Let Me Show You What I See

Time Lapse Tragedy

2011-12-07T18:17:00.001Z

I have been experimenting with creating time lapse video from stills and have popped a couple of them on YouTube. The first one was back in late October where I was trying to get a nice sunrise but where I initially wanted to shoot from was covered by low cloud so I had to find somewhere else. By the time I got to this place I had missed quite a bit of the sunrise but managed to capture about 500 shots to make this first video.

It was a bit of a learning experience and this is what I figured out.
1. Take the photos in jpeg instead of raw because they take about a quarter the size and don't fill my memory cards as quickly. They also are less power hungry on the computer when processing them.
2. This clip took about 45 minutes to take so have something else to do while your waiting. I'll take my other camera next time and maybe my iPod so I can listen to some music or a podcast.
3. Reduce the time between shots so there are more stills available to create the video.
4. Keep warm, it can get pretty chilly if you are standing about in the early morning or evening.

Since the first experiment I've not had the opportunity and suitable weather conditions at the same time to do more time lapsing until last weekend. So Saturday morning I planned to get up early but unfortunately my bed was warm and comfortable so it wasn't that early when I set off. As before I was a bit late getting into position and then the sky was too clear with a band of low cloud just on the horizon where the sun was coming up. So my first set of shots where of a piece of clear orange sky with the smallest bit of cloud drifting across.

I was at Scout Dyke reservoir again and the water level was lower than I've ever seen it. For the first shots I was well down towards the water to try and get some reflections from the water but that didn't seem to help. I tried a different angle and position as the wind was picking up and bringing some more clouds over into the scene. But they weren't coming over fast enough and they were just grey blobs when they arrived so not very interesting. It was all very muddy in the reservoir bottom and where the mud dried up a bit it had cracked and made some patterns on the ground which may add interest to the shots.

In the meantime I was wandering around with my other camera looking for a few still photos to take and I noticed the start of some pinkness in the clouds in the other side of the sky to where the sun was rising. I spun the camera around 180 degrees for my next attempt and captured the clouds clip below. It was very windy and even on my tripod the camera was getting blown about which is why it was so shaky. Also I was wandering about taking other shots and I had the radio trigger in my pocket and I think I must have gone out of range a bit because there seems to be some missing frames occasionally.

As the above clip was being captured I noticed that the clouds in the sky in the other direction were starting to come over more and getting some colours in them. I swung the camera around again on the tripod to continue filming towards the sun. I took a couple of steps away and then the tragedy happened. Over went tripod with the wind and the camera landed lens front down in the thick mud. Here's the shot just before it went over ...

... and this was the first shot after I picked it up again. The remote trigger was still firing away even when it was face down in the mud but those picture were a bit dark.

I decided it was time to go home so I dragged my stuff up onto the bank and here's a shot of the camera still on the tripod ,with a dirty, dirty lens.

When I got home I took the lens off the camera for one last shot before I got to work getting it clean (it took quite a while).

So it was only a minor tragedy and the clip is OK, not good. What did I learn this time.
1. If it's too windy the time lapse is going to be shaky unless you can really tie the camera down. I have a reasonable tripod, and it was very low but I still had issues. I wonder maybe I should have removed the neck strap because that was getting blown about quite a lot and was probably contributing to the movement.
2. Especially if it is windy, make sure the tripod is secure. Maybe I should have tied a rock to it or opened the legs wider so it had a more sturdy base.
3. Don't keep changing position because if I had left it in the original position the clouds would have come over eventually and my lens wouldn't have been covered in mud. Also I noticed as I was leaving that ground which was in the frame on the clouds movie started to get lit up by the orange light of the sun, so continuing that clip may have had some added interest later.
4. If wandering around taking other pictures while the time lapse is running it is probably a good idea to leave the remote trigger near the camera to prevent missing frames.

I'm looking forward to my next attempt, hopefully I will have more success.

Fairburn and Ledsham

2011-12-02T22:32:00.001Z

We've not been anywhere this week so I looked back through some of the folders from the last couple of months that I haven't posted. It was yet another of the AA Walks in West Yorkshire and it was another sunny, almost cloudless day. We started the walk in the village of Fairburn which is East of Leeds just North of where the A1 crosses the M62. From the village we went down a path into the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) sanctuary called Fairburn Ings. I think I may have posted about this place before a couple of years ago. Its on the site of an old coal mine and is made up of regenerated slag heaps and water filled areas.

As we walked into the sanctuary I took this photo of the main lake through some trees on the banking. It was supposed to be a bit arty with the silhouetted trees making a frame for the water and trees behind.

There are a number of hides around the lake where you can sit and watch the bird out on the water. Unfortunately the first hide looking out onto the smaller lake had been closed because someone had tried to burn it down. This next photo is of the swans, cormorants, ducks and seagulls out on the islands in the middle of the lake. There is quite a selection of different kinds of ducks out on the lake including shelducks, pochards and tufted ducks.

A bit further around the path was some bushes with what at first looked like pink berries. On closer inspection they were more like flowers with orange berries inside. I took a few photos of the whole bush but prefer this close up of one of the twigs.

Continuing along the path you end up at the RSPB office and shop where there's toilets and a cafe. Opposite the building is a small area with lots of bird feeders full of all sorts of different food. This particular one appeared to be the favourite for the Gold Finches as they kept swooping in and out from the surrounding trees.

We walked through the car park onto a walkway to the big lake and there was a seagull perched on the fence. I managed to get fairly close before it flew off. In the picture there are some more gulls sat on a wooden perch out in the water.

We left the bird sanctuary and headed North on a path towards Ledsham. This next picture is looking back towards the lake with the cooling towers of Ferrybridge power station in the background. I guess in the past the power station would have taken all of the coal from the mines in this area.

When we reached Ledsham we went to a pub called the Chequers Inn where we had a lovely lunch and a bottle of wine in their beer garden. I'm glad we came for the walk on Saturday because the pub is closed on a Sunday and we'd have been very disappointed. The story of why it's closed on Sundays is on thier website, linked above.

There were lots of lovely buildings in the village including this ancient church which has a history going back into the 6th century (yes 6th), making it one of the oldest churches in England.

Behind the church was a row of lovely old cottages with this beautiful lawned area at the front.

It was very dark inside the church so it was quite difficult to get these next two pictures. The first is of the main aisle in the oldest part of the church.

The next picture is looking through into what was a second aisle which was built much later and used to double the size of the church. The church has had many changes over the centuries including several different tower designs. In the first picture of the church you can see where they have used a completely different type of stone when they added a steeple to the existing tower. In the picture below they have removed the back wall of the church and put in these big arches to open up the two aisles to each other.

After leaving Ledsham I took this photo looking to the rolling hills to the North. I particularly like the shadow of the trees behind me stretching across the newly mown field.

I quite like this photo of the trees but it is slightly spoilt by the electricity pylon in the background. I guess being so close to a big power station it's quite hard not to get the pylons or electric lines somewhere in your view.

This photo is looking back towards Ledsham with the church and some of the big houses visible within the trees.

A little further along was this field with the haystacks. It's hard to see in the picture but this field had quite a slope in two directions. Th front haystack looked as though it was ready to fall over.

We were almost back in Fairburn now and this picture is another grand looking tree in a field. Again unfortunately spoilt by the power lines going across the sky in the background. I did consider removing them and I might yet.

Well it had been a beautiful day for the middle of October, but as we've had even more beautiful days since it doesn't feel that special now. We're in December now and it has been the warmest Autumn for a few years. Of course now there are suggestions that we might be heading for a drought but I'm sure we're going to get plenty of wet weather in the next few months so I don't take that too seriously. It's raining quite hard now as I type this so it doesn't look as if I'll get out much tomorrow for a walk.

Marsden Moor

2011-11-24T20:03:00.001Z

Last Saturday was a beautiful day when we went for our "Marsden Moorland Ramble", which was another card from our "AA 30 Walks in West Yorkshire" series. My wife wanted to go on a slightly longer walk than the usual 5 or 6 miles but didn't want to go too far from home. Our starting point in Marsden is about 8 or 9 miles away going through Holmfirth and Meltham. We arrived at the station car park at about half past nine and headed up the canal tow path towards Tunnel End.

At Tunnel End both the canal and the railway line disappear under the Pennines and reappear at Diggle in Lancashire. The canal has been closed for a long time but the railway line is still the main connection between the Cities on Leeds and Manchester. This first photo is looking at the entrance to the canal tunnel and the cottages next to it.

From here we walked past the Tunnel End Visitors Centre, then up past the Tunnel End Inn (which apparently is closed) and then along a path at the edge of the old reservoir which supplies water to the canal. The trees have nearly lost of of their leaves but this old tree still had a few beautifully coloured leaves which were lit up in the morning sun.

