Recently enjoyed a lovely summer’s day out at Kenyon Hall Farm with Hazel and friends.
Kenyon Hall farm is a great venue for the family if you’re looking for somewhere good to go. It was rather busy when we arrived around lunch time and was something of a struggle getting into the place from the A49 Kenyon Lane, but once in, we managed to park reasonably easily, although one or two other vehicles struggled a bit.
Kenyon Hall farm seems to have invested heavily in making it a family destination. With the chance to pick fruit like strawberries, gooseberries, raspberries, tayberries, and broad beens amongst others. There is also a cafe and shop, and a play area for kids. On a nice day it’s a real country day out. Kenyon lane is also close to junction 22 of the M6, so really easy to get to.
Just a little bit of background about the farm, over 75 years ago my dad at the age of 9 years, used to work on the farm to earn some extra pocket money, he told me local kids were recruited to do potato picking, or spud picking as he calls it, as part of their duties, he used to pinch a few to take home to the family. Remember this was around the time of the second world war, so food supplies were being rationed, and every little bit extra helped the family. He said it was one of the hardest jobs he has ever had to do, “back-breaking” as he describes it. All the kids got time off from school for a couple of weeks to do it, so he didn’t mind. I’m not sure if the present owners are descendants of the family that owned the farm at the time or not, but they might well be. So you can see Kenyon Hall farm has a long history in the local community.
On this particular occasion I took the opportunity to take my new DSLR camera with me for a bit of a play, while Hazel and my friends got stuck into their picking duties, here are some of the shots I took on the day.
The great thing about DSLR cameras is the ability to control depth of field. I love using a shallow depth of field to direct the viewers eye to where I want it to go in a photograph. I got low down to the ground to get some of the shots and used the plants in front of the subject to create a 3 dimensional effect, keeping them out of focus along with the background, and the subject in sharp focus. The viewers eye will always be drawn to the focused part of the image. Shooting with a wide open aperture on a longer focal length zoom will help with getting a shallow depth of field. The aperture here is (f4)