Ironbridge Photography

As my family live ten minutes away, I often find myself taking a wander through the town of Ironbridge in Shropshire. It’s always picturesque and I can’t help but want to take some photos. Due to lockdown, during my last visit a few months ago, the streets were mostly empty of the usual tourism you would find there.

One thing that stuck out of me on this occasion is the church. Whilst the Iron Bridge is always impressive and nice to see, the light at the time I arrived happened to be illuminating St Luke’s as it looked down from higher up the gauge.

The Iron Bridge is a bridge that crosses the River Severn in Shropshire, England. Opened in 1781, it was the first major bridge in the world to be made of cast iron, and was greatly celebrated after construction owing to its use of the new material.

In 1934 it was designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument and closed to vehicular traffic. Tolls for pedestrians were collected until 1950, when ownership of the bridge was transferred to Shropshire County Council. It now belongs to Telford and Wrekin Borough Council. The bridge, the adjacent settlement of Ironbridge and the Ironbridge Gorge form the UNESCO Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site.[1] The bridge is a Grade I listed building, and a waypoint on the South Telford Heritage Trail.

All photos of The Iron Bridge in Ironbridge were taken on the Fuji X-H1 with the Fujifilm XF16 - 55mm f/2.8 Lens, processed from RAW with Capture One.

Please visit the rest of my website, www.lukebennettphotos.com for much more content, including further landscape and nature photography from the UK and visit my Print Gallery to buy high quality prints of my UK landscapes.

Also, if you are interested in hiring me as your wedding photographer in Solihull, Birmingham, Coventry, Warwickshire, the Midlands or Beyond, please say hi!

Finally, please Help Support This Blog by Buying Photography Equipment on Amazon via this link and following me on social media.

Up Above the Streets and the Houses, Rainbow Climbing High (over the Wrekin)

I took a much needed walk up to the top of the Wrekin in Shropshire just before Christmas. It was a very cold and wet day, with huge muddy puddles everywhere and very slippery under foot. The kind of conditions where you need to be careful how you hold yourself and mindful of your surroundings. The best kind of conditions! Luckily, the sun was also out from time to time, for some lovely lighting at the top and clear-ish views over the surrounding areas.

As seems to be a common theme lately, I almost took a tumble a couple of times whilst scrambling around on the icy rock face. As I’m sure many other photographers can relate to, my immediate priority whilst slipping was to hold my camera out of danger, ignoring the potential breaks and bruises awaiting me on impact. Luckily I was fine and some well chosen swearwords seemed to aid my balance.

On the way back the light suddenly changed, covering everything in an orange glow and a lovely big rainbow could clearly be seen arching from one side of the Wrekin to the other. I could almost see the gold at the other end it was that close.

On the drive back, satisfied with a good walk and some nice photography opportunities I had to pull over for one final shot as the sun came down. This is (I think) part of the Long Mynd as viewed from the road by the Wrekin, looking very atmospheric in the cold winter light.

All photos of the Wrekin were taken in Shropshire by Luke Bennett.

Please visit the rest of my website, www.lukebennettphotos.com for much more content, including further landscape and nature photography from the UK and visit my Print Gallery to buy high quality prints of my UK landscapes.

Also, if you would like me to photograph your wedding or event in Solihull, Birmingham, Coventry, Warwickshire, the Midlands or Beyond, please say hi!


Concrete, Canals, Reflections and Graffiti

Last month as part of my recovery from surgery, I took a walk down my local stretch of the Grand Union canal. It was a nice clear day, cold and bright; good photography weather. In fact, looking back, it was probably the last week where the vibrancy of autumn was still visible - the leaves have now all dropped from their branches so everywhere is looking a bit dreary and devoid of colour.

After a little while I came to a section of concrete overpass where the motorway crosses over the top of the canal. I’m not a fan of graffiti, as a rule (unless there’s an element of skill or thought behind it), but it can certainly make a photo more interesting. It just so happened that I’d arrive at the overpass as the sun was low enough in the sky to shine through brilliantly, creating severe areas of light and shadow and illuminating the tags on the concrete. Unfortunately I didn’t have my tripod with me, or it might have been fun to combine multiple exposures for more control over the balance of shadows and highlights in post production, but I think they came out OK.

All photos of the Grand Union Canal in Warwickshire were taken on the Fuji X-T2 with the Fujifilm XF16 - 55mm F/2.8 lens, processed from RAW with Capture One.

Please visit the rest of my website, www.lukebennettphotos.com for much more content, including further landscape and nature photography from the UK and visit my Print Gallery to buy high quality prints of my UK landscapes.

Also, if you are interested in hiring me as your wedding photographer in Solihull, Birmingham, Coventry, Warwickshire, the Midlands or Beyond, please say hi!

The Iron Bridge of Ironbridge

Until writing this blog entry, it hadn’t occurred to me that the town of Ironbridge had a different spelling to Iron Bridge, the bridge made of iron located within the town of Ironbridge. Ahem.

Anyway, for those that don’t know, I shamelessly lifted the following from Wikipedia:

The Iron Bridge is a bridge that crosses the River Severn in Shropshire, England. Opened in 1781, it was the first major bridge in the world to be made of cast iron, and was greatly celebrated after construction owing to its use of the new material.

