Having too much time on my hands
As you know, I'm a rotten photographer, and for a number of reasons, the technical side is not going to improve any time soon. I'm therefore, going through my last twelve years of digital photography, and I'm finding out that photos which on the face of it were rejected, very ordinary snaps, can often be transformed into something quite beautiful, and sometimes very strange. My abstracts that I recently displayed at the last display night received one of my highest number of awards.
Normal televisions have a screen ratio of 4 : 3, in other words the screen is four units wide and 3 units high. Wide screen televisions are generally 16 : 9.
I have been experimenting with photos which I have cropped to 36 : 8, which by any standards is extreme letterbox format. Unfortunately this blog appears to be limited to portrait and no landscape, which makes the photos smaller than they need be.
The first photograph is taken at Cockfosters. It is in London, and everyone knows it as the northern terminus of the Piccadilly Line. Everyone has heard of Cockfosters, but few have seen it!
The second photo is a complete contrast. It is the furthest north that you can get on the Isle of Man, the Point of Ayre. Possibly not in this picture, but certainly in the original, you can just see the southernmost Scottish Mountains near the Mull of Kintyre. It's a bleak spot, the wind always seems to be blowing, and two currents meet here, making the sea extremely rough at all times. Only seabirds really feel at home here.
This format, besides giving a wonderfully spacious feeling, almost as though you were there, is great if you are into cloudscapes
Cornwall is a beautiful English county. In early spring the sun bounces off the fresh green leaves and the light in the narrow lanes becomes green. Add to that, bluebells and other wild flowers and picturesque cottages, it is difficult NOT to take good pictures.
This is the Clapper Bridge near Pillaton near Saltash, which is joined to Devon near Plymouth by Brunel's giant railway bridge over the River Tamar.
Finally, part of Salisbury Plain near Avebury, between Winterbourne Monkton and Berwick Bassett. It's one of the areas where early civilisations formed. Places like Stonehenge and Avebury are nearby. The farming land has traditionally been sheep, who eat almost anything plant-based, but modern agricultural methods are making the area more arable. A popular crop is rape seed, forming yellow fields all over the Plain.
Deadman's Hill, near Marlborough
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