The village by night-mode

January 30, 2024 / 2 Comments

(-📩 500 words, mainly photos. A five minute browse)

(Above: the local estate’s gatehouse – now a separate dwelling)

It was so late there was literally no-one else around.

An unsettled dog with an upset tummy had led me out into the unlit streets of Sedgwick: our small village, which lies about 25 miles from Lake Windermere.

(Above: standard lighting (bulbs) often renders itself with an orange-yellow) glow, which is most attractive in a night shot)

With nothing else to do except walk the poor collie until she was tired or cured, I got the iPhone out and began to play with ‘Night-mode’, switching the flash off and letting the lens and internal computers do their best against the darkness. There are no street lamps in Sedgwick; the village has a dark-skies policy.

(Above: a row of cottages, nestled together)

I don’t use a tripod, so half the shots were taken just standing up and holding the phone as steady as possible. The rest were taken jammed against a fence post, lamp-post or anything else that was tall enough to brace and steady the shots. I did, though, have the benefit of a bright and full-ish moon, which made all the difference at the ‘cold’ end of the spectrum.

(Above: a surprising flash of green and white light caused by modern, LED technology)

Opposite the old Wakefield estate, there is a row of individual houses, built at various times in the village’s history. Geographically, this is the centre of the village.

(Above: the edge of the old Wakefield family’s estate. They were wealthy gunpowder barons from the 1820’s onwards. The great house is now divided into apartments, and the gardens tended by professional gardeners on a service contract)

(Above: couldn’t resist including the barbed-wire of the Wakefield estate’s fence… Very menacing!)

(Above: and as close as you can reach through the fence and hand-held. Not the best shot, technically, but it is nice and moody)

The old Wakefield house and gardens are extensive. In the darkness they look ominous… The perfect setting for a ghost story, perhaps?

Apple’s night-mode on the iPhone works by using AI to evaluate what’s being asked of it, then taking and merging multiple shots to get the best result it can. All this without using the flash – which makes it good for any kind of landscape photo; near or far.

(Above: one of the last houses before the River Kent bends the road. The glow in the distance is the lights of Kendal, four miles away)

As the hill steepens towards the River Kent, the houses thin out. This is one of the old gunpowder-foreman’s houses , now divided into two dwellings.

(Above: taken in colour but looking like a monochrome shot. Moonlight has wonderful powers, photographically, but tends to ‘bleach’ images). The collie and I turned around at this point. Ahead of us would have been only blackness … and moonlight on the river!)

(Above: On the way home: the road beneath the Victorian bridge that supports the old canal)

(Above: our turning into the narrow lane that leads to home…)

(And the glow of that postcard-ish gatehouse, again, to finish)

©Stephen Tanham 2024

All photos taken and processed on an iPhone 12 ProMax.

Stephen Tanham is a writer-photographer and mystical teacher. He is the founding Director of the Silent Eye, which offers a journey guided by lessons, correspondence, exercises, zoom reviews and personal meditation. This takes the conscious personality to the dawning of realised personal Self and its restored home of Being.

There are two blog streams:

http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk

(mystically-oriented writing)

and

http://www.suningemini.blog

(general interest, poetry, humour and travel)