Yet another new destination! In early September we ventured to Shipley Bridge in South Dartmoor and attempted the walk by the river Avon upstream to the Avon Dam. And we would have made it - but for my 'pauses' to take photographs!
There has been considerable debate over the last few years about a key essential for life - water. The UN's research shows that water and climate change are intrinsically linked, with more and more extreme weather events causing drought and flooding around the world. Here in the South West we are affected too, with water restrictions for most of 2023, due to lack of rain. Then a very wet winter and Spring partly refilled the reservoirs, but it was the 'wrong' kind of rain, often so heavy it just ran off the ground. Some natural solutions are being sought, such as the introduction of beavers in Devon a decade ago, having been hunted to extinction in England by the 16th century. The beavers are transforming the River Otter in East Devon, and have built more reservoirs to alleviate flooding over the past three years than the water company has in over three decades! But still some landowners and fisherfolk are sceptical and the debate rages on.
I digress. I am on the River Avon, which was dammed in 1957 to provide water for the growing city of Plymouth. It rises on the Moor and reaches the sea at Bigbury in the South Hams. It is not a river that I am familiar with and the first joy was discovering that the river bank was only a few minutes walk along a tarmac track from the car park. The second was realising that there was a series of waterfalls just waiting to be photographed! Luckily my companion had brought a book and a cushion as I was immediately immersed in the possibilities that lay before me. The light was dancing on the water, some summer green remained in the trees but also a touch of autumn colour from fallen leaves. I played around with ICM completely absorbed in the process. I varied the shutter speeds and the direction of movement, wanting to get the texture and movement of the fast-flowing water and this set shows how you can change the degree of abstraction by doing this. To me they are reminiscent of the painting styles of Cassat, Morisot, Cezanne and Turner:
I turned my attention to the texture in the trees lining the riverbank, another essential in our lives:
I then got fascinated by the combinations of the shapes of the trees and the flowing water. Experimenting with the white balance gave me different effects, some quite ghostly, some remeiniscent of floods washing away the world:
I noticed the first signs of Autumn, leaves of yellow and orange caught in the current:
I then had a play with my Kokak PixPro camera, which is waterproof, so I was able to put it in the water. The images capture the movement and sparkle from a different perspective, a feeling of immersion.
And we finished our afternoon with coffee and cake from the cabin! Another successful trip.
NB: The River Avon begins its life at Avon Head Mires, near Ryder’s Hill the highest part of the southern moor, and flows all the way to the coast at Bigbury on Sea; a journey of around 25 miles.
Avon is the Celtic word for ‘river’.
The dam was built in 1957 to supply drinking water to the growing towns in South Devon.
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