At the end of the path we joined back onto Waters Road and and past the Hey Green Hotel. From here we went down another path beside the river to the Eastergate Bridge where I took some photos but we were in the shade of the valley and I didn't think they were worth posting. There's also a strange sculpture here and some information about the pack horse trail that we were about to follow. Along the trail are a series of stone marker posts and this photo shows one next to the path we were walking along. In the background is a round topped hill which the details on the card said we would be walking to the left side of later.

The path was quite flat here and then we dropped into a little valley with a stream before climbing up towards the round topped hill. In this next photo is Lynne crossing the stream with Evey the dog watching me take the photo. Up the path is another marker post for the pack horse trail.

This next photo is from part way up the round topped hill looking back down the path and yet another marker post. At the other side of the hill we head down towards the Buckstones Road and just before the car park we join the Pennine Way and then started heading South towards Standedge

As with the Stanage near Sheffield that I blogged about back in April 2010 the name Standedge is derived from stone edge and the next photo has some of the stones on the edge. In the background we're looking towards the little village of Denshaw on the far left with the Castleshaw Upper and Lower reservoirs nearer the centre. The stones here are nowhere as impressive as Stanage but there were some people climbing them with ropes further along.

As we approached the Huddersfield to Manchester road near to Brun Clough Reservoir there was this wooden signpost for the Pennine way. The sign point back in the direction from where we had come was missing. On the right was Evey watching me again and wondering why it was taking me so long to get along the path.

We crossed the road and headed down the path going past Redbrook Reservoir and then on to Old Mount Road towards Hades Farm. This next photo is looking across the golf course towards another part of the Marsden Moor Estate and Butterley Resevoir. Further up that valley is Wessenden where I have blogged about several times and walked around even more times.

Further along Old Mount Road I took this photo of the West end of Marsden with the big old woollen mills and the little millworkers houses.

After this we dropped back down onto Mount Road into Marsden town centre and then back to the car park. The walk was about eight miles and we took a little over four hours to complete it, including stops for refreshments and taking photos. Which wasn't back considering that some of the pathways were pretty hard going underfoot. It was a very good ramble and just what we needed to get away from the stresses of everyday life.

Dirty Dog

2011-11-21T22:50:00.001Z

We were out walking on Marsden Moor on Saturday and it was a beautiful day for late November. I will post some pictures of the landscape later but I couldn't resist posting these photos of Evey getting herself covered in mud.

1. Charging into the muddy puddle

2. Head down making first contact with the mire

3. The big splashdown

4. Emerging from the blackness

5. Taking to the air

6. Mud dripping from her mouth

It looked like great fun but I don't think I'd like the mouth full of black muddy water. Evey didn't seem bothered and fortunately over the rest of the walk the mud dried and most of it dropped off. We delivered the dog back to my daughter Emma and mentioned that she might need a bit of a wash down.

I'm Still Here

2011-11-15T22:22:00.001Z

It's been over two months since my last post and I think it's about time I got back into it. I've had an early bout of winter blues and there's little sign of getting past it yet even though we're only in mid autumn. I feel my photography has seriously got stuck in a rut and although I've taken lots of pictures I'm not getting the urge to share them at the moment. So this is taking a lot of effort, but I'm determined to push through before I lose the will to make pictures any more.

It's been quite mix of weather the last couple of weeks but last Saturday we had a bit of early sunshine. So while my wife was having her hair done I wandered into Victoria Park in Holmfirth with my camera to look for inspiration. The sun was quite low and sky was blue and I thought I might find some trees with their leaves a nice autumn yellow to make a great contrast to the sky. It's a great combination of colours, yellow, green and blue. But I just couldn't find a shot.

As I walked about I spotted some mushrooms growing at the bottom of an old tree stump so I went to have a closer look. The tree stump was very dark with it being in its own shadow and the mushrooms were out in the sunshine and very bright. I decided to make three exposures of each shot at different shutter speeds so I could merge them to makes tone mapped HDRs with details in the shadows. I took quite a few shots at different angles and heights to make different compositions of the mushrooms and in the end I chose this ones as the best. In the end I didn't merge the exposures because I decided I didn't want the detail in the shadow to detract from the detail in the mushrooms. When I look at the picture now I feel I need to get rid of the grass in the background on the right because it's drawing my eye away from the main subject. Its too light so maybe I can darken and desaturate it, or perhaps clone in some more tree stump.

After the mushroom I started heading out of the park and there is a small public garden with a bench and some shrubs in the borders. I spotted some very late blooming honeysuckle and went to have a look. Although the weather has been mixed it has been quite mild for the time of year so there are a few late blooms around. I quite like this picture but again I wonder if I should darken the background a bit more to emphasise the flower. Maybe add a bit more of a vignette to darken the corners might work.

Next to the honeysuckle was an unknown (to me) bush with some furry leaves which had lots of water droplets from the overnight rain. Some of the leaves were in the sunshine and I spent the rest of my time trying to get some interesting pictures of them. This was my first attempt but it doesn't work too well with the angle of the shot and the busy background. I need to seriously get rid of the contrast in the background by darkening and desaturating it all because the foreground subject is completely lost.

This next ones a bit better with having the wall in the background, but the bits of honeysuckle stem are a bit distracting. I lowered the angle of the shot to try and look through the big water droplet and this works a bit I think.

Same leaf but from the side of the leaf this time and lower again. Now I'm getting the shot right through the big water droplet and I quite like the effect of the light bending through it. Maybe again I just need to get rid of the light circle near the top left because it's distracting but overall I pleased with this picture.

Same leaf again and back to the same direction as the first one but lower and closer. There is very little depth of field and I've used the exposure two stops below the metered exposure which is why it is so dark. I chose this exposure because the background has almost completely gone and the only part of the picture in sharp focus is the big droplet. I noticed a variety of colours in the little droplets so I boosted the overall saturation sky high and then desaturated the green so that the leaves look a fairly normal colour. I love this picture, even the very light blurred spot in the foreground because it is on a bit of a diagonal line through the composition. It looks even better full size on my computer screen with the weird shapes in the big water droplet and all the little coloured circles of bokeh from the little ones.

Thanks for looking at this post. I really hope you like something here. Writing this has been a bit of therapy for me and maybe I can get back into the swing again. No promises but I'll try to get back to posting weekly. Please give me some feedback in the comments if you have a bit more time to spare me.

Buxton High Peak HACK

2011-09-08T00:52:00.000+01:00

The day of the HACK had arrived and it was an early start for us. We had to get up before 4am to get ourselves ready and drive to Buxton in time for me to start my duties as soon after 6am as possible. My first duty was on the 3rd marshalling point which was about a mile and a half into the walk so people setting off at 6am could be there before 6:30 and I needed to register, pick up my high visibility jacket and drive to the marshalling point before anyone reached it. When we arrived at Grin Low Cottages I was told that I had been changed to marshalling point 2 which was a few hundred yards before point 3 so that was fine, I knew where the early marshalling points were because we'd done this part of the walk back in August. I took Lynne around to the walkers registration point in the car park and then went to pick up my jacket, new instructions for the marshalling and my partner volunteer for this first stint, a young man called Guy.

The weather was set to be quite good for the walk, dry and not too warm with a possibility of showers later in the afternoon. When we arrived at the marshalling point it was looking as though we could could have some early rain with big black clouds out to the West, but it never materialised. The early starters began to appear over the brow of the hill just around 6:30 as expected and there was a fairly steady stream until just before 8am. The last registrations were at 7am so we knew we wouldn't be here very long. This first photo is some of the walkers heading up the short stretch on the roadside between marshalling points 2 and 3. Part of our duties was to advise the walkers to stay on the left side of the road and try to keep off of the road. The edge of the grass had been trimmed a bit since we'd been here in August so it was possible to walk off of the road in single file. The sun was shining where we were stood but the clouds up on the hill still looked a bit threatening.

After we had been instructed to stand down by the sweepers I had quite a long gap between my next official duties at Checkpoint 3 at 13:00 so I took Guy back to the control at Grin Low Cottages and then headed to Checkpoint 1. I had told Lynne that I would try to track her progress around the course and walk with her when I could. Checkpoint 1 was at the Cat and Fiddle pub, which is the second highest inn in England and was almost 6 miles into the walk. In this next photo some of the walkers are arriving at the end of the path to cross the road to the checkpoint.

I walked back along the path and found Lynne a few hundred yards from the road and she'd found herself a walking partner called Paul. He was a Geordie who was currently living in the East of England. I walked with them to the pub where they registered and picked up some nice energy bars and more water before setting off on the next leg of the walk. I walked with them as far as Shining Tor which was one of the highest points on the walk where there was a lot of low cloud obscuring the view, which was a pity because views are stunning on a clear day (see my previous blog from the 12 August). I left them to continue towards Cat Tor and Pyms Chair while I headed back to Checkpoint 1 to pick up my car. I told Lynne that I would probably see her next at Checkpoint 2 which was just over half way around the walk. In this next photo are a couple of walkers just arriving at Shining Tor after climbing up the long a fairly steep hill.

