Solitude - a walk through Greenham Common

While visiting my brother in Newbury with the family, we took a walk through the famous Greenham Common during an unusually mild December afternoon. Greenham Common is of course known for being an old RAF base during the war as well as for the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp that was held outside its gates in the 1980s. Most recently the old airfield and it's bunkers were used in the recent Star Wars Episode Seven. 

The paths were busy with cyclists and dog walkers as well as the odd sight seer (it was unclear whether they were interested in the history of WWII or star wars!) so after following a Red Kite that I was excited to see fly over, I soon found solitude among the gorse bushes listening for song birds and watching the Corvids chase the Red Kite. Solitude. It soon became a theme in my mind in this large open land where no one tread in fear of the spikey gorse bushes. I struggled with a pleasing landscape shot so soon switched to a slightly longer lens and began isolating solitary objects through use of depth of field or merely composing the subject into a sense of singularity.
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It was an interesting exercise to restrict myself to a theme - even though the theme almost expanded from what I was naturally looking at and photographing at that point. I think it is sometimes good to fall back to basics and restrict some element whether it be in topic or just by using one particular lens in order to encourage creativity and think outside of that comfortable box we tend to cosy up in all too often.

That said... usual business will continue as usual in my next blog with a copious concoction of creatures and conservation.