#Lens-Artists

Seeking Perspective At Chatsworth House

The grand mansion was ever built to impress and raise social standing, its setting in the landscape deploying all manner of visual knacks and contrivances to enhance imposing looks. See, it says, this is the domain of the rich and powerful, beings who inhabit a realm far removed from that of ordinary mortals.

And to prove this point, it was not unknown for mansion owners to dispatch from their purview, and place elsewhere, the unsightly villages of their peasant tenants. It was common, too, to incorporate tunnels and hidden thoroughfares in the surrounding grounds so as not to suffer the indignity of looking out from the drawing room windows and seeing a passing labourer.

Sometimes one does wonder why we British never had a revolution.

Here at Chatsworth in Derbyshire, seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, generations of the Cavendish family have spared no expense when it comes to home and garden improvements. (It is still the family’s home, albeit now the Chatsworth House Trust).

The first house here was built in the 1550s by Elizabeth Talbot (widow of Sir William Cavendish who amassed great wealth during the Dissolution of the monasteries), otherwise known as Bess of Hardwick, Countess of Shrewsbury. She built a large Tudor mansion on the banks of the River Derwent, which in later times acquired the Classical finish we see today, complete with elaborate gold leaf embellishments (recently restored across the entire exterior by the Chatsworth House Trust).

Yes, all those windows in the header photo, and more besides, have gilded frames since real gold is said to provide the best weather protection.

On the stately homes tourist trail, Chatsworth is among Britain’s most popular visitor attractions, this despite the £33 adult entry ticket. The gardens and park are perhaps what return visitors love most, the Emperor Fountain (header) and the Cascade (coming next) being among the more spectacular favourites. (Note too the ride cut through the trees on the far hill, to mirror the Cascade and add to the expansiveness of the parkland setting).

The first version of the Cascade was built in the 1690s by French hydraulics engineer, one Monsieur Grillet, who had worked for Louis XIV. In succeeding years it was doubled in length, widened, made steeper and repositioned to align with the southern frontage of the house. The contrived waterfall is fed from water draining from the high moors into a series of lakes above Chatsworth, and then descends through some 60 metres, just under 200 feet.

These days it is out of commission, waiting for 7-million-pounds’ worth of repairs. Over half of this sum has already been awarded by the National Heritage Lottery Fund, but members of the public are also being urged to sponsor one of the hundred stones that make up the 23 steps, the suggested donations ranging from £100-£500.

Meanwhile, the grandeur of the interior might also render one speechless. This is the Painted Hall, created in 1694 by Louis Laguerre. Actually, when we visited a few years ago, it simply made me very cross. Much of the wealth of the Dukes of Devonshire (and before them the Earls of Shrewsbury) derived from tithes and rents from their farm and lead miner tenants who inhabited communities on their land holdings across Derbyshire’s High Peak District. Among them were generations of my maternal Fox and Bennett ancestors. So it makes me think, looking at such unbridled opulence; family tales have it that, as a girl, my great grandmother, Mary Ann Fox, used to ride over to Chatsworth from Callow Farm, at Highlow, to deliver the family’s tithe in eggs.**

The photo above shows the library. We were only allowed to look through the open doors. And this is but one of very many extravagantly furnished rooms and apartments . (See the State Apartments HERE) So how does one gain perspective on the scale of wealth disposed for the single purpose of showing off? What did successive dukes and duchesses see if they caught sight of themselves in one of their many grand mirrors?

Enough. I’ll finish with a much more pleasing view out in the garden. A soothing avenue of young beech trees, moderately uncontrived, in late summer light:

And a view of the River Derwent that flows below Chatsworth. Upstream it passes through fields once farmed by the Fox family at Callow Farm. They had to sell up in 1892. The rents were by then too high to make a living.

**To Chatsworth and how Mary Ann went to the ball

Lens-Artists: Perspective, Depth, Scale This week John shows us different tools in photo composition. Go see!

Looking Back Through The Old Africa Album

The Great Rift Valley surely is a world wonder, the four-thousand-mile system of volcanic fractures and fissures that stretches from the plains of northern Syria, across Arabia and the Red Sea, then cuts down through Ethiopia, on through Uganda and Kenya (with a westerly Albertine branch around Lake Victoria), pressing on through Tanzania, Malawi, Zambia and finally finishing in Mozambique. I read somewhere it is the only geological phenomenon that can clearly be seen from space.