Lynne was still with the early walkers so as I headed back down the hill there were many of the walkers on there way up. Quite a few of them recognised me from marshalling point 2 and were surprised to see me walking towards them. Many of them remarked that I had a twin brother and one person asked me if I'd been helicoptered onto the top of the hill. In the next photo it was a bit dull with the low cloud but everyone still seemed quite happy.

As I continued down the hill the mist cleared a little but as you can see from this photo the visibility was still only a few hundred yards.

As I past by the bottom of the dip before the climb up to Shining Tor a couple of the walkers told me that some people had gone the wrong way at the gate which they needed to come through and had gone straight ahead instead. I rushed back to the gate and on the way someone else told me that one of their party had gone after the ones who'd gone the wrong way to get them back. I met him back at the gate and he said that he thought everyone had been called back so hopefully we hadn't lost anyone. I rang control to let them know what had happened and I stopped at the gate to make sure no-one else went the wrong way. Here's some people in the dip.

I set up an unofficial marshalling point by the signpost and I was amazed that even with me stood there that some people wanted to go straight on. One of the organisers arrived after a while to put up some extra signs and most people had gone through this point by now so I walked back to checkpoint 1 and set off for checkpoint 2. I had rung Lynne to let her know that I was held up but was still hoping to see her at checkpoint 2. Here's the signpost to Shining Tor pointing to the gate. The clouds had lifted a bit and the sun was quite bright and warming.

I arrived at checkpoint 2 just a few minutes before Lynne got there. They were making very good time and only a couple of dozen people had set off from the checkpoint so far. Lynne was keen to get on with the walk so after registering picked up more water and energy bars before setting off again. I walked with them for about a mile and then left them to continue onwards. Here's Lynne waiting to register.

Most people seemed to be taking checkpoint 2 as their lunch break so I after walking back I hung around for a while to take some photos. Here's one of the Raynet men wanting to get in the picture. They perform a vital task to radio back to the control with all numbers of the walkers that go through the checkpoints to make sure no-one goes missing.

Here's one of the volunteers handing a hot drink down to one of the walkers who is sat having a rest while other walkers look on.

Lots of the people coming through the checkpoint recognised me again from earlier and I hope they were pleased to see me wandering about. One man said he'd been trying to count the number of marshals and said that I was totally throwing out his calculations. Here's a group of walkers stood around having their lunch and there were many more sat on the grass doing the same.

After I left checkpoint 2 I headed for checkpoint 3 and stopped on the way at a viewpoint that was marked on the map. On a full screen view of this next photo you can can see walkers coming out from behind the trees at the top centre of the photo, along the road going right to left in the bottom third and then across the reservoir wall. If you click on the photos they are a bit bigger but not quite full screen. Checkpoint 2 was at this end of the reservoir wall, but we can't see it from here.

Before checkpoint 3 there is a fairly steep hill up through the field which Lynne and I found very hard going when we walked it in August. In the next photo there are some people just reaching the top and looking a bit red in the face. In the middle of the photo there are some other walkers heading down into the valley which is at the bottom of this hill. We decided that it must take about 40 minutes to get from the marshalling point on the road (which is the line about two thirds up this photo) to where we were standing near the checkpoint. We were trying to encourage people by telling them they were at the checkpoint ant there was only four miles to go. Many people asked about what the rest of the course was like so I was able to tell them what was in store. It's by far the easiest part of the course as the first bit is flat on an old railway line then a small rise, a steep hill down and then flat again until the woods near the car park where there's a short but steep climb over the brow.

Lots of people recognised me again at the checkpoint and I was very pleased to see how well everyone was doing. I walked a bit of the way down the hill to meet up with Lynne and carry her backpack for a while up to the checkpoint. Again she didn't want to stop for long at the checkpoint because she was afraid she'd seize up and not be able to carry on. Poor Paul was struggling a bit by now but he carried on with her for a bit longer. Here's some of the later walkers leaving checkpoint 3 on the last stretch. As predicted it did start to rain a little at about 4:30pm but checkpoint 3 was getting ready to pack up by then. We were just waiting for the sweepers to come through and let us know everyone was past this point.

Lynne had rung me from the finish and she had completed the course at 3:35 which meant she had a great time of about nine hours twenty five minutes. She'd left Paul a couple of miles out because he kept stopping and she didn't want to stop. In the end Paul came in about twenty minutes after her. She'd had her soup and roll at the final checkpoint and was waiting for me to pick her up and take her home. Apart from her hips and knees aching she said she was feeling OK but starting to get a bit cold. When I got back to the car park she was ready to go so I didn't get any soup. There was also a tent with a band playing but we didn't stop. I just had to check out at the control before I left and return my jacket.

It was a good day and everyone I spoke to commented about how well it had been organised and how friendly everyone had been. Lynne says she's looking forward to walking again next year and I will be volunteering to marshal. It will be the same walk next year and I might see some of the same people with any luck. As in my previous post, if you want to contribute to the NSPCC for the Hike Against Cruelty to Kids there is a green Donate button at the top of their page, Thanks.

Heather near Soldier Hill

2011-09-01T10:06:00.000+01:00

We're back from France and Lynne is getting back into training for the HACK, so early on Bank Holiday Monday we stormed up to Soldier Hill. The route is from the road above Wessenden Head Reservoir and then up to the trig point on Black Moss. On the return route we divert down towards Issue and then to Black Pool Bridge and bak to the road. It's about five miles and the first half is mainly upwards, quite steeply in places so it's similar to the terrain around Buxton

It's the time of year for the heather to flower so I took my camera to get a few shots on the way. As you can see from the first photo the weather isn't sure of what it's going to do, so we put on t-shirts and shorts and put cagoules in the backpack. When we left home the sky was blue but by the time we set off to walk there was a big thick layer of black cloud above the clear sky.

As we drop down into the first stream valley theres a small outcrop of rocks where I previously taken photos of icicles as there is always a steady dripping of water from between the rocks.

Looking up the valley the grass is a bit greener and there's more water in the stream than the last few times I've been here. I guess there's been a bit of rain while we've been away.

Further around the walk there's an area of the moorland that is completely covered with heather. Even though we are getting glimpses of blue sky the sun didn't come out sufficiently to get a good shot of the heather.

Near Black Pool Bridge there was a bank covered with a variety of different coloured heathers from almost white to a very deep purple.

So the HACK is on Saturday and it's an early start. We'll need to leave home about 04:30 to get to Buxton for just before 06:00 so I can pick up my high vis. jacket for marshalling and for Lynne to get her self prepared for a 6 o'clock start. I need to get to marshalling point 3 ASAP so I can point people in the right direction and give them a bit of encouragement. I think it's only a couple of miles into the course so I need to get there early. After that I've no duties until 13:30 when I have to be at Checkpoint 3 at the 18 mile point to help with checking people in and providing drinks, snacks and encouragement to the walkers. Lynne and I have already walked the last part of the course so I can advise the walkers of what to expect. In the gap I'll wander around the course and try to get some pictures and generally encourage people along. Hopefully I'll see Lynne along the way to make sure she's OK.

By the way Lynne hasn't got an online fundraising site set up but if you go the Buxton High Peak HACK 2011 page there is a green donate button at the top. Many Thanks.

A Tale of Two Walks Part Two

2011-08-12T00:47:00.000+01:00

We had been sent the map for the walk that my wife is going to do for the HACK in early September, so we decided we'd have a go at part of it. The full walk is around 24 miles so I found a place where we could take a short cut and make a 16 mile walk which took in nearly 10 miles at the start of the hack and about 4 mile at the end with a couple of miles to join the two parts.

We arrived at the start at around 10:30 which is about two hours later than we'd planned because Evey the dog had suddenly started limping the night before so we thought we were going to have to abandon the walk. All of a sudden in the morning she stopped limping, all we can think is that she'd managed to get a piece of cat litter in her paw and it had fallen out. We were so relieved because we thought we might have to take her to the vet and my daughter wouldn't have been happy because Evey is her dog and we were just looking after her.

The walk started at Grin Low Cottages where there is a car park and a Caravan Club site adjacent. The weather was glorious with lots of hazy sunshine and a few white fluffy clouds. To be honest it was a bit warm for walking but we needed to get in the practice. The weather was so much different to the walk at Kettlewell in the first part of this blog which had been just two weeks earlier. The walk started with a bit on the flat to get warmed up and then a good hill to climb to almost the height of the Cat and Fiddle pub. In this first photo we are getting our first view of the pub across the valley on the brow of the hill. At this part of the walk we were heading away from the Cat and Fiddle but would curve around and head towards it later.

