No, I did not, I must say that I am not great fun of metal ornaments. I like porcelain ornaments, tiles a lot more.

This is a very fine work.

Never too late 😂

Snow and two wheels don't go very well. Nice composition !

I like it, but in that situation I'd probably pointed camera more toward sky to get rid of centered horizon, show these nice clouds and reduce somewhat empty foreground.

I have seen woodpecker working around tree stump, near ground. So it could be very well woody, trying to get some snack out.
Nice fog in first shot with trunks fading into it.

Pincock Weir

Mediocre weather and low energy levels conspired to stop me getting out and about during most of this week, but I eventually managed to force myself out of the door on Sunday afternoon, when I decided to take wander down to Pincock Weir. Despite living here for 50+ years, it's the first time I've visited this local spot, just a five minute drive from my front door and I think it's fair to say, it'll be worth revisiting in different conditions as, despite a promising start, Sunday afternoon turned out to be somewhat overcast, with just the occasional bit of side light breaking through.

The weir itself sits on the river Yarrow, just after it leaves Chorley and makes its way to the sea via the neighbouring village of Euxton (pronounced exston and not yuckston as I've heard it said on the BBC a number of times). A quick Google revealed no information about the history of the weir, however the 1830-1880 OS map reveals there was once a number of sizeable mills on the site (the Pincock corn mill and Euxton cotton mills), so it was no doubt constructed as part of the water supply infrastructure for those.

Apart from the weir and its associated fish ladder, no physical trace remains of the mills themselves, although there's a lot of relatively new build houses on and around the former site.

The path along the river goes on for miles, but I followed it for about 1.5 miles, up to a little way beyond where it passes under the M6 motorway, where it started to veer away from the river and look a lot less interesting. At which point I doubled back a short way, crossed the river and followed the path back on the other side. This very quickly left the river too and nothing really caught my eye along that part of the walk as I looped back along the main road to where I'd parked my car.

For this walk I took the GFX100S along with the ever trusty 45-100 f/4 and the 20-35 f/4. For once, both lenses were put to good use, rather than one of them just coming along for the ride. All of the pictures were taken with the camera mounted on a tripod and with a CPL on the lens, typically adjusted to remove foliage reflection and thereby improve the saturation of its colours. I also dug out my ND8 and ND64 neutral density filters to slow the waters on the weir, fish ladder and even the river itself. All images processed from individual raw files in Capture One Pro 23.

For anyone interested in such things, after some experimentation during the past 12 months, I seem to have settled on the Astia film profile when using Fujifilm cameras. For a time I was generally shooting on Film Standard and way back in my earlier Fujifilm days I was quite partial to Classic Chrome, but for the past few months with either this camera or the X-T50, I've tended to plump for this one as my starting point for colour images before editing begins. I sometimes dabble with testing the other profiles in C1P, but I'm generally just reverting back to what I shot it on. Of course the whole point of Fuji's film sims (print ready, out of camera JPEGs) goes out of the window with the amount of editing I often do on the raw files, but it's interesting how your tastes can change over time. Anyway, enough waffle, here are some pictures...

The River Yarrow

This is looking West down the Yarrow. The weir is off camera to my left.

Across The Weir

The source of the Yarrow is tucked away high in the hills on Anglezarke moor. It makes its way along Lead Mines Clough before being rudely interrupted by the expansive Yarrow Reservoir. It finally makes its escape from Anglezarke Reservoir before continuing on its original lazy course along the southern boundary of Chorley, eventually reaching this spot before continuing to the sea. Its origins, high in the peat covered moors above Chorley, seriously influences its colour, this is very brown water, nothing like you see in the mostly crystal clear brooks and rivers of The Lake District, that looks refreshing and inviting, this looks like something you'd use to stain a teak side table.

The reflections in the viscous looking water as it rolls over the weir caught my eye here, but I felt like the picture really came together when I put an ND filter on to smooth out the flow. I was a bit unsure what to do framing wise at the top, so I simply settled for including part of the stone foundation the weir is built into. In the original shot, I captured more of the foamy waters to the right, but it looked a bit unbalanced, so in the end I settled for a square crop with the visible arc of the weir occupying the centre of the frame.

Further Along The Yarrow

There was intermittent light breaking through the clouds to my left when I took this, but it was fleeting, probably only lasting for part of this two second exposure. I have extensively tweaked the colours here, initially adjusting to a very flat white balance along the histogram (which gave a blue / magenta tint), before adjusting individual parts of the colour palette to taste and differently across the picture. I think it's given it a painterly look, but I'm curious what others think?

A Glint of Light

An unexpected glint along the crest of the weir. Cropped to 5:4 to hide a pair of straggly branches I failed to notice on the right when I was taking this.

Weir'd

I think this is the more conventional view of the weir that people tend to shoot, although they'd probably frame it somewhat higher to concentrate on the water. Me, I like trees, so those lovely backlit characters stretching across the water behind the weir are just as important in my eyes.

A Fishy Ladder

This is the fish ladder that rejoins the river downstream of the weir. I didn't fancy my chances trying to cross that from the weir side when I initially reached this point, so I had to double back to the top of the damned thing and go around it. It's longer than you might think. There's a slight crop to 3:2 in the edit to hide some of the messy foreground and the more exposed part of the sky.

The Wider Weir

This was an in camera XPan crop to get in more of the interesting rocky shore on the right, which would be lost with a taller image. There'd also be a load of bare sky too. Although this was my planned crop, I sometimes feel that the 65:24 XPan crop can be a bit too wide, so I did experiment with 16:9 and even 2:35:1 (Cinemascope) when editing it, but I still felt was the crop that worked best.

Up The Ladder

This is the view looking up the fish ladder as it rejoins the river. I don't think this quite works, but I can't put my finger on why. I think it's the messy and nondescript woodland behind it. I'm going to have to give this another try the next time I'm down there.

Urban Countryside

As I mentioned above, the river eventually passes under the M6 motorway, through this manmade rocky channel that wouldn't look out of place in a theme park. When I took this shot, I was overwhelmed with a strong smell of cooked bread. For a moment, given my recent medical history, I wondered if I was having a stroke, but then realised I was stood next to a flat bread trailer full of waste bread in various states of decomposition. I guess they use it to make animal feed. I can't say I liked the look of it myself, but it smelled alright. A small footbridge crosses the river a little way downstream from here, leading to the path on the opposite side here, which eventually took me into that thin band of woods up ahead.

Rooting Around

This was a little further down the river on the same side (shortly before I doubled back and crossed the footbridge). The roots made interesting subjects, but I couldn't settle on a composition and ended up shooting this in both portrait and landscape orientation. It was quite a large area of exposed roots and I probably should have swapped to the wider lens, but the light had become very flat by this point and I couldn't be bothered. When I initially imported the image it looked very flat and uninspiring, so it's had some experimental colour editing to get it to this state, which I kind of like, even if it's very unnatural. I should probably try a black and white edit at some point too.

A lovely, almost timeless view. Well, it would be apart from the mechanical digger on the right hand side of the frame. Joking aside, it's a great image, nicely making use of the perspective on the rows in the field at the front. I'm not really one for travelling the world, but if I ever do decide to renew my passport, Italy is one of the few places I would really like to visit.

You have made some nice pictures of a pretty mundane sort of place. 4,5 and 6 are the ones I like most.

The Fish ladder, might be an stimulus to return with a wider lens.

I think the colour interpretation is rather lovely.
The 'Glint of Light' is lovely too. You were really lucky to find that little glint on such a drab day - but then luck comes to those who prepare. 😊

Remarkable shot and so are the others.