Meanygate meanderings (and beyond) - a farmed landscape

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Dave
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One thing the covid restrictions are doing is forcing me to explore my local area. Over the years I have made half-hearted attempts to photograph the flat, farmed, land where I live, but now I have to walk through it I'm starting to 'see' it better. Out of boredom I've also started to visit places I've either not been for years or never been. Places that aren't en route to anywhere. The flatlands are long-drained marshy areas, mosses, which are criss-crossed with ditches, drains and single track roads many of which are called 'meanygates', some no longer open to road traffic but still public rights of way.

The farming is mostly vegetables and salad crops, with arable and maize grown on rotation. All done in a fairly intensive way, particularly by the large concerns, yet with some small scale outfits who don't employ on migrant workers but do it themselves, often using old machinery or by hand.

How long I'll persevere with this I don't really know. It might well fizzle out, but the pictures will be a mix of landscapes, but which wouldn't go down well in the landscape section of TP, farm work (if distancing wasn't an issue I'd make contact with people) and details. Here's an initial selection.

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Although the land is long since drained and tilled tree remains are still ploughed up from time to time.

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Where the land has, I assume, sunk the roads give a slightly raised vantage point making it easier to give an impression of the topography. For such a flat place I find wide angle lenses far from useful. There's nothing romantically nostalgic about the farming methods in use.

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Good stuff. As a full time worker and part-time carer, I don't get out much, so the local walk around my village is something I've been doing for years (and am continuing to do now). I firmly believe there are images to be made, and (personally) I think they have more importance than the million photos of that lighthouse in North Wales at sunset.

Anyway, I love #4. Appeals to my tidiness. Also #5. My first thought was "there are still people doing this by hand?" Shows how much I know about farming.
 
I walk somewhere most days, always with a camera (and have an ongoing project of photos from those walks) as I also believe that there are pictures to be found everywhere and documenting a locality has value. Looking back at my negatives I regret I didn't take more 'record shots' of the area instead of trying to make 'art'!

This last month I've had more time (work dried up) so have been going further afield, treading paths I've not been down before.

A couple more.

It might get boring taking the high vantage point, straight on pictures. Or maybe not.

The last of the leeks. I have a lot of leek pictures in my files...

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There are a few houses/farmsteads dotted about the moss where people have been practising social distancing for decades.

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Shed looks good. One of those images that makes my eyes go funnny if I spend too long looking at it :)
 
I spent a bit of time using Gimp last night, making an illustration of the meanygates I'm photographing. Boundary and Taylor's actually extend west and north respectively, but for the purposes of my project I'm limiting the area covered to that highlighted, which is roughly one mile on each edge.

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There are other meanygates in the district, not all publicly accessible, and at least one 'lane' which is shown as a meanygate on older maps. The old maps available to view at https://maps.nls.uk/ are a mine of information to map nerds and anyone researching places. Sword Meanygate appears as Sward Meanygate on one such map, which makes more sense as a name. There are still plenty of Johnsons and Taylors in the area.

On this morning's walk I got to thinking that the repetitive nature of a lot of my pictures actually reflects what it's like out on the moss. The changes in the view are minor as you progress and there are a lot of straight lines which a head on camera angle emphasises. As well as photographing the fields I've started taking photographs of the ditches and drains.

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I do try making pictures from an angle, but they don't strike me as any better than the straight on ones.

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If this dry weather continues it won't be long before irrigation starts, either from mobile pumps or permanent ones like this.

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Being laid on peaty soils the roads across the moss are not up to today's heavy tractors and artics, but most are in better shape than this.

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As I'm starting to exhaust the landscape subject matter (at least until crops grow, more are planted, or the weather changes) I'm on the lookout for other pictures to fill out the story.

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As ever, all comments welcome.
 
I got to thinking that the repetitive nature of a lot of my pictures actually reflects what it's like out on the moss

This. Not just the repetetivness(?) but the fact that striving to make something ordinary look extra-ordinary can sometimes be missing the point. Sometimes the ordinariness(?) is the point of the exercise. I have a few photos of my local walk that aren't really anything special. But I like them, and they reflect the fact that it is just an ordinary walk.
I think I talked myself in a circle there...
 
....striving to make something ordinary look extra-ordinary can sometimes be missing the point.

Indeed.

