Hannah's Meadow

[Kaye Leggett]

Whilst on holiday a few weeks ago I had the pure joy of visiting Hannah's Meadow..... Hannah was a lady who farmed in a remote part of Teesdale only using traditional methods. She was 'discovered by TV' in the 1970's living on a farm with no electricity or running water - sounds romantic nowadays but she had had a very hard life and the TV fame did not change her way of farming. When she retired in the late 1980's, herself in her Mid 80's, a local Trust bought three of her fields and pledged to continue to farm them as she had always done: Never ploughing or using any fertilizers, cutting hay by hand in mid summer, then allowing cattle to graze for a couple of months followed by sheep in early winter until it was time to allow the meadows to rest and grow again to make hay.

These photos are of those fields. The first is the wider view to give context and the second two are to illustrate the wealth of wild flowers and species of grass in the meadow and the magic of this remote place, but have I succeeded ? C&C on how to improve these shots greatly appreciated.

[Shadowman]

I like those low angle shots.

[dje]

Hi Kaye

This does indeed look like a lovely place. I like the colours and light in these images very much.

With the first shot, I'm not sure about that foreground object on the right hand side. I wonder whether a shot from a bit to the left could have featured the rocks on the left more ? Very nice scene though.

I really like the second shot for it's colour and light.

Not so sure about the third shot. I think I can see what you were aimimg for but there's just a bit too much of the image blurred for me.

Dave

[marlunn]

I like them a lot, the only thing I would do is remove the sky from the #3 one, and I love the context information, thank you for that.

[IzzieK]

Kay...are you able to go back there? I like #1 very much but I agree with Dave about the framing of the picture. My thinking goes back to the design of tallest to the left sort of thought. So a bit more of the rocks would have been nicer. But then you saw something here that is really very nice. Maybe, just maybe you can just remove the offending tallest at the right thing by cropping the short rock frame instead...Anyway, #3 is nice too -- without the clouds.

And Kay, I'd just like to let you know that since I came back here to CiC, I noticed that you had improved a lot in your photography.

[Kaye Leggett]

Thank you Izzie, Mark, Dave and John. Sadly no chance for another visit in the near future but gives me ideas for future shots. The stone on the right is the upright to a gateway but you're right I don't have enough of the wall in the image so the upright becomes a distraction. I have tried the third without the sky and here is the result - better I think - so thank you.

[ShaneS]

Kaye;

This is a nice series and I can't count the times that I have said I need to go back and can't or worse yet I can and for some darned reason an improved composition still eludes me! Practice, practice, practice I guess as I am still waiting for stunning composition to just jump out at me so I feel your pain

The last shot is improved without the sky I think. I also think that the second would be a nice companion piece if you were to make it long and narrow by cropping the bottom up to the top of the out of focus foreground (the large yellow area above the blade of grass).