Still at The Helix to see The Kelpies on my walk this week, I have been looking at some details of these metal equine structures in the Scottish landscape. The setting sun was good to me!
Category Archives: Photography
Horses in the Landscape – The Kelpies
Returning from my walk this week as a day trip to Edinburgh, we took a slightly round about route and visited The Helix at Falkirk to see The Kelpies. I had known about this wonderful installation but wanted to see it for myself. I have done my best with the photos below but like all the other images available online, they cannot do justice to the real thing.
The Kelpies, The Helix Park, Falkirk
Up and Down in Edinburgh
Before my walk this week on a planned day out in Edinburgh, I asked my uncle what might be the best thing to go see and he answered “Just go and see the place itself – it is all on different levels and that is one of it’s main attractions as a city“.
Water of Leith
My Walk this Week – Scottish Interlude
My walk this week takes place in Scotland. While on holiday there in the south west, we took a day trip to Edinburgh and returned via The Helix Park at Falkirk to see The Kelpies for ourselves, but more on them later in the week.
It is about 35 years since I was last in Edinburgh despite having been born there. It was a 2.5 hour drive to get there and we didn’t want to spoil things by trying to do too much. So we decided on two venues close together and a short walk in the city centre. The venues were both the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art – Modern One and Modern Two.
Modern 2 – the main exhibition was of drawing by Joseph Beuys, a very interesting show but it was essential to read all the accompanying notes in order to have any understanding of the work itself and how it related to his performance art. The museum itself is what my photos below focus on and it, too, was a fascinating place though with low light levels and a warm day, it felt rather stuffy and claustrophobic.
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 2 – Stairwell Project by Richard Wright
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 2 – colourful toilets
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 1 – stairwell mural
Modern 2 stairwell shadow pattern
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 2 Cafe – Vulcan by Eduardo Paolozzi
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 2 Cafe – Vulcan by Eduardo Paolozzi
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 2 – replica of Eduardo Paolozzi’s studio
Sepia Sunlight and Reviewing the Walk
A final example of sepia sunlight for my walk this week through woodlands at Stainton in the north east of England. The pale sepia effect on this image seemed to enhance the sense of Summer. I hope you enjoy listening to the soundscape for the walk below while viewing selected images from my posts this week. All photos and field recording was done on my iPhone 6s.
Woodland Walk Sounscape
In the land of the Living
During my woodland walk this week it was easy to forget that anyone else existed while in amongst the trees – except for the background sound of human activity. The traffic of a suburban area on the edge of farmland was not really significant – more-so was the rising and falling volume of the tractor at work in the fields, recorded on my iPhone 6s. This, however, could not detract from the enjoyment of the woodland environment on a peaceful end-of-summer day just prior to our holiday in Scotland.
Stainton Woods – Traffic and Tractor
New or Old – Sepia Comparisons
It was the patterns and textures to be seen on my walk this week through the woodlands of Stainton, Middlesbrough, that prompted me to try making some sepia comparisons to the normal colour shots I took on my iPhone 6s. Often a sepia effect is used in photography to present an impression of age or times past. Because of the effect time can have on photographic paper combined with the fact that, pre-colour photography, there were not many options to producing the image in monochrome, the effect, produced digitally today, seems a fair one to employ to gain the effect of age.
Arrangement of Trees
Whether established or more recently planted to extend the woodland further, the arrangement of trees in Stainton Woodland where I enjoyed my walk this week, can only be described as formal. Reminiscent of the French penchant for arboreal pattern, there would be a closer match to their taste if the trees themselves were of a different species.
For whatever reason the obvious pattern of the trees seen from different angles prompted me to experiment with desaturation, monochrome and sepia effects when reviewing the images.
I am sorry I cannot tell you the names of these trees but I am given the impression that they are not going to grow to a huge scale. However, if I visit again in another ten or twenty years, perhaps I will be proved wrong.