My first thought these days is often "Do I need to put the main subject off-centre?" If the only reason to do so is because the 'rules' say you should I stick it slap in the centre. Making pictures which are praised for their composition no longer interests me, I'm far more interested in making the subject clear to read. Although I do still try to give each frame a visual structure.
 
I'm far more interested in making the subject clear to read. Although I do still try to give each frame a visual structure.

And if you did it well, people would use the word composition to describe it. :) I think it's when the composition *is* the picture that the problems begin.
 
I thought I'd try using a longer lens this evening. It didn't work out as well as I thought it would. Most of the pictures I could have taken with the standard zoom.

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The audio-visual bird scarers are out. I've taken better pictures of them in the past though.

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I was a little seduced by the light here, but the longer lens might come in useful for photographing the isolated farms.

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Maybe I wasn't trying hard enough or I'm finding the lack of people in the pictures is making me less enthusiastic. Either way I think I need a break from this for a while.
 
I thought I'd have one more go before the rain came today, and before I got down to doing some real work. I wanted to see what the skies and flatter light looked like.

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I got aon a bit of an architecture kick too.

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The wheel rim touching the blue bag is driving me nuts now!

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The bog wood continues to be dug up. Fresh today.

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Walking the same routes brings home how things change day to day. The four stacks of pallets against a building wall in an earlier post have been reduced to one - which doesn't make a picture. A large stack of wrapped silage bales I photographed on my first walk was removed a week ago and the field ploughed up. Reminders to take photographs now.
 
Love that 1st frame. Big sky over a tidy land. Right up my street.
 
Being restricted in your movements is a great motivator for finding photographs in the places you've previously passed on a multitude of occasions and subsequently become bored of. I'm very much a proponent of the idea that there is always an interesting photograph to be made, no matter how mundane the location - it's just a matter of taking the time to find it. Sometimes a change of conditions will reveal it, sometimes a change of vantage point, often a change in your frame-of-mind, but there is always something.
 
Another weather change saw sunshine and big clouds to tempt me out this afternoon. I knew it would end up in being tempted to photograph the sky. Which is not what this project is about.

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This one isn't too bad.

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I am trying to look for other directions to take this.

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So nothing much achieved except, perhaps this, comparison which I doubt I'll take any further.
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Definitely atime for a break. I'll have to start taking my exercise elsewhere.:)
 
Which is not what this project is about.

I lol'd at this because the image below it is *literally* all about the sky. I mean, the lines in the land are really good, and I love how the land adds impact to the image, but it's really all about the sky.

In my opinion of course...

:cool:
 
I lol'd at this because the image below it is *literally* all about the sky. I mean, the lines in the land are really good, and I love how the land adds impact to the image, but it's really all about the sky.

In my opinion of course...

:cool:
That was why I posted it - to show what I don't want to do.

It's an out-take. ;)
 
“Where the land has, I assume, sunk the roads give a slightly raised vantage point making it easier to give an impression of the topography.”

Has it sunk? Wouldn’t the roads sink too, unless they’ve been mounded up. Don’t you think it’s probably loss of topsoil which is happening everywhere with intensive/mechanical farming? Maybe the traditional farms have ”sunk” less? Just musing ;).

Anyway, like the photos generally!
 
“Where the land has, I assume, sunk the roads give a slightly raised vantage point making it easier to give an impression of the topography.”

Has it sunk? Wouldn’t the roads sink too, unless they’ve been mounded up. Don’t you think it’s probably loss of topsoil which is happening everywhere with intensive/mechanical farming? Maybe the traditional farms have ”sunk” less? Just musing ;).

Anyway, like the photos generally!

I've always understood that as the land dries, it's peaty underneath the topsoil, it sinks as in the Fens.

Vermuyden, however, assumed that the local fields could be easily drained into this and similar channels by gravity. In this, he was mistaken, even though the black, water-logged “soil” of his era was high enough. That wasn’t soil, though, it was peat. It had built up, as it always does, and would rot away as soon as it was drained and exposed to air. Within a few decades, the fields had sunk below Vermuyden’s drains. By the early 18th century, the Fens were once again flooded.
https://britishheritage.com/travel/britains-sinking-lands-exploring-fens

There is also a possibility, I suppose, that the roads/tracks were originally built up to keep them drier than the surrounding land.
 
