Up close

It's rewarding to get up close and personal with some of the flowers in Harlow Carr Gardens. There's a wondrous variety of colour and form and some lovely juxtapositions too. 

Blue poppies are fairly rare and difficult to grow successfully. Harlow Carr have some beside the stream, though they were past their best when I visited. 

HB details

A few details that caught my eye during my wanderings around Hebden Bridge. The clock was installed on St George's Street to mark the Millennium in 2000. It has rings of orbiting planets that move around the clock face.

I spotted a round arched window in a building that I think is known as Machpelah House.

Who wouldn't like a turquoise door surrounded by pink rambling roses?

The prow of a canal boat moored on the Rochdale Canal.

Detail of another narrowboat - with daisies on the canal bank.

And another pink rose. I liked the delicacy of the flower against the gritty stone of the gatepost it was growing over.

The quiet eye

'In common things that round us lie

Some random truths he can impart,

The harvest of a quiet eye

That broods and sleeps on his own heart.'

Those lines were written by the poet William Wordsworth in the early 1800s (A Poet's Epitaph). I'd argue that they are as applicable to a photographer or an artist as a poet, perhaps more so. I'm interested in photography as a 'mindful' practice and lately I've been seeking to slow down and notice the 'common things that round us lie', often to be found in the smallest details. Here is the 'harvest of a quiet eye' from a recent walk. 

The pretty blue egg shell is, I think, a blackbird's egg. I couldn't tell if it had hatched properly and been discarded from the nest or been damaged by a predator.

Spring is beginning to segue into early summer. The hawthorn blossom is fading, the 'candles' on the horse chestnut trees are at their peak (cue lots of sneezing from me!)

In Trench Woods, along Shipley Glen, the lichen covered rocks and old tree trunks are sometimes almost indistinguishable from each other; trees have embraced the terrain through which they grow.

Then there's evidence of man's activity: an old gatepost stands in a field like a prehistoric standing stone in miniature.

Young calves were as curious about me as I was about them. Look at him! Big ears, whiskery nose, eyes perfectly set to see forwards and sideways. Not the most beautiful face, though perhaps his mother loved him...

Luck and promise

Even on a dull day, spots of colour, shape and texture attract my eye. I snapped all of these in a small area by the entrance to Linton churchyard. Some of the dying geranium (I think) leaves had turned to vivid orange and red. The winter jasmine was in full bloom, a little early perhaps as it's been quite mild. It's such a cheerful shrub, happily promising spring from the depths of winter. As for the horseshoe, it's a lucky symbol (and we could do with some of that in the current mire!) Hung with the end upwards, they say, it catches the luck; others maintain it should hang with the ends down to pour luck on those who pass beneath it. If you're of that persuasion, you'll have to turn your laptop upside down!

The harbour

Harris, day four
A little further beyond the church is the village of Rodel, once the historic capital of Harris, situated around a harbour that used to host the Skye ferry. Those accolades now fall to Tarbert and Rodel is much more tranquil.

I really enjoyed taking a few 'mini-landscape' shots here. There was much to inspire me: old boats, rusty chains, knotted ropes, seaweed and lichen. Some lovely colours too...

For some reason I can't quite define, this shot of seaweed caught in a gap in the decaying harbour jetty is probably one of my favourite images of the whole trip. The shapes and colours just seem very pleasing to me. I think it's an archetypal feminine image in some senses - a bit Georgia O'Keefe, albeit not a delicate flower. 

Big skies and details

Harris, day two
Up to this point we'd not done much walking, just hopping out of the van and pottering on beaches and places of interest, so it was a welcome relief to stretch my legs with a walk to the spot chosen to enjoy the sunset. This was the beach Tràigh na Cleabhaig, under the hill called Ceapabhal on the north-western tip of Harris. It had a dual aspect, over to another beach called Tràigh an Taoibh Thuath. (These Gaelic names might arguably be easier to pronounce after a few glasses of Harris gin!)

We passed a sheep with magnificent horns, who was safely in a little fenced field and didn't seem fazed by a troop of photographers passing by.

There were details to enjoy: a fence made from old pallets and rope, its blue tones counterpointed by the scarlet rose-hips behind it. 

And of course, the marram grasses in the dunes behind the beach. These had created wonderful swirly patterns in the sand, where the wind had caught them.

Flamborough Head

Flamborough Head juts out into the North Sea between Bempton Cliffs and Bridlington. It's a chalk promontory, cut with little bays like North Landing (above) and crowned by a lighthouse - in fact, two. One dates back to 1674, the oldest surviving lighthouse in England, and was designed to have a beacon burning on top of it. Apparently it was never lit. The current lighthouse, powered now by electricity and still in use, was first lit in 1806 and originally had two white flashes followed by a red one.  Now it has four white flashes every 15 seconds.

It was cold walking on the headland but we had time for a few photos of the puffins on the cliffs and plenty of close-up shots of boats, ropes and flaking paint. Then it was into the café for a warming cup of tea. Aaah!

I tried a few in-camera multi-exposures too (as below), since my new camera has the facility to layer two images. It's quite fun trying but there is clearly a knack to it that I shall have to practise to achieve really pleasing images using the technique.

Blowsy peonies, with a hidden secret

My daughter gave me a bunch of peonies on my birthday. I'm not sure I've ever had any before and I thought they were wonderful, both in their colouring - changing from deep pink buds to a nuanced white when the bloom was full out - and in their showy, blowsy, curly, unruly petals. They didn't last as long as some cut flowers do, soon dropping their petals once they reached full bloom, but boy, were they worth it. They gave me a lift every time I walked in and saw them.

The June theme in my online photo group was chaos. After trying numerous other shots: piles of old rope, pegs and paperclips among them, I settled on this because, although there is a kind of chaos in the way the petals furl, I also think it's rather beautiful.

(I noticed when I'd made the photo that you can see a little girl with her hair in a bun and her hand on her chin, just peeping out! Now I've seen her, I can't unsee her... Pareidolia strikes again. But still, that's quite sweet, I suppose.)

Haworth details

Just a few of the details that caught my eye when I was wandering around Haworth.

Autumn gold

Autumn arrives differently every year. This time, the colour change is not developing uniformly. There are patches of intense gold amongst green leaves on the same tree, and small outbursts of red and orange can be glimpsed at a distance amidst the still mostly green woodland.

These are two sprays of colour that caught my eye on a recent walk.

I've been practising controlling the depth of field on my photos. I like the little patches of bokeh sparkle that I caught on the image on the left.

Devon: Coastal detail

Sometimes, capturing the 'essence' of a place is as much about the detail as the wider view. These are a few of the details that I was drawn to as I wandered around Porlock Weir, starting with a hidden heart that reminded me that I am loved.

And 'the one that got away'... or at least, tried to!