As we continued the walk we came to an abandoned quarry where there had been an old building that someone had made a pile of stones on one corner.

There was a small stream running through the quarry that we needed to cross and here Evey was taking a well deserved drink.

As we climbed back out at the other side of the quarry we could look back and see the piles of old stones with some more of the Peak district hills in the background.

We were now heading towards the Cat and Fiddle and had the wonderful view towards the South with the sun and shadows across the scene.

This was our second view of the Cat and Fiddle pub which looked very busy with lots or cars and mini buses in the car park. We stopped here for a quick break before we headed to the highest point of the walk on Shining Tor. On the HACK this will be where Checkpoint One will be and the walkers will be able to get more water and refreshments.

Here's the trig point at the top of Shining Tor where we had wonderful views of the peak district in all directions.

From here we headed towards Cat Tor which you can see in the middle of this photo. There is a steady hill down and then back up again to get there and it's paved like the Pennine Way that we walk on regularly.

After Cat Tor we go down further to Pyms Chair which is where we cut across to rejoin the main route of the HACK.

We followed the road called The St. near Pyms Chair down to Errwood Reservoir.

After Errwood Reservoir we rejoined the route at a little bridge over a stream after which there is a fairly steep climb up to where Checkpoint Three will be. We've missed out Checkpoint Two with our short cut. After the checkpoint we go along an abandoned railway line which is flat but seems to curve a long way around the valley.

I think the valley was called Wild Moor and there were quite a few people walking on the paths below us. The railway line ends at a blocked tunnel where we have to climb again to the top of the hill.

At the other side it is a very steep path down into the village of Burbage where there were some lovely big properties. This monument and pond was at the bottom of the garden of one of the houses. Evey was looking across at some moorhens wandering across the lawn and then jumping down into the water.

After Burbage we made our way back to the car park and there was one final climb to get over the into the quarry where the Caravan Club was situated. There were signposts to Poole's Cavern and Solomon's Temple but we may visit them another time. After 16 miles up and down the hill in the heat we were ready for going home.

A Tale of Two Walks Part One

2011-08-07T01:04:00.001+01:00

I can't remember whether I've mentioned this before, but my wife is in training to do HACK (Hike Against Cruelty to Kids) at Buxton this year, so we've been in training. Some work colleagues of hers go on walks a couple of times a year so we signed up to join them on a walk around Kettlewell. We've never been on an organised walk with other people before, so we were just hoping that we weren't going to be the ones that were constantly lagging behind, especially as many of them were much younger and fitter than us. As it turned out that wasn't the case and we were pleased to be towards the front/middle of the pack most of the time. We'd been looking forward to the walk for weeks but the weather forecast on the day wasn't good so we packed up our waterproofs expecting the worst.

These first two photographs were taken at the top of the first hill out of Kettlewell which felt like an almost vertical climb from the car park. It's hard to tell on the photos but the weather is atrocious, it was blowing a gale on the top of the hill and the rain was hard and very wet. Even with the (so called) waterproofs on I was wet and cold and my feet inside my boots were soaking. I was having to keep my camera in my backpack with a waterproof cover and just take it out when there was a photo opportunity. There wasn't much to see of the view, as you can see below the scene is getting quite misty over about fifty feet so the expected view for miles just wasn't there.

For the group photo I was facing into the wind, as they were keeping their backs to the wind, so I was getting rain splodges on my lens. While we were waiting for the last people to reach the top we were starting to get very cold so we had to move on and hope they caught us up later.

The next part of the walk was downhill towards Arncliffe where the TV soap Emerdale Farm was filmed in the early days. The group had caught up together on the way down from the top of the hill and we were just setting off again to drop down into the village.

From Arncliffe we followed the river up towards Litton and here we were crossing the river by stepping stones. Even though it was raining hard today this year has been pretty dry so far and there was little water in the river. The weather was a bit better down in the valley but it wasn't going to last for long. I was completely soaked to the skin but was getting the wet suit effect where the water next to my skin was warm from my body heat.

From Litton we went back over the hill again towards Buckden and the weather deteriorated as we went over the top. On the way back down the hill one of the party was having a problem with her knee so we left a group helping her down the hill and we carried on down the hill to Buckden. Just outside the village was this lovely big tree at the head of a line of trees in the field. The weather was starting to brighten up but we were all still cold and wet.

As we reached the village the rain finally stopped and one of the ladies in the team decided it was a good idea to stand in the middle of the road and remove her tee-shirt to wring it out. Fun eh!

The weather was improving by the minute and it was actually getting quite bright as we crossed the river at Buckden.

We waited at a cafe for the remaining team members to get down the hill. The lady with the poorly knees found that she was OK once she'd reached the level ground at the bottom of the hill. In the meantime her husband had made his way down the valley to Kettlewell and brought the mini bus up to Buckden. I was quite looking forward to the four miles walk down the riverside back to Kettlewell but the majority decided it was time to abandon the trip and head off to a pub for a hearty meal.

Part two was a very different walk and I'll try to get it posted in the next couple of days.

St Paul Church, Armitage Bridge

2011-07-26T00:58:00.003+01:00

St Paul Church at Armitage Bridge is one that I've always wanted to photograph. When I was making church images a few years back they were having some work done and had scaffolding around the church so it got missed. With my renewed interest in my church photography I thought I'd take the opportunity to fill a gap in my gallery.

It was a lovely day with deep blue sky and a few fluffy white clouds for contrast. Behind me it was a lot cloudier and I had to wait for breaks in the cloud to get some of the photos. The church feels to be in an odd place because, until recently, it's not next to any housing where the congregation would be. A commemorative bridge has been built from the road across to the church but previously it would be necessary to go over a hump back bridge and down a lane to get to the church. It's hard to explain really. Opposite the church is a big old mill which has now been split into units and there is a cricket pitch adjacent to the churchyard.

The first couple of images are taken from the lane and through a nice stone arch at the entrance to the churchyard. The first I've used a portrait orientation to use the whole of the arch to frame the shot.

The second shot is taken from the same place but I've changed to landscape and zoomed in so just the sides of the arch are on the edges of the frame. This also has the effect of removing the sky from the shot at the top ad the big patch of shadow from the foreground. The closer shot is also showing a lot more detail with the little statue over the door and the odd angles of the gravestones.

In the next shot I have moved inside the archway and gone a lot wider to capture the whole church and the trees at either side. Because of the wide angle on the original shot there was quite a lot of perspective distortion which I've tried to correct but I think the tower looks a bit bent over now.

In this next shot I have moved into the churchyard where there is a line of gravestones leading up to the tower.

In the next image I have moved to the other side of the churchyard to get more of a view across to the tower. I wanted to go a bit further across but the trees on the right started to get in the way.

So I moved a bit closer which gave the opportunity to have the gravestones in the foreground but now the tower is a bit out of focus towards the top. On this photo and the previous one you can see where the roof line used to be a bit higher and at a steeper angle. I suspect that originally the roof came down straight to the top of the wall whereas now the angle changes to enable the line of small windows on top of the wall. The addition of the row of windows was probably added to make it lighter inside. Unfortunately the church wasn't open and there was no-one about so I wasn't able to find out.

There is a lovely war memorial with this tall cross on the top with the names of local people that had lost their lives in the first world war.

In this last shot of the church I wanted the war memorial in the front with the tower behind so had to use this funky angle to get them both in the frame. Again the tower is a bit out of focus, I guess I needed a smaller aperture but it's quite difficult to see until it's on the computer screen when I get back home. I'll maybe need to go back again to get some more shots and maybe if the church is open I can take some photos from inside too.

After I had finished at the church I went to the mill across the road where one of the units is the North Light Gallery where there is always some kind of exhibition to visit. On this day it was the work of the students from the Holmfirth High School from their 'O' Level exams. My daughters went to this school as it's about a ten minute walk from our house. There was a lot of interesting stuff and some of the work was excellent. It's fascinating to see how the 15 to 16 year olds are seeing the world and how much talent they have. I didn't take any photos inside the gallery as I wasn't sure if that would be allowed and I didn't want to get ejected.

After visiting the gallery I went to Beaumont Park where I've been a few times and had a couple of blog posts in the past. Last time I was there they were just doing the finishing touches on the new roof to the bandstand which previously was just an open square with the wall around. I must admit I've looked at this before and thought it would be good to restore it and make use of it. I'm very pleased to see the work completed and I'm very impressed with what they have done. The whole park has had a lot of work done on it in the last few years but I suspect it's a big job to keep on top of the amount of work required. Hats off to the Friends of Beaumont Park for all their good work.

As I walked around the park the sun was disappearing behind the clouds you can see in the bandstand photo. I was struck by this island in the path with the old bit of tree trunk and the fluffy pink flowers. I think it makes quite a nice photo and I might print it out on one of my big sheets of photo paper to put up on my wall.

