Author: Richard

Landscapes

Dinky van

On location and I’ve brought my trusty 1950 Bedford delivery van with me.

Dinky van

We’re on assignment because I’ve just started Ben Hawkins’ The Complete Beginner’s Photography Course, A Modular System for Success and the park at Nostell Priory is an ideal location to complete the Landscape section, including this attempt at ‘forced perspective’, creating an illusion with a toy car.

Dinky van

It worked better on the lichen encrusted capstones on the old park wall than it did in the sunlit courtyard at the stables because I couldn’t get the camera down far enough to get ‘eye level’ at about the height of the van roof.

The Rule of Thirds

Nostell Park

But there’s more to landscape photography than toy cars – or as Ben suggests we call them ‘the right props’. He starts with the rule of thirds.

dead tree

Then adds a focal point – again, to have most impact, at a junction of thirds.

Lead-in Line

Woodland at Nostell

His next suggestion is to create depth by adding a lead-in line, such as a path or shoreline.

Framing

lake
bridge

And of course you can frame a landscape with an overhanging branch, a tree trunk, a bench or even a Robert Adam bridge.

The only shot that I struggled with for technical reasons was one which showed a still landscape with one element moving and blurred – such as cascading water or windswept grasses.

I need to try again with a tripod and, as a long exposure is needed, on a duller day.

Nostell Priory

Intentional Camera Movement

ICM

This was my attempt at ICM – intentional camera movement – a rowan with plenty of ripe berries. It’s intended to give an impressionist effect.

Batman Hoverfly on Hogweed

hoverfly sketches

Batman Hoverfly, Myathropa florea, on hogweed in a clearing below Staindale Lake, Dalby Forest, North Yorks Moors. It is supposed to have a Batman logo-shaped marked on the rear of the thorax, but individuals can be variable.

The larvae of this hoverfly are ‘rat-tailed maggots’ living in wet hollows in woodland, although they’ll make use of buckets and plastic containers.

hoverfly

James Herriot’s House

James Herriot's

A distant cousin of mine who lived in Thirsk told me that when she was a young child her guinea pig died. In tears she took it, in its cage, to Alf White – a.k.a. James Herriot – the local vet.

“Can you do anything for him?”

It didn’t work out like it does in the TV series:

“No sorry, even I can’t help him!”

Grape Lane, Whitby, has no connection that I know to James Herriot but another James, later Captain Cook, was apprenticed there in 1746.

Hostile Aliens

production still

Hard to believe that I didn’t become Yorkshire’s answer to Steven Spielberg when you look at these 1965 production stills from our ambitious science fiction home movie Hostile Aliens. Thanks to Adobe Photoshop, I’ve been able to print this hopelessly badly developed negative for the first time. Richard Ryan’s stand-in dummy is about to be incinerated by the Alien’s heat ray. Alien played by my sister Linda in my dad’s oilskin and waders (plus papiere mache mask when the camera was rolling.

discussing scene

Linda also played the World Security observer responsible for monitoring outer space for alien invaders. In real life the emergency telephone put you through to the telephone exchange at the top end of Wensley Street.

stop action filming

For a stop action shot of the World Security armoured personnel carrier trundling towards the alien landing site, Lin pressed the cable release while I moved the model inch by inch across our garden rubbish heap.

A Bend on the Beck

Coxley Beck

Wearing wellies, I painted these hawthorns on a bend of Coxley Beck in April 1996. They were overhanging the deeper outside bank and since then the beck has undercut them and they ended up in the stream.

Humboldt’s Penguins

penguins sketches

We’d missed their feeding time at Sewerby Hall Zoo and this moulting Humboldt Penguin was lolling by the pool, soaking up the afternoon sun.

penguins

Over on the other side of the pool there was more action with one penguin seeing off a rival then duetting – braying loudly, bills pointed skyward – with its partner.

Jenny

Jenny

Jenny, natural history illustrator, drawing by our pond. She recently completed a commission to illustrate an information board about the wildlife at a pond on a nature reserve in West Sussex.

Jenny's drawing
Jenny’s drawing of the vegetation around our pond

She started on John Norris Wood’s natural history illustration course at the Royal College of Art a year after I left, in 1976 and graduated in 1979, focussing on the Chelsea Physic Garden, it’s history and plants.

Mosey Downgate

cliff
kittiwakes

Mosey Downgate, RSPB Bempton Cliffs, 12.30 pm, Thursday 6 July, 69℉ 24℃: Most of the kittiwake chicks now have conspicuous black stripes along their forewings, although there are some downy chicks still around. One birdwatcher tells me that he was here a month ago and he estimates there are now three times as many nesting.

The warden suggests that this impression might be because a month ago many of the pairs were nest building and spending more time away from the cliffs. Kittiwake numbers are stable at Bempton but nationally the bird is in decline, so the wardens are keeping a close watch on numbers.