Five images from this week’s walks

It’s been a week of colour after a monochrome month.

Each morning, before I have breakfast and start work for the day, I drag myself out of bed and walk five miles around my local footpaths. I began this habit two years ago, and have kept it up – it’s become one of the most important things in the rhythm of my daily routine. These miles are often muddy, and at this time of year they are dark. Light and colour are in short supply. Especially in a winter as drab and dull as this one.

But 90 minutes in nature, 90 minutes communing with my own thoughts, 90 minutes before I look at emails or Twitter or anything else (other than the BBC Weather app) – in good weather or bad, this daily reset is vital.

Recently, the long run of dull, mild, cloudy weather had been starting to get me down. The sheer lack of light made photography even more challenging than usual at this time of year. But this week I’ve been seeing a bit more colour again.

In winter I am captivated by the shapes etched by bare branches against the empty sky. It’s an easy choice of subject – there is very little else to photograph in Lincolnshire on an early winter morning! But I never get bored of these compositions, even though I have now captured many of these scenes multiple times.

With no further waffle, here are five images I’ve taken this week that capture my aesthetic of the moment: silhouettes and winter colours.

(Recently I mentioned on this blog that I was contemplating a total switch to 35mm film for my personal photography. For various reasons, cost foremost among them, this won’t happen – I’ll continue to shoot both film and digital, enjoying the benefits of each. For the last week or so I’ve mostly been shooting with my Fujifilm X-T2 and zoom lens. Next week I might go back to the Olympus 35mm film setup. I have a roll of Ektachrome to finish off…)

All images © Alex Roddie. All Rights Reserved. Please don’t reproduce these images without permission.