All Hallows, Kirkburton

2011-07-20T00:20:00.004+01:00

After my visit to the church at Hepworth I've had a renewed interest in updating and expanding my churches portfolio and I've added a churches gallery page to the blog. I've dropped a set of my old photos onto the page and started adding a bit of text about them (need to do some more yet). I've also been inspired to try to get back to some of the churches and try to get some new photos in better weather as many of the photos have issues with the sky. I'd also like to think that maybe my photography has improved in the last few years.

A few weeks back I had a bit of spare time so I went back to the church at Kirkburton, which is about four miles from home, to make some fresh images. When I went here before it was a Saturday morning and there were quite a few people about getting the church ready for the Sunday services and tidying up the graveyard. It was one of my first forays into approaching people and summoning up the courage to ask if I could photograph them. I need to do it more often but usually when I'm out and about there's not many people around.

When I set off from home I just took my camera with a 50mm lens and my tripod as a bit of an exercise in using a minimal amount of equipment. As happens quite often for me the weather starts out bright and sunny but them almost immediately starts to deteriorate. The church has a piece of land across a little lane which is an addition to main graveyard around the church and it has a little lychgate at the entrance. In this photograph I am inside the new graveyard looking out towards the exit and with the old graveyard in the background. I should maybe have moved the green bin out of the frame or perhaps I should have a go at cloning it out.

After wandering around a bit I headed towards the church itself and the cloud was beginning to increase very quickly. There are a lot of big trees in the churchyard and so it's quite difficult to get a clear shot of the church from this side. I seem to remember having the same problem last time I was here. As I was taking this shot of the tower a gentleman came out of the church and said "I'm just going to get something from my car, I'll be back in a minute". I said "OK" and thought why is he telling me that, I wasn't here to see him. I carried on taking the shot, and true to his word he was back.

He asked me if I was wanting to look around inside and I said that I would as the weather conditions weren't that good for many more photographs outside. Last time I came here I didn't get around to going inside so it was all new to me. The gentleman started to tell me about the history of the church and about some of the notable things inside and out. It's a very old church site going back to the middle ages some 800 plus years ago. It turns out that he is a local historian with a long association with the church so he had plenty to say about the church and the notable people from it's past. He was also a keen photographer and in the past had been a professional working for one of the local papers. He showed me some pictures that he had created in Photoshop giving an impression of how the building had been changed over the centuries which was quite impressive.

It was quite dark in the church but I mounted my camera on the tripod an made a few images. The choice of the 50mm lens was perhaps not too suited to the task as I really needed something a bit wider. I will definitely need to go back and take some more photographs both inside and outside this church. The altar area seemed to be the oldest part of the church with the bare stone walls and this lovely stained glass window. In the side of the wall was a little hole (or squint) which went into a hermits dwelling that was built onto the side of the church. St. Agnes lived here for over twenty years and the hole was to enable her to "squint" at the clergymen as they performed their services.

To the side of the pulpit was another, smaller stained glass window which looked much newer than the one behind the altar. Here the walls had been plastered which also made this area look a lot newer.

At the back of the church was this medieval font which had been taken away from the church but was later returned. The font was big enough to cover a baby completely with water at the christening. The gentleman had told me that in the olden times they only changed the holy water once a year so it was a bit of a health hazzard towards the end of the year. The cover was a much later addition and was hung from chains attached to the ceiling.

My final photos were of the gentleman who I met outside and had spent time with (and I wish I had got his name, maybe I'll see him again on my next visit). He was a little reluctant to be in front of the lens as he was more used to being behind it, but I have never had any strangers I have met refuse to have their photo taken. He was very tolerant of me asking him to move to a spot near the font where I could use the light coming in through one of the windows. I used a very wide aperture to get a shallow depth of field so only the main features of his face are in focus. I really love this photo and especially the black and white conversion. I have made a print an put it into one of the second hand frames that I have been buying from the local charity shops with the intention of giving it to the gentleman if I see him again. Unfortunately I managed to break the glass so I'll have to try and get a new piece or borrow one from one of the other frames to replace it.

Since this trip I've been to yet another church and also been on a couple of long walks so I really need to concentrate on catching up with my blog posts.

Holy Trinity Church, Hepworth

2011-06-24T00:56:00.000+01:00

A couple of years ago I spent a bit of time taking photos of churches around the Holme Valley and I felt sure that I'd put them online somewhere but it doesn't appear that I have. I did have some thoughts of putting them into a book and trying to sell a few to the local people but I never followed through. I even photographed some people in and around the churches and they asked me if I was going to publish the photos so there could be some interest.

Anyhow, one of the local churches I really love is the one at Hepworth, just a couple of miles from home and usually pretty quiet. I decided to go back and make some fresh images and compare them with the ones I took back when I first started getting serious with photography. So this first photo was taken back in April 2008, which surprised me a bit because that's more than three years ago and also explains why there aren't any on line as I didn't start blogging until November 2008. I have an A3 print of the photo in a folder and I've always thought it looked pretty good with the lychgate war memorial and the church behind.

But now when I see it next to the new photo I can see it has a very yellow colour cast, especially on the stonework, which I suspect I may have added in the early days. It does make the old image look a lot warmer than the new one but now I think it looks a bit odd and not as it should be. The images are also a bit different as in the original the trees were bare of leaves, they have painted the doors a light green from the original brown and also freshened up the gate and roof trusses on the lychgate.

I found some other photos of the church I had taken in June 2008 but the sky was a very bland white and didn't look good at all. I think I must have gone back to take more photos when I'd bought myself a very wide angle lens which I have also used in these next two new photo to get the whole of the church in the frame. I had to move the green wheelie bin away from the left end of the church because it was very distracting.

This second wide angle shot is a bit closer and is suffering a bit with distortion which makes the end walls of the church look as though they're falling inwards. I ought really to correct the distortion but I don't like to spend too much time post processing my images these days.

In this next shot I've take the shot from down low and tried to be a bit artistic. The shapes of two gravestones in the foreground are supposed to being mirrored by the steeple and window behind them. I'm not sure if it works or not though.

I took a few more shots outside, put the wheelie bin back and went inside. This first stained glass window is just inside the entrance in a bit of a reception area which is quite dark. I had to move a few things from the window ledge because it was a bit messy.

Between the reception area and the main church they have partitioned off a room which looks like it must be used as the Sunday School for the children and other social events. Then you go through the double doors and find this aisle leading down to the altar. I love the exposed wooden roof joists in this church, quite plain but simply beautiful.

I took quite a few photos of this font with the wooden cloche type cover over it but I was having a problem keeping the images free of wires and plugs which were plugged into an electrical socket behind the fonts stone base. This ended being my favourite image with the board with the hymn numbers in the background.

This next image is looking across from the font to the lovely wooden pulpit an choir benches. Last time I came here the table in the foreground had a wish tree on it where the congregation has written there wishes for people on little cards and hung them on a pretend tree. When I read some of them I was very touched by their thoughts for others. Today it was a bit bare with just a vase of flowers and the three little candle holders on a mirror.

I was quite intrigued by the candle holders on the mirror with the little tea lights inside and took quite a few shots of them. This was my favourite with the light from the stained glass window reflecting in the mirror.

Most of the church was carpeted but this area by the altar has a lovely tiled floor. Also in this area the wooden roof joists have been painted red and green an look very nice.

A different angle on the pulpit with the stained glass window behind. It looks like the paintwork on the arch is suffering from a bit of damp coming in and could do with touching up.

My final shot inside the church is up at the wooden rafters. It's spoilt a little by the piece of green twine wrapped around the middle which I might try an clone out later.

As I took my final shots inside a gentleman came to lock the church up for the night. I took one last set of shots of the outside and then left to pick my daughter up and bring here back to our house for dinner. This wasn't my favourite of the last shots but the others had the green wheelie bin on them. I should have moved it again but it was getting late so I didn't bother, maybe next time.

Colne Valley Walk

2011-06-10T00:46:00.000+01:00

Another walk from the AA cards and another one that's close to home. The Colne Valley is the next big valley to the Home Valley (where I live) which starts from the heart of the Pennines and leads down into Huddersfield. As with the Holme Valley there is a great history in the woollen industry but a lot of the old mills have either been converted or demolished over the years. The Colne Valley boasts a railway and a canal which link the northern industrial and commercial cities of Leeds and Manchester and although the railway is still going strong the canal is now used only for leisure activities.

The walk begins in in the centre of Slaithwaite (local pronunciation Slough'it) although we actually started a little way out of the centre on the road that goes to Meltham. It was a lovely sunny day with plenty of blue sky and quite warm for early May (yes I'm way behind again). It's quite a steep rise out of Slaithwaite, up the road and then up the path through some fields but then you get the wonderful view back down into the valley.

