STICK YOUR EAR IN IT - STUCK FOOT POST FOR MAY

My first digital camera was a phone. I'd decided - perfectly reasonably, truthfully and not even slightly on a whim - that if I could take a photograph of my immediate environment every day . . . I would be happy.

Daisies in the cow-field. Sheep in the field beyond

Not that 'decided' is the right word. I'd known this for a long time. I don't think I had the internet then. I certainly didn't have a blog. I'm not even sure blogs had been invented. But there were simple cameras on what were, to me, expensive phones. And they were expensive. That first mobile phone-camera was twice the price of my new (though basic) smart-phone.

And off I went to take pictures.

Then there was the blog.

Then there was my first 'proper' digital camera.

And now I have the one I have now - which also takes moving pictures; little films.

Long before I bought my phone, I'd wanted to take films. I hadn't wanted to make stories or record events; I wanted to film what I could see while standing still. Specifically, I wanted to film waves at the place where sea meets land in a trickle, not a storm. Just that. But camcorders were expensive. Out of reach.

Green leaves seem brown when reflected in the water because of the tannin.
Eyeworth Pond, Hampshire.

Perversely, when I at last had a camera which also takes films, I began to enjoy sound rather than movement. I'd fix my camera on a scene and film the nothing-happening that I'd dreamed of but when I got my camera home, I'd find it was the sound that drew my attention. Sea sounds different when you listen to it.

So I wanted to buy some really good sound equipment - the kind which would pick up every nuance without being blasted out by a sudden gust of wind. Erm . . . out of my range!

And who would want to listen to my sound recordings?

I don't know why we blog. Sometimes bloggers blog about why they blog - and the answers are never very satisfactory - especially given the amount of time and effort and creative thought that we put into them. We blog because we blog. We take pictures whether or not we put them on the internet. And every so often I go out and fix my camera on a singing bird or a rattling mast and record the sounds they make.

Oddly, despite this being a solitary activity, I always have people in mind. Would they be prepared to listen to noises while looking at nothing happening? So I've kept these little sound clips short. For me, they are too short. I get them home and listen and wish they would go on and on instead of stopping almost as soon as they start.

I'm about to move on a step. After today I'll make my sound pictures longer. It doesn't matter whether anyone other than me puts them up on a screen and is entranced by the rustle of a leaf or a lawnmower in the distance. It doesn't matter any more than it mattered when I took photos every day without knowing that anyone else in the world did the same.

But longer films are for the future. The 21st will be a Stuck Foot Post Day. So I'm posting my latest short stuck-foot soundscapes. For ordinary Stuck Foot Posts I move my eye. I look down. I look sideways. Twist to see a little behind me. But these 20 - 30 second clips aren't just Stuck Foots, they are Stuck-Eyes too; stuck eyes so all that goes on is what one is hearing while standing still to see.

The first is from the 4th of April. The village is Milton Abbas in Dorset. I struggled with this because there are cars in the frame; but those I filmed with no content other than chimney tops take the sound so far out of context they no longer make sense. The roar at the beginning is a car moving away. The voices you hear are people in the kitchen at the pub I was standing near. I like these 26 seconds. They are life.

The second is staring at a cow field at Fritham on the edge of The New Forest (Hampshire) on the 13th of May. The Forest Trees are several yards behind me - mostly oak and out of sound-shot. I was standing under some kind of tree with needles instead of leaves and in front of a hedge I didn't pay too much attention to. The cows, dissobligingly didn't moo but birds did sing. That's the funny thing. You think you are watching cows when really you are listening to birds. Or maybe it's that you are listening to birds when really you are watching cows. Here are 38 seconds of both.

The third is on the same day, about ten miles from the cows at the River Black Water. In this clip we spend 47 seconds listening to the Black Water meandering its way through the forest. Eventually it will join with others in the Lymington River. (Not to be confused with various other River Blackwaters.)

And finally The Valley of Stones. So we've gone back in time to 27th April. The reason I've put this one out of sequence is the silence. We are on open grassland. No birds other than one lark. Larks don't like trees. Then the lark stops. This clip is 30 seconds. (The slight roaring throughout is, I suppose, the camera desperately trying to find something to listen to.)

If you aren't able to watch film clips on your computer, I really do apologise - but sound posts don't happen often. And if you are able to listen through earphones - maybe that's the best way to immerse yourself in the moment and hear it all at its best.

Are you a Stuck-Footer? Would you like to know more about Stuck-Footing? 

Then go to the Loose and Leafy Stuck Foot Page to find out more.

If you too have a Stuck Foot Post

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will open at 7am on 21st May and close at 7pm on 25th May (UK time)

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THE RAGBAG

November 24th 2014

As you know, I'm distracted and busy so proper posts are somewhat adrift. But . . . well, do you have photos which start off stacked and ready to use but which drift down like half-used balls of wool in a knitting bag?

I do!

So for this post I'll rescue a recent few and bung them here.