The aging photos in this post, then, show scarcely a glimpse of Kenya’s Great Rift. Most were taken at different seasons from the 9,000 foot viewpoint on the highway north of Nairobi. The road itself, the country’s major route to Kisumu on Lake Victoria and Uganda beyond, climbs from the city, up and along one of the East Rift’s faulted terraces before descending to the valley floor at Nakuru.

The volcano you can see is Longonot, quiescent now and containing a lost wildlife world within its massive crater. You can walk around the rim, and it’s one of my regrets that we never did. But then in the ‘90s when we lived in Nairobi, security everywhere always seemed an issue.

The foreground farms lying in shadow are on a lower Rift terrace. This is Escarpment village where Graham did a lot of his fieldwork on Napier grass smut for his PhD thesis. I went along to hold the clipboard and one end of the tape measure. For that story see Past Lives – Beneath A Tropic Sun.

Next comes a rainy season view. This was probably taken during the very wet 1997/98 El Nino event:

But then…

…the dry season, both above (July) and below (August) on the valley floor:

And finally…

…here’s a late afternoon view, further south from the Ngong Hills near Nairobi.

Looking back on these photos, the biggest wonder is that I was ever there at all. Even at the time, much of what we saw was too astonishing to grasp.

Lens-Artists: Looking back at #1 Wonder This week Sofia reminds us to be amazed by life’s wonders. Please visit her beautiful photo galleries.

Apricot Afternoon

Late afternoon. Wind gusts in the hedge outside the kitchen window, sending light darts along the sill. Earlier I’d put some apricots there to ripen, but now it is their flesh that fascinates – the contre-jour deep shadow, the sun-blazed cheeks.

Lens-Artists: focused Please visit Patti who sets this week’s challenge. She has lots of tips for different ways to stay focused.

Lens-Artists: In The Early Morning Garden

In this last week of May, the weather has switched from weeks of blustery cold to days of enervating heatwave. How did this happen?

Things began to warm up last Friday. By sunrise on Sunday, there was no doubt about it: summer had well and truly come to Bishop’s Castle. Towards 7 a.m., the sun just topping the town rooftops, I went out in the garden. There had been a heavy dew and all was glistening. I kicked off my shoes and walked on the wet grass. It was very cold – champagne for the soles!

It’s odd, though, how you can go into a familiar place at an unfamiliar hour and feel an intruder. The garden was not expecting me. It was immersed in its own business. There was a sense of immanence. A discernible energy. Still cool, but also voluptuous as if you might wallow in it. Also in the early light, the flowers had other-worldly looks; their intimate, intricate structures very strange at close quarters. Again, a sense of intrusion.

But then that made it just the moment to ponder on Egidio’s this-week’s theme at Lens-Artists. He’s put us on the spot, and literally too, proposing that we restrict ourselves to a well-defined small space and photograph what strikes us there. It seems a perfect exercise for exploring the familiar, the taken-for-granted, with fresh eyes.

And so the header photo – a result of peering more closely. Quite eye-opening actually – to notice the astonishing number of miniscule components needed to make a blackberry. Here it is again:

These next photos conjured thoughts of alien spacecraft…

And then there’s the extraordinary pollinator guidance system of foxgloves – not only the captivating flight path of spots and dots, but also a landing pad covered in tiny filaments – and for what? Massage services for bees as well as the pollen fix?

And finally some simple things that pleased this gardener’s eye…noticing a corner by the shed that is entirely the garden’s own work – assorted volunteer columbines and another foxglove.

…and then the lantern-like looks of alliums and snapdragons, caught with surprising vividness in early morning shadow…

Lens-Artists: Stuck in place This week Egidio asks us to focus on a particular space, no more than 10-15 paces in any direction, and consider its parts with fresh eyes. How will you capture them?

Lens-Artists: Elephants In Words And Pictures

“I have seen a herd of elephant travelling through dense native forest…pacing along as if they had an appointment at the end of the world” Isaak Dinesen

No dense forest here, only a rare scatter of thorn trees on the Maasai Mara plains. And yet early one December morning, when we found ourselves in the path of an elephant herd, the sense of their concerted purpose flowed round us like a slow tide. They did move as one – elders, adolescents, infants. And so softly too. An elephant mirage then.

As they passed on by, not one member of the herd showed any reaction to our presence. And so there was that moment – the urge to follow, to walk with elephants, pace for pace. How astonishing might that be? (Or how invasive).