The first half of the walk goes along the top of hillside up towards Marsden with lots of stunning views down into and across to the other side of the valley. This old tree caught my attention but it doesn't really come out on the shot as the main subject because the background is far too busy.

There are quite a lot of old farm buildings along the path including this old barn attached to the end of the farmhouse. It's quite strange having the wooden flat roof across the gap between the two side bits which has now fallen down. There's probably a lot of history in this building as it seems very higgledy piggledy in its construction.

Here's a row of old farm worker or maybe mill worker houses that have long since been abandoned.

This old fireplace reminds me of the ones that we saw at Beamish in the old miners houses but obviously in very poor condition.

The fireplace in the house next door had this strange addition on it which must have been for some big round vessel to be heated by the fire. I guess it could have been a laundry or maybe some strange cooking pot.

We loved the design of this rusty old gate and there were lots of similar ones in this area. I wondered if it was some local iron worker that had made a job lot for the farms. I like this photo because of the colours and the textures in the gate, gate posts, walls, trees and sky.

Another abandoned old house which is dated 1754, exactly 200 years before I was born.

And another old abandoned farmhouse and barn looking a little worse for wear.

Further along the hillside we get a lovely view down into Marsden with the big mill in the centre and all the rows of houses around. In the distance is Marsden Moor which is beautiful in summer but very bleak in the winter.

Up on the hillside there are a number of gulleys which feed the local reservoirs and drain some of the moisture from the peat bogs on the top of the moors. Every so often there are these lovely little bridges that allow the animals and farm vehicles to cross the water.

The walk goes a little way past Marsden and around the corner where we have a view of the bottom of Butterly Reservoir and across to the golf course and another part of Marsden Moor.

We then drop down into Marsden where there is this lovely little house next to the river called The Old Cobblers.

Th second half of the walk is just straight down the canal side and back to Slaithwate. I've photographed this walk a couple of times before so we didn't stop for many new ones but I quite liked this lock so here it is.

The first half of the walk had been hard going but the second half was just a sprint down back to Slaithwaite. I guess it's designed this way so you get the hard work out of the way at the start of the walk rather than after you've been walking for a couple of hours. We've done another of the walks over Rishworth Moor which was hard going for most of the way and I will cover it in a later post.

Farnley Tyas Walk

2011-05-20T23:26:00.000+01:00

In an attempt to get a bit fitter we've been trying to get out for a few more walks. Normally I go out on my own or with my daughters dog but my wife has decided to come with me a bit more often. She bought a pack of cards from the AA called 30 Walks in West Yorkshire from the book club at school and we're going to try to do as many as we can. The walks are quite varied ranging from 3 to 10 miles and each card has a map on one side and directions on the other, which are quite detailed. The cards also give the distance, minimum time, ratings for gradient and difficulty, a suggested OS map and lots of other useful information. The cards are made of sturdy card with a plastic coating and a plastic envelope is supplied for carrying the cards on the walks. The AA have similar cards for many areas of the country and I think they're very good to give some ideas to get out walking.

Most of the walks seem to start and end at or near a pub, which is always a good thing. The Todmorden walk from the previous post was from one of the cards and so is this one. Farnley Tyas is about 3 or 4 miles from home and my wife used to live between Almondbury and the village for the first 15 years of her life so it's an area we know reasonably well. The walk is 4.5 miles with a medium gradient and difficulty and expected to take two and a half hours.

We started the walk next to the playing fields and then headed down a track next to the woods, through a field down onto a little road. After a few yards we left the road on another path into some more woods and this is where we went a bit wrong. Had we read the instructions we would probably have stayed on the right track but we ended up spending quite a time in the woods instead of taking the correct route through some fields. Anyhow from the map we were fairly sure where we were so carried on knowing we could pick up the proper route later.

There were lots of bluebells in the woods and the weather was very sunny so there was patches of light coming through the trees. I took this close up of a bluebell near to the path and got down low so that the bluebells in the light and shade in the background were in the frame.

In the middle of the woods we came across this pond that belongs to a local angling club. It looked like it could have been an old mill pond, I don't know of a mill that was close to here, but there may have been. Alternatively it could have been an old local reservoir, possibly serving Honley village at the bottom of the hill. The angling club had constructed platforms around the water for the anglers using what appeared to be bits of scaffolding. At one end of the pond was a security camera looking over the water so I wonder if they have problems with poachers. As we walked around the pond we saw millions of tadpoles and also some very big fish just under the surface of the water.

Past the pond the path dropped down to this little stream. The weather has been dry for ages so there wasn't much water in the stream.

More bluebells all through the woods between these very closely packed trees.

As we climbed up the hill there was a bit of a clearing that looked beautiful with this rich blue carpet.

At the top of the hill we came out onto the road between Farnley Tyas and Castle Hill and were a few hundred yards from our intended path. There was another path which appeared to be going the right direction but we decided to walk along the road and pick up our intended path. As it happened the other path did join our a little way along but you never can tell sometimes. From the path we had a nice view of Victoria Tower on Castle Hill looking quite magnificent in the sunshine.

We'd brought a picnic with us and considered making another detour to sit up by the tower to eat our food but we couldn't find a path going in the right direction so we didn't bother. Further down the path I took this next photo looking across the valley back towards Farnley Tyas. You might just be able to see the church steeple poking up in from of the trees on the horizon.

Next to the path was this little bush with white and red flowers which looked very pretty. I love the way the background is out of focus but you can still make out the trees and the fields going into the distance. Since I exported this photo for the blog I have re-cropped it to square to take out the fence post on the left and the twigs coming in from the right. I think it's a great improvement because those two bits are quite distracting.

We joined the road for a little while and then started heading downwards through some fields. At the edge of the field was this amazing looking dead tree. I took this photo with Victoria Tower in the background because I thought it was a nice contract between the straight lines of the tower and the curly branched of the tree. I think the photo is too busy though with all the other buildings in the middle ground but I couldn't figure out a way of avoiding them.

At the bottom of the hill we were back into woods again. Here we are very close to where my wife spent her childhood. She always calls these wood Mollica Woods but when we look on the map they are actually called Mollie Carr Woods. I like this photo because there's a lot of light and shade and again more bluebells going up the hill in the background.

At the edge of the woods we finally had our picnic on a grass bank next to a little stream. I think this all brought back a lot of memories to my wife as she often played here with her brothers and sisters. She is one of seven children and I think they must have had a lot of happy times here. Behind where we were sat was a big field with this beautiful tree in the middle.

Along the path were these lovely white flowers in the grass.

We had few more yards on the road and then started heading up a path back towards Farnley Tyas on the last leg of out walk. Part way along the path were some houses and a little grassed drive with this green dumper truck. It just looked interesting to me so I took the photo. In the background is Castle Hill again and there's a line of smoke rising up from the bank in front of the tower.

As we walked further up the path the smoke was getting thicker so I popped my long telephoto lens on to take some photos.

At one point the whole of the tower was hidden by the smoke and we could see the flames engulfing one of the smaller trees on the banking. It had been one of the driest Aprils on record and the news was full of stories about fires on the moorland areas, particularly in the North West. A few spectators were stood on the banking and you might just be able to make out the top of a fire engine in the bottom right of the picture.

After a little while the firemen got the blaze under control and we continued our walk back to the car at Farnley Tyas. Had we gone up to Castle Hill for our picnic we might have had a much better view of the action and maybe got a few fireman shots into the bargain.

Packhorse Path near Todmorden

2011-05-12T00:04:00.000+01:00

I don't often talk about equipment on this blog but I started having problems with one of my lenses not focussing properly. It's the lens that I use the most and which is on my camera probably over 80% of the time. It has broken before when the zoom stuck and I blogged about it back in July 2009 and because it was only a few weeks before going on my annual holiday I hurriedly bought another copy. I was used to this lens and I couldn't justify getting a higher quality lens. About a year later that lens also went the same way as the first which I wasn't too happy about but then I found when I searched the internet that this was a common problem with this particular lens. I also found a website which showed ho to fix it. Basically the fault was a screw inside the lens which had come loose and it required taking the whole thing apart and putting it back in. I was feeling very brave at the time so I followed the instructions, fixed both lenses and took the advice to put a bit of super glue on the screw to stop it coming back out. Since then I've used one of the fixed lenses and kept the other one as a spare which I am having too use now. If you're interested the lens is the Canon 17-85 IS USM which Amazon are currently selling at £350, so not a cheap lens. I think it's an awesome lens when it's working but I'm not happy that it doesn't appear to have a particularly good build quality. I wouldn't buy another one so if this spare one breaks down too I will have to consider my options.

Anyway I guess you have figured out that this was the lens on my camera when we went to Todmorden to do the packhorse pathway walk. Starting on the Todmorden to Littleborough road near Walsden we started by crossing the canal and then heading up the steep hill. The stone on the canal bank says Lancashire on one side and Yorkshire on the other so we were doing a cross-county walk today.

