This was the view I had from Three Crosses Community Centre whilst waiting for the rest of the dragonfly hunting group I was with last week. It was very pleasant sitting in the sun with a light breeze to cool me.
Looking across the Gower Peninsula, it struck me that there were a lot of signposts. However, they did not spoil the view but rather created an interesting mix of patterns and structures through which I could see the natural beauty of the landscape.
We accept or learn to accept a lot of things in our need for order in society and the power we want to run our lives – like the millions of electricity pylons and increasing number of wind mills, sky scraper skylines and network of roads to name but a few of the interruptions to our views. We want what they bring and they do not necessarily spoil the view – it is more a matter of how you think about them.
Having said that, there should be balance in everything and we cannot afford to lose much more of our natural habitat – after all, the horses need their shade!
Strictly speaking of course, these are not specifically pond plants. However, they are all plants that were found close to the pond and woodland environment in Three Crosses where we went dragonfly hunting last week (see earlier posts).
Those dragonflies from yesterdays post were hunted and found in two places – Three Crosses Community Woodland near Swansea and Gelli Hir Woodland on the northern side of the Gower Peninsula.
Both places are beautiful and the weather was perfect for finding what we were after. I wasn’t doing any sound recording on this visit but I will be going back, so yet again, watch this space!
StillWalks is about promoting a sense of health and wellbeing, enjoying the sights and sounds of your local environment. Both the Three Crosses and the Gelli Hir woodlands are places that I will be visiting again with the assurance that, whatever the weather, I will enjoying a sense of wellbeing while I am there.
Coming down from the hills at the end of the day and heading into the sunlight can provide some remarkable views of the landscape – dependant, of course, on the weather conditions and time of year.
The end of my journey home from Felindre brought me down from the hills towards Pontarddulais in South Wales where there is a vast network of metal giants criss-crossing the land as part of the National Grid.
Electricity pylons seen against the light and the land need not be a blot, but rather a fascinating part of the composition, creating patterns and networks of lines that may not be natural, but are something we are happy to live with in order to have the power we need for modern life.
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!
Last Wednesday evening we went to Aberdulais Falls for the Green Routines exhibition opening which was about cutting carbon emissions.
Whilst there I took a couple of new photos and video clips on my iPhone which reveal some of the fascinating patterns of the drips thrown up by the waterwheel – they were mesmerising! Click to play the video below.
This metallic canvas is Turner-esque in the violence of the storm – but I did nothing, just took the photo!
The texture . . .
. . . and vibrance of the colour amazes me.
I love it but . . .
. . . it’s just . . .
. . . an old freezer . . .
. . . destined for the scrap merchant.
Of course, it should never have been burnt, but it has provided me with some interesting material to play with and add to my collection of metal (weird, I know). I shall be recording some of sounds it can make soon. Anyone interested can listen to my metallic sound collections on SoundCloud here and here or click below. If you can’t see the sound files below, please visit the blog page.
