Chez Spud

Ooooh, I won Tara’s photography competition for my ‘Nature’ entry to her weekly Gallery. I’m chuffed to pieces. Not least because my prize is a luxury organic hamper from chocolate makers extraordinare Green & Blacks.

This was my entry. I will enjoy re-reading it whilst gorging myself to the point of sickness on fine chocolate. YUM!

Ooof I think the themes for Tara’s The Gallery are getting harder not easier. I was so sure this week’s theme ‘nature’ would be a breeze. Drag out a photo or two of some pretty flowers from the archive and be done with it, I thought. But actually none of the flowers were really doing it for me. Instead, it seems I am a tree hugger.

I love the shot above, taken in one shot in the pouring rain after rain stopped play during a trip to Framlingham Castle. The sky blackened, the rain fell in balls not drops…we rounded a corner and I spotted the scene above in the passenger wing mirror. “STOP THE CAR!” I shrieked. Out I dashed and risked camera cardiac arrest in the rain for what is one of my Top 10 favourite shots of mine.

Fast forward 6 months and here I am, yet again, taking moody bleak photos of trees. Actually this was taken at sunset, and it was a glorious red/orange/yellow kind of affair. But by the magic of photo processing I made it look like the End of the World is Nigh. If you listen v…e…r…y carefully you can just hear the clip clop of the Four Horses of the Apocalypse….

Then there was that whole ‘rows of trees in a line’ thing, as above. But here is favourite tree, and this is my favourite shot of it:

I love that shot, it’s up there in my Top 5 photos. Partly I love it because it’s a beautiful scene and I think I managed to capture it, and the processing enhances it. But mostly I love it because the subject, the horse chestnut in the field in front of our house, was the thing that inspired me to take up photography as a hobby. On 15 October 2008 I looked out of our kitchen window and saw the mist hanging in the sunlight of the branches of that tree. I grabbed MrSpud’s ‘big camera’, shoved it on auto, stuck my wellies over my PJs and marched out and snapped the scene. It wasn’t a brilliant shot and I didn’t process it because I didn’t know how. But I loved how it turned out, and how I’d captured a moment.

In that second I was smitten. A hobby and a passion was thrust upon me and I finally got to reclaim a tiny bit of ‘me’ time each day. I wasn’t just ‘being a Mummy’ or working. I was a ‘keen amateur photographer’. There I was…saving myself…one picture at a time.

So this one is my shot for The Gallery. It’s not my best, or my favourite. But it’s the one that started me off and it will always be precious to me for that. Thank you tree mwah mwah xx

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