It was a very hot day so the going was quite hard on this stretch of the walk. As we neared the top there was this little stream running alongside the path.

Our destination at the top of the hill was a series of reservoirs and this photo shows what appears to be two long thin reservoirs with a wall across the middle. In the distance is a long line of electricity pylons stretching along the top of the moors.

Heading away from the pylons there was another, bigger reservoir (Warlands) which unusually had the control tower towards the middle of the wall. Normally these towers are in one corner of the reservoir.

At the far end of the reservoir was what looked like a quarry wall so I wondered if they had used the store from here to build all of the reservoirs in the area. I made this into a panoramic because the top and bottom of the full image was a bit boring. At full size you can see that this photo is not very well focussed because my lens was playing up quite badly by now and just got worse as we went along. Most of the photos after this point were well out of focus when I got them home and the last few I focussed manually so I had something to take home.

Out in the distance there was a big tower on the top of the hill which looked very similar to the one at Pots and Pans near Greenfield. It was getting quite cloudy now and it was still very warm but there was a bit of a cold breeze at times.

We started walking downhill and reached Gaddings Dam which was quite pretty and at the far end there were some people swimming.

I went down to the waters edge and took this low angle shot across the water. You might just be able to spot the tower on the horizon that was in the earlier shot.

At the far end of Gaddings dam was this wonderful stone staircase which looks to be going up to the sky from this angle.

From the dam we started to head back down towards out starting point and on the way we passed this very strange looking rock formation.

The last stretch of the walk was back along the canal to the lock where we had started. We had walked around 6 miles and was ready for our lunch and so we headed to a nearby pub.

Not much narrative today (apart from the rant about my lens), it's getting late. Next time another walk about but nearer to home and not as far, and with a lens that focussed properly.

Early Morning Missed

2011-05-06T00:16:00.000+01:00

Sorry, really bad pun. It should have been "Early Morning Mist" but I've had trouble getting out of bed early enough. It was quite misty when I first got up and I was wanting to get some sun rising over the water pictures. On the drive to the reservoir the sun was glowing a wonderful orange colour through the mist and I almost stopped at one point to get a few quick shots, but I didn't. In the few minutes that it took me to get to the reservoir the mist had all but gone and the sun was shining brightly. It was about half past six and the sun was quite a way above the horizon, it's hard to get up early enough for sunrise photos at this time of the year.

Anyhow I stuck around for half an hour or so and fired off a few shots before going home for breakfast. In this first photo I am trying to capture the reflection of the slightly pink clouds in the water and what is left of the mist in the distance. On the right edge are a couple of anglers setting up for the days fishing although I'm sure they aren't supposed to start before 7am so I hope the water bailiff doesn't catch them.

There didn't seem to be much wildlife about either this morning, maybe it was a bit chilly. In the fields next to the reservoir there was a couple of hares running about but they were too far off to get a reasonable shot of them. In the water was this solitary crested grebe making its way towards the dam wall.

I was making my way back towards my car and I was pleased to see the sun shining brightly on these bushes next to the water. In the distance the mist seemed to be coming in again but it didn't look as though it would stay for long.

As I reached the car park I looked back to the reservoir and saw the windmills reflecting in the water. There was very little wind and all of the windmills were still. I considered driving around to the windmills and taking a few shots of them in the early morning sun but I was in desperate need of a drink as I didn't have anything with me and I had set off from home without having anything.

Over the Easter holiday period I've been out and about quite a bit but I've been pretty bad with sorting out my photos so hopefully I'll catch up and make a few more posts in the next week or so. We've had some excellent weather recently but it's the Holmfirth Folk Festival over the weekend and the weather forecast isn't looking too good at the moment. I hope it not too bad for the people to get out on the streets and maybe I'll get chance to get some photos.

Jaume Plensa at Yorkshire Sculpture Park

2011-04-25T07:49:00.000+01:00

It's been a very busy Easter holiday so far. With the weather being so great we've been doing lots of work in the garden but on Saturday afternoon we decided to have a bit of a break. Lynne remembered hearing something on Pennine Radio about giant heads at Bretton Park so we thought we'd go and have a look. Over the last few years they have loads of work at the park to make it more accessible including a massive amount of parking and a new visitors centre. I've made a few trips here with the dog on early morning photo trips but we've not been together for a while. Some parts of the park aren't open to dogs so there are areas that I haven't seen recently too.

When we arrived at after 3pm the car parks were full and we had to park on the grass near the entrance. We walked down the hill from the car towards the lake and on the way saw the incredible tree. The yellowy green leaves against the blue sky looked amazing.

Just a little way further down the hill, tucked away behind the trees was Bretton Chapel. I've been coming to this park for years and years and I've never stumbled upon this building before. I did suggest to Lynne that they must have just put it here but the notice board outside the gate to the chapel said it had been here for nearly 300 years so I guess I was wrong.

We walked down to the lake and I was pleased to see that they were working on the conservation area around the lake and preparing to open it to the public. Until recently you could only see the lake from the bridge at the far end but now they've opened the bridge at the bottom end of the lake and there looked to be a path going around behind the conservation area and across the fields to the far end. They were constructing paths through the conservation areas and I'm looking forward to being able to get near to the lake.

We decided not to go around the lake because it was getting late and we hadn't found the giant heads yet. We walked along the near side of the lake and noticed they had thinned down the trees considerably so now it's possible to see more of the lake and the islands within the lake. Next we went to the Orangery where they have a good display of Camellias including these next two photos.

I think I like the red one the best. There were also some very nice white ones but none of them were in a good place to photograph and most of them had lost a lot of their petals.

After the Camellia House we had an ice cream from the stand outside the cafe. The young girl serving there said "You're the last I'm serving today". Apparently she was supposed to close at 4pm but it was after 4:30pm and she was almost out of of ice cream, only 3 flavours left.

We finally found the entrance to the area around the underground gallery and this is where we found the Jaume Plensa sculptures. There was a display of three of these metal sculptures made of letters and chinese symbols. These three were just a little bigger than life size but in the background you can see a very big one.

On top of the gallery roof were the big heads that Lynne had heard about on the radio. They were made of what appeared to be a single piece of wire mesh in a head shape with the featured moulded into them. They must have been 10 to 15 feet high and were very impressive. They weren't letting anyone into the gallery because it was getting close to to closing time so we couldn't see any of the work inside. We'll have to come again a bit earlier in the day before the exhibition ends in September.

On the lawn in front of the gallery there were more sculptures sat hugging the trees. There must have been eight of ten of these on the grass with people sat around them. The letters on these ones were spelling the names of composers.

We walked across the front of the gallery and at the other end there is a path around the back of the gallery which takes you up the hill to where the big sculpture was. As you can see it was possible to go inside and actually sit on ledges at the side.

From here you could look down the hill to the gallery roof and the big heads. They look quite surreal with the trees and the rolling landscape in the background. It was a bit hazy so the landscape doesn't show to well in this photo.

I took a few photos of the big sculpture at different angles and I think this one came out the best.

The path continues back down to the other end of the gallery where we first entered the area. There were a few more of the smaller metal sculpture but these ones were kneeling rather than sitting. In this photo I got the big sculpture in the background again. A pity about the guy in the pink shirt, I had considered cloning him out but in the end I decided it would be too much trouble. Maybe I ought to change the colour of his shirt to something a bit more subdued so it doesn't distract as much from the sculptures and trees.

By now it was getting quite late and the park closes at 6pm so we made our way out and went home. If your in the area it's definitely worth a visit to see the heads. If you are not in the area it's worth a trip to see the whole park, there's lots of other sculptures by other artists in the park (including Henry Moore) which are in other posts in my blog. You could easily spend the whole day here, walking around the park and have a picnic in the grounds or have a meal in the cafe or restaurant. Admission is free and the car park is just £4 for as long as you like. In case your interested, full disclosure, I have no connection with Yorkshire Sculpture Park or the Bretton Park estate but here's a link to their site.

Spring Flowers

2011-04-18T23:36:00.000+01:00

It's been a great weekend for the weather so I decided to grab some photos of the spring flowers. On Saturday we went to a local park for a walk and this first photo is a lonely two coloured daffodil with quite an unusual flower. We were in a wooded part of the park an it was a bit in the shade so the picture has come out a bit dark.

A little further along there was a few more of the same type of daffodil and this time they were basking in the sunshine.

Quite close by were some more unusual daffodils with very spikey flowers. There were much smaller than the first type and were getting a bit past their best so it was hard to find any decent looking specimens.

Towards the centre of the park there were some of the more traditional type of daffodils and I contrasted these ones with some white flowers in the background.

