Back to Home Park in Hampton Court and to the Kingston Fields. Today marks the last shoot for the project. The book and exhibition are well underway. Also today I spoke to the printer for a last bit of confirmation of specs for the book and this all went well. Now comes the really hard part, because over almost a year I’ve shot around 2500 images on subjects as wide ranging as Shires logging, harrowing, with spring and chain harrows mowing (with two types of mower, pulling three different types of passenger vehicle, meeting the Prince of Wales and helping out in management training and psycho therapy, (yes really, I’m not kidding). There are going to be between 150 and 175 pages in the book and only 25 to 30 images in the exhibition. I would love to say that all the images in the project are world beaters, but in truth some are better than others and there a re lot of good ones. However the subjects are so photogenic that editing the stack down is going to be really hard work.
As far as the last shoot went, chain harrowing of old pasture doesn’t seem as if it would be that special, but it was. Viv and I met up with Tom Nixon, Andy Moody and Nobby, Heath and Tom (the shire horse) as Tom (the human) wanted
to start trying the lads out working three abreast and this was a good chance to do some training. This is the most magnificent sight as they power their way across the field and the horses took to working three up, likes ducks to water. We were blessed again today with the wonderful hard winter light, what studio photographers would call a “point source” or “Pin light”. A really far cry from three days ago when the image of Nobby doing some logging in the Kingston Fields woods. The overcast made it all look like the sky was a giant studio softbox, add in the dappling of the trees and everything took on a dream like quality.
Right time to get on with the editing.
