second shoot: collecting footprint tunnels at Benthall edge.
For my second shoot I decided to go round with the trust when they where collecting in the footprint tunnels from the door mouse survey. these where a piece of plastic drain pipe with a piece of wood in it. On the piece of wood is a slice of cartridge paper, each end of which is an oil based paint, made from sterile charcoal and olive oil. These where then strapped to trees where the dormice would run through them. I decided to document the removal of the dormouse. I mainly wanted to get pictures of the scenery and the removal of the door mouse tunnels.
The dormouse survey was carried out to make sure that there weren't any dormice in the area. This is because they are about to embark on a land restoration project which would disturb the dormice. Over the three months they where carrying out the survey they found no dormice. now the land restoration project can be started, this will take it back to something more like what it was like before the industrial revolution, over time, the restoration will make the woodlands in the gorge more hospitable to dormice and they should return in time. We where removing the dormouse tunnels we had placed in the trees along the top of Benthal edge. to remove them we where cutting through the zip ties which had been used to secure them to the trees. Once we had removed them, we had to take all of the rubbish with us, we couldn't leave anything in the woods.
These images are really superfluous to the title, these are more showing the environment we where in and some of the interesting fungi we were finding. my plan for some of the landscape images is to Matt them together in Photoshop to create a photo mosaic of photographs, with the aim of making a more involving environmental piece of work.
This contact sheet is mostly action shots of one of the trust's volunteers removing the dormouse tunnels themselves. i think, as boring as this is, these are vital parts of the shoot as they show the most important thing we where doing on that day, removing the dormouse tunnels.
