Helen Stephenson's Orpington Priory Park Pictures

I took this picture as a lead-in for a slide panel, to be shown as the first slide. The weather conditions weren't really with me (rather watery intermittent sunshine) and insufficient light fell on the side of the brick doorway where I had my camera set up. I've sort-of rescued it by scanning it and adjusting it, but it wasn't good enough to use as a slide, and for a print panel, a better first picture is one which leads you across to the next image rather than a static image like this one, which doesn't really lead you anywhere except into this picture.

It does offer a tantalising glimpse into the formal gardens in Orpington Priory Gardens.

This picture could work as either a slide or a print. The sweeping flowerbed gives foreground interest, and then curves around to lead the viewer into the next image. The tree at the back acts as enough of a "stopper" that it could also be used as a single image. It was taken outside of the formally planted area, which is behind the wall in the background of this picture. This part of the Gardens was laid mostly to lawn, with some flowerbeds set into the lawns to add colour.

The next image, although taken on the same roll of film, was taken a good half hour later than the other formal garden pictures, and the sunlight had got very watery and diffuse, which shows in the difference in the colours of this picture. Although it was taken in the same place as the others, it doesn't really go with them to help form a cohesive panel. It stands up as an image in its own right, though.

This image goes better with the picture of the flower bed in terms of colour, but they're both "left" images. It's always possible to project a slide from the wrong side or to print a mirror image to correct this if need be, though - provided that there isn't any writing visible in the picture! As it happens, this picture was very carefully composed to ensure one of the palm trees was between my camera location and some rather messy graffiti, which I've successfully hidden, so I could turn it around if I wanted to. I think there's something not quite right about the focussing of this picture, though, so it probably won't go anywhere apart from this page.

Now here I've got an image which would work on the right of a panel, as the swan is swimming into the foreground from the right, stopping the eye from wandering out of the picture. This one couldn't be used as a slide, as the sky was too washed out and had to be enhanced from a second darker scan of the same slide. I should have used a neutral density granduated filter! Unfortunately I could do nothing about the clump of grass forming my foreground interest: it is underexposed how ever you look at it!

I took a lot of pictures from this viewpoint with the swans in various locations around the pond, but due to the slow shutter speeds I was using, in most of them the swans exhibited motion blur, and only this one managed to catch the swans at a static moment.

You might not realise it to look at this picture, but it was taken within about 20 metres of the last one. The light levels were so low that my shutter speed was so slow that there's a dark blur in the water near the tree trunk, which is actually a duck swimming through the picture.

I was trying to hedge my bets that day and I also took some close-up pictures of some of the flowers around the Gardens. I think this pink tulip is the best of the flower pictures I took that day.

Well, I might not have had a set of pictures here which formed a cohesive panel, but I hope you've enjoyed looking at my images of a late afternoon trip to Orpington Priory Gardens.