Nov 2024 (One Month - One Picture)
Explore Landscapes #66
November was a busy month and saw me traveling for a little over 3 weeks. Even though it was a great trip it was a relief to get back home to SoCal after so long away.
Warm morning light highlights the hedge as I walk past on one of my morning strolls around Chesterfield | © 2024 Jon Norris
November 2024 | Chesterfield (UK) | Belgrade (Serbia) | Davis (CA) | Joshua Tree National Park (CA)
November’s image was taken during my (almost) daily strolls around Chesterfield while I stayed with my Dad. I call it a stroll, but it’s actually a 5-mile loop that takes me from the edge of Chesterfield through the picturesque village of Wingerworth before returning to Chesterfield.
The image was taken on my first full day in the UK after a long flight from Los Angeles. I was jetlagged and in desperate need of some exercise and sunlight. It was a beautiful morning; sunlight was streaming across the field while the sun was still low in the sky.
The hedgerow I was walking alongside was patchy in places, and occasionally, a window of warm light highlighted the autumnal-colored leaves. This caught my eye and stopped me in my tracks.
The majority of my landscape photography images feature ‘big vistas.’ I’ve been trying to make more effort to look out for the more discrete, intimate scenes in the landscape and capture them. This doesn’t come naturally to me, but I’m enjoying slowing down and looking around me as I walk or hike to see what small scenes I can find.
To encourage a new way of seeing, I will have to try restricting myself to using telephoto lenses. I should probably also keep my wide-angle lenses, which I default to, in my camera bag or, better still, at home.
My trip to Belgrade was for a ‘day job’ conference (I work in B2B marketing in the aviation industry). I’m embarrassed to say that even though I had my little Canon G16, I didn’t even take it from its pouch. I was in Serbia for the first time and saw nothing except the airport and the hotel. In my defense, the weather was lousy (rain and sleet), and I was disinclined to venture out while staying at the brand-new St. Regis Hotel - with all it had to offer a ‘weary’ traveler.
As always, I’m contrasting last month’s image with one I took five years ago. I enjoy triggering the memories from five years ago and seeing how my photography has progressed since then.
Singapore’s Supertrees at the Gardens by the Bay | © 2019 Jon Norris
November 2019 | Singapore | Miami
One of my favorite places to walk around and explore is Singapore, and I’m lucky to visit a couple of times a year for work. I bookended back-to-back conferences with two weekends of walking, photography, and great food.
I love to explore and walk around a city without looking at a map, just taking this turn and that and seeing what you discover. I walk for hours in this ‘mode’ ... then get out the phone, locate myself, and typically hail an Uber or Grab to get me back to my hotel.
Gardens by the Bay is an enormous botanical garden with two giant conservatories, Flower Dome and Cloud Forest. It is a must-see when visiting Singapore.
The Supertrees are 18 tree-like structures that dominate the Garden’s landscape and tower above visitors at 25-50 m (82-160 ft). They are vertical gardens that also serve as the air intake and exhaust of the conservatories’ cooling systems.
Every night, the Supertree Grove comes alive with a coordinated light and music show, the Garden Rhapsody. Finding a spot where I could set up my tripod and get a clear view of the Supertrees without people or other distractions getting in the frame was challenging. I wrapped up the day with great food and a cold Tiger (beer) at Satay by the Bay, one of the many Hawker centers on the island.
