Clough Williams-Ellis is most famous for building Portmeirion, but not too far away is Plas Brondanw which he spent most of his life working on. It’s a small garden with lots of features designed to make the most of the surrounding scenery. I tried to make a few photos that were a bit different and this is the first one.
Snow has it’s pluses and minuses. It’s great to photograph but quite inconvenient to move around in, in a car or on foot. This is taken on a compact camera, easier to carry and use when the snow is blowing around you. Initially I excluded the power lines but fortunately then realised they made a good contribution to the composition. The scene you’re looking at is the Wimble in New Radnor.
At this time of year the sun doesn’t get too much higher and often produces nice shadows, especially on a crisp and slightly frosty day. As is obvious this picture is looking straight at the sun. It was taken using a cheap Nikon kit lens but still gives a great contrasty result.
This autumn has seen some particularly good colours maybe due to all the rain and the warm weather. This is a picture of the Fairy Glen in Snowdonia; it’s quite dark even in bright weather so it is easy to make long exposures to show the water’s swirling flow.
It’s autumn again and yesterday’s sunny day made the very best of the trees and their leaves. I did not have to walk far to see this scene. The picture does not use a polarising filter as it would have made the colours too colourful and the sky just too dark.
This is New York’s Central Park. I had imagined a warm blue-sky day as one does after seeing promotional photos of New York. But it was wet and windy. Too windy to hold an umbrella and a camera. In the end I think the photograph is better for being on a not-so-great day as it has a distinct atmosphere that wouldn’t be possible on a sunny September morning.
This is a canopy of trees – or just some foliage really. Photographed from Faringdon Folly Tower looking almost straight down; of course that’s the tower’s shadow in the picture. Even my shadow is visible, just.
You will have seen many pictures of Antony Gormley’s ‘Another Place’ on the beach at Crosby. Hopefully this one’s a bit different. It’s a closeup of the corrosion on the back of one of the 100 figures. Click on the image to see it larger and see more of the detail.
I have only just got round to looking at some pictures from last autumn in Cholmondeley’s gardens. It was a chilly and grey day but the light suited the subjects perfectly. Plants at the end of their lives or just shutting down for the winter.
The weather was a bit too cloudy around sunset on the solstice but it did clear just long enough for the moon to make a hazy appearance next to Beeston Castle in Cheshire. Peckforton Castle also makes an appearance in this photo, just visible on the skyline towards the right.
