After weeks of lockdown, with the whole of Wales out of bounds, things have now progressed to the point where a trip to one of my favourite woodland walks was possible. This is Plas Power Woods, an area of ancient woodland just outside Wrexham. With ample parking, well marked paths, and a charming waterfall at the site of an old mill, it’s a great spot for an afternoon out.
Sadly there were rather more people around than I expected, so it didn’t offer the tranquility I had experienced on previous visits. I managed a few phone photos, but my plan to photograph the waterfall was largely frustrated by a group ‘tombstoning’ from the upper level soon after I arrived. I hung around for best part of an hour and got just a few photos, but it was clear they were there to stay, so I moved on in the end.
Nevertheless, it was good to get out in the fresh air on the first sunny day this July. And the first day for a long time that I’ve felt like going out specifically to take photographs. Here are a few more from the day.
Excellent evening with TimeLine Events, London Camera Exchange and Sony UK at the Barrow Hill Roundhouse, the last surviving railway roundhouse in the United Kingdom with an operational turntable. Built in 1870, it was threatened with demolition in 1991 when the site was closed by British Rail. It was saved by a group of volunteers who have transformed it into a railway museum and events venue.
A highlight of the visit was spotting 60163 ‘Tornado’ outside undergoing minor repairs and annual re-certification. This A1 Pacific ‘Peppercorn’ locomotive was built in 2008, the first steam engine built in the UK since 1960. It’s a magnificent piece of engineering!
Plenty of opportunities to take photos of the locos on display, and there were a group of re-enactors posing in period costume.
I absolutely love my Sony A7iii camera. It’s a fabulous camera to use, and with it’s full frame 24Mpx sensor, unrivalled dynamic range, and superb Zeiss and Sony lenses, it’s capable of the highest quality images. The downside though is that it’s a fair amount of kit to carry around, and needs to be used carefully to get the best out of it. Fine for a dedicated photo ‘expedition’ but overkill for casual photography – definitely not something to carry around all the time.
Today gave me the opportunity to check that out – a bright and cold start, with lots of great colours in the sky, and pretty much wall to wall sunshine for the rest of the day. Photo #1 was taken very early, and just a few yards from home, while photo #2 was taken an hour or so later when the sun was fully up. The rest of the photos were taken late morning – looking across at a local wood, and then near the local canal. All photos were taken in RAW format, using the Moment Camera App, and then processed in Snapseed on the phone to convert to mono or enhance the colour etc, and to add the border and frames.
A phone-camera is never going to be a match for a dedicated camera with a much larger sensor and inter-changeable lenses, especially for nature or sport photography, or in adverse lighting conditions, but for ‘casual’ shooting the results are pretty amazing. I’m confident that with my new phone I can take photos that I wouldn’t otherwise get, just because I wouldn’t have a bigger or better camera with me. I have a wide angle adapter lens on order which will help with landscape and architectural shots, and I may also get a telephoto adapter too – ideal for portraits.
Thanks to those kind people at 
The line now runs for around 10 miles from the beautiful station at 
Nigel Young 