Picture of the month | March 2011

March arrived with a distinct feeling of spring being just around the corner.  To many photographers this brings fresh opportunities after the long winter months.  For me it was a case of digging out my macro gear and heading out to the local woodlands, as well as revisiting locations that I have photographed during the previous seasons in a quest to capture some new images for the libraries representing my stock photography.

Durham is unquestionably one of my favourite cities to photograph and I rarely need much of an excuse to head south of the river to spend a day there.  During the middle of the month we were graced with a period of fine weather so I decided to revisit some of my favourite Durham viewpoints but also made a point of looking for some new ones.  This shot was captured from a viewpoint which I had found during a winter visit but had on that occasion failed to produce anything worth keeping.

Captured towards the end of the day, I could hardly believe my luck when the breeze began to disappear leaving me with a perfect reflection of Durham Castle and the Cathedral on the river Wear. I tried some shots omitting the footpath but I decided I would like something to anchor the complete scene so I opted for a scramble up a nearby waist level flowerbed (without any flowers in it I hasten to add) which allowed me the height to include the street lamp without any signs of converging verticals.  Then it was simply a case of fitting my 3-f stop ND graduated filter to balance the  footpath (which was in the shade) with the distant vista of Durham Castle and Cathedral.