Light, Shadows and a Pair of Fighting Stags.
It's 10am on a Wednesday morning. The sun is already quite high in an almost cloudless sky, and yes, the light is harsh — but it doesn't matter. This walk has to be done. This walk is always done, two or three times a day, whatever the weather is up to. This is Elvis's morning walk.
Our village sits on the tip of the Chiltern Hills, down in the valley with the River Wye meandering through it. The route is roughly a mile or so around the fields to the rear of the house, climbing up above the village until, at the top of the hill, you're rewarded with wonderful views looking down through the Thames Valley. On paper it should take twenty-five, maybe thirty minutes.
Unless you take a camera. Then it's not unusual for me to be gone a couple of hours — sometimes accompanied by a phone call from the other half: where the bloody hell are you, you've only taken the dog for a walk. Don't blame us. Blame the light.
No such call today though. One Man, One dog, One camera, and left entirely to our own devices. Today's camera was a little different from the usual Sony setup — I've recently acquired an Olympus Stylus 1S, picked up partly as a travel camera for an upcoming trip to Spain, but also just as a lightweight option for days when I don't fancy lugging the Sonys around. I'll do a proper write-up once I've spent more time with it, but first impressions are good. All the images in this post were shot on the Stylus 1S straight out of camera in black and white.
It might only be the usual morning route, but every time you head out there's always something different waiting to be noticed — a shift in the seasons, rain, mist, wind, sunshine — it all changes the perspective. Today was about light, shadows and texture, gifted to us by that harsh overhead sun. I took a few wider shots along the way, partly to show the kind of morning it was, and partly because I never get tired of that view anyway. Quite often I'll find a fallen branch to sit on and just disappear into my own little world for a while, no particular thoughts, just being there.
We set off down the path of the old Wycombe railway line before heading uphill through the trees to the fields above. Not all the spring growth has come through yet — it's sheltered in there — but there's always something to see depending on the time of year. Muntjac deer foraging through the undergrowth, a fox, or just the birds singing their little hearts out. At certain times of day it gets busy too — other dog walkers, people making the daily commute on foot between the villages, school children.
Breaking through the tree line and over the stile into the open fields, with new crops just starting to push through, we carried on uphill until the ground levelled out. It's this next field that offers the most photographically — the views over and through the Thames Valley, slightly hazy in the sunlight. Sometimes you can stand and watch an entire weather front moving down the valley, knowing that if you don't get a move on you're going to get soaked before you reach home. Not an issue today.
Bluebells and daisy-like flowers have just started to appear along the hedgerow, and a butterfly sitting and warming itself in the sun caught my attention — a peacock, wings spread flat, completely unbothered by us. A weathered fence post wrapped in barbed wire, a few rusty nails hammered in at various angles — agricultural engineering at its finest — stopped me for a closer look too.
Then the shadows. The trees were throwing long shapes across the path and field edge, and I'm going to be honest — I probably spent longer here than any normal person would. My mind was running wild with the shapes they were creating. Other dog walkers passed me and I can only imagine what they made of the sight — a man crouched at the field edge staring intently at a crop of winter wheat. I was almost oblivious to them. Elvis, for his part, was entirely unbothered. He knows the routine when the camera comes out. He has a good sniff about, and if I'm taking longer than usual he'll sit or lie quietly at my side. He never complains.
With the viewfinder fixed to my eye, shuffling around — left a bit, right a bit, down a bit, zoom in, zoom out — one composition suddenly stopped me. The shadows of two trees, branch shadows splaying upward from their trunks, had arranged themselves into something I couldn't unsee: two stags up on their hind legs, antlers locked in battle. That's how my head configured it, anyway. Once you see it, it's there — solid as anything.
Eventually pulling myself away, we headed back down the steepest part of the hill, picking our way carefully on the loose flint. It wouldn't be the first time it's got the better of me. When it's wet the clay turns it into a skating rink — something I know from painful experience. Reaching the bottom, we turned back down the old railway line toward home and a well-earned cup of tea.
Below is a selection of other images from the walk, just click on them to enlarge them.
The moral of the story is this: no matter how close to home you are, no matter what the weather is doing — take your camera. You will almost always find something to bring a little photography happiness to your day.