September and October on the Southwell Trail - Part 2 (2021)

I raised in my last post the idea of photography as a mindful activity and will expand a bit more with this selection of photographs. 

Often mindfulness is portrayed as something done with your eyes closed in a dark room with a focus on the regularity of breathing. The aim is to relax the mind from the relentless stream of thoughts, staying in the present moment for the duration of the exercise. This is particularly helpful to relieve stress and/or manage intrusive thoughts. 

Whilst I find the standard mindfulness techniques very useful, I am more able to engage for longer when it is part of an activity, like photography. 

To this end, I have a number of locations that I can access easily from home at different times of the day. One of these is a stretch of the Southwell Trail that receives nice light at the end of a day. I am very familiar with the compositions on this stretch of the trail so I am able to concentrate solely on the light and how it falls on my chosen subjects. This means I am rarely distracted by the technicalities of photography including making any judgements about the results. In this way, I can stay in the moment and just go with the flow…

These are some of the images from this section of the trail during September and October:

     

September and October on the Southwell Trail (2021)

There will be some jumping around in the next few posts as I cover the photography in the local area during September and October. As stated previously, the photography was sporadic during this time and getting out with the camera was used more as a release than a planned activity. 

Often I found myself covering the same subjects on multiple occasions, like this field just off the Southwell Trail. My initial interest was the colours and textures of the stubble lines following the late summer harvest (see my recent post, Stubble Lines). I then returned several times as the golden post harvest tones were replaced by fresh greens, emphasised by some heavy October skies in a number of the images below, and later by some emerging autumnal colours: 

Stepping back to the start of September the new green had just started to show in the stubble lines, as had a vibrant green buffer at the front of field which included a selection of wildflowers. I can reflect on how important it was to be able to capture these small changes when experiencing difficult times, underlining for me, the power of photography as a mindful activity:

Strawberry Hill Heath (September 2021)

Walking back from The Desert (see my previous post), I stopped near to Strawberry Hill Heath to capture the sunlight in the top of the birch trees. The birch leaves were starting to change colour and there was a pleasant golden glow, particularly when highlighted by the late afternoon sunlight. 

Also changing to a rich auburn colour were some of the ferns that line the various paths on the heath. It was great to see some of this early colour although it was fair to say that autumn was arriving late this year…