Photography | alan frost photography

Posts tagged ‘Photography’

Agapanthus – simply beautiful

Agapanthus

In a break from my usual black and white photographs, I couldn’t resist posting this image of some flowers in our garden. I don’t profess to be a gardener but these plants are quite stunning and have given my wife and I a great deal of pleasure this year.

Agapanthus are an architectural plant originating from South Africa. These are growing in three pots on an area of decking immediately outside our living room. Without a great deal of care, they have produced forty stems, each about two to three feet long, topped with a ‘ball’ of intensely coloured flowers. They have such a long season of interest, from the moment the first stems start to appear, through to when their attractive seed heads form later in the year.

Simply beautiful and without question one of my favourite plants.

For those who are interested in the technical details, this photograph was taken with a Leica M9P and 35mm Summilux lens. It was shot at f2.0, 1/3000 sec at ISO 160. Cropped and with some processing in Lightroom, but the colours are just as the CCD sensor recorded them.

The Dunes – East Head, West Sussex

I have said it before, and I’ll say it again, but East Head on the West Sussex coast must be one of my favourite places. I am so fortunate to live nearby and I try not to take it for granted, which would be a very easy thing to do.

Strangely I rarely visit this location specifically to take photographs, as it is really dog walking territory. As a result most of my images taken here are opportunistic, and are often captured on my iPhone. This shot is just such an example. The clouds were wonderful and the sun lit the dunes in the foreground. The sands were rippled from the wind and luckily were pure; not a paw print in sight! The grasses too were bending in the wind and a lone figure below the patch of blue sky completes the scene. How lucky I am to have such a beautiful place on my doorstep.

Churches Project no.16 – A return to North Stoke, West Sussex

There is something to be said for returning to a location or indeed a church which I have previously visited. The benefit of familiarity and the knowledge of the images taken before, help me to see things with a fresh pair of eyes, to explore new angles and find fresh compositions. The light can of course be different even in the interior of a church building, so a return visit can hopefully yield some new images.

This was certainly the case when I went back to St Mary the Virgin in North Stoke last week. It’s a particular favourite of mine so whether or not I was able to make some more images didn’t really matter, as I was more than happy to be in this historic and rather timeless place of peace and solitude. I hope the four images in this post help to convey this feeling.

Cared for by The Churches Conservation Trust, the church is no longer used for regular worship but is still consecrated.

If you would like to read the original entry about North Stoke Church and see more photographs then please click here.

As always do click on any of the images to view a larger version which will open in a new window.

The Church Defender

Church Defender

In time to come it might be quite hard to put a date against this photograph.

The Church in the background, which is dedicated to St Margaret, is in Cley Next the Sea on the North Norfolk coast and was built in the early to mid 1300’s. The vehicle parked on the grass verge is of course a Land Rover, built much later but many are still going strong today. I would guess this is a Series 1 model – which first came into production in 1948 and later became the Land Rover Defender. I am no expert and if anyone can confirm whether or not this is the case then do please comment. An iconic vehicle which went out of production after 68 years, the last one rolled off the line on the 29th January 2016.

I like the timeless quality to this shot. Both the subject and the treatment evoke memories of days past even though it was taken less than two years ago in October 2014.

Cley Next the Sea is arguably best known for its windmill, which can be seen for miles around and overlooks the salt marches of this beautiful but wild part of the English coast. There are links to a couple of earlier posts featuring Cley windmill below.

Last light of the day on Cley Windmill

Cley Windmill – Decisions, decisions

Transient light – when only colour will do.

Transition

Photography is painting with light – and that light can be very transient in the landscape. The weather and consequently the light can change in an instant, so to capture these fleeting moments there has to be an element of good fortune.

This image was taken a couple of weeks ago in the beautiful county of Dorset. We were experiencing all types of weather that week; in fact it could be said we had all four seasons in just one day. Bright sunshine followed by clouds and then hail showers, turning the ground white if only for a short time. Hopefully the last blast of winter before the summer truly arrives. At this time of year we also see fields turn yellow as the vibrant colour of the oil seed rape crops burst into life. Combining these two key ingredients is potentially a recipe for some good landscape photography which can only be enjoyed in colour.

When I took this shot I was standing in sunshine, looking back across the rolling hills to the north of the county town of Dorchester. As we returned to our cottage I could see dark shower clouds moving in quickly from the west and as the rain fell on parts of the countryside it was lit by the sun. I quickly parked the car, got out, and walked very briskly to find a suitable position to take a handful of shots. Within a few minutes the special light had gone, but I knew I had captured the transient light and colour of the scene before me.