We walked in to the south east moors from Reddacleave Kiln area and headed north to go around the back of the Avon dam reservoir.  It was cold but sunny and the moors had that wintry feel which I love.  everything seems somewhat muted and we didn’t see another person all the time we were out.

We headed up the Western Wella brook towards Huntingdon Warren.  This smallholding provided food for the local tin mine and the warrens would have provided a good supply of meat in the form of rabbits.  The enclosed ground seen above is the main part of the farm – the remains of the buildings are just out of sight to the right of the tree.  Some remain of the workings can be seen down the valley with the tip of the reservoir in the distance on the right.

We headed up to the top of the hill behind Huntingdon Warren to the wonderfully named “Heap of sinners” which is a fairly large cairn and decided to stop for an early lunch break.  The above image was our view.  It captures the winter bleakness of the moors quite well for me.  As I am enjoying a little more image manipulation these days I’ve taken quite a bit of the colour out of this really only leaving reduced levels of blue and orange/yellow.  To me that has enhanced that wintry feel a little.

Getting to our feet after eating it must have been just about midday…  This was the view in the direction we were heading.  A brief conversation suggested a change of plan was wise but by the time we had put on a layer or two more the rain was with us, it became very cold and we got quite wet in the following half hour.

Hitting the main track running down the ridge in the direction of the car we looked back.  Rainbows are seen quite frequently however this one was nicely placed on the top of Pupers and all too often the weather is not the best for using the camera.  The weather bot north and west of us suggested that heading on back to the car would be wise.

A few minutes later there was a full rainbow the right hand end of which can be seen here.  Despite the wide angled nature of my lens I couldn’t get the whole rainbow in sadly.  This was the last shot of the day as the next batch of weather hit us immediately after this.  We agreed that the hail that came then was a little painful when it hit!  Overall a good winter walk however also a reminder that even the nice looking days can change quite quickly on Dartmoor.

I actually started a blog on this subject two years ago but it has remained a “draft” all that time.  Over that period I have learnt quite a bit and still have a lot more to learn.  These images do not relate to a specific walk but have all been taken over the past couple of months, the weather for the last week or so has mostly just been grey!  Most of the images have been seen on the Westcountry Wanderings page on facebook too as I do sometimes put recent images on there before they make it into a full blog.  Not particularly a fan of facebook but I do appreciate the feedback I get there.

For quite some time I couldn’t “see” black and white images in my scenes.  I realise that I could set the camera to black and white however one thing I have learnt is that it is better to process the images to grayscale after they are taken not at the time.  This actually allows far greater flexibility in processing and I will manipulate grayscale images more than colour ones which I prefer to be as true as possible.  Given we do not “see” in black and white” creating more or less contrast is not about reproducing a scene but more about a feel for the look of an image

The idea of “colour popping” has always appealed in a sense however it is something that can be overdone and so I rarely look for it in my images.  However the one above which was almost monochromatic on a grey day seemed worth trying it on.

Quite a few of my images have tended to be somewhat monochromatic anyway with my love of shooting into the light and I am starting to see that some of my better colour images will also work in grayscale.  In fact the above image is quite “wrong” in colour and does work better in monochrome.

I have always been a fan of Ansell Adam‘s work.  His monochrome landscapes are extremely evocative to me.  They manage to capture the scale and grandeur of some scenes in a way which almost seems harder to achieve in colour.  I have a long way to go yet but I like the sense of space here.

The drama of light and cloud which I love can also look good in grayscale.  The mistiness on the coast – something I like in colour – also works in grayscale as seen above.  The idea of the vessel being in a spotlight has more drama in monochrome than in colour actually.

This one quite surprised me.  The colours in the clouds at sunset were lovely and I got a quick shot or two in.  I suddenly wondered what it might look like in grayscale and was pleasantly surprised by the results.  The colour version can been seen on facebook too in this album.  This will not be the last monochrome post I think even if it has taken me two years to get it done.  I’ll close with very best wishes to all readers for 2012 – hopefully it will bring some good photographic opportunities too.

Moving off the Dorset coast we had a few days in inland areas of southern England.  At first I thought that there was nothing all that interesting to blog and then realised that there was a theme to a number of the images.  Where the highlights of the earlier part of the break had been in the natural environment, in the second part we saw quite a few great sights that were made by man covering many centuries.  The first of these works is Corfe Castle (seen above in evening light) which dates back from around the 11th century.

