The other type of country shooting

Capturing the countryside

In no way do I consider myself to be a photographer, however over the course of time I have found myself taking photos of things that I come across whilst out and about in the great outdoors. These days pretty much everyone carries the means to take a reasonable quality picture so it's very easy to see something and to capture the image. I am quite proud of the fact I have never purchased a mobile phone, other than the mk1 BT cellnet when they first became readily available, and which I can confirm did not have the means to take a photograph, always managing to get by due to the kindness of others donating their old phones when they get an upgrade. 

Considering myself lucky

As I am sure the majority of people who live in rural Britain do, I sometimes find myself taking for granted the fact I get to call the beautiful area in which I reside home . It serves as a reminder when I share a photograph of something I have seen on social media, the amount of reactions and make comments like  "I have never seen a deer other than dead ones next to the road", "What a beautiful view, much better than looking at a load of houses" of how fortunate I am.

Varied subjects

I try to photograph lots of different things when I am out and about from fungi to wildlife. I take a biased amount of my dogs as they are always with me and in my opinion are beautiful animals that often look great in the environment they are bred for (not so much when they have been rolling in something disgusting or cooling down in what looks like a forest equivalent of a cess pit). 

One of my favourite recent pictures (taken last winter) was a hedge located next to a lane at a point where a puddle forms, at the time we were experiencing constant cold weather and the temperatures struggled to climb even a degree over freezing. As cars consistently smashed the layer of ice on top of the puddle and water propelled onto the bare hedge, before it could drip onto the floor it was being frozen in place, over a sustained period this resulted in nature creating this beautiful effect.

I find that fungi are usually quite nice subjects to photograph (mainly because they cant run away) due to the variation in appearance and preferred habitat. Another reason I take photos of mushrooms is I do quite a bit of foraging through the season, so am already scrubbing about looking at the forest floor for them. 

Photographs are important

Not only is it great to be able to share photos of the countryside with friends and family but it is also quite important to be able to look back on a visual documentary of how the area around you is evolving. For example if you know that you are in an area which has always been good for foraging a certain type of mushroom or where you know a certain species was once thriving and one year you are not seeing it, then you can look back through a timeline of images and pin point when it began to change. The practicality of photographing an entire forest is out of the question, but if like myself you find yourself visiting the same relatively small areas within whatever land you roam, and subsequently taking many images over the course of time, you can monitor the change. For example, if I find a nice big tasty chicken of the woods (the fungi not a pheasant) I generally take a photo of it before I take any and the next year will do the same thing, so it becomes noticeable if one year something has changed and there is no chicken of the woods in that area. 

I find that a photo is a great way to jog the memory when trying to recall what somewhere looked like in the past, even if the image you find is not of the particular thing you are trying to recall, just that it was taken in the vicinity. 

Continue taking pictures

I cannot imagine not taking photos that I can share with people and look back on myself. Like I said at the start of this article, I am not a professional photographer (clearly obvious now you have seen some of my photos) but I do really enjoy the challenge of trying to capture the best image I can with the means I have to hand. 

This is the fourth article that I have written on Scribehound so if you like this one please do have a look at my others. 

Many thanks for taking the time to read.