Tag: Nostell Park

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.

Knopper Galls

Knopper galls

Hundreds of knopper galls are scattered beneath the oaks in Nostell Park. On some you can see the way that the acorn has been transformed into the home and the food source for the larva of the gall wasp Andricus quercuscalis. The acorns have stalks, botanically penduncles, so these are the acorns of the common or pendunculate oak, Quercus robur.

It’s the asexual generation of this gall wasp that produces the knopper gall; the alternate sexual generation produces tiny galls on the male catkins of the Turkey oak, Quercus cerris. Turkey oak acorns have ‘mossy’ cups, that remind me of the furry Russian hat that Ivan the Terrible might have worn. There are several Turkey oaks at Nostell.

Bracket fungus

This species of bracket fungus is sprouting on deciduous stumps in the woods around the lakes.

Rabbit Mesh

Lettuce
Additional security around the lettuce bed.

The head gardener is adding wire mesh to the newly restored iron gate to the walled garden.

“Is that to stop the ducks getting in?” (It’s been a good year for the mallards on the nearby lakes).

“No, rabbits.”

“I worked on the film of Watership Down, so I’m always rooting for the rabbits.”

“There’s plenty of grass out there!”

Spotting Woodpeckers

woodpecker

Lower Lake, Nostell Priory, 11.30 a.m.: We’re convinced that the woodpecker, tapping on the upper surface of a bough is a lesser spotted as it appears to be about the size of a nuthatch but luckily, while it’s fresh in my mind, I sit on a bench and draw a field sketch: when I look it up in the bird book I realise that the red vent proves that it’s actually a normal sized woodpecker – a greater spotted – at the top of a very tall oak!

The lesser spotted has barred black and white plumage on its back.

A Hare in Priory Wood

hare10 a.m., Nostell Park: As we reach the southeast corner of Priory Wood a brown hare runs right in front of us, only ten yards away, crosses the (filled in) cattle grid and hares off across the bottom corner of the wood.

“Did you see that?” I ask the man who’s just been putting a lead on his black labrador “I think your dog must have disturbed it.”

hare“It’s the farmer cutting this field,” he suggests, “I often see them around. There are a few setts around here.”

He’s wrong actually; a sett would be badgers, it’s just a form for a hare: a shallow depression in the ground. But I don’t like to be pedantic!

It’s great to see a hare so close up, close enough to see the prominent black and white markings at the tips of its long ears and its black and white tail.

hareAccounts suggest that hares aren’t doing well in the English countryside. Traditionally managed parkland, as here at Nostell, gives them a refuge and hopefully there isn’t too much lamping: hunting at night using powerful spotlights, which is thought to have led to a decline in their numbers in some areas.