RIP Lone Tree

This morning I went out walking on one of my usual routes - I hadn't been this way for some time and the going was heavy. Over two grassy sheep fields, is another large arable field which has a lone tree in the middle of it. The field had been ploughed over the winter into huge furrows and I felt momentarily disoriented as I scanned the horizon for its familiar outline only to find it missing! I felt sure I had made a mistake - perhaps the tree had been in another field after all. But as I walked round the edge, it became clear to me that it was definitely no longer there. Perhaps it blew down in stormy weather or more likely it was removed by the farmer to make ploughing easier. It had always been a landmark which showed the direction of the public footpath across the field, usually hidden by crops or ploughed up in the winter. No longer will it be there to point the walker in the right direction or to offer a bit of welcome shade on a hot sunny day. Another small change in the landscape, probably not noticed by many but sadly missed by me.

I have taken many photographs of this tree over the years, with various assorted cameras and in all seasons. Here is a selection.... RIP Lone Tree!

Life through a plastic lens

Rifling through my cupboard full of cameras, I picked up my long-neglected Holga camera last week.  It was so long since I had used it, that I didn't think to check, took off the back to insert a film and immediately saw that there was already one in there!  Luckily the film wasn't spoilt as I straight away put the back on again.  However, instead of the colour film I thought I was shooting, it turned out to be black and white. When shooting black and white you tend to more aware of light and shade as opposed to pleasing colour compositions, so I was quite surprised to find that most of the images I shot that day had turned out well.

The film used is 120 roll film with the same square format as the Hasselblad but there the similarity ends. Whereas the Hasselblad lenses produce pin-sharp images, the Holga is a cheap plastic camera with a plastic lens.  The look of the images is soft and blurred with a distinctive dark vignetting in the corners. It has two settings - sunny or cloudy - and 4 distance settings so there is very little scope for control.  I love the look this camera gives to images and somehow it is so much more satisfying using it than trying to emulate the look with digital filters or phone apps.  Obviously it is a lot more effort - instead of just uploading the images onto the computer, the film has to be processed, dried, scanned for display on screen or printed in the dark room.  But I reckon it is worth it, so will be using it more frequently from now on.  

More images taken over the last few years with my Holga can be seen here