with the photos I am taking. I feel I am on some sort of quest to capture the right photograph that expresses my true feelings and understanding about photography and the environments that surround me.
It is for these reasons that I feel the need to mention in a series of posts some of the things that frustrate me within our blogging culture today.
1. The “like” button
The “like” button as a concept is fairly sound. It provides readers with a simple means to tell the blogger that they appreciate their post and to keep up the good work. At least, this is what I thought when it first came out. What I have since discovered is the use of the “like” button to grab large volumes of hits on ones own blog with very little effort and without posting anything of any worth.
For example, on the last two posts which I have submitted, within 20 seconds of me clicking the publish button I have had 3 or 4 people hit the “like” button on them. Not only that, but it is more often than not the same people. The same people who “like” the majority of posts down the same stream that mine appeared in, in my case usually photography. What this tells me is that people wait for the stream to update new posts and instantly click the top right “like” button. By doing this they haven’t looked properly at my photographs, they haven’t read anything I may have said and are just hoping I will feel warm enough inside that I will click their blog, thus giving them a hit. These same people also never leave a comment on my blog.
I find this rather damaging on a few levels. Firstly it damages the legitimacy of WordPress as the blogging site. Secondly, the blogger themselves, they made a new post which they may have been proud of, and although it may make them happy to receive a “like” they do not provide any means of reflection or criticism. Thirdly, I think it damages humans as a collective, it damages our intellect and ability to, as mentioned, reflect, critique and discuss on a variety of issues that people write about or visualise in their blogs.
Of course, I am aware there is a vast majority of WordPress users and general bloggers who enjoy commenting and discussing on others posts, after all, isn’t that what blogging is all about? Writing about the things that interest you, in the hope that you will meet people who share that interest and want to discuss and provide their own ideas. And there are indeed people who genuinely do like someone’s work, and have taken a closer look when they click the “like” button. What I am finding though is an increase in the amount of people who fake the “likes” purely for their own selfish reasons.
Giving a comment can be a lot more than just a means of discussion. It is a way of helping others improve and providing them encouragement by detailing sections of their post you genuinely like and dislike and give critical reasons as to why, so that they can improve upon where they went wrong. I for one would really enjoy some critical and encouraging comments from other photographers on my blog so I can try to take on what they say and improve.
If I receive “likes” on my post now I just ignore them, I find them very disheartening and in my opinion they go against everything that blogging is.
Tom Barden.
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