Waldershare Gold
3 July 2022 · 06:57 · Waldershare Park, near Whitfield, Kent
Waldershare Park sits in the plateau between Whitfield, Eythorne and Coldred — land whose documented history begins with Odo of Bayeux, William the Conqueror's half-brother, who held the estate in the decades immediately after the Conquest. The park as it now exists was laid out between 1702 and 1710 by Sir Robert Furnese, and many of the trees planted during that period are still standing. The Belvedere — a brick tower in the Palladian style built in 1725-27 for Sir Henry Furnese, attributed to either Lord Burlington or Colen Campbell — is one of the more significant Georgian garden structures in Kent, though it is currently derelict. The mansion was destroyed by fire in September 1913 and rebuilt in a modified form; the estate runs to over 430 acres. The public footpaths that cross it pass through arable fields that have been under cultivation for most of recorded history, the hedgerows and tree belts along the field margins much the same in outline as they appear on the estate maps of the eighteenth century.
The crop in this field is barley, not wheat — the difference is most visible at this stage of maturity in the awns, the long bristle-like extensions projecting from each grain. Wheat awns, where present, are shorter and stiffer; barley awns are long, flexible, and dense enough that in backlight they produce exactly this effect: a fine filigree of gold across the whole surface of the crop, every awn catching the low angle and transmitting it back towards the lens. At 06:57 on a July morning the sun was still close to the horizon, striking the field nearly horizontally and passing through the canopy of the trees along the eastern boundary to produce the crepuscular rays visible in the upper centre of the frame. This quality of light is not available an hour later. It requires the early start.
The tractor tramline — the compressed track left by the machinery that applies fertiliser and crop protection through the season — runs towards the sun and provides the path through the image. Tramlines are a standard feature of arable fields but they are not usually the subject of photographs; here the vanishing point they create towards the tree line, and the way the overhanging barley on either side closes the gap as the line recedes, makes the ordinary infrastructure of farm management into a compositional device. The soil in the tramline is the same chalk-based heavy clay that runs through most of this part of east Kent, and at this stage of the season — early July, perhaps ten days from harvest — it has dried to a pale dusty surface that reflects the light differently from the crop on either side.
Ricoh GR III · 18.3mm · f/8 · 1/800s · ISO 200
The Ricoh GR III, released in 2019, carries a 24-megapixel APS-C sensor behind a fixed 18.3mm f/2.8 lens (28mm equivalent on full frame) in a body that fits in a shirt pocket and weighs 257 grams with battery. There is no viewfinder; the camera is held at arm's length and composed on the rear LCD. The GR series has been produced by Ricoh since 1996, with film versions preceding the digital line, and has developed a dedicated following among street photographers for its combination of large sensor quality in a genuinely pocketable body. At f/8 on a 28mm equivalent, depth of field extends from a metre or so to infinity, making the camera well suited to the kind of scene where precise focus is less important than being ready. The tramline here was photographed by holding the camera close to the ground and pointing it towards the light.
