2021 – In review

It seems just a bit weird and just a little bit sad to be sitting typing another annual lookback that contains a significant amount of lockdown material made more poignant by the very sad loss this year of a couple of people close to us. Of course we’re all in a much better position this year than we were last year when we were only just starting to get suggestions of viable vaccines. By the middle of the summer a lot of us had received two shots and I was out teaching photography again. Something that was inconceivable 12 months ago when we barely left the garden. And we have had yet more bizarre weather, with winter stretching all the way into April and early May, despite yet again having had a bizarre warm patch in March. A lot of the plants in our garden that got off to a cracking start were scorched by the severe frosts of April.

As it was for a lot of folk, I am sure, the garden was a real place of comfort this year and we got a lot of work done. We also did a huge amount of walking, with further exploration of the local lanes providing a lot of welcome distraction. I’ve also spent a lot of time pushing my painting forward. I’m still nowhere near where I want it to be but I’m a lot closer than I was this time last year. And I don’t throw away a fraction as much work as I was doing this time last year. I’m happy to feature some of the better paintings in the blog below.

A highlight for the year for me was running my first smartphone photography-only workshop, which I did on behalf of the good people at Buxton Museum and Art Gallery. It was very satisfying to both articulate and put into practice the knowledge and material that I have accumulated over the last three to four years. Smartphones have reached an astounding level of sophistication and while there are some aspects of photography that are still best left to the more expensive and dedicated cameras smartphones are very much fit for purpose for an awful lot of the things that you might like to take photographs of at a tiny fraction of the weight.

There will be more smartphone workshops next year and more experimentation as the devices develop rapidly.

So some pictures and some stories …

January

We do seem to have had an awful lot of snow this year. It’s just as well there has been some nice stuff in between. January’s shot comes from a local walk across the fields toward Litton on a day that despite the bright sun the temperature never got above freezing, so the frost and snow on the trees hung on all day. A lovely day for photography and this tree was just one of the many that caught my eye that day. I have so many photographs from January snow this year and of course it continued into February and beyond.

I also finished a piece that I was very happy with in January – Sunset in the Dane Gap, which is the view from the the Roach End Gap side of the The Roaches toward the Dane Gap, where the River Dane leaves the Peak District and flows out onto the Cheshire Plains.

February

Another snow image, inevitably, for February. We spent a lot of time walking in and around the lanes that split the fields south of Tideswell and where the White Peak Way passes through our corner of the Peak District. As is often the case with these things the snow reveals the landscape in ways that would be otherwise overlooked and this shot is a good example of this.

March

More walks and more snow. This brings home to me just how much snow we had and how cold it was for such a long time. One of our regular routes takes us over Wardlow Hey Cop, which is a magical place. The howling gale that had accompanied this band of snow left these wonderful drifts in the lea of the wall above Cressbrook Dale.

April

My catalogues are curiously bereft of photography in April. I know we were busy with all sorts of things but I have a vague recollection of the weather not being particularly brilliant. I also remember waiting impatiently for the spring flowers to get going but it was so cold that it took an eternity for the Bluebells to arrive and Wild Garlic never actually arrived. Thankfully the passing weather offered enough drama to compensate.

May

Although the month started cold the weather did eventually break and flowers started to come through so thr annual pilgrimage to Ravensdale was in order.

I also manage to complete another painting. This was done in water-mixable oils, which really are a curious beast indeed. A pleasing bit of draughting even if the the colours proved tricky in the unfarmiliar medium.

June

In June we finally managed to take a holiday that we had actually booked for the previous year and it was with some considerable relief that we found ourselves on a stretch of the Cardigan coast that we know well. Significantly I had also taken the leap of upgrading the smartphone that I had been using for photography. I replaced my trusty iPhone 7 with an 8 Plus, which has the advantage of dual lenses. I was stunned by the leap in quality that it offered. So much so that at some point in the near future I will upgrade again to a 12 Pro. June’s shot was taken at midsummer evening on the beach at Tresaith.

I also completed another painting in June. Somewhat contrarily it was a snow scene. As if we hadn’t had enough of the stuff. The result was very pleasing.

July

More time away from the Peaks in July and this time up along the west coast of Scotland. We had the pleasure of spending a few days on Eigg, which proved to be an incredible place. A bit Mordor and a bit Shire, all wrapped into one. This shot of the view over to Rhum was taken on a walk out one afternoon from our accommodation.

August

It was also around this time that I got my second Covid jab so felt more comfortable about getting out and running workshops and the heather this year was excellent … even if the weather wasn’t particularly brilliant. On a day out with Steve we went to Three Shires Head, which is a bit of a favourite of mine for photographing moving water. It was very pretty but I was a little bit shocked to find it in a bit of a state. Apparantly it had been ‘Instagram’d’ and after the end of lockdown last year had been inundated with visitors. The abundance of ‘No Parking’ signs was a testimony to the problems that the flood of visitors had caused. I might not use it again. We’ll see…

September

Back in the Peak District for a lovely, golden September and a busy month of workshops. This month’s shot is the excellent view down into Water-cum-jolly from Brushfield. It’s a shot I have done before.

And another painting. This time on the less-known Peak District location of Wolf Edge. A really lovely place to be on an evening in late summer when the heather is in bloom.

October

October proved to be an incredibly busy month and included the aforementioned workshop on behalf of Buxton musuem, which was very successful on the whole but which also revealed the significant performance gap between iPhones – my preferred platform – and Android-based smartphones. It is very intriguing how divergent the various mobile platforms are when it comes to Photography. It’s quite unlike DSLRs where the same photographic principles can simply be ported between proprietory platforms because at the end of the day they all simulate film SLRs. Smartphone photography can simulate an SLR but increasingly – and divergently – don’t. Interesting times. A shot from a lovely evening on Gardom’s Edge. It’s one that I have done before with an SLR. I struggle to see any difference between that one and this, done with the iPhone 8 Plus.

November

We were all a bit shocked by the early return of the snow in November. I had a chat with one of the local farmers about it and he said that while it had happened before in his lifetime it was very unusual. For three days it was very attractive around here. One of those days was a complete deep freeze, which made walking interesting and then suddenly overnight the snow disappeared completely. All 4 inches of it. Quite strange.

December

I’ve not had a great amount of opportunities to be out with the camera over December. The weather has not really been very good. As I write the wind is wet and gusty outside and the forecast isn’t much better so I’ll finish with the shot up Grainfoot Clough that I took a couple of weeks ago.

So, another curious and unsettling 12 months. The weather forecast is set for it to be 13 degrees celcius here over the New Year, which is something that I find really quite worrying. What does that mean for the coiming 12 months ? Will we be baking in March and knee-deep in snow in June ? Who knows.

Keep safe and look after each other.