Heaven knows how many thousands (millions?) of people have taken the exact same picture but here’s my go last weekend at The Haywain, minus cart and horses and, quite frankly, minus Constable’s imagination. What I did enjoy, though, was giving myself permission to really play with the image on my computer, and turn it into something different from what I actually saw…here’s the very drab unprocessed starting point:
Perhaps we should give ourselves more permission to move away from reality sometimes – unless you’re trying to suggest an image is portraying the unembellished truth, why not have a go at making it look more aesthetically pleasing?
The image above is my take on what is almost certainly Constable’s most famous painting, and one of the best loved British landscape pictures full stop. It’s also one of the last photographs I took on the way home from a very enjoyable but all too brief visit to Suffolk last weekend – a lovely part of the country which I never tire of visiting. Here are a few more from the weekend (all Fuji XT1, mostly with the 16-55 lens except for a few with the 55-200):
Another view around Flatford Mill on the River Stour (a few yards from the image above)
Rooftop of the poorhouse built inside Framlingham Castle (where Mary Tudor was proclaimed Queen of England)
The beach and pier at Southwold (the pier is often featured in photography magazines, usually illustrating articles about the use of big stopper filters to achieve very long exposures, nearly always for monochrome images).
Finally below, a few telephoto images taken around the amazing RSPB Minsmere nature reserve:
Hopefully more posts to come soon – I’ve finally finished making a photobook of my images from Cuba, which means I’ve been on a photography go-slow over the past few weeks because otherwise the backlog becomes impossible!
The Photographer's Block 