The weather may not have been great for my walk through Swansea Marina but there was still plenty of activity in the place. I enjoyed standing a while leaning against the railings and listening to the banter of those on the fishing boats, watching the rowing practice and looking at the jewels and beads of water on the bundled fishing nets as they spilled out of their harbour side containers.
Marina Activity
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I’m back, but with fewer photos and fewer posts – that is my intention anyway!
About a year ago I started posting more frequently because I like doing it and I wanted to show what was going on with StillWalks other than what was being done for video production. I also wanted to present sets or series of photos because that is the way the StillWalks videos work.
However, for the time being, I will be posting fewer images and less often. Different images and sound clips may also be spread across other social media – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr and SoundCloud.
I will also continue to feature individual StillWalks videos from time to time. The current featured video will be the last for Autumn this year and can be seen at the end of this post. Just click the image to play the video.
One of the first frosts in our garden
You can use the Donate button below to help StillWalks. Pay how much you want and receive a high quality download of this week’s featured StillWalks video – “Abertawe Walk” which is along the cycle path alongside the River Tawe going into Swansea, South Wales. Click the image below to watch the video. DVD Collections are available to order in the StillWalks Shop.
A few weeks ago I started writing a short blog style article for the online version of our local newspaper, the South Wales Evening Post. The articles are about some of the walks I take in the Swansea area and many of them are a little off the beaten track.
My contribution to the paper today (read here) features the River Tawe at Ynystawe but here, on this blog I want to present another part of the river. The StillWalks, “Abertawe Walk”, takes you along the cycle path between the Liberty Stadium and the bridges at SA1 and the Maritime Quarter in Swansea.
The production for this walk was done in the Autumn and the walk takes you through the woods along side the river as well as the cycle path.
The video can be seen here and the photos below are taken from that production.
The Millennium foot and cycle bridge is an attractive piece of architecture in Swansea and can bee seen from one side of the River Tawe against the backdrop of the modern development of SA1 and from the other side, against Swansea’s Maritime Quarter and the rigging of sailing boats in the marina.
You can find any number of photographs of the bridge if you Google it – perhaps these are one or two new viewpoints even if they don’t show the identifiable suspension structure.
Swansea may be the wettest city in the UK, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth visiting.
It may be that you can find scenes similar to this in many different places around the world but as with any image (or sound), each one is, in fact, unique to the time and place according to the conditions at the time the photograph is taken or the sound recorded.
Understanding that what we experience of our surroundings is interdependent on these unique conditions from moment to moment is a major part of what StillWalks is about.
More important than that, however, is simply the enjoyment of what we see and hear around us – rain it may be, but I hope you enjoy these images.
It’s not always obvious that the images used in my StillWalks are from the named season but all photos, just as with the sound recordings are unique to the time and place of the walk.
from Abertawe Walk – Autumn
from Woodland River Walk
Images are available to purchase as prints from Photobox/StillWalks. If you would like to buy high or low resolution jpeg downloads, please visit the Prices page of StillWalks Equestrian for instructions and then return to the Photobox/StillWalks to identify the images you would like.
Adverse Weather Conditions led a scheduled day of equestrian photography to be cancelled at short notice. I didn’t check the website for updates before hand and so ended up down at the show field anyway. The day was dry but the previous week had been very wet. So I took the opportunity to go for a walk along a section of the River Tawe and quickly found myself under a bridge!
Under Bridges – My interest and curiosity about the underside of bridges goes back a long way now. About 14 years ago I was taking photographs of the underside of the second Severn crossing, a striking suspension bridge of the Severn Estuary between Wales and England. It was all part of my research towards designing and weaving a major tapestry commissioned for Caldicot Library in Monmouthshire.
Secret Places – Since then, I have looked at the underside of many other bridges and find them to be quite secret places, even when they are busy with people, it is the side away from public view.
