My book choice

My choice:

Far From the Madding Crowd. 

This is a book that I have known since I was a girl and I am totally familiar with the characters and story line.  I was fascinated and made uncomfortable by the way that Bathsheba Everdene treated the men she met with and interacted with during her life in Weatherbury.  I thought I would research previous editions of this book and using Amazon found there were dozens of editions covering a wide time span.  Here are just a few front covers:

 

I must admit that I wasn’t very inspired with the front covers that I found as I wanted to create it in a more up to date way.  Then I found the cover below:

 This was definitely what I needed to inspire me, as there had also been the David Hockney exhibition at the Tate Modern recently with his wildly extravagant style of portraying, countryside, meadows and ploughed fields.  I also found some examples of Hockney’s work on Google to give me inspiration to continue with my more modernistic style, especially as I am very keen on what is know as ‘digi art’ or ‘photo art’.

David Hockney’s Three Trees

Hockney's image Winding Road

 These two pictures and the front cover above epitomise the style that I want to portray with my front and back covers. I plan to use the Filter Gallery in Photoshop once I have obtained the best image/s to convey what I want to show.

Location Shots

I’ve been travelling around the local area looking for the ideal shot to illustrate the cover and have had to contend with the worst weather situations for many years.  Local lanes and ploughed fields have been absolutely saturated with rain, and even at one point, snow but luckily that didn’t settle.

I had to decide whether to go for a picture of a ploughed field with bare trees in the background in silhouette or plump for sheep in the foreground.  It’s very difficult to get a wide spectrum of ploughed and green fields with sheep in the foreground especially as there was a likelihood that they have mist on the upper slopes.

Image Shooting Schedule

I took advice as to where to find the best places to see either ploughed fields or sheep with green hills/ploughed fields behind them.  I travelled along several main and secondary roads and studied the local maps to get a good idea of where I should go.  The map below, courtesy of Google Maps, shows where and when I concentrated my main efforts.

I seemed fated to experience bad weather and even when I went out in sunshine, within half an hour or so, the weather would turn cloudy and start to rain.

On those dull days I used the pictures that I took as scouting sessions to see what might have possibilities for the final image.  I even had family members and friends looking out for suitable views.

In the end, I went out early last Sunday morning (December 2^nd) when there had been a heavy overnight frost and it was still on the ground at 9.30 am, to a location on the A35 where there seemed to be all that I needed for the perfect picture.  The field was beyond Kilmington on the road to Honiton.  The farmer had his sheep near the road and, on the other side of a rough track, was a ploughed field, perfect!