Autumn Fruits

Autumn Fruits, originally uploaded by Bexley98.

Autumn is my least favourite season. In the Scottish Highlands it’s the season of rain and wind, Summer is long forgotten and the crisp clean days of winter are still months away. Autumn is also the season when I feel most useless…my impairment is colour blindness, I don’t see dark reds, greens or browns properly. As a result the autumn colours are something of a let down for me.

Autumn feels like the day after a party, all of summer’s growth is lying about, everything is damp and decaying. The sun disappears until the first frosts and it rains and rains. I fully understand why people get SAD….

Anyway, I braved the heavy showers on Sunday and went for a stroll around the River Nairn, something I haven’t done for a while. This time I didn’t go out with a theme in mind…it kind of came to me whilst I was ‘on location’. I’ve been reading Giles Miltons excellent ‘Nathaniels Nutmeg’, all about the Spice wars in the East Indies 300 years ago.

When I saw that the hedgerows were full of Blackberries, Rosehip, Elderflower and assorted other autumn fruits, it got me thinking of the illustrations in old Herbals and this combined with my current colour toning fad resulted in todays picture.

As someone who takes lots of landscapes, I have little experience of macro (close up) photography, so often I’m looking at the big picture I fail to see some of the more attractive detail. With an abundance of fruit, the last flowers and and the amazing patterns of leaf litter, maybe autumn isn’t so depressing after all.

I’m on holiday for most of this week so am hoping to get out and about for a few more shots…more updates to follow.

Breaking into heaven

Breaking into heaven, originally uploaded by Bexley98.

Hi ho...another slack few weeks of photography following my camping trip.

If you keep an eye on my flickr site, you'll notice I've been working a fair bit over the last few months with texture and toning. The effects can be beautiful and whilst I'm no master, I'm quite pleased with the shot above and a few other of my efforts.

My attempts pale in comparison to two flickr masters of toning, Lara Jade and Rosie Hardy. It's really rare that I'm genuinely moved by anything, but these two have the kind of photographic talent that you can't teach.

I will never be as good as they are....and whilst that's slightly dissapointing, it's enormous fun to try and also to be wowed by thier work. Despite her photographic maturity, Rosie just turned 18....and over the 200 or so photo's she has on her flickr site, you can see the evolution of her photographic style from fairly typical studenty 'teen' stuff to start with to jaw-droppingly, mind bendingly brilliant stuff in the last few months.

Rosie's work is made all the more emotive by the fact that she lives and studies photography in the UK and has a boyfriend, Aaron (also a phenominal photog) in the US. Their relationship runs as a kind of soundtrack to the photography on thier respective flickr sites and thier shared blog.

I've kept an eye on Lara's work since she featured in a UK photography magazine...I think it was Practical Photgraphy? Her work is arguably more gothic than Rosies...there's some wonderful interpretations of fairy tales in Lara's flickr portfolio, and her work is instantly identifiable, kinda art deco meets gothic....genius? We throw that word around a lot, but she is amongst the best.

It just makes me want to pick up my camera...