Late sun through mature oak leaves, a timeless blessing. Paints the woodland with magic.
I decided upon monochrome for this image... I felt it added a slightly spooky mood.
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Stone walls and slate fences. Even in the wildest of landscapes there are walls. Jigsaws of rock and slate, running for miles, through bog, over boulders, weaving around the contours, marking the boundaries, keeping in or out the stock and flock. Clothed in moss, splashed in lichen, a home for ferns and mice and wrens. Imagine, each rock, lifted, examined chosen for it's shape and size, placed with care and concentration. The farmer, the prisoner of war, the quarryman. Hard hands, hard lives. The walls... monuments of their toil. The crooked teeth of the traditional slate fence make for a great foreground to a photograph. Beautifully decorated with lichens, each tooth has its own shape and pattern. They stand shoulder to shoulder, feet buried soundly, heads bound by wire, a thin palisade of metamorphic wafers.
The house stands alone on the heath. No road leads to or from its door, the door that grumbles on one rusted hinge. Tatters of rotted cloth wave from glassless windows at passing sheep and clouds. Upstairs a single bed teeters at the shattered boards, promises to join the chaos below... just one more gale, when the last slates will fly up like a courtroom of angry cards! I made this short black and white film about abandoned homes by combining my photographs with music written to evoke a sense of the haunting beauty that I feel when exploring these sad but fascinating places. I created the music on Garageband on my iPad and put the film together with iMovie. Most of these photographs were initially colour images but I chose to go the mono route for the film. I think it adds a cohesive vibe and adds to the feeling of sadness. I love photography without people but here, although they are peopless scenes, you can somehow feel the past lives of the lost inhabitants. Who stood at this window, who sat by that hearth.... and what were their dreams, their dramas?
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