Thanks Dave. I took “sunk” to be subsidence but of course if it’s peaty it’ll shrink and decompose and also blow away when dry :).
And no doubt there'll be compaction from heavy machinery and water erosion too. :)
 
After a bit of a break I went for a morning wander today. Not much had altered, but there's always something. Last time out this parcel of land was fenced off, I'm guessing there'd been sheep on it over winter.

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Today the fence was gone and the grass had been mown and removed.

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I'm carrying on with the 'horizontal strips approach to many pictures as they seem to be making sense. A slightly longer focal length has altered the look somewhat, making the distance more obvious and bringing context out more.

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However, I'm remaining open to other picture ideas which are more straight documentary.

This one shows many of the key features of the area: straight roads, ditches, glasshouses, bungalows, crops, fleece and bird scarer.

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That is so well seen, a really interesting image IMHO
 
That is so well seen, a really interesting image IMHO
Thanks Chris. It was one of those see it, walk on, go back and take a shot moments.
 
More of the same old same old I'm afraid. Two things realised today though. Ultrawide lenses are not my thing, They get too much in and anything at the edges is prone to distortion. I have a wind turbine that is definitely vertical in real life leaning wildly in one picture! I prefer the sun overhead for this project. While shadows might be harsh they are small. There's also no temptation to make 'golden hour' pictures.

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Another attempt at a more documentary shot.

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One ultrawide shot which does sort of work OK.

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Some farming machinery. I want to break up the 'boring' landscapes with stuff like this, detail shots, buildings and farm work.

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That's it for now. It's tempting to leave alone for a longer period, but there's always the chance that I'll miss something. So it'll be a case of diminishing returns I guess. Always the tricky point of any project.
 
That is another impressive image for me, when's the zine coming out :)
:agree:

Also like the tractor shot.

Thanks both. I guess one good picture every few walks is worth the effort.

This one and the half tractor tread I quoted above look like the start of a project or a theme for this project - frames split half-and-half, A crop of this one would also make a half-and-half

Zine not for some time as I'm hoping to take it through to autumn at least.:)

Not too sure about the half-and half-idea. I don't want to narrow my vision down so that I start looking for pictures to make a set. That said I do take a lot of shots with a vertical central line.

My tentative plan for the end result is a larger format than A5 with pictures of different sizes. For example, the 'horizontal strip' pictures printed large with information' pictures (road name signs and details) printed small and possibly in groups/grids.

All up in the air at the minute but that's the way I'm thinking when out and about.
 
I really will give it a rest until I have anything radically different to show after this post! There should be some work to keep me occupied from tomorrow anyway.

I had an evening walk yesterday and although I found couple of pictures flare from the low sun messed them up. I managed to fare a little better this afternoon as I tried to recreate them, although the lack of sun wasn't ideal for the picture below - a little more contrast on the soil might have improved it.

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Orange mesh is starting to appear in places. I'm guessing that when it's fully in place it's to deter rabbits and hares. At the moment they can hop round it...

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The flatness of the area make the less abstracted, contextual, type pictures tricky for me to frame without there being too much sky. The wood helped in this instance.

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It has crossed my mind to make pictures of the soil, somehow, as that is what the moss is all about. More thought required.

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And just for @sirch :D

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I really will give it a rest until I have anything radically different to show after this post! There should be some work to keep me occupied from tomorrow anyway.

OK. I lied. :LOL: Work was boxed off for the day and when I get an obsession in my head...

When the wind blows a loose patch of fleece can ripple like waves on water. Trying to show this in a still image is something I've tried to do on and off for some years on my wanderings around the flatlands. I had another try this evening.

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Another pictures of patterns in the soil. The swirl caught my eye.

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And....

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Please let me know when you've had enough!

I took advantage of the relaxed travel rules and went to look for the local sheep for a change. They'd been moved to pastures new. So...

Things are changing. Bird scaring devices are popping up and irrigation has started.

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I've got quite a few pictures on file of various irrigation devices around the area which were a sort-of-project-without-an-aim. I don't think these new ones are particualrly succesful but at least they add something fresh to this project. If the dry spell continues there should be more chances to improve.

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As the pump puts water through the pipe to the sprinkler heads the drum rotates drawing the sprinkler boom very slowly towards it.

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A detail shot which probably won't make the final cut.

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And more of the usual.

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