Spring on the Southwell Trail - Part 18 (June 2018)

This is the final post in the Spring on the Southwell Trail series and as the season drew to a close, the trail was shaded by a thick canopy of leaves and the green verges had started to encroach onto the path. I continued to capture these changes but it was harder to draw out the compositions as much of the trail looked very similar. Individual trees that I recognised in winter and early spring were now disguised by the dense foliage:

Moving off the trail into the surrounding fields provided more light to work with. I captured my favourite ash trees (yet again!) but this time with a stiff breeze blowing the leaves and the wheat crop:

 

I also visited Edingley Beck which was now covered in weed. I have included a comparison from earlier in the year to show the difference:

Finally, the view from the trail which is now very restricted due to the height of the fast growing ferns - again I have included a comparison from earlier in the year:

I have already started a summer series, or rather I have continued to take photographs along the trail during July, but I can see that the volume is greatly reduced. The weather has been unusually hot and the ground has been very parched. I think the summer series will be more documentary than landscape photography - a bit like this post - but there is still enough time for this to change; who knows what the British weather will serve up in the next couple of months!

Hunstanton - Part 2 (June 2018)

The wreck of the Sheraton on Hunstanton beach has an interesting history from its launch as a trawler in 1907, to its use as a target ship during World War Two, and its eventual wrecking in 1947 (1). This is a photograph of the remains of Sheraton taken on my previous visit to Hunstanton in 2013:

For this visit I decided to concentrate the close-up details including the rivets and the rust:

It wasn't really landscape photography weather, in fact it was quite dull. This was the scene looking across The Wash, followed by views of the beach and the lighthouse above the cliffs:

Walking back to the car, I set myself the task of taking one photograph that summed up the conditions and represented a grey summer's day at the seaside - this was the one I chose:

(1) More information about the Sheraton wreck can be found on Nautical Archaeology Society site and at Norfolk Heritage Explorer 

Hunstanton - Part 1 (June 2018)

Hunstanton is one of few locations on the east coast of the UK that faces to the west. This is due to it position on The Wash and makes it ideal for sunset photography. It also has a very distinctive three-toned cliff face consisting of orange sandstone at the base, a layer of red limestone and then the upper white chalk layer.

My first photography visit to Hunstanton was in 2007. At this time I was using a Canon 20D and a 18-55mm kit lens for my landscapes. I only mention this because I looked back at some of my old shots from this visit and was surprised at how small the file sizes were; I even checked to see if I had reduced them from the original RAW file. When I looked up the 20D's specification, I was reminded that it was only an 8.2 megapixel DSLR, which was good at the time, and demonstrates how far camera technology has move on in the last 10 years. Despite the file size, I quite like some of the results from 2007 and I picked this one as an example:

For my latest visit, I didn't get much in the way of evening sunlight - it was a bit flat. In 2007 I would have probably cursed the weather but now my photography tastes have changed and I was happy to look at the detail of the three-toned cliffs and in particular the level of erosion.

I was actually surprised at the amount of rock debris below the cliffs, more than I remember from previous visits, and the cliff face looked particularly unstable in places (see below). This led me to wonder whether things had got significantly worse over the last 10 years and I tried to find the answer on the internet. I found reports of some damaging storm surges during this time and many references for the need to protect this part of the coast from further erosion, but I failed to a specific measure for the Hunstanton cliffs: