Monday 4 April 2011

Falling Apples, Sheppys Cider 2007

I won a competition with this photo in 2009 for which I received a fieldscope.... (e-bay loved it) and 2 nights at the Mount Somerset Hotel which was excellent and well deserved I think. The opportunity to take this shot came about when, on one sunny day off, I decided to take a trip to the fantastic Sheppys Cider farm at Bradford-on-Tone in Somerset  (described as a 'cider theme park' in the Naked Guide to Cider - who incidentally butchered my lovingly donated photographs.) I had no idea what I was going to get, but I was in the zone and hungry for something. After several hours or two of snapping the apples arriving, the pressing, the juice etc I sat in the sunshine, sunk a bottle of their delicious Tremletts Bitter Cider (a most underestimated single variety) and a pasty. Stuffed and woozy, I headed down into their orchards to stretch my legs, where I stumbled upon an old boy upon a tractor with an adolescent doing the donkey work. They're job for the day (probably the week) was to shake the remaining apples from the tree. Towards the end of the season I think this becomes common practice. Their particular method involved a canvas strap, a steel cable and the oldest tractor I have seen outside of a steam fair. I then had a satori and this was the result. Its earned me more than any other photo I have ever taken, more people comment on it than anything else and it sums up my feelings about real cider better than anything you can possibly express in words. (Unless you said:

'The power ov thit Zyde wuzz upon thee, zee?'

And then I said:

'Ap, reck'n twas son.')

 

1 comment:

  1. Wow, congratulations on the award winning photos. They are beautiful. I can't believe at the end of ever season they bust out the tractor, steel cable, and the canvas strap to shake the rest of the apples off the trees. You were definitely in the right place at the right time.

    ReplyDelete