View From The Roadside

Muddy Boots
Originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.

Last Saturday some members of my photography club met in Winchester at about 2pm. We had until 4pm to take any pictures we wanted in Winchester. Later, once we have all processed our pictures from the day, we can have a little competition to pick the best ones The real benefit from an exercise like this though is to see what other photographers saw, what pictures they took, given the same limited circumstances that you had to work with. It’s always easy to imagine you would have taken such and such a shot had you been there too. This challenge puts you there too, and lets you see what you missed, what other perspectives you maybe didn’t see, and what unique things you saw. I can’t wait to see what the others come up with.

On the day we split up into little groups. I spent the day with Anton. We set off for the Records Office on Sussex Street and went from there. It was further along Sussex Street that I spotted these boots outside a house. I had to wait for the visitor at the door to go in before nipping back to take the picture.

Tank Lights
Originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.

After running into Alexis for the first time in the Great Hall (the first of many times we came across him in the 2 hours), we ended up in Peninsular Square, which I’d never actually been to before. This tank (SPG, whatever) caught my eye. Wonderfull as the square is, it’s lack of symmetry lets it down in my book.

It was one of those typical overcast days, though thankfully dry. The sun did make a little appearance just before 4pm. Finding pictures was quite a challenge. Most of us decided not to rely on the Cathedral, mostly because it was just too obvious, but also because anything inside the Cathedral would leave you no real time to get anywhere else. It was that need to stay moving just to get to places that might yield pictures that was a major part of the challenge in terms of actually taking your own pictures. So far I’ve managed to whittle down my pictures to eleven, though which three I go with for the competition I haven’t yet decided.

Field Of Gold
Originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.

The yellow crop is called Rapeseed, and it’s a very popular crop in these parts. Rapeseed is used to make biodiesel, amongst other things.
I would have liked a better defined sky, but it was a hazy day. I decided I would go back another day when the weather was a little more co-operative. When I did I found a very green field.

A few days after I took this shot,  and a few days before I returned, we had about 2 days of wind and rain, and it had stripped the flowers from the plants. It wasn’t just this field, it seemed it was every field of rapeseed in Hampshire,  at least! I was glad I’d taken this shot when I did.

Blue Yellow Green
Originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.

Actually, it’s not true that all the rapeseed flowers were blown off. This little patch a few fields away did survive, probably because they were sheltered by the row of trees. Just outsidde the frame of the picture the flowers end and it’s back to the flowerless plants. Indeed, without the lack of flowers I don’t think I could have taken this picture. Rapeseed has a very heavy smell. It’s a very strange sensation to stand next to a field fo the stuff. It actually makes it hard to breath. I can only imagine it’s something to do with the pollen. To get this picture I had to take the marked footpath across the field from where the car was parked, and I really don’t think I would, or could, have had the field been the sea of yellow it was a few days previously.

Meadow, originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.

This is a shot from my first outing with a digital SLR, my housemates.
The setting sun was casting the most lovely light, the sort that really highlights the texture of the countryside and lit up these weeds. I notice that the fence has since been replaced with a far less photogenic version.

Since it was my first outing with someone elses camera, I was in jpeg mode. If you change a jpeg and resave it, it does lose some quality with every save, even a resize and necessary touch of sharpening, to say nothing of adjusting levels, contrast or white balance. I don’t want to change this shot, but the frustration of not being able to anyway is why I’ve only ever shot RAW since.

This is the (new) companion blog to my Flickr gallery (http://www.flickr.com/photos/viewfromtheroadside/).

As I take pictures and add them to Flickr, I will pick out some of them and write a little more about them here. The reasons for picking an image could be anything from an interesting story about how I came to take that picture, to a new technique I’ve tried in Photoshop. I will go back over the existing pictures from time to time as well.

While a picture should be able to stand all on it’s own, I often find the story about how that picture came about, both in a technical and anecdotal sense, can be just as fascinating, and can sometimes even help appreciate the picture more.