Jim Wood Photojournalist

Friday 21 December 2012

Merry Christmas...#Streetphotography

Poor old Santa looks done in...

#Footsteps #Streetphotography @SouthStreet

Wednesday 12 December 2012

#StreetPhotography #DogsOfEngland @Leominster

#frost #morning #graves #dawn #winter #landscape #photography @PrioryChurch @Leominster

#silhouette #chimney #coalfire #dawn #landscape #photography @SouthStreet @Leominster

#dogsofengland #streetphotography @CastleStreet @Leominster

#dogsofengland #streetphotography @SouthStreet @Leominster

#dogsofengland #streetphotography @Co-op @Leominster

Porch To Let #streetphotography @SouthStreet @Leominster

#Impressionism #graves #landscape @PrioryChurch @Leominster

Merry Christmas from Leominster and Mr Granger #streetphotography @Grange @Leominster

#remembrance #streetphotography #poppyday #11/11/11 @Grange @Leominster

A Photographic Tribute To Alfred Watkins. Part One; The Old Standing Crosses Of Leominster Priory.

   I was Christmas shopping in Hereford with the children the other day. I'm sure I had heard the name Alfred Watkins some where in the murky mists of time. But it had never really connected with anything. That was until I was exploring the back streets around Hereford Cathedral. I turned a corner into St John's Street and there was a little blue plaque on the wall that said "Alfred Watkins 1855-1935 Pioneer Photographer Antiquarian Lived Here 1920-1935". Then I went around another corner and came upon the house of Henry Bull the naturalist. I was flabbergasted.
   So when I got home I started Googling as one does now. He truly was a pioneer! He patented the first light meter in 1890. This was called the Watkins Bee Meter, in the first year he sold 1,400 meters at a guinea each. It was that good Herbert Ponting used one for his exposure readings on the fateful trip to the Antarctic with Captain Scott in 1910-1912.
   He started out working for his father and eventually running The Imperial Brewery, it was sold in 1898 for £64,000 making Alfred totally independent.A lifelong interest in photography started in his late ’teens with little more than a pinhole camera, developing his wet glass-plate negatives in a small tent before they had a chance to dry. Alfred Watkins spent over sixty years photographing events throughout Herefordshire and the neighbouring counties. First by horse and trap, then by one or other of his favourite steam cars and later by his Wolseley Stellite, he travelled to the most remote parts of the county taking photographs of items which caught his interest with his massive plate camera,.
   Watkins became a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1910 and was awarded the society’s 11th Progress Medal for his research work. The following year he completed his all-embracing reference work Photography; its Principles and Applications — the ‘bible’ for amateur photographers for a couple of generations. In later life he experimented in colour photography and had a hand-turned cine camera.
   The Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club was formed in 1851 Watkins regularly attended the Club’s meetings, in Hereford during the winter months and out and about in the County and further afield in the summer. Club Transactions were illustrated almost entirely by Watkins’ photographs. Rare shots include buildings long since demolished, historic trees and diverse countryside activities. He became a County Magistrate in 1907 and served on the Bench for many years. In 1914 he became County Councillor for Tupsley and was eventually made a County Alderman. His efforts were responsible for the riverside path below the old General Hospital and, as committee chairman, the design of the War Memorial in St.Peter’s Square.

Grave of John Ward and Sarah Ward, grandparents to the Herefordshire Charles Kemble acting dynasty

He was also an antiquarian who insured that fine photographic records exist of many archaeological sites that have since been lost including sections of Hereford’s City Walls, Craswall Priory, St Giles Chapel and many others. He also published a theory about "Ley Lines" (Prehistoric trading routes based on straight lines between a variety of sighting points. Of great significance, these original markers were subsequently re-used and their sites marked by later, but still historic features.) This was a subject that was to occupy him for the rest of his life as he attempted to convince others of his theories. In rapid succession he published The Ley Hunters Manual, Early British Trackways, Archaic Tracks around Cambridge, and, still in print after some 78 years, The Old Straight Track.