It is a remarkable (& very photogenic) structure.  The walls are crumbling and nothing like vertical in many places but it is a very appealing place to visit and is one of the National Trust’s most visited properties.  Spending a little more time in the area than I have in the past enabled me to explore some other viewpoints and, in the one above, look down on the castle.

Heading north from Corfe we found we were passing Cerne Abbas and it seemed silly to pass without taking a look at the “giant”.  There are a number of figures of various sorts in the hillsides in the area with quite a few “white horses”.  When the outline has been recently cleared to allow the chalk to show through they are more striking however the relatively low angle of the light on the above image does give a sense of the figure.  There is more than a little confusion about the age of the figure and it is not possible to definitively date it as older than the 17th century.

We then headed further north to take a look at one of the most renowned UNESCO World Heritage sites in the UK – Stonehenge.  While I’ve passed it a number of times it is some years since I’ve had the time to stop and look properly.  Tourists are now far better organised and the time of wandering among the stone is long gone sadly.

Even in the relatively harsh light the stone are very striking and the labour required to achieve the structure would have been quite remarkable.  Once again dating is not fully established on all parts of the structure however it is between 4 and 5 thousand years old.

Heading towards Devizes which was the nearest town to where we were staying for a couple of nights we found the small (& attractive) village of Seend.  The church there looked wonderful on the afternoon autumn sunshine.  I felt the smoke at the base of the tower added a certain mysterious quality to the setting.

We spent some time walking the Kennet & Avon canal and it is here that our last man made structure in this sequence was found.  This set of locks, Caen Hill locks, is also the most recent structure built in the 19th century and now restored to leisure use.  There are 29 locks in the main series and it is a remarkable piece of engineering and restoration.

Even at this somewhat quieter time of year there were plenty of people making use of the canal for a variety of leisure activities.  In addition to people using the long boats on the canal for holidays there were plenty of fishermen around along with many walkers and cyclists making the most of the weather and the canal towpath.

Firstly I spent the middle part of the day in Brixham.  The tide was out and there was building work going on around the harbour with scaffold and sheeting covering a building which seemed to intrude on any shot.  However walking the breakwater I liked the feeling of isolation around these fishing rods.  The fisherman was nowhere to be seen which added to the effect.

In the evening I drove up to Dartmoor for a walk.  A little unusually for us we headed into the valley of the West Dart at one stage rather than walking the open moors.  These granite stepping stones across the Dart caught my eye and I took a few shots here.  The water was low so walking across them was very easy but I have seen the river when you cannot see the stones at all.  We stayed there for a drink and watched deer on the edge of the hillside however they were too far away for any meaningful photos .  A green woodpecker flew by but too quickly to get a shot of.

Almost back at the car we passed this gate.  I like the strangeness of a gate with no fence or wall around.  On the far hillside are the lines of old leats as the area has been extensively worked by tin miners in the past.  The late light on the moorland was lovely.

These are images taken on two different occasions (and with different cameras) however as they both concern rather indirect sunlight and are both recent I thought they might go together.  The one above (taken on my “point and shoot”) was on the morning of the recent election here.  I was heading off to the polling station I was working at and, fortunately, it was early enough for there to be little traffic around so stopping suddenly when I saw this was not a problem.  The early misty light looked lovely.

The rest of these images were all taken on the same evening as I was heading back to Totnes after a meeting in Paignton.  I’ve looked over this valley before and felt it had something to offer a photographer but, as always, catching the light is the issue.  The very threatening clouds combined with the bright sunlight (yes – it is a little overexposed) with the feel of the valley below was interesting – a place I will return to.

The above photo comes from a favourite spot – the copse on the ridge looks good at various times of the day if the light is good but here it is almost a silhouette with the attraction being that burst of sunlight from behind the cloud.

Almost back in Totnes on a road where there really is nowhere to stop I just had to for this one.  Not all meetings have such beneficial results but hopefully this one will lead to another opportunity to exhibit as well as giving me some good images.

When we arrived at the summit the contrasts were striking and remarkable as we seemed to have arrived on the edge of two quite different weather systems. To the west (the direction we had arrived from) the weather was quite “normal” for the area and time of year – clouds and sun. To the north and south there was a clear line of weather. To the east there really was really nothing to see!  It was interesting to be at such a clear division in the weather.