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Category Archives: Nature
A New Dawn
I am going to ask you a favour but first, for the sake of the title of this post I am including an image of the dawn I watched on Saturday morning at the start of a StillWalks production day – I might even call the finished video “Dawn Walk”.
The favour? Please buy a StillWalk video. It will only cost you a couple of pounds / dollars / Euros and I need to test the system and get some feedback.
I have changed all the StillWalks on this website to low resolution, sample length videos and added a “Buy now” facility to enable purchase of the full length, high definition versions. Visit the Walks pages and follow the simple instructions to buy now.
Why do it like this? Last year I had an unpleasant and very costly experience with the original StillWalks automated shop facility. This way, I have complete control of it – at least until I have arranged for a new automated shop, which will only happen if I sell some videos in the first place.
Other things have changed on the website too. Please take a look around and see what you think. The design is the same but some of the content has changed.
Thanks very much for stopping by and I hope you enjoy what you see (and hear).
Crossing the Bridges
Yesterday I went through gates, today I am crossing bridges.
Foot bridges can serve a similar role to gates in a StillWalk. Useful as way markers both visually and aurally, the design, materials, condition, sounds – all play a part in identifying a stage in the walk.
Here are two of the foot bridges I encountered on my recce walk of the River Morlais and Troserch woodland with a view to producing a new Summer time StillWalk.
Walking Through the Gates
A recce walk through recently discovered woodland revealed a number of elements that can be very useful in the production of a StillWalk.
Gates, both the images and the sounds can, in the sequence of a StillWalk, provide a visual and aural way marker and in doing so, give a sense of progression. If the gates are of different design or in different states of repair, this too can be recognised as a way marker if the walk is circular, sending a message to the viewer that they are on the return journey.
There were several gates along the River Morlais leading into Troserch Woods. All were either of different design, at different angles, more or less rusted . . .
The sounds of the gates are also unique, though this is as much because of the surrounding conditions as the type of gate – here is an example from StillWalks on SoundCloud.
World Listening Day
I posted these sounds to all my other social media platforms this morning but held back until now to post it here.
The sounds were recorded during my recce walk for a new StillWalk video along a stretch of recently discovered river and woodland near where I live.
The video will obviously not include the Lancaster Bomber as it won’t be around when I do the actual production walk but it was good to hear on its way home from the annual air show at Swansea.
Landscape Photography – A Personal View
Still enjoying the short journey home over the hills from Felindre, the local Welsh landscape is beautiful and it’s got nothing to do with the current good weather, honest!
My work over the years has taken me all over South Wales and although this has meant a lot of driving, it has also given me the opportunity to see different aspects of the landscape in all sorts of conditions. Whether it is local or more distant, you have to be there to really appreciate it. Photography can do only so much. Artists can capture moods of a scene with which you can best identify if you have been there or somewhere like it.
I do not describe the photography I do as landscape photography. Although much of it involves the landscape, the photography I do for StillWalks, I describe as environmental – natural and man-made. If you google landscape photography, you will be presented with any amount of spectacular photographs produced by a range of more or less well known photographers who have done all the “right” things in terms of framing the shot and finding the right angle, waiting for the light, etc.
Some of the scenes from around the world (both near and far) are truly amazing . . . yes, there is a but coming . . . but, some of the shots I see seem to me to be almost unreal or super-real, a bit like photo-realism in painting – it’s almost beyond belief. It seems as though there is no texture in the scenes and texture is something I am interested in, no doubt due to my other life as a tapestry weaver. It may be that in these textureless images, there has been some over-use of pixel smoothing techniques but I know of one photographer who does not make this mistake, if it can be called that.
Victor Rakmil is a photographer whose work I greatly admire and he writes an excellent blog much of which I would entirely agree with and learn from regarding technique. Take a look to see the texture that remains in his landscape scenes as well as the other photographic genres he covers.
I took the shots below on my way home over some of the lower lying Welsh hills. It was a hot a hazy day and for me, give a true (photographic) representation of the landscape as it was at that time in those conditions. Tomorrow I’ll have some more!
These and more photos can be seen and purchased at StillWalks PhotoShelter.
Over the Hills and Quite Close By – Felindre and Lliw Valley
Following the recent StillWalks project exhibition, “Sights and Sounds of the Countryside”, I was delivering some the display screens back to Felindre Primary School who had generously loaned them for the purpose.
Being a beautiful, sunny day and quite different to the weather we had on the project production days, I was tempted to walk some way along the footpath we had taken up to Lliw Reservoir. It is a part of the Gower Way and the photo below shows the start of the walk.
I would love, over time, to produce more StillWalks along here and at Lliw Reservoirs in different seasons. All I have to do is find the time or someone to pay for it!
These and more photos can be seen and purchased at StillWalks PhotoShelter.
