September 2017
Well I’m still without a car, I was hoping to have sourced the parts early in the month but I was let down by the internet and so its a waiting game until the 6th of October when the part arrives at the garage. That means I’ve hardly been out shooting all month again…
However, the Tour of Britain cycle race came through the parish and so of course you have to go and watch/take pics. Where I positioned myself though that for both the leading group and the main group of riders coming through Eglingham my near head-on view was obscured by the Police and race motorbike outriders. So not much to show for that morning out!
I had a good hour or so out by the coast on the 10th as heavy rain showers passed through, making images of Beadnell harbour, Ebb’s Nook outcrop at Beadnell, weather over the Farne Islands and Bamburgh village. The photo-mojo was around me for that little trip out with a few keepers and probably a few images still to make from that day. My favourite from the month comes from that dander and is this image of Bamburgh village.
Bamburgh Village between rain showers
With me not getting out much again this month I delved deep into my archives and worked with images captured in 2015 and 2014, specifically of Neist Point on Skye from our Scotland trip and a view of Norham Castle and the River Tweed from a wander up there in the early autumn of 2014. For all at the time I thought I didn’t have the data and pleasing shapes of movement to work with, changes in processing techniques (and taste) helped pick out a few frames to use and produce two images I’m pretty happy with. They begin the gallery of images below…
In an effort to get our parish photo club going again after the summer break I had a wander around Hedgley and Branton Ponds with fellow member Mark Popely, for a recce to see if there was anything worth returning for. Branton Ponds, slightly more established should have some great autumn colour in a few weeks and I can see it being a good place for a cold wintry shot. I’m thinking low winter sunrise/sunset, hard frosts and frozen lake kind of shot …which means I’ll never shoot it!
I got one image from the morning, and that was of grasses by the old railway embankment of the Alnwick to Cornhill line closed in 1953 – not a pond in sight!
One thing that did my photo ego no harm at all this month was the opening of The Cookie Jar, a new boutique hotel in Alnwick. The building housed a former Convent, the school my mother went to, and has been converted beautifully into Alnwick’s latest (and much needed) hotel. The reason it boosted the ego? The fact that probably 80% of the artwork used to decorate it was mine! Most surprising was that it wasn’t just my old regular black and white images, but someone had embraced my abstract style to feature it front and center! There was me thinking it was a very un-commercial style to try and sell as interior decor… You can see examples of how it looks in the embedded Instagram post below.
You may have also noticed that I gave the website a little bit of a tweak, I took out a few pages of services I’m no longer offering, finally updated my latest images gallery, added a gallery of all the images that made up my photo book “Intentional” and rebuilt the front page completely. Still plenty to do, but please do have a fresh look around!
Here are this months chosen images…
