The Caterpillar Photographic Society category for the month of July was “Water”. Another subject almost as broad as the Pacific Ocean.

Waterworld

Again a large number of ideas entered my tiny mind, possibly pushing out some useful ideas, about how to approach this subject. The first brain wave I had was using symbols for water, H20 (obviously with a subscript 2),  I didn’t search for the chosen symbols as I wasn’t sure what to look for. I searched online for images of “water symbol” and found interesting icons for the liquid made from 2 molecules of Hydrogen for each molecule of Oxygen.

It wasn’t until after I’d submitted my chosen photo (see below) that I figured out what to do with these symbols. Digging out a fat permanent marker and some fluorescent coloured paper from my stationery drawer I proceeded to draw the three chosen symbols on to single pieces of paper to hang on the washing line after spraying them with water.

The sun was out and i was kneeling on the garden path taking photos from low down, to avoid the houses, fences and trees that would otherwise appear in the picture. The pieces of paper had weird images drawn on them and were hanging from the clothes line dripping with water. My neighbours must have seen this and wondered just what crisis I was going through, again. The sun through the paper lit it up and the blue sky with a few clouds made for an interesting image. If I hadn’t have already entered my shot, this would have been uploaded.

Titled “Everywhere, but not a drop to drink” the image shows the symbols I used. From left to right they all represent Water but in form of Mandarin script, Egyptian hieroglyphic and Alchemical symbols.

Lake Placid

My first road trip of July was to Ellesmere, Shropshire around 20 mins form home. It’s a lake of sorts and I thought I’d visit it as the sun set and get some cool reflections. The sun did drop down while I was there but the sky was too grey and cloudy for it to be to my liking. I took a few pictures of the boat that takes people out into the lake for a pleasure cruise and some of the open water. This HDR of the pleasure boat titled “lady of the lake” was my favourite of the trip and would have been my choice as the submission had I not wasted loads more petrol by driving around the countryside.

Miles per photo=31

On the way back from Ellesmere I stopped at Whitemere about three minutes away. The sky was providing some interesting colours over this water so I climbed over the gate and strolled onto one of the jetties that poke out into the water. Trying a couple of wide angle shots produced results I felt were unsatisfactory so again I tried an HDR and merged the shots when I returned home to produce this lovely coloured picture which accurately represented the true colours. The main reason I didn’t warm to this picture though was that the boats in the photo, on the right hand side of the horizon were horribly blurred. There wasn’t enough room on the jetty fr my tripod so I was hand holding it, leaning against a spider infested boat house whilst being attacked by millions of bloodthirsty midges. Good job that bats eat 2000 of these little blighters each night otherwise there’d be nothing left of me.

Water Under The Bridge

Still undeterred by the Gormanesque Miles per Photograph metric I pushed on and visited the Ironbridge Gorge where I’d try and take some photos of the Ironbridge and the river Severn as it flowed past. The pics I’ve got of this were not great but are available in my flickr set if you are interested. I took some of the bridge, some of the river from above, some of the river in front of Buildwas power station and some of myself throwing skimming stones into the water.

On the way home from the gorge I stopped at Atcham where, due to the unseasonably  warm summer, the Severn was extremely low. I stopped and walked down to the “Church Pools” and walked into the cool water with my geography teacher sandals on, (no socks though). I set the camera on my tripod and was halfway across the breadth of the river when I started taking photos of the bridge. It was getting ever darker and some of the midges that the bats had thoughtfully left were starting to take an interest in what I had in my shorts. My legs that is not anything else, please, this is a high-brow photography blog….

Owing to the fast fading light I opted to use auto exposure bracketing and would later HDR them when I got home. There were two pictures from here, one of the arches that I was pleased with and then one of the water with the reflections of the lights and drinkers outside the Mytton and Mermaid pub reflected in the shallow waters.

67 miles for three worthy picture = 22.3 Miles per photo

Weight Of Water

On another quiet evening when there was some stuff on tv for my better half to watch I decided to go for another spin. This time to Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, the site of one of the UK’s tallest waterfalls at 240 ft tall. it’s another 28.5 miles there so another 57 onto the totaliser, although with a huge diversion it probably went up to around 65 miles.

Standing in the pool at the foot of the falls I set my Canon 500D on the tripod and used a 10stop ND filter to enable me to carry out a longer exposure and I found that 1/2 of a second was more than enough to capture the water flowing down the face of this majestic piece of nature. It still ended up with a very washed out sky though so I was a little disappointed.

Not content with seeing this beasty from below I walked the path to reach the top of the falls. I stopped to take some photos of peacocks just ambling across the footpath and spoke to a couple from Vancouver,Canada who explained that they could have the food in their tent while they were in the UK. Whilst in a tent in the woods at home they have store the food 50 ft away  in a big tube that the bears can’t get the food out of.

At the top of the falls and a brief peak over I decided there was no decent photo there so I leaned over, camera at arms length and snapped a couple. They were a bit blurry as I was shaking a bit, I’d started imagining my falling to the foot of the falls at 10pm with no phone signal and no-one around to help.

Nothing to be had up there, so I worked my way back to the base, the long way, and started a couple of light painting photos in the pool. None that had any real impact though so I didn’t consider using these in the monthly competition. This brought the metric to 122 miles for 5 photos. = 24.4miles/picture

Without A Paddle

The last chance for the month was a trip to Whitemere again, on my way back from Clay Pigeon shooting at Ellesmere College. A thirty one mile round trip this time.

I pulled over and sat the camera on the tripod and my behind on a waterproof jacket as the grass was still a bit dewy. There was a load of water in front of me but nothing of interest until I noticed that the sailing club were coming out from lunch and had started setting sail again.

I took a few of the jetty and the boats surrounding it but the favourite picture from this trip was the following. It’s a small dinghy/yacht/boat thing and the lighting seemed perfect along the background of the trees around the edge of the lake. This was very nearly my submission for the comp but I selected the more impactful HDR of the Atcham Bridge.

Master And Commander

The miles had been piling up now at 153 miles for the 6 photos and at a ratio of 25.5miles per photo I thought I’d call time. I’d taken some nice pictures but the time to decide was at hand, I chose the Atcham Bridge HDR picture purely on a focus group suggestion. My family told me which one they thought represented “Water” most so I went with them.

Thanks to them, I won the months comp and look forward to the next months assignment of “Portrait”. Owing to being away in Menorca I wonder if I’ll have enough time to do any portrait shots. Maybe a couple on the beach, maybe some at a sunset. We’ll see.

Keep an eye out for the August blog post about the Portrait assignment.

Bob