The route of the River Lliw, from its source in the hills (see other posts this week) to its mouth in the Loughor Estuary, passes through Gorseinon. Here the children from Felindre Primary School are measuring the depth and width of the river as part of the Clear Streams project.
In time they and other schools will be involved in the project, will be making further investigations into the environment of the river from mouth to source to help develop understanding of the benefits of keeping our rivers and streams clean.
It is worth keeping our rivers and streams clean if only for the beautiful effects of sunlight falling on clear water.
The reasoning for the Clear Streams project goes much further than that of course. However, it is still important in my mind, that those taking part in the project appreciate these visual aspects as well as developing their understanding of the environmental aspects.
The orange in the second image was not left in the River Lliw. It was being used as a device for measuring the rate of flow of the river at this second stage through Felindre on its way to the river mouth at Loughor.
Swansea Countryside Connections Team, through which StillWalks ran the Sights and Sounds of the Countryside project, put on a number of events throughout the year for those living in eligible rural wards in Swansea. It was one of their dawn chorus walks where I first met Helen Grey and it was she, along with Tim Orrell, who was leading the Nature Detective Walk along the Gower Way from Felindre to Lower Lliw Reservoir last Wednesday evening. See the photos below.
As this was the route taken by the Sights and Sounds project on the production day for the Felindre Families group, I thought it would be good to go along – and indeed it was! I discovered what the funny lumps and bumps are in the first field we crossed. We found a very old ash tree with branches twisting and twining round each other, reflecting its age. We saw Deadly Nightshade amongst other plants and flowers, a badger set, mole holes, young Hazelnuts, whin, thistles, ducks, etc., etc.
“Helen, you will have to remind me of that last little yellow flower I asked you about. I cannot remember it it now!”
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!
Returning home over the hills from Felindre (see yesterday’s post) in the sunshine, I stopped several times to take in the views. As the evidence shows, I was heading towards Pontlliw.
The hot and hazy scene in the last photo is not Felindre but a part of Swansea with the Borg type cube (ref. Star Trek) of the DVLA (Driver Vehicle Licensing Authority) building.
The Red Arrows would be streaking across this patch of sky a couple of days later as part of the Swansea Air Show. I only part I saw of it was a Lancaster Bomber heading home afterwards. The sound of the plane quite something and I cannot imaging what a whole squadron flying overhead would have sounded like in the war!
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!
First it was on, then it was off . . . then it was on again! The weather, these days, is unpredictable. Last Friday when we went to do our recce for the latest production with the Sights and Sounds of the Countryside project, the conditions led us to postpone the following day’s work.
Heavy Weather
However, Saturday was dry, and not only that, almost all the snow had gone! So with a quick announcement on Facebook and email, we went ahead with what turned out to be a great production day, even though we were not able to cover everything required and will have to go back next week. Fingers crossed for dry weather again.
