Withnell Fold
It's always nice to find new and interesting places close to home. I've long been aware of the tiny village of Withnell Fold and its paper mill, but was completely unaware of the nature reserve that's built up around what I presume was once a lodge belonging to the mill. I stumbled upon this location on Saturday and foolishly hadn't brought a real camera, which was a pity as it looked great, so I gritted my teeth and decided to slum it with the camera on my phone.
Not feeling particularly energetic today (the Bank Holiday), I decided to pop back down there with the Nikon at lunchtime and take another crack at some of the more interesting trees. I don't think the light was as nice as it had been on Saturday, basically it was very flat and dull, but with the right conditions and at the right time of year, it could be a good spot for some woodland shots. In the meantime, until that serendipitous conjunction occurs, here's what I ended up with today.
1 - The Paper Mill Beside The Leeds/Liverpool Canal
The mill sits on the East bank of the Leeds to Liverpool Canal between Blackburn and Chorley. A relatively recent housing development has been built alongside it. The nature reserve is situated on the opposite side of the canal, i.e. immediately behind where I was stood when taking this picture.
2 - The Mill
The paper mill was built in 1843 and produced its final batch of paper in 1967. It was subsequently converted into industrial units and has recently suffered a serious fire.
3 - The Chimney
The building adjacent to the chimney appears to have been redeveloped from what was a very derelict building just a few years ago and is now home to a design agency according to Google maps.
This is actually one of my phone pictures (all of the rest were taken with the Nikon). I was cursing myself for only having the phone on me on Saturday and cursing the phone even more as I find them horrible things to take pictures with. It's like trying to photograph with a camera that has no control and the handling characteristics of a wet bar of soap.
That said, a handful of the phone pics looked subjectively better than the Nikon ones, probably because the light was a bit nicer on Saturday compared to today, however the phone shots I took in the woods looked as terrible as might be expected. In this particular instance, in addition to the usual Capture One tweakery, it's also been given a 2x upscale and denoise pass in Topaz AI, which can cause some unpleasant artefacts, but seems to have done little harm in this instance.
4 - An Angry Looking Tree In The Nature Reserve
Most trees are content to just stand there being trees, but some, some have character. This particular example looks decidedly unhappy to me.
5 - A River Runs Through It
In addition to what I presume is a lodge, a little brook runs through the nature reserve.
6 - An Interesting Grouping
I think there's a good picture in here somewhere, but this isn't quite what I was aiming for. It's had quite a bit of selective colour mangling applied to it to try and draw the trees out from the background and general chaos around them, which has been sort of successful, but the flat light has left a limited number of colours to isolate, leaving just brown, green and yellow in the mix.
7 - Reflecting On The Lodge #1
The water wasn't quite as mirror still as it had been on Saturday and the flat light made it glare quite brightly, so I've used a polariser to tame the glare, taking care not to wipe out the reflections in the process and added a 10 stop filter to extend the exposure time on these to smooth out any ripples.
8 - Reflecting On The Lodge #2
9 - Reflecting On The Lodge #3
10 - Trees At The Memorial Garden
There's a little memorial garden in Withnell Fold and I spotted these interesting looking trees standing proudly above it.
11 - Blossom
I thought this tree looked great when I spotted it on Saturday, but the added dusting of fallen blossom beneath it today really set it off.
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