reserving nature

My Walk this Week 253 – Revisiting the Nature Reserve

My walk this week returns to the nature reserve I began exploring a couple of weeks ago with my phone camera. When I returned with my DSLR camera I enjoyed finding practical angles and appropriate subject matter to try and represent the tangled and wild environment.

Some of this old quarry has been used as a bit of a dumping ground in the past, but even the these items are being swallowed up by nature and I suspect that the only object that will resist both time and natural forces is that dreaded and indestructible material plastic.

Nature Reserve – Listen out for the Red Kite at 0:20, 1:04 and 1:23 as it wheels around, harried by a crow.
Tenby harbour

My Walk this Week 165 – Tenby, South Wales Seaside Town

I could have imagined being in the Mediterranean on my walk this week. – It was a bright blue day in the South Wales seaside town of Tenby with its colourful buildings and exotic planting of palms, completed the illusion.

Exotic planting - Tenby

Colour and texture was the order of this day out with the strong blues of the sea and sky and the fascinating textures of the seaweed on the sea wall and ropes tethering the boats.Continue reading

Gull on rooftop

My Walk this Week 155 – New Memories from Whitby

My walk this week is from 2009 – let me explain. My wife was recently surprised by the Photos app on her iPhone telling her she had a new memory which turned out to be from Whitby in 2009. That seems to me to be an old memory, not a new one. However, I checked the memory section of my own Photos app and found a similar set from the same holiday we had taken.

Harbour wall left

When looking through the photos it was the one above that caught my eye (apart from the happy family snapshots) – I like the form created by the angle it is taken from. On looking more closely at the images, Continue reading

holey tree

My Walk this Week 126 – Woodland Wonders

The wonders of the woodland, the lakes, the colours and the soundscape . . . and the textures and the bird life and the patterns and the fact that the rain held off for me on my walk this week around Gnoll Estate Country Park in Neath, South Wales – these are some of the things that I enjoyed about this walk.

Early Autumn colour

One thing I did not remember from previous visits (going back a few years) was the oak tree with a huge hole through its trunk. Clearly the park authorities felt it was a wonder worth preserving and have reinforced the natural structure with metal rods.Continue reading

stepping down

My Walk this Week 126 – Step Up To the Lake

I step up from one lake to another in this second stage of my walk this week  – and there is a third lake in Gnoll Park, plus a reservoir! This lake is the largest and features a wonderful cascade which, even when it is not flowing with water, makes an attractive feature.

stepping up

We are at the start of Autumn now and the colours are beginning to change. There are only hints of the season to be seen in my photos but they are there all the same, plus the temperature has dropped.

I restricted my walk to this larger lake becauseContinue reading

tree shadows

Shadows On a Spring day

My walk this week has looked at art, craft, design and now, having come back outside on a beautiful Spring day in Leeds city centre, I am looking at shadows. Standing on the steps of the Leeds Art Gallery and looking down on Victoria Square the subject matter of my photography (iPhonography) was obvious. The patterns of light and shade created by such a bright day stood out in strong contrast against both the warm coloured paving stones and the strong blue of the sky.

step shadows

The shot I took of the pattern of tree branches on the pavement confused me at first. I thought it was out of focus, until I saw on closer inspection that while the tree trunk shape close to the ground and cracks between the paving slabs were in focus,Continue reading

zig zag

Zig Zag and Twisted – Perspective, Steps and An Urban Soundscape

On this, the third side of my triangular urban walk this week, my main focus (or perspective) is on steps. It was a long set of scaffolding steps that I originally wanted to photograph and which turned into a walk round the block that revealed some other angular and twisted (spiral) steps. I was amused by the “floating” gate below which advertises the entrance to The Forge.

spiral steps

As someone who enjoys many different aspects of metal I couldn’t resist the first perspective shot below of the structure and pattern of shop front shutters, but as I turned the next corner I was also taken by the colour, repeating pattern and perspective of the short terrace across the street. I found other perspectives Continue reading

Swansea urban scene

Urban Walk – Second Side of the Triangle

Looking at some of the patterns and features on my triangular urban walk this week, the second side of the triangle provided me with a number of everyday aspects of the city with, to me, points of visual interest. The angles and perspectives of architectural features, when looked at on their own and viewed without the context of the wider urban environment, become simply lines, shapes and patterns and can be seen as works of abstract art.

angled steps

Those lines and shapes are reflected in the design of murals on the walls of the Elysium artists’ studios but opposite this is an apparent anomaly – Continue reading