A short blog this week - You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, or so the old proverb goes. I'm very keen to produce some images that have a more graphical feel, a bit of edge to them. There's a slight problem, I get led towards these kind of shots, but can't seem to take any (have a drink) for a couple of reasons; Primarily I have a certain way of seeing, I'm simply a documentary style photographer, not particularly creative or sufficiently "arty" perhaps. The other is the fact of where I live, we just don't have gritty urban areas, nor anything with stunning modern architecture.
Yesterday I decided to take a short trip on my motorcycle around part of the Cotswolds. It could hardly be described as edgy or gritty or modern, it's the anthesis of those things, pretty sand coloured cottages nestle together in chocolate box villages. The cotswolds is an area of outstanding natural beauty, like a giant postcard. It's also full of well heeled locals and equally well heeled tourists, the whole place reeks of money. I've never seen so many high end DSLR's and ultra fast lenses. I went to Bibury, Bourton-on- the-Water, Lower Slaughter... they're all very similar and generally have rivers running through the main street with bridges to cross. The shots I took are all very similar too, perhaps I could present you with just one photograph to sum the place up, now all I have to do is choose it. How about this taken in Bourton-on-the-Water? -
We've got the tourists, a river and bridge...no cottages though. Ok, let's have a photo of a typical Cotswold resident, here she comes (the rider not the horse!) as we venture to Lower Slaughter -
Now we have the cottages, river, one of the indigenous population, but no tourists. Trying to pick just one photo was harder than I thought we'll give up on that. Instead I'll show you the other frames in this sequence -
You can see it's tricky to get one of those geometric, graphic shots in this environment. Here's as good an attempt that I could have made under the circumstances. Two ladies who were slightly lost, wandering up a path that I have no idea how they got in to which lead to someones garden -
I could have bombarded you with pictures of quaint, quintessentially English churches, pubs...let's move on. They say that if you want to take interesting photos then put yourself in front of something interesting and I'm trying to do that. To be honest it wasn't the most fruitful of trips, but the ride was absolutely fabulous. I can see why so many tourists visit the area, it is beautiful and must be a huge contrast from what they're used to in their own countries.
Something I find really easy is capturing my children. Let's finish on a high and total change of scene - my youngest son about to win the sack race at the school sports day taken the day before my Cotswolds trip!
As usual I would be delighted to read any comments and my sincere thanks go to anyone taking the time to read my blog.
All images can be opened by clicking on the thumbnails and are taken using a Leica M with Summicron 35mm fitted, the last photograph used the Noctilux 50mm