Fishing The Ure At Masham
2019-06-26 Fishing Masham 001
Continued from Fishing the Ure at Masham.
The best way to find this out, would be to get started. So, I went to the spot where the tree branches came together and hopefully with a dragged shutter, the background river textures would smooth out and pop the foreground branches into prominence without the distraction of the water textures, as pre-visualised. This would put the theory to the test and see if further investigation is warranted however, as soon as I looked through the viewfinder, I knew, I didn’t have the lens to get the juxtaposition and crop factor needed for the image to work. With this disappointment, I then had fill the memory card with something, and looked around to start. I had seen a tree stump that looked like it was crawling along the bank on my way to this location and went back to start again and try to find a way of photographing the stump from my viewpoint. I viewed the scene through various fixed lenses and settled with the 100mm macro, as this would allow me to start from a distance and move into the composition and into the macro zone as I moved in trying to find a final composition. This would allow variation in the images and hopefully find a place in the finished compilation of photographs. After this exercise and pondering things over in my head, I then proceeded to the top of the stretch in order to get some bankers and at least then, I would be able to start the project with the opening and closing images of the book. The front and back covers, could be the signs showing the top and bottom of the fishing clubs stretch. This would bookend the project and set some of the foundations and narrow the focus, keep things tight and make sure I am, not wandering around on other tracks putting lose threads and distractions into the photographic project. Setting the boundaries in this way would also allow me a lot of wiggle room, whilst at the same time providing natural sections for the book. The upper beat above Masham Bridge. Masham Bridge to below the water works, this would then leave the lower section. This would give three sections matching the three subjects; trees, wind, and water, giving nine divisions within the book. This would also hopefully avoid monotony and alleviate some image blindness by having short sections of similar subject matter. I then followed the stretch to the top limit and worked my way back to Masham and then down to the River Bairn
After capturing the images of the stump, I then thought about what imagery the book would require. and then captured some fillers for showing the upper section length. This would give any future readers an image of where I would be fishing and the scenery, in a similar fashion to others. It also followed the lines of similar fishing books. Therefore, I must be on the right line somehow, even though that is not what I wanted but, every journey into the unknown starts from a familiar point. The weather was most pleasant with a slight breeze and I had foregone a days fishing to be with the camera in my hand. I also ensured some copy space in some of the images through habit.
About Masham
Masham – originally Maessa’s Ham – probably owed its foundation to the gentle, flood-proof rise on which it stands, near an easily fordable part of the River Ure, together with its proximity to the course of a Roman road and its position on the main route from Wensleydale to York.
The present square with its beautiful Georgian houses was created in the 18th century. The huge market place would originally have been surrounded by thatched cottages and was the site for annual Sheep Fairs with over 80,000 heads of sheep being sold some years, including animals from the flocks of nearby Fountains and Jervaulx Abbeys.