Of course we were not on foot, but in a truck with our driver-guide, Dan. He drove quietly away and parked on a ridge above the thorn trees; even suggested we should get out and eat our picnic breakfast while we watched the herd fan out below us.

Some members climbed over our ridge, but again seemed not to acknowledge our existence.

“The herd moves as one, yet each elephant knows its place.” African saying.

At sundown the herd met up with us again, travelling at the same slow, purposeful pace, but now in the opposite direction. We were on our way back to camp. Dan stopped the truck while they moved on and on around us. So close we felt their presence as they passed. The musky smell of them.

Lens-Artists: favourite quotes illustrated This week Ann-Christine asks us to illustrate our favourite quotations (No more than 5 photos). She has some stunning examples. Go see!

Lens-Artists: Lucky Shot

For most of the several years we lived in Africa I only had a small film camera – an Olympus-trip. It had a good lens and was great for general landscapes, but of course it had no zoom facility. Obviously, this was a big handicap when driving through bush country in search of wildlife to photograph. Also I did not have the aptitude to make the best of varying light conditions. E.g. The header photo was taken in Zimbabwe in July, winter in the southern hemisphere, with a midday view in Hwange National Park as gloomy as an English November. In other words, that this photo worked at all was sheer good luck. In fact I could probably say the same for most of the photos in the old Africa album. There’s another problem too: old film does not keep well.

And yet I love this shot. It has the look of a painting; an air of timelessness. And besides which, the scene did seem to materialise by chance.

At the time we were living in Lusaka, Zambia, and had driven down to Zimbabwe to meet up with New Zealand friends and take them on a short tour through Zimbabwe back to Lusaka. We spent two days driving around Hwange under lowering skies. The bush was parched, so many shades of brown, and anyway the likelihood of spotting anything much from a Subaru estate car seemed slim. We thus spent our first morning on a high-rise game viewing platform, gazing at a very distant waterhole with some faraway buffalo and one giraffe. It was very mesmerizing, surreal even, but in the end one forgot to feel grateful for witnessing such a scene, and began to feel frustrated by the limited photo opportunities.

We left the hide and returned to Hwange’s paved access road, trundling between wide grass verges, that truth to tell, had a rather managed, suburban look about them. Finally we found a dirt trail that led to another waterhole, and parked up under a rain tree. There was no sign of wildlife when we arrived, but it seemed a good spot to eat our picnic lunch. It was only as we were driving away that we saw the elephants had arrived. One of those moments you don’t forget.

Lens-Artists: Lucky Shot This week Sofia sets the theme. Great fun!

Knowing My Ground: Spring On The River Avon

This week Patti at Lens-Artists asks us to consider fore- middle- and background when framing our photos. And it just so happens I took a few (I think) suitable photos back in March when we were staying beside the river at Bidford-on-Avon in Warwickshire.

The house had a fine view of the town’s fifteenth century bridge. On the afternoon we arrived there was brilliant sunshine. I’m glad I caught it! I liked the shimmery reflections of trees and church tower in the river, but also that you can glimpse the upstream banks through the arches. Can you see the swan?

A view from the bridge

And lastly a couple of photos from our visit to nearby Hidcote Manor Gardens:

I liked the layered look of the magnolia blossoms near and far against the flat grey sky.

What’s not to like about this red-framed window in the Hidcote tearoom, and such a rich red too. Then there’s the garden border beyond, still slumbering for the most part, and in the distance the manor house roof.

Choose a pane, any pane…

Lens-Artists: Framing your shot – fore-, middle, and background

This week Patti sets the theme, and gives us some excellent examples and guidance. Go and see!

Blue Sky Morning

Breakfast on the lawn. A jug of coffee and fresh cut orange and apple with toasted nuts. And at last the sun on our skin. A sense of bliss after the dark, wet months.

Overhead, in the big blue, jackdaws drift from their roost to all points and back again. No reason necessary. Far off, too, above the town, white glints catch my eye. They shimmer like foil reflecting the sun, and soon, drawing near, take form: a pair of buzzards in their best feathers. It’s the white underwing that catches the light. They glide by. A pair. Aerial synchrony. It looks like a slow pas de deux.

And next comes the red kite, Shropshire’s largest raptor. Sipping our coffee we lean back to watch. It’s far up, the tell-tale V of the tail feathers, the wide wingspan. We almost take such sights for granted now. The sparrows, though, dash for cover in the holly hedge. And that’s when, gaze lowered, I notice the brimstone butterfly. Wings of pale apple green, it’s flitting about the garden at high speed. Then up and away over the fence, across the street and into the Thorntons’ garden. It’s the second I’ve spotted this week. I don’t recall ever seeing brimstones before.

