Serendipitous miscellany

The squirrels have started raiding my hazelnuts, a month earlier than normal in this strange horticultural year that we've had:

A spectacular sunset, just time to grab the camera:

And quickly the colour fades:

This a flower of calendula officinalis (pot marigold), a very common garden flower. I had never before paid such close attention to the tiny central trumpets :

Walking round a sunflower

These photos are in response to a post from Darlene Hildebrandt suggesting taking time to 'walk around your subject'. Some sunflowers were in glorious bloom in my garden:

Deer in a parched landscape

This visit to Charlecote Park wasn't planned as a photography outing. I was having lunch and going for a walk with a friend, but stuffed a camera in my bag anyway. The dry parched landscape made the whole place look very different from any previous visit.

First, I was drawn to the gaze of this stag - very direct, wary, but not afraid, and guarding his herd:

Then I was completely entranced by the long sustained gaze between the same stag and a little girl. They were quite far apart, difficult for a photographic composition, so in processing I tried to 'remove' the distance between them, to emphasise the gaze:

The pale, burnt landscape and bright reflecting sun turned the patterns of antlers into almost abstract compositions:

Sunsets on two consecutive nights

Striking sunsets - almost van Gogh Like in their slightly sulphurous, lurid colours. What you see here really is what they looked like (give or take the calibration of your screen, of course!)

Off-street photography - Art in the Park (3): quiet moments

Some people escape from the throng, and some husky dogs create a little tranquil space around themselves.

Off-street photography - Art in the Park (2): crowd scenes

The crowd scenes I shot looked to me - when I got them up on the computer screen - overly 'busy' in a way that obscured the structure of the scene that I had wanted to capture. So I changed them to black and white and magically the image I had seen in my head reappeared.

Off-street photography - Art in the Park (1): capturing individuals

Articles, books, and other advice on 'street photography' typically have sections early on about overcoming your discomfort at photographing strangers, at intruding yourself into other people's private lives as they go about their business 'on the street'. But I have to start one step back from that, because 'the street' is already outside my comfort zone. I don't hang about in the street, or sit in pavement cafés passing the time . . . I'm not a flâneuse! Streets are places I go to do something specific, to accomplish that, and then leave . . . they're not a place of enjoyment for me.

So, to begin to practise 'street' photography, I seek out non-street public places, where people congregate and I feel more at home. One such is the annual August 'Art in the Park' festival held locally to where I live. I spent a couple of hours there today.

I don't get up close to individuals to photograph them, contrary to frequent advice, because I would hate it if someone did that to me. I use a long lens (a discreet one, on a compact camera) and look for images of people who are unaware that they are being observed at all.