Brocton Coppice
A landscape photography blog by Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire based landscape photographer Rob Thorley Photography.
The forecast for this particular morning was mist and fog., and I’d decided the night before that I was going to give Cannock Chase a visit. When you set the alarm before bed you always live in hope that the forecast will be right. When I poked my head out of the curtains this morning my bleary eyes were pleased to see it was nice and foggy.
It’s a thirty to forty minute drive for me to get from my front door to Cannock Chase. I was up early enough that I’d arrive about half an hour before sunrise. The only dilema I had was to “Groot”, or not to “Groot”. That was the question.
I’ve photographed the “human tree” a couple of times but never in the mist, or fog. As I drove towards the chase this was probably plan A. Plan A however went out of the window as I got to Wolseley Bridge.
I’d driven in quite dense fog all the way from the front door to within a mile of my destination when the fog just evaporated. It’s not the first time this has happened to me when visiting Cannock Chase. I’d have thought with a lot of woodland, fields and water it’d be a prime candidate for mist and fog, but on quite a few occasions I’ve had it all around me but not on the Chase. Maybe there’s a reason why. Maybe I’m just being unlucky. Either way it seems very strange.
As I set off into Brocton Coppice I was pleased to see there were some excellent pockets of autumn colours. Now I was on plan B, which didn’t exit I decided I’d juust walk along a path I’d never been on, and off I went.
With nowhere else to be I decided I’d slow down and try and work the woodland. Something that’s easier said than done.
Like a lot of photographers I struggle in the woodland. Trying to decipher the chaos is a bit of an art. Any mist and fog that you get to simplify the scene by isolating your subject from the background really helps. Today, sadly help was not at hand.
After a while I continued along the path heading towards Milford. The path opened out and one subject that immediately caught my eye was a dead tree. The silvern colour of the dead wood was making quite a stark contrast to the autumn colours of the bracken and trees.
The first image I took was with the long lens looking up towards the tree which was situated on the side of the valley. I noticed there was a path running up towards the dead tree, so decided to stretch the calf muscles and tr and photograph the same subject on a similar level.
After I taken an image on the same level. I sat and had a brew and a bit.
I was about three quarters of the way up the path at this point. The path continued to the top of the hill. Being this far up I thought it would be a travesty not to go and look “over the hill” to see what was there, so I left my gear by the dead tree and wandered up to take a look.
To my surprise I came across the scene below. It looked worthy of spending a few minutes investigating and photographing, so I went back down the hill and grabbed my gear.
A bit of reading and Googling later on I found out that this it the Berkswich Millennium Sundial, which is located at Broc Hill which I’d just walked up and down . . . and back up. The sculpture itself is an analemmatic (human) sundial, and apparently there is a second one located at Berkswich Primary School. Sadly there was no sun to give it a go, but stil very interesting to see, and learn about.
After grabbing a few shots of the sundial and with lunch time approaching I decided to call it a day. Making my way back to the car i got distracted by the Silver Birch trees that were showing their autumn colours quite well. What was quite catching was the contrast in colours between the two halves of this image. In the flesh there was also a tunnel like effect with the dark background but I didn’t quite do the scene below justice to convey that. I’m not sure if that’s due to my edit, or that it just doesn’t translate well to the screen. Either way I still quite like the image.
Brocton Coppice, Cannock Chase.
You can view more images from Cannock Chase, and my gallery of other nature subjects.
