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Ian Scholey
An engineer and project manager by training based in Cambridgeshire, I spend weekends and holidays where possible preoccupied with amateur landscape photography around the UK. My engineering background and interests have helped feed my interest in digital photography to the extent has become my creative outlet. Trips further afield have included Lake District, Cornwall, Yorkshire and the West Coast of Scotland using my VW campervan as an ever flexible transport and accommodation.
Alconbury Brook is a tributary to the River Great Ouse that snakes around Huntingdon racecourse and through Hinchinbrooke Park (home to Oliver Cromwell’s family) before meeting the river at Brampton Mill. Given a reasonable amount of rain it regularly floods and creates opportunities for landscape photography in an otherwise rather uninspiring local natural landscape, particularly if the weather is icy or foggy.
It's part of my regular route to walk the dogs over the past 20 years, so assuming their patience – they have been known to jump into the water and then expect help getting out - I can take the opportunity to capture a few images. These images were captured in the winter of 2020/2021 after a lot of rain and they do convey the cold and dampness. The misty weather coincided with weekends for what turned out to be a peak in creative opportunities.
All four images are taken at locations over a stretch of Alconbury Brook each less than a few hundred yards apart over approx. 6 few weeks of winter; so represent a snapshot in time of that area.
The misty conditions helped separate the trees and brook from the background with the vegetation still showing the fast flowing floodwaters that had receded leaving the long dead vegetation.
I have a long term aim to complete a larger body of work focused on a slightly wider area. The lack of any traditional grand landscapes means it feels more of a challenge and often focuses on woodland and rivers. I definitely feel the need to progress from a single image to a project based creative process.
More and more my best work seems to have been monochrome conversions and in the bleakness of winter, of course, nature helps with that pre-visualisation.