Along the garden path there’s a continuous sprinkling of cherry plum blossoms. The ice pink petals fall like slow snow flakes. On days like this the tree looks its festive best against the sky. It’s not our tree but grows near our hedge, casting the new spring garden of daffodils and hellebores in dappled light.

And so with the sun and the blue sky all seems hopeful, bountiful, beneficent, and I breathe a long slow breath. Muscles soften. Winter tensions dissolve. Here, in our small garden world, spring is happening.

Lens-Artists: Time to relax This week Anne at Slow Shutter Speed wants to know what helps us relax.

Shadowed At Wenlock Priory

In its time, the Cluniac Priory at Much Wenlock, Shropshire, did much overshadowing. For one thing it was physically one of the largest ecclesiastical houses in medieval Europe. For another, its Prior ruled over both its resident French monks and the lay populace of peasant farmers and artisans who lived and worked beyond its walls. Then in 1540 came the Dissolution of the monasteries. By order of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s fixer, roofs were stripped of their protecting (highly valuable) lead, and the place, no longer watertight, literally, if slowly, began to dissolve.

Before the end though, the Priory was often a spot for some very shady dealings, forging currency not the least of them.

There’s more about the history in earlier posts Centred at Wenlock Priory and 5 Stories 5 Photos: Hidden Wenlock #2 All of which had me thinking about shadows and recalling the early autumn afternoon when I went to the Priory specifically to capture the ruins in some high-contrast light conditions. I’d taken many photos there in the past, but in the middle of the day. The end products were, without exception, pretty underwhelming.

And so for John’s Lens-Artists’ challenge I thought I’d show a series of different shadowed shots from that late-day autumn visit. I was using a point and shoot Panasonic Lumix including the dynamic monochrome setting for the sepia and black and white shots.

Lens-Artists: Shadowed This week John sets the theme and explores different approaches in his post.

The Power Of Juxtaposition

Grasses, sky and clouds on Wenlock Edge

Sometimes you need to lie down to take a photo; taking this header shot was one of those moments. I wondered how the thin stems of meadow grasses would look against the fiery sky. They had much to compete with. Some more distant treetops got a look in too. Earth to sky: we’re holding our own despite the light show.

And a different take on earthly-aerial juxtapositions; this time a barley field, sun reflecting off the tufty awns that surround the grain. I liked the contrasting textures of spiky crop and meringue-soft cloud; the green against the blue, white-grey contrast:

The colour red always makes its presence felt. Here a single red bird cherry leaf:

The showy crab apples somehow make a lowly snail all the more remarkable.

I do take an awful lot of landscape photos, but perhaps you can have too many ‘good views’. The presence of some living/moving element generally makes for a more engaging shot:

This rather strange view of a Stiperstones tor was shot in monochrome in gloomy midday light. Odd things seem to happen in this mysterious Shropshire upland: so who knows where the sky went. But then I liked the happenstance appearance of the tight-knit group of hikers. They walked into the shot, their group posture conveying group purpose: they will reach the top.

And you want to follow them.

This is another chance Stiperstones photo, taken on the same day. Despite the poor light the tor does seem to radiate something. That’s my other half on the skyline. As ever he has stopped to see what had become of me, dawdling somewhere behind. I was so pleased when he stood still. There he is – a tiny human beside a momentous stack of geology, remnant of the ancient days when this quartzite ridge was crushed and fractured during the last Ice Age.

Back then, two great glaciers (one from Ireland, the other from the heights of Plynlimon in mid-Wales) convened in the Shropshire hills. They kept the ridge company, not covering it, but nudging the tops through alternating periods of freeze and thaw. Needless to say, this would not have been a human-friendly landscape. Even now, in bad weather, it is a brutally exposed spot.

And closer to home, the not quite live elephant on Wintles Hill adds a certain something (if only viewer puzzlement) to this Shropshire autumn landscape. The different layers of sunlight and shadow also caught my eye:

#IAmNotACrop

Lens-Artists: the power of juxtaposition This week Patti at Lens-Artists asks us to consider the power of juxtaposition in our compositions. Please see her super post for guidance and inspiration.

Tish Farrell

Writer on the Edge