Whereas the painting and guitar have a weekly 'driver' in the form of an art class and a guitar lesson, the photography has tended to be more haphazard and frequently gets brushed aside by other important necessities of life such as house and garden maintenance.
So this year I have determined that I will have one day out a week (usually Tuesday) to get out with my camera, come rain or shine. The objective being to get at least one photograph which is worth showing to anyone who may be interested.
So to start I decided to make the short trip back to where I was born and raised: Ashbourne, in Derbyshire.
There are several things which Ashbourne is famous for (apart from my having been born there) but some of them can wait for future trips. This week I will show you what no visitor to the town can miss:-
This is the 13th century St. Oswald's Parish Church, one of the most striking mere Parish Churches in England. The stone spire is 212 ft high and is known as the 'Pride of the Peak'. I said I would get out 'come rain or shine'. Well it wasn't raining but there was definitely no shine to this typically grey and dull January day. This resulted in a very 'flat' picture with a dull sky. So I decided to make a virtue of necessity and made it even flatter, converted to monochrome and blurred the outer extremities to make it look like an historical postcard type print.
If you want to know more about the church and its history a Google search will bring up many sites with interesting facts and detailed photographs. What those sites won't tell you is that my first school, St Oswald's Church of England junior school was (and still is) on the other side of the church. I can still remember spending much time staring out of the window up at the spire and the weather vane cockerel on top of it. The quarter hour chimes of its clock kept us constantly reminded of the progress of the school day. The most welcome chimes being those at 3:30 signalling 'home time'.
