Sunday 28 October 2018

Moments of an autumn sunset








Yellow

Each Sunday, the Observer newspaper publishes a topic for readers' photographs. The Pictures Editor chooses a selection of those submitted for publication on a later date. I don't send photos in, and I don't respond to every week's theme, but this one appealed to me and autumnal subjects were close at hand that fitted the brief.


Sunday 7 October 2018

Regency Leamington

I went out with my U3A photography group, with one of our members taking us on a walk around the areas of Regency buildings in Leamington Spa. At the start, the light was misty, murky and very poor for photography, although it improved with time. We had an interesting walk and I took over 100 photos . . . but when I looked at them the next day, it seemed to me that I'd got an excellent series of illustrations for a talk on Georgian architecture in the town . . . but very few of them were interesting images in their own right.

The 100+ were fairly rapidly reduced to 25, and of those, only the six below are anywhere near worth posting here; and interestingly, most of these have other ingredients than just the architectural features.







Friday 5 October 2018

Cookham - church and angel

We had walked round the churchyard on the afternoon of our arrival (see previous post). One of the Stanley Spencer paintings that we saw in the gallery the following morning was:

The Angel, Cookham Churchyard (c.1936-37)

The statue of the Angel stands at the entrance to Cookham Churchyard, a place of special significance to Stanley Spencer.  This is the second version of the painting and is slightly smaller than the first and has a more serene autumnal feel to it.  It is the only known instance of Spencer repeating a subject.  The work was painted for the artist Gwen Raverat, granddaughter of Charles Darwin, whom Spencer had met and become friendly with at the Slade. 







This intrigued me, as I couldn't immediately visualise whether this was a realistically possible perspective, or wholly artistic licence by the painter. So we returned to the churchyard - my camera was, by this time, packed in my luggage back at the inn, so I had to make do with my phone. The poor light and dull grey sky weren't conducive to great photography . . . and a lot of stooping under bushes and clambering over brambles was involved . . .




The leafy branches in the painting are definitely artistic licence - the reality is a straggly yew tree! I could probably have got closer to the exact perspective of the painting if I'd had a copy of it with me to refer to - I was working from memory, and didn't quite get the angle right, but it was an interesting experiment.


Cookham - sunset

Last week I went to Cookham for 24 hours, with a friend, primarily to go the Stanley Spencer Gallery. On the afternoon we arrived, we went for an early evening walk along the river, and then back to our hotel.






Sunset minute by minute

Sunset at the back of my house, late September, three images with a minute gap each time.




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