Photography is a significant part of my strolling. It acts as a record of change and a jogger of memory. I take a great many simple snaps, hundreds adding up to perhaps two thousand a month. It is fairly mind-bending just keeping the catalogue of the images so they can be searched and sorted in some fashion.
I am a hoarder of memories.
Every so often from the painfully mundane an image that can illustrate a point on the blog can be culled. A good many photographs just go onto my flickr account, a slideshow runs on the left hand side of the blog if you are interested in seeing the photostream.
As with everything else I hope to be on an upward learning curve when it comes to photography but it is debateable. I spend a lot of time enjoying other people’s snaps, some of the work is breathtaking. They are all inspirations.
Here are some of the images which mean something to me in August.
The month itself is far to short in the way that February is much too long. Winters might be milder, spring might be arriving earlier, but none of this has yet to save us from the misery which is Feb. The two months August and February are calendar opposites but somehow February always seems closer to hand than August.
The most dramatic early feature of the month were butterflies. It has been well recorded this was the year for the Painted Lady, it made national news.
By the end of August I seem to have lost sight of the butterflies, perhaps I am just looking in the wrong places. I miss them.
The farmers have been busy bringing in their crops for us, a process which has escalated as the month has drawn to a close. Fields that were gold will soon be brown and with the first rains, mud. The harvesting has obliterated the footpaths across fields in many instances, the three inch of stubble makes walking more difficult for me, it is a serious inconvenience to my dogs who are only 6 or 7 inches off the ground.
Giant circular bales which always look on the point of movement now dominate fields. They don’t move, I tried it once, even with the strength of ten pints it was not an easy task and not one recommended. Some fields still have a more traditional square bale, sometimes piled high, echoes of urban skylines, towers 16 bales high, 5 across leaning drunkenly dot the fields. The effort will have an efficient purpose, the size will be determined by some reasoning that eludes me. I can guess, but I don’t know. There is always something to learn.
Again this year I have failed to take a picture of the harvest that matches the one that is in my head, maybe next year.
So the farmers have danced with nature again and brought in the colourful crops for us. In the meanwhile the plants, left to their own devices have simply got on with it. Fruit has ripened, seeds are being distributed.
This has brought about another problem for walkers with dogs low to the ground and rough coated, seed heads. One walk was totally ruined by continually, and literally, having to cut thistle heads out of the dogs coats. In the end I had to carry them 3 miles. The accumulation of the heads had become too much, walking became impossible for them. The dogs coats were beginning to look moth eaten with my continuing ministrations. Cutting thistle heads out of wriggling dogs with a 1 inch pair of scissors does not make my top ten list of things to do.
This combined with the issues created by harvesting has meant field walking has been somewhat curtailed the last few weeks.
Before the seed head problem a recent walk took me past Langham Church. It was staging a wedding ceremony, so it did not seem like the appropriate time to go wandering in. Unfortunately for most churches, there is no longer a good time to wander in. The idea of the open church has long gone in many areas now. The population has retreated from church and the churches make themselves less approachable. The only church I have found open was no longer a church.
This was a great shame as Langham Church is reputed to have the oldest church chest in Essex. An oak dug-out dating from the 12th century. The venture to augment my walks with some fine historical church interiors is only going to be possible if I can solve the problem of the locked church.
The chest shown is from West Bergholt Old Church (the church that isn’t any longer) and dates from the 15th or 16th century. I am hoping to add to this image collection but the modern world may have put paid to that.
August was a month of small pilgrimage for me, the visit to the first Augustinian Priory in England. I did not capture the building that I saw, my snaps were workman-like, they are on flickr if you wish to see them.
The days are growing shorter now, noticeably so, sunsets are currently at the 20:00 mark, sunrise just before 06:00. Good news for the lazy photographer. No longer is there a need to get up desperately early to capture a sunrise and it is not so late that it affects the needs created by a working day. Likewise a sunset has been and gone and I am back home at an hour which means there is almost enough hours to sleep in.
August is a time of sunrise and sunset, the hint that autumnal colour is on its way and the next great season will soon be upon us. I am very much looking forward to this, even if the shorter days will start to impact on the available free time I have outdoors. I have my plans for September, if I am lucky half of it will get done.
I left a comment on the 'butterflies' post a while ago that was presumably missed. I remarked on the conspicuous reports that this is a good year for butterflies, yet we have seen very few, either in our garden or on our backpacks. Of the small number we have encountered, most have been painted ladies, which is consistent with the news.
ReplyDelete