First is the section of Dorset cliff which begins at West Bay and runs east towards Portland. It's where Chesil Beach begins (or ends, depending on which direction you're coming from). (So for all that these soft and golden and fast eroding cliffs are beautiful and impressive, look at at their feet.) For a while it runs along like an ordinary beach slam up against the shore but gradually and extraordinarily it drifts off into the sea, first leaving gaps and pools then peeling away completely leaving the Fleet Lagoon between it and the land. And as it goes East, the lagoon widens and the beach rises till it becomes a looming pile of up to fifty feet running parallel with the continuing cliffs and fields till it launches off on its own for a couple of miles then is stopped short by the very different grey stone cliffs of Portland. (Apologies for long sentence.)

Here at the beginning, the pebbles are really gravel. But if you were to follow the beach along you'd find the pebbles get bigger and bigger so by the time you arrived at Portland you would find not only that your legs would hurt horribly but the pebbles would now be flattish and smooth and many colours - pink and brown and grey. Most of them would be about the size to rest comfortably on the curved palm of your hand.

I don't think it's possible to explain anything of what this is all like. You have to see Chesil Beach to make sense of - and even then it's pretty hard to grasp and even when I see it every day I never fail to find it extraordinary.

There are so many extraordinary things to wonder at; things which go beyond the merely geographical - like what is that man doing on top of the cliff?

He was there quite a while. Is he practising golf strokes? Is he? And, if so, why there? . . .

Now we'll flit to the New Forest in Hampshire. Whenever I mention the New Forest I need to make it clear this is a very old forest. (Developed from pre-existing woodland in 1079) And here is a very old tree beside the village of Fritham. And on the very old tree there is lichen. Indeed, the tree seems to be plastered in lichen . . . and moss . . . and I wish I had had time there to look at it properly while I was there. But I didn't. It was a 'Hang on can you wait a minute while I take a picture,' sort of moment. Snap. Snap. And we were away. Hurray for cameras that's what I say! In a sense I was able to bring the tree back home with me to look at it here.

December 17th 2014

November 1st 2014 - but fairly confident ragwort will be flowering there still in December.

And a third extraordinary. I don't know when autumn ends and winter begins. Whichever it is, it's not still summer. But some flowers flower and flower. And some flowers, like this Oxford Ragwort like to flower in extraordinary places. In Poole, Ragwort has taken a shine to the railway. This plant is growing through the zig-zag slats there to dissuade pedestrians on a level crossing from veering off down the tracks. And it hasn't noticed it's season is over. It's carrying the Ragwort banner, ploughing on well after its companions have died down.

Closer to home, out of an urban setting, nearly always there will be an Oxford Ragwort plant flowering in winter. Personality!

Ain't nature wonderful!

Related Posts

CHESIL BEACH

Nothing But Stones

Thrift on Chesil Beach

NEW FOREST

Redwood Trees in the New Forest

On My Other Blog - Message in a Milk Bottle

The same beginning but with Portland in the distance.

External Links

Chesil Beach on Wikipedia

Chesil Beach - lots of info. provided as advert by commercial company specialising in measuring underwater noise.

The New Forest on Wikipedia

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REDWOOD TREES IN THE NEW FOREST

Several times I've tried to photograph the tallest London Plane trees in Europe. Complete waste of time. I could show leaves. But all plane trees have leaves. I could show branches - but there's was no way I can give any idea of height. They are in a wood so you can't stand back. And even if you could - suppose there were a hill to stand on a bit distant and you photographed them poking above the other trees - still it wouldn't work. How tall are the trees around them?

This link gives you a chart of their height. 

 I don't know why it looks as if it's standing in ice or snow. It wasn't.
Blame it on the light.

Now, inadvertently, I've visited the tallest Redwood tree in the UK. If there hadn't been a notice to say so, I would never have known. Its trunk wasn't especially wide - not as wide as you might have expected. And like the plane trees, its height was obscured by tall trees nearby.

I wasn't especially impressed - except for its exceptionally strokeable bark.

Common Frog - Rana temporaria
June 22nd 2014

For, as you know, it's the small things in life and nature which usually catch my attention. Like this frog which was sitting still in a damp place beneath the tall-but-not-quite-so-tall trees across the road.

I found myself making an exception though for this tree - another Redwood.

(I'm being vague about the names of these trees - though I think they are Sequoia Wellingtonias. I wasn't paying attention. I was simply feeling their trunks and walking round them. I think you'd have done the same.)

This tree may not have been the tallest (though it was still very tall; for England) but the flare at the base of its trunk was massive - and beautiful.

Absurdly, here I am with a nature blog - and not minding that I don't know exactly what I've seen. And I took hardly any photographs. Sometimes (mostly if you are me) simply being in the presence of something - a tree, a frog, a leaf - is enough. And taking note of its parts instead of its impressive whole.

And the pictures imprinted in my brain are as good as any photos I might take. It's just that I can't share them as I can images from a camera.

* * *

If you'd like to see these trees for yourselves . . . and hunt for frogs . . . Here's the link to The Forestry Commission's Tall Trees Trail. (We saw a woodpecker walking up a trunk too.)

I'm Following a Tree
Are you?
The next link box
will open at 7:00am (UK Time)
on 7th June 2014.
If you'd like to know more
about Tree Following,
click the tree!

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P.S. The New Forest isn't exactly 'new'. It was developed for hunting in the late 11th century but it existed long before then. Here's the Wikipedia link.

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