Towards ending the year I am taking a walk through my records of approximately 150 walks through a local forest in the previous year (2015). Each day over the last two weeks of this year will represent the sights and sounds of one month during that time – on the two Sundays I will review the previous six months.
Today I am presenting a selection of images and a couple of sound clips from the forest in January 2015.
They are central to the image and framed by the tree but the gulls admiring the view towards the low afternoon sun across the lake are not a big enough in this shot to argue that they were the main feature of my focus – but they were to begin with! Without a longer lens than that provided by my iPhone I had no choice but to consider the composition of the wider scene – but that’s OK because I like the tree as well.
Continuing on my walk this week around an urban lakeside I found that low angle shots often provided the best viewpoint. Looking at things from another viewpoint often provides a different understanding of the subject and allows you to see things you might otherwise have ignored and passed by.
This evening landscape at the end of my walk this week in Penclawdd on the North Gower coast was not really very late in the day – just after 4pm. The days seem so short at this time of day, but I must try to remember those further north who, if you go far enough north, see no real sunlight at all through the day. I cannot imagine what that is like.
The sounds of this walk include many of the activities of the place, both man-made and natural. It was good to find myself hidden from the traffic and industry so easily by such a low lying shield of land as I walked at the edge of the salt marsh.
Enjoy the sounds along with selected images from my walk below.
Penclawdd Walk Soundscape
It was very cold (for Wales) on this Winter afternoon walk and I didn’t sit on this perfectly placed seat, but I did enjoy the last of the light. I know I posted shots of this sky at a slightly earlier stage of its cycle yesterday, so please excuse me, but I could not resist posting again as the light faded and the colours deepened.
I met my friend David Wibberly – Photographer just after taking these photos and he was commenting on the bad light for photography. I explained that as my intention is to try to present what you would see and hear on a walk, whenever it is taken, the issue of light is something I just have to deal with.
Finally on my walk this week I rounded the corner of the edge lands to the salt marsh and was able to appreciate the vast cloudless afternoon sky. The only blemish(?) on the pale blue>green>yellow>orange canvas was a distant airplane. The other mark on that sheet of colour apart from the land itself is a tiny object on the horizon line – that is Whitford lighthouse. This a Victorian cast iron built feature of the Burry Inlet that I have been to within one or two hundred yards but have yet to find the time to time it right and get right out to it when the tide is low enough . . . someday I will.
Heading further along I met up with the river which at low tide features some very glorious mud – “mud, mud, glorious mud. nothing quite like it but . . .” something the birds in the area thoroughly enjoy or at least feed in. Enjoy the sound below.
Down on the edge of the salt marsh as I walked towards the sunlight of a more open landscape I came across a couple of interesting features. The first were these (there were a cluster of them) earthy looking large boulder-like objects sitting at the edge of the slightly higher ground I stood on. I guess they were once part of that higher ground and the sea has simply eroded away all that once surrounded them.
The route of my walk this week took me around the back of working buildings in Penclawdd on the North Gower coast. Although it was bitterly cold in this area shaded from the sun and the beautiful views across the salt marsh were obscured, there were still fascinating finds to be made. I guess they are everyday things at this time of year – frosty grass, icy pools and so on – but looking at the patterns the cold weather creates and the colours affected by the light on this day, I found there were any number of things to record, both sights and sounds.
Penclawdd at Work