Tim Rawle > Oxford > OXFORD ARCHITECTURE: The Architects Who Shaped The City
OXFORD ARCHITECTURE: The Architects Who Shaped The City
The two images above were taken at one of my favourite photo locations from the hills surrounding Oxford, to many of which I often return for different lighting and seasonal conditions. On a November afternoon in search of autumnal colour I arrived there on my bike, camera bag on my back and tripod strapped into the rear basket, and climbed over a gate into the secluded corner of a familiar field. Much to my satisfaction the scene I had hoped for was there in the distance: the long line of Oxford’s central spires, towers and domes all backlit in silhouette, with a foreground of brassy-golden oaks and beeches and a field sprouting the early green shoots of recently planted winter wheat. With that feeling of a photographer’s excitement at the prospect of achieving a good shot, I set my equipment up and quickly went to work taking a series of bracketed exposures to ensure that all I needed was in the bag before losing the moment, as so often can happen. I then dismantled everything and mounted the gate to leave, but briefly glancing back I saw that things were indeed changing, not adversely but potentially into something spectacular. Further excitement ensued as I placed the camera back on the tripod, but I felt no need to hurry as the transforming landscape was gradual and building at a slow pace from stage right, from where an eerie mist was calmly floating down the Cherwell valley from the direction of Woodstock in the north-west. As I stood there watching through the lens over the next few minutes, the camera’s shutter clicking, the almost supernatural metamorphosis of the scene was extraordinary, but it only lasted briefly before the sun went down and twilight gave way to darkness, killing the superb backlighting altogether. During the thrill of this brief experience I was reminded so strongly of one of Oxford’s many literary greats, J R R Tolkien, almost as if he was present and we were staring into Middle Earth expecting to see Gandalf ride out of the mist on the beautiful white steed, Shadowfax, with Aragorn and Hobbits being pursued from the forest by Sauron’s Orcs et al! To add to all this, as darkness fell a slight shiver went up my spine, as only a short distance behind me was Oxford’s own desolate marshland, mysteriously known as Ot Moor, a name strikingly akin to Mordor. I was reluctant to leave in case of any further missed opportunities, but sadly the magic was soon gone and I sped down the hill with the dynamo on my bike lighting the way back to the shock of the Oxford Ring Road running through what had been such a mythical forest only a few minutes earlier. I felt very privileged for what I had witnessed and recorded so unexpectedly: the “Dreaming Spires” as I had never seen them before, as if being transported back hundreds of years into medieval times.
The two images above were taken at one of my favourite photo locations from the hills surrounding Oxford, to many of which I often return for different lighting and seasonal conditions. On a November afternoon in search of autumnal colour I arrived there on my bike, camera bag on my back and tripod strapped into the rear basket, and climbed over a gate into the secluded corner of a familiar field. Much to my satisfaction the scene I had hoped for was there in the distance: the long line of Oxford’s central spires, towers and domes all backlit in silhouette, with a foreground of brassy-golden oaks and beeches and a field sprouting the early green shoots of recently planted winter wheat. With that feeling of a photographer’s excitement at the prospect of achieving a good shot, I set my equipment up and quickly went to work taking a series of bracketed exposures to ensure that all I needed was in the bag before losing the moment, as so often can happen. I then dismantled everything and mounted the gate to leave, but briefly glancing back I saw that things were indeed changing, not adversely but potentially into something spectacular. Further excitement ensued as I placed the camera back on the tripod, but I felt no need to hurry as the transforming landscape was gradual and building at a slow pace from stage right, from where an eerie mist was calmly floating down the Cherwell valley from the direction of Woodstock in the north-west. As I stood there watching through the lens over the next few minutes, the camera’s shutter clicking, the almost supernatural metamorphosis of the scene was extraordinary, but it only lasted briefly before the sun went down and twilight gave way to darkness, killing the superb backlighting altogether. During the thrill of this brief experience I was reminded so strongly of one of Oxford’s many literary greats, J R R Tolkien, almost as if he was present and we were staring into Middle Earth expecting to see Gandalf ride out of the mist on the beautiful white steed, Shadowfax, with Aragorn and Hobbits being pursued from the forest by Sauron’s Orcs et al! To add to all this, as darkness fell a slight shiver went up my spine, as only a short distance behind me was Oxford’s own desolate marshland, mysteriously known as Ot Moor, a name strikingly akin to Mordor. I was reluctant to leave in case of any further missed opportunities, but sadly the magic was soon gone and I sped down the hill with the dynamo on my bike lighting the way back to the shock of the Oxford Ring Road running through what had been such a mythical forest only a few minutes earlier. I felt very privileged for what I had witnessed and recorded so unexpectedly: the “Dreaming Spires” as I had never seen them before, as if being transported back hundreds of years into medieval times.
