View From The Roadside

Micheldever Bluebells10, Originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.

I’ve found myself down around Southampton Water a lot recently with the camera, with the three Cunard ‘Queens’ in port for the only time before the QE2 is sold off later this year, and a few days later to see the new Independence of the Seas. I like taking these shots, I find the ships themselves and the whole idea of a port with ships coming and going from all over the world fascinating, but they are ‘documentary’ shots. There is nothing wrong with that, other than that I don’t really do documentary shots. I prefer to try and take some interesting composition to add some artistic twist to the picture, and you can’t really do much with a big ship on the other side of the harbour.
I was therefore looking forward to the trip to Micheldever Wood. It’s famous for it’s bluebells, which I wanted to photograph. I’d gone along a few weekends ago just to have a scouting walk around it. There were some bluebells then, but not the carpet of them I knew to expect. Having seen bluebells popping up around the place going in and out of work, I had a pretty good idea it was time to go back to Micheldever.
The weather couldn’t have been better. Very hazy sun, normally a terrible source of light, was just prefect for this place. The bright sun giving nice bright colours, while the haze made sure there were no harsh shadows. I’d seen other pictures, so I knew what to expect, but the actual sight of this carpet of purple was still quite amazing to see. It was almost too much. In one sense you just think you could point the camera anywhere and get a great shot, but you know that simply isn’t the case, but how do you go about finding the better spots?
My approach was to take a picture of a ‘nice’ spot, then move on around the wood looking for a better spot than the last. I did that for nearly three hours while walking around a lot of the wood. There were a lot of people there, including a lot of photographers, but nothing intrusive. For me, the best place was an area of Beech at the further end from the car park. A lot of people don’t venture that far, so I was the only one there.
Standing in this sea of purple, with the lovely fragrance was spellbinding, well, as spellbinding as anything can be when your about a hundred meters from the M3. I just kept finding another great shot to take, and another, and another. I even tried some tricks with adjusting the zoom mid-exposure. The dizzying effect just seemed to sum up this place so well, though that might say more about me getting dizzy trying to place the camera in this amazing wood than anything else.
By the time I gave up, mentally exhausted and physically tired, I couldn’t have been happier. It was the perfect way to spend a few hours, and a magical place to take photographs.

Update:
Bluebells are meant to be blue. They look blue. The original version of my ones were actually purple. I went back to Micheldever on Thurday to show James where I’d taken the pictures, and in the last moments of daylight, the shots of those bluebells really do look blue. A quick alteration om the white balance on the first batch of shots, and they too look like the blue I remember them being.

Southampton Container Terminal, Originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.

Where Portsmouth has the Spinnaker Tower, Southampton has the Container Terminal and it’s giant loading cranes. I’ve wanted to take some sort of picture of them for a long while, but I could never seem to find anywhere in around Totton that gave a good view, and none of the lanes around Marchwood looked any better. This was before I found the little slipway I used for the Queen Victoria shots, and charged with a new determination, I set off one evening a few weeks ago to try again. I very nearly failed again.
I went to where the map seemed to say my best chance would be, and again found access to the waterfront blocked behind gates and apartments. I was about to go home, when I noticed a family out walking their dogs, walking along a little dirt path by the side of a block of flats. Did the path continue around the corner? How close to the water would it get me? I parked the car and went for a walk.
As soon as I turned the corner I knew I’d found what I was looking for. The path led all the way to a little shingle beach were people were fishing or walking their dogs, and right across from the Terminal. I took a few shots, but knew I really wanted to be there as darkness fell to get a night shot.
When I went back I found my spot, and took a picture every few minutes over about half and hour as darkness fell, looking for just the right balance between the natural light of twilight and the lights of the terminal. This shot, for me, was it.
Now that I had a picture without a big container ship there, I began to wonder how different the picture would be if there had been a ship there at the time. I knew I was going to have to go back and see. I can’t remember if I checked ais-live or not, but the next time I went down, there were three ships unloading, one right opposite my little spot. I took some ‘daylight’ pictures, wandered off to see how close to the new Ventura cruise ship I could get (not very) then came back as night started to fall.

Dublin Express originally uploaded by Liam O’Neill.

It wasn’t a great nightfall. The cloud in this picture turned into a proper rain cloud, giving both a fairly boring flat sky, and rain that I couldn’t shoot in. It did finally stop, and I did take some pictures, but the Dublin Express, pointing right at me, had long ago turned on some very powerful lights on the bridge to illuminate the containers on deck, and these lights, and their long reflections in the water, very prominent in the middle of the frame, were just too bright. Instead I concentrated on the earlier pictures, and saw the Black and White potential in this one, where the threatening clouds add a real interest to the scene.