A walk on the Moors

This time yesterday, I was primed and ready to publish a post praising the British railway system, explaining how I shall miss it next year. One misdirected train, two taxis, thirty seven pounds, and a fair few hours later, I am not quite so keep to press the publish button. Instead, I have written a piece about a walk I took today in the Yorkshire Moors, no thanks to a certain York station announcer.

Before I launch into the post proper, I must explain that I am not a Nazi. Before you navigate away from my blog in disgust, let me reassure you that I have not been inciting racial hatred, invading any European countries, or even listening to the views of the Royal Family. It is a lot more innocuous than that.

With a day to spare in Yorkshire, I decided to test my navigational skills in preparation for walking the Pennine way and ultimately across America by navigating a few miles across a large featureless moorland aiming at a small stone carved over 3000 years ago with a swastika, hence the Nazi connection.

Anyway, I set off up the Moor, map in hand. After a mile or two, I realised that I was walking through an area the map worryingly marked "danger area!". Unhelpfully, the map gave no clue as to what dangers I might face. Regardless, I carried on, slightly wearily, looking out for low flying aeroplanes, holes in the ground, and everything in between.

Another mile or so down the path, I stumbled across a line of grouse butts. Again, do not turn away in disgust, I am not being rude! Butts are dugouts in the Moors used for shooting grouse. This was a danger more deadly than any of those I had considered. Low flying planes are all well and good, but lead shot let lose by chinless wonders wielding aging shotguns is something altogether different.

I then considered whether it was or not shooting season. Somewhere in my mind the glorious 12th stuck out. Or was it the glorious 9th? Come to think of it, which month contains this oh so glorious date? I had no idea, so illogically decided to carry on regardless.

You may by now have got the impression that I do not approve of grouse hunting. Quite the contrary, I simply do not approve of landed gentry firing bullets willy nilly in my vicinity. Without the hunters there would be no grouse and no heather Moors.

This may seem a bit backward, but the Moors are an entirely manufactured landscape. Without frequent burning by hunters, the heather would be outgrown by bracken, the bracken would be outgrown by bushes, and the bushes would be outgrown by trees. The grouse would be long gone by this point, as they rely on new heather buds and shoots for food. Three thousand odd years ago, when the prehistoric inhabitants of Ilkley Moor were carving Nazi propaganda in the hill's rocks, the area was still completely forested.

Back to the walk, my path crossed another Neolithic feature of Ilkley Moor; the twelve apostles stone circle. Now I know the circle is called the twelve apostles circle because there are twelve stones and were twelve apostles, but would it really have been so difficult to think of something that existed by the dozen when the stone circle was built to name it after?

Finally, I found myself in the area of the swastika stone. Luckily, it began to rain. This is not normally lucky, but to be honest I did not really want myself, a bearded twenty something year old, to be found scouring the Moors looking for symbols from the Third Reich, and the rain had sent most ramblers looking for shelter. In actuality, I was quite glad not all the ramblers had gone home. A small crowd of three surrounded the rock rendering it slightly easier to find. Furthermore, the smooth curves of the prehistoric swastika looked nothing like Hitler's crude straight-lined efforts.

In case you are wondering, the slight similarity between the Bronze Age swastika and Hitler's symbol in no way means that the Stone Age Britons were Nazis. It might however mean that the Nazis were Stone Aged*.

Anyway, navigational test passed, I jumped on a train back to my Grandparent's house just in time for Grandma's shepherd's pie. There is nothing quite like Grandma's cooking. Thank you Granny!

*Edit (08/07/2010): Yes Mr O'Connor, I know that the Stone Aged was not 3000-5000 years ago, I was using a little artistic license.

Exploring the tree of life

There are words to describe the weather that graced Nottingham today; however, most of these are rude so I will stick to simply calling it "British". You get the gist.

Luckily, today I was never supposed to be outside. Last Wednesday, after a brief visit to Bempton Cliffs RSPB reserve, my fellow MSc students and I collected a whole host of animals from Filey Brigg; a rocky spit sticking out into the North Sea riddled with tidal pools. Today was time to photograph them in the studio.

On land, wildlife photographers are severely limited. Phyla are the largest divisions of the animal kingdom and, with one exception, all 36 animal phyla evolved in the sea. We terrestrial beings represent a highly specialised minority of the ten phyla that have made it out of the sea. Almost all of the animals we frequently photograph, from slugs to dragonflies, scorpions to albatross, and even ourselves, fall within just three phyla; the Molluscs, the Arthropods, and the Chordates.

How then can we hope to document and photograph a larger proportion of the evolutionary tree without going sub-aqua or pointing microscope-mounted cameras into our ponds? One of the very few ways is to go rock pooling.

During our short foray, we collected members of the Echinoderms and Cnidarians, as well as encountering many divisions of terrestrial phyla that do not occur on land.

Us landlubbers are very accustomed to most well-photographed terrestrial animal's patterns and forms, so as photographers we usually try to show these species interacting with their environment in new and interesting ways. This is not true of many marine groups, so in the studio I tried to simply highlight the shapes and forms of these species.

To do this I decided to photograph them on a white background; a style of photography very much in the vogue at the moment, especially with the recent launch of Niall Benvie and Clay Bolt's meet the neighbours project.

I hope you will agree that this technique exemplifies the shape, colour, and even transparency of the individuals. If you would like to know how to shoot against a white background then the best place to look definitely the meet the neighbours photographers guide.

Lastly, and just in case any of you are wondering about the ethics of collecting specimens for studio shots from the wild, I would not normally condone this practice. However, as we were with Nottingham University academic staff, and all collected specimens will become part of the well used and important university collection, this put me at ease somewhat.