Today has taken me to a place where I could enjoy and exploit my solitude and, in the same location, offered me the diversity of a conversation about Henri Cartier-Bresson’s black and white photography, all on the back of a quintessentially English bacon and sausage sandwich …. in an American Diner. Life in Somerset, it seems, is far from ordinary or mundane.

I enjoy my solitude. It’s not that I’m anti-social ( I’m not I like to think ) but solitude gives me time to ponder, sometimes to reminisce, and the view from here today took me back to an afternoon perhaps 40 years ago where a similar scene was to be had on Westhope Common in Herefordshire. Westhope Common is high on a ridge not far from my North Herefordshire roots in the market town of Leominster. It’s accessed North and South by narrow, high hedged, country lanes and, unlike here on Ham Hill in Somerset, when you get to the top there are no car parks, no benches, almost always no other human presence. The only thing, at this time of year, are the long field grasses, the songbirds, the sound of the breeze whistling through the grass under an endless expanse of sky …. almost where Heaven is a place on earth.

Here today on Ham Hill at this bench those same sounds weren’t to be heard, the overarching hum and drum of the traffic travelling along the busy A303 truck road in the plain below the hill and the sounds of visitors enjoying ( like me ) the views and the open spaces meant that the songbirds and the gentle murmurings and whistling of the breeze wasn’t available. I had several brief, sociable interactions with others, including Henri Cartier-Bresson man but still the scene triggered memories from another age and place long gone. I am glad that my solitude allowed me the time to return to an afternoon long ago.

I hate technology almost with a passion! It makes me feel inadequate, it laughs and sneers at my inability to grasp it’s complexities but we are all in it’s grasp, part of the inescapable drive onwards, upwards, forwards. There are times when I crave the simplicity of times gone by and yet logic also tells me that we cannot simply stand still.

Talking of logic, I’m told that computing is logical, you can’t break it ( watch me ) and that at it’s heart is a simple binary code consisting of only two symbols, the figures 0 and 1. Explain to me then the logic of turning one’s computer off having used it for several hours and then coming back to it and turning it on to find that it no longer wants to ‘ compute ‘. In the intervening period between turning it off and back on it has, to my mind, decided to defy logic and now refuses to work. We are, almost all of us, somewhat enslaved by the computer at some level or other whether domestically, commercially, artistically, computing is at the heart of almost everything we do or have done by friends, associates, banks, hospitals, Governments!.

The picture today illustrates a bygone age, the simplicity of nature and the use of technology to paint a picture that is half truth, half lie, a fabrication of two worlds melded together, technology used to create nostalgia. An old truck, the kind my parents might have known well and one that I might have remembered from childhood stands in a field underneath the milky way, the natural phenomenon as old as the planet itself and yet, in this instance an image created by technology and applied to create an illusion of the night sky. The reality being that the shot was taken in bright sunlight ( the hub cap and the front bumper give it away ) and that damned technology that frustrates me so has, in this instance helped me perpetuate a sense of the simplicity of the past. Whilst it frustrates the heck out of me at times, in order to create and move forwards, I find myself ‘ embracing technology ‘ ever increasingly ….

I’ve always enjoyed ‘ the outdoors ‘ , not to the extent that I’ve ever felt the need to immerse myself in it by trekking up a mountain or sheltering from the inclement elements in a tent, but in a gentler way, spending an hour or two, or three, wandering and enjoying the unfolding spectacle is no mean thing.

The dawn or dusk is a particular treat for me, it evokes memories from early childhood, teenage years, adulthood. In the innate silence of the moment, memories of places, events, people and a whole host of things return from the subconscious and present themselves to the forefront of my mind.

I’ve titled this ‘ Beginning ‘ because it is just that , a beginning, the dawn of a new day, the start of something new.

Where have all the poppies gone? This field on the site of the old S.O.E. airfield at Tarrant Rushton has always had a proliferation of poppies in the field margins at harvest time but this year they have been few and far between. Is there a reason, a logical explanation behind their demise? Have they just not flowered this season, maybe because of the unusual weather we’ve had, or have they become the victim of chemical intervention in the name of better yields in the grain?

The sight of the poppies, brilliant red, against the golden wheat is always, in my minds eye, a sure sign of summer. Their brightly coloured heads swaying in time with the heavy laden ears of wheat on unseen breezes across the vast openness of the fields here ( as in many other places locally ) has been a sight to behold in summers past, not so this year unfortunately. At dawn this morning, in the half light under an enormous, rolling sky I could only find this one lonely specimen, a straggler in the margin of the baked earth.

On a warm, muggy, threatening afternoon out in the lanes searching for inspiration and possibly some harvesting activity to photograph, I drove along a little road in North Dorset stopping in gateways and peering over hedgerows. It’s quite often the way that ‘ views ‘ present themselves for a fleeting moment but there’s nowhere to safely stop for the length of time it takes to compose and shoot a few frames, North Dorset roads being what they are and traffic being what it is , often oversized and always, it seems, increasingly in a hurry.

In this case I was fortunate enough to find a pull in at a field entrance deep enough to accommodate my car without any inconvenience to the motoring fraternity and I was able to wander to the hedgerow and capture the scene without incurring the wrath of any other road user. I love the area hereabouts, except for the traffic, though even that is a small inconvenience made up for in spades by the simple beauty of the landscape.

Life, it seems, is a constant process of ‘ improvement’ , or so we’re often encouraged to believe. Whether that be improving our environment, our economy, our health, our finances, our ‘ situation’ ( whatever that might be), we’re almost constantly encouraged to ‘ improve’ even if the results are difficult to measure or to observe. Is the desire to improve an inherent human trait or a learnt behaviour over millennia? Whatever, the desire( or struggle) for improvement goes on at pace, nothing stands still for long …..

The farming year moves on at pace, dependant on the weather but always governed by the next job in hand. In the sultry warmth of a summers afternoon I stood on the edge of a recently harvested field under a threatening sky. The grain already gone to the drier, the straw, some already baled and some still adorning the field waiting on collection and in the far left of the shot on the horizon a tractor, already engaged in the next task in the cycle of production, bending the plough to the hard earth in readiness for the coming winter crop.

Sometimes life’s a rush! There always seems to be something demanding one’s time, so it was this afternoon. I had an engagement, somewhere to be at a specific time and before I knew it time was running away with me, what had seemed to be the opportunity to wander and find something inspiring to photograph was running away, rapidly.

My ‘ window of opportunity ‘ dwindled to a mere thirty minutes and a very hasty trip to the garden where the wild sweet pea’s had crept over the fence and amongst the bordering bushes. The hot afternoon sun and a piece of coloured card as a backdrop to the blossom provided the basis for an impromptu photoshoot, the subject being shaded slightly with a diffuser to take the edge off the highlights.

I’ve returned to this format once again, the last re-invention seemed less than successful, hopefully I’ll have a little more success with this venture.

Several year ago , well, more than several years if the truth be told, I spent an entire year writing daily, or almost daily, and taking a photograph that either related to the post or at least inspired me to write something on the day. In truth, what started out as a reasonable project, at times, became a monster where I sometimes found the impetus and inspiration impossible to find and maintain. On the occasions that I failed to complete the daily challenge I was often consumed with an irrational guilt. To that end I doubt that I shall look to add to this on a daily basis, I will look to use it more as a vehicle to capture moments and musings to look back on.

After some length I’ve resurrected this blog, no more a daily challenge to write and post, it’ll just be an ad-hoc experience as and when the urge takes me.