In 1934 it was designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument and closed to vehicular traffic. Tolls for pedestrians were collected until 1950, when ownership of the bridge was transferred to Shropshire County Council. It now belongs to Telford and Wrekin Borough Council. The bridge, the adjacent settlement of Ironbridge and the Ironbridge Gorge form the UNESCO Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage Site.[1] The bridge is a Grade I listed building, and a waypoint on the South Telford Heritage Trail.

I recently had a mosey on down one summer evening whilst visiting my family who live ten minutes away. The lighting wasn’t as nice as I’d hoped it would be. Greedily, I was rooting for one of those colourful skies and long shadow kind of evenings, but what I got was nice-ish but pretty flat.

The Iron Bridge underwent a lick of paint in 2018 in a dark red colour, thought to represent the original paintwork of the bridge when first constructed.

All photos of The Iron Bridge in Ironbridge were taken on the Fuji X-H1 with the Fujifilm XF16 - 55mm f/2.8 Lens, processed from RAW with Capture One.

Please visit the rest of my website, www.lukebennettphotos.com for much more content, including further landscape and nature photography from the UK and visit my Print Gallery to buy high quality prints of my UK landscapes.

Also, if you are interested in hiring me as your wedding photographer in Solihull, Birmingham, Coventry, Warwickshire, the Midlands or Beyond, please say hi!

Finally, please Help Support This Blog by Buying Photography Equipment on Amazon via this link and following me on social media.

Photos from the Clent Hills

Last Saturday I took a trip to the Clent Hills in Worcestershire, near Stourbridge and Halesowen. Amazingly, it's somewhere I've never been before, despite being a big hill fan (read that how you will).

I was pleasantly surprised to find that in reality they're much more impressive than I'd assumed they would be in my head for so many years previously and I definitely will return for a longer exploration some time soon.

Embarrassingly, I had agreed to meet friends there, but in some bizarre episode of self sabotage, my brain was convinced that we had agreed to meet at the Lickey Hills near Birmingham. So upon arriving at their visitor centre and finding no one I recognised therein, it dawned on me - I simply had not listened properly. For any potential wedding clients - I will listen to you intently and will not turn up at the wrong venue.

Anyway, eventually I arrived at the correct hills, where my friends had already set off on their route, so I headed for the highest point to take some photos.

It was quite an overcast day but visibility was pretty good still. I only brought one lens with me to keep weight down - the Fujinon XF 35mm f/2.0. It's not known for being a landscape lens or even focal length, but I must say it performed really well, providing good clarity and definition.

All photos of the Clent Hills were taken on the Fuji X-H1 with the Fujifilm XF35mm f/2.0 Lens, processed from RAW with Capture One.
Please visit my website, www.lukebennettphotos.com for much more content, including further landscape and nature photography from the UK and visit my Print Gallery to buy high quality prints of my UK landscapes.
Also, if you are interested in hiring me as your wedding photographer in Solihull, Birmingham, Coventry, Warwickshire, the Midlands or Beyond, please say hi!
Finally, please Help Support This Blog by Buying Photography Equipment on Amazon via this link and following me on social media.

Poppies in Worcestershire

After seeing some excellent photographs on social media over the last week, I went off in search of poppies on Saturday evening for my own attempts at some poppy photography and to test out my sorely underused wide angle lens.

I had a vague idea where they were and after about 20 minutes of walking in the wrong direction down a busy A-road in the sweltering heat I ended up turning around and then seeing them up on a hill back near where I started. By the time I got there I wasn’t looking very photogenic, but luckily the poppies were.

This was a rare occasion where I’d actually planned to take photos specifically of a particular place, so I made sure to bring a tripod, my polariser, ND filters and Fujinon XF 10 - 24mm lens for some wide angled fun. It’s a lens that I don’t use as often as I would like to, purely because it’s too wide to be very useful for more generalised shooting, but it performed well and suited the location and the look I wanted to achieve.

The lighting wasn’t ideal, with the sun concealed behind cloud for most of the evening, but when it broke through I took my chance to play with what was on offer. There were a few limited occasions when the sun did dip under the clouds to create a beautiful illumination through the sea of red petals making for quite a striking contrast against the overcast landscapes in the background.

Towards the end of my evening when the wind had picked up quite a lot, I took the opportunity to try some long exposures, ranging from 10 to 30 seconds at a time, picking up the frantic movement of the flowers and wheat. I think these are probably my favourites from the batch.

All poppy photos taken on the Fuji X-H1 with the Fujifilm XF10-24mm f/4 Lens, processed from RAW with Capture One.

Please visit my website, www.lukebennettphotos.com for much more content, including further landscape and nature photography from the UK and visit my Print Gallery to buy high quality prints of my UK landscapes.

Also, if you are interested in hiring me as your wedding photographer in Solihull, Birmingham, Coventry, Warwickshire, the Midlands or Beyond, please say hi!

Finally, please Help Support This Blog by Buying Photography Equipment on Amazon via this link and following me on social media.