Photography trip in the Chiltern Hills, 18th May 2006

My original intention was to visit Norfolk. With It’s gentle undulating landscape, big sky and fenlands it would have been perfect for my project, but the weather forecast was continual rain so we had to confine our photography to the counties of Herts and Bucks.

We drove to a beauty spot in the Chilterns called Ivinghoe Beacon, there was a solitary tree on a steep hill, ‘a single note on the horizon, a lonely ballad’. We climbed the hill to get the best perspective for our photograph. It was very hard to get to the right place, because there was no footpath, and we had a difficult climb. We waited for right time to take the photographs, because we wanted a combination of blue sky and white clouds. The wind was so strong that we had to use a tripod. When we finished taking the photo of the tree, we looked back and wow! There was such a nice view from the top of the hill, with varying fields of colours from cloud and the sunshine. I was really pleased with the photography the tree, it looked so dramatic and solitary and made a wonderful study, I think I shall always look upon it as ‘Kai’s tree’.

Our next visit was to the Tring reservoirs at Marsworth, it was an atmospheric place, there were ‘white horses on the lake, with wild ducks and geese, a wide vista and an open sky, we found a lovely corner with marsh grass and the semblance of a beach, and took a series of pictures.

We then drove to Cheddington ( famous for the great train robbery!) on the Grand Union canal. I took some photos of a rape field, I was able to use perspective and depth, and I used a long focus 100m-shot, so the photo will be abstract. I don’t think it’s a total success because the sun was in front of the subject. I tried to find a better place to take the picture with the sun behind me, near the summit, but ended up walking through a bed of impassable stinging nettles and tall rape, the end result was a pair of black jeans decorated with yellow dye from the rape! It was unfortunate that the time of day was wrong. Because otherwise the sky and land would have combined in a glorious silent symphony.

On the way back to the car I felt invigorated, and in a mad moment wanted an ‘action shot’ of me diving into a field of rape, things did not quite work out and I fell flat on my stomach with a stinging nettle rash on my chin a bruised body and no accurate pictorial record of the proceedings! Not a pretty sight!

This was the first time I had used a polarizer to enhance contrast and skyscapes and I look forward with eager anticipation to the results!

© Sheng-Kai Chou 2006