In most people’s modern hectic lives there is little opportunity to re-visit things – especially if it is your hobby. Between coming home from work, sorting the kids out and being a taxi service at weekends, there is often little time for anything else. That’s why when the opportunity does arrive to look back over your back catalogue, it is often a surprising and pleasurable experience to find that the photographs you passed over the first time resonate with you on a second viewing.
Below are two such photographs, taken back in October 2016, on Holme Fell above Hodge Close in the Lake District. One was taken with my little compact, which goes a long way to prove the expression, “the best camera you have is the one in your hand”. I had camped over in my van in the Hodge Close car park the night before, getting up early to be in a spot I had found the evening before, as the colours on a specific tree had caught my eye.
As the light changed I saw the sun that was rising behind me and clearing the top of the fell touch the top of the birch shown below – I couldn’t resist.
Moving off the high ground, I headed down to the choked up reservoirs that lie in the woods just below Holme Fell. These reservoirs were used as part of the slate quarrying in Hodge Close further down the hill from Holme Fell. At the time, I guess wasn’t that taken with the light, as I took the photograph using my compact camera, and didn’t get the “big” camera out of the rucksack. In some ways I regret that now, but at the same time I’m glad I took the photograph as looking back the light was rather special and quite painterly.
Looking back at my trip to the Lake District in October, I think I have found a number of landscape photographs that deserve some new attention, as ever though, it is all a matter of finding the time….