Category Archives: Nature

The Gorge at Roundhay

February 17, 2014 Carl Milner 6 Comments

Great Heads Beck at Roundhay Park

I’ve done other posts on the beauty of my local Roundhay Park and it’s walks, but I never thought I’d go there and find a hidden gem of a walk I’ve never ventured before. Most visitors tend to stick to the lakes and walk around it feeding the many swans, ducks and geese, or relax in the tranquil and wonderful lakeside cafe with a tea and scone…which is a gem in itself. But we seldom ever venture deeper into the woods, but recently Wifey and I did just that with the dog, into area called The Gorge. This area is somewhat hidden behind the Castle Keep to the north of Waterloo Lake, but it does offer one the most beautiful loop walks at Roundhay with the Great Head’s Beck running through it with countless wooden footbridges crisscrossing it as you venture through the Gorge. It eventually leads you to the most quaint Yorkshire stone bridge at its pinnacle.

Dogs Mouth Spring.

For me…the gem of this walk was its hidden Dogs Mouth ‘natural’ Spring …the water tasted like no water I’ve ever tasted before, sharp, clean and so fresh with its lovely icy tinge… Cleansing for the liver I’m sure.

Dog’s Mouth Spring at Roundhay Park

Great Heads Beck Rapids at Roundhay Park

Roundhay Park Gorge

The Gorge at Roundhay Park

Dog’s Mouth Spring

Great Heads Beck Bridge

Advertising, Art, Family, Nature, Photography

InstaCanvas

May 28, 2012 Carl Milner Leave a comment

Family, Filey, Landscapes, Nature, Photography

Good Morning Filey

April 12, 2012 Carl Milner 10 Comments

Filey’s People

You’ve probably guessed by now I have a special place in my heart for the unspoilt and un-commercialised seaside town of Filey on the East Yorkshire coast, for me one its most endearing qualities is its people, and how friendly they are, no more so than on a morning whilst they are preparing for the hustle and bustle of tourism to kick in. I’ve noticed this greater since getting my little ‘mans-best-friend’, she really loves its beach and getting up for an early morning walk for the papers, no matter where we stop, or how far away it is, we’ll wander of into town ‘rain or shine’ …recently we even did a 5.30am walk ‘excited doggie’, despite this, it’s on these walks that you get to meet the ‘real’ and friendly people of Filey, I don’t think I’ve actual met someone who’s not is willing to say hello back or even propose the hello first. This is such a delightful character for its population of nearly 7000, something which my suburb town of CrossGates (with its meagre population 2200) doesn’t seem to have.

Over the Easter break we encamped again in the beautifully refurbished Abbots Leigh Guest House for 3 days of R&R, under the friendly control of Stephanie and Chris, who like me share a great passion for the art and heritage of Filey. Over these days I managed to grasp a few special ‘me-times’ to wander again with ‘Trusty the Camera’, doing a 3 hour night shoot (which I’ll blog about later) and a wet and wild day on the beach which provided some profoundly atmospheric scenes to capture.

Leeds, Nature, Photography

Devil in the Clouds

April 11, 2012 Carl Milner 10 Comments

Bit of an opportunist shot, but this apparition appeared in the clouds over Leeds today, my daughter said its Harry Potters Lord Voldemort returning from the dead 😉

Art, Garden, Leeds, Nature, Photography

3 Days & 3 Photo-shoots

April 4, 2012 Carl Milner 1 Comment

It’s quite hard to believe I did this last week, considering it’s 0° today and snowing.

Recently it seems ‘the company’ have noticed my photography skills, so in these recessionista times decided to give me some assignments, so for the first three days of last week it was taken up with doing photo-shoots, each one as diverse as the other.

I’ve shown a selection of images I took separately from the outlined briefs I had on each of the days.

DAY 1: Liverpool Estuary
The brief for today was from English Heritage, who is quite concerned about the visual impact some proposed new buildings would have on the vista from the Old Liverpool Airport looking out toward the Mersey Estuary. They wanted to see some CGI montages of seven key viewpoints in which we had to ‘accurately’ drop in the 3D model to the photographs. Although this was quite a long and technical shoot requiring two 5M survey poles to be recorded within the images. The camera and poles then also had to be precisely triangulated and recorded with a remote GPS tracker linked back to base total station. I have to say this was enjoyable on a techie level, but totally boring on the other. The only saving grace was the glorious weather that started this week off and ‘luckily’ I had the chance to wander around over lunch and take a few personal snaps.

PS Our studio’s young CGI wiz ‘Chris’ made a stunning job of marrying photo and 3D model within inch accuracy using Autodesk Max 2012.

DAY 2: The Orangery

Another stunning day awaited this shoot of The Orangery; a 200-year-old unique grade II listed building in the heart of Wakefield which is also home to Beam, an arts, architecture and learning company working throughout the Yorkshire region and beyond.

I was required to visually document the building for R&D project our company is involved with using Open Cloud and Unity’s VR & AR software to create a virtual ‘play’ building which people can interact with, open and walk-through. Again a slightly technical shoot, but which will have a fun aspect later down the line.

It also has a gorgeous green oasis hidden next to the Wakefield Westgate Railway Station, so I had a little time to explore the gardens and some of the decorative features within the building with the lens.

DAY 3: Leeds
This day was the hottest day so far, (75F) and after getting sun burnt on Monday (to which my daughter called me a tomato) I had a Slip-Slop-Slap moment with the old blue factor 50 sun cream.

The ‘free’ brief today was to photograph The City of Leeds in all its glory for a future secret website project. This also allowed snapping some parts of the City I’d always wanted to capture for myself, so after 820 pictures later and 7 hours of walking a circuit of Leeds with lots of zigzagging moments along the way, a few results are as follows… Enjoy…I did