I had actually wanted to find some bluebells to photograph as the news had been going on about how they were all out two weeks early because of the warm weather. So we headed back into the wooded area but none of the bluebells had started to flower yet. I guess the news people must have been further South. However we did se a few small clumps of these blue flowers which look as though they must be related to bluebells but have very tightly paced flower heads.

Back to the daffodils and here there were some white ones with yellow middles and some yellow ones with orange middles behind. The white ones all had double heads and the yellow ones had tripple heads. I really hadn't realised how many different types of daffodils there are. I think the gardeners must be specialising in having different types of daffodils scattered around the park.

The next type of daffodils were very small and also had multiple heads on each stalk.

Finally for the daffodils back to the more common yellow ones, although the trumpets on these look a bit more fancy than the ones we'd seen earlier so maybe these were special ones too.

Near the entrance to the park was a couple of beds with a lovely mixture of yellow, white and orange blooms.

I took quite a few close ups of the flowers in the beds and I think this was the best one.

On Sunday morning I got up early to take my daughters dog for a long walk and on the way back I went through the woods close to our house. Here I found the bluebells that I hadn't found in the woods next to the park. There was still a load more that hadn't started to flower yet but there were certainly a good number already out. The first ones I saw were a bit sparse so I got some close ups of these.

A little further along the path there was more of a carpet of the bluebells in a patch of sunlight between the trees.

Again I tried for some close up shots and this time there are more bluebell flowers in the background. I was being very careful not to stand on the bluebells as they had been saying on the news that they are very tender and can be easily damaged.

Another patch of bluebells were enjoying the early morning sunshine. I will check back next week to see how many bluebells are out over the Easter weekend. The weather forecast is for some sunshine and warm weather this week so there should be a lot more to see.

When I got back home I thought I'd take some photos of the few flowers in our garden before I went in for breakfast. There were some nice pinkish red flowers in the front garden ...

... and next to them some lovely purple alpines growing over the rocks. It looked a bit odd because the part of this plant that was in the ground had't started to flower yet. I wonder if the rocks retain more heat and allow the plants to thrive better?

Also in the front garden the cherry tree had finally started to blossom. The cherry trees in a neighbours garden had flowered weeks ago and all their flowers had gone.

In the back garden we have this bush with lots of little white flowers that smell very sweet as you walk past them.

And the last photo is the flaming pieris which isn't a flower but is quite colourful all the same.

I took a few other photos while out and about so I might put some in a post a bit later in the week. Looking forward to the Easter holiday, with the Royal wedding and the bank holidays I've just had to use 3 days of annual leave to get 11 days away from work. I have quite a few jobs around the house and garden to do but hopefully I should get plenty of time to take lots more photos.

Black Headed Gull

2011-04-04T23:57:00.000+01:00

Since we came back from the North-East I haven't had much in the way of successful photo expeditions so I thought I'd bring up some images that I made during my winter doldrums. I think it must just be the time of year because when I looked back at last year I had a long break from blogging at the same time. Anyhow less of my winter depression and on to the images.

It's been very cold this winter, we've had snow, we've had ice and in the second week of the year I went for a walk around one of the local reservoirs. The surface of the reservoir was almost completely frozen over so the ducks and geese were either skating along the ice or dipping in the water near the edge. Here's a wide angle shot of the ducks and the reservoir.

There was a single black headed gull (in it's winter plumage) out on the ice so I got my long lens out to take a couple of shots. He looked quite a gentleman strutting across the ice and glancing over at me as if to say "wot you looking at mate?".

The he decided to take off and fly around. It was quite windy so he was hanging quite nicely in the air overhead. I thought I'd try to get some shots of him up in the air. I pushed the ISO setting up to 800 so I could get a shutter speed of 1/4000 second and hopefully get some decent shots.

I took lots of shots but on the first ones my focus was a bit out and there there were quite a few where he was flying away from me or his wing was covering his head. In these shots I managed to get him with a little catchlight in his eye which always makes the photo look a bit better.

In the last shot he was coming back down to land on the ice and he'd brought his undercarriage down to meet the ice. I just had a bit of motion blur on this last one but hopefully it doesn't spoil it too much.

Hopefully I'll find something for next time or I might get inspired enough to make some new photos. It'll be spring soon and maybe more opportunities will come up to be creative.

On the Beach

2011-03-26T00:51:00.000Z

I guess the posts are a bit out of order because all of these photos were taken on the way from Seahouses to Bambrugh but I had processed the Bambrugh Castle ones first so they were ready to post. The other reason why I haven't rushed these ones onto the blog is that I don't know how interesting they're going to be to anyone else. I like them because I was there, but the majority are pictures or waves and rocks and there's not that much to say about them.

As we left Seahouses we found a way down onto the rocks, but this was a bit of a mistake because they were very wet and slippery. The seaweed and moss made the going very slow and treacherous. However I did manage to get a shot looking back to the harbour which I quite like. On the horizon there was still that narrow band of clearer sky which I had photographed earlier in the morning at Low Newton.

The beaches in this area seem to have nice stretches of sand with outcrops of rocks reaching out into the sea. It's quite pretty in March so I guess it will look even nicer duding the summer months. I think for photographs the sandy bits are quite boring so most of the photographs are of the rocky bits. The next photo of rocky bits was a bit further up the beach and this is the first edge we reached which was sheltered from the waves.

Whereas at the other side of this outcrop of rocks the waves were rolling up the rocks. The rock formation is a bit strange because it looks as if it was a flat stretch of rock that been tipped up about twenty to thirty degrees. I didn't get a lot of depth of field on this shot, I guess I must have focussed on the seaweed on the front rock and then everything else it very soft. The harbour is in the background and the narrow band of pink sky is showing up a bit more in this shot.

This is another shot from the same place but this time I've concentrated more on the waves rolling in.

And again the waves breaking onto the rocks and spraying foam into the air.

In the next shot I had moved off the rocks and back onto the beach. Again I'm looking back to the harbour at Seahouses and this time seeing a bit more of the town. From here you get a better view of how the rocks slope out of the beach and form lines going out into the sea.

This next shot was taking a lot further along the beach and this time the rocks are stood a few more feet out of the water. Again the water at this side of the rocks is very calm but the waves are battering the other side.

This next photo was between two bigger sets of rocks and here there was a narrow line of rocks which are wavy along the top. It looked a little bit like a piano keyboard to me. I tried to walk along the top of them out into the sea but big waves kept coming up and covering them.

This next photo is where there was a little stream coming off the land and down the beach. I tried to capture a leading line starting at the bottom left and curving around to the right and then away over the wave that's starting to beak and on towards the island. By this time the narrow band of pink sky that had been on the horizon had gone so we had wall to wall cloudy skies.

Onto the next rock formation and another wave breaking over the rocks.

Here's another shot of a big wave heading towards the rocks. I quite like the colours in the wave on the right hand side with the yellowy brown sand and the bluey green of the sea merging together.

Here's a closer up shot of a wave about to break. Again the brown and green in the wave and then the white foam looking a bit like melted candle wax below the crest. I cropped a bit of beach out of this shot so the emphasis was more on the waves.

In the next shot I've done a black and white conversion because there wasn't a lot of colour anyway and it allowed me to push the contrast a bit more. The sea looks to be boiling and shooting foam up into the air like like fireworks.

In the next shot a big wave had crashed over the rocks and then as the sea went back down the water was running off of the rocks. Again the foam looks a bit like candle wax especially at the very front of the photo where camera has frozen the foam in waves and the oddly arcing globule in the middle.

Most of the rocks along the beach were very igneous looking but every so often there were small areas of sedentary rocks which were almost slate like. This particular slab looked a bit like a contour map of the Himalayas and was very colourful with the oranges at the front and the greens at the rear. I was also intrigued by the straight lines cutting through the layers as though it had been broken and then glued back together.

On the way back from Bambrugh to Seahouses the tide had come all the way in and almost all of the rocks had been completely covered by the sea. So the journey back was a lot quicker because I didn't take as many photos and the only ones worth posting have been included in earlier post.

I'm not sure what to do on my next blog so it'll be a surprise to everyone, including me.

Bamburgh Castle

2011-03-23T00:11:00.000Z

We had a good walk along the beach from Seahouses and went as far as Bamburgh Castle. Next post I might show a few shots of the beach but for now here's a bit of what we saw in and around the castle. This first photo is from the beach as we headed towards the sand dunes between us and the castle. It doesn't look too much but the dunes were pretty steep and the sand was quite soft which made it very hard going to get to the castle. Also there was a big ditch behind the first line of dunes where you had to go all the way down and then back up a bigger slope. With all the stuff I had in my back pack I was pretty worn out by the time I reached the castle walls. I guess that would be how any attackers would feel if they approached the castle from the beach and had loads of armour weighing them down.

We went into the castle and then found a bench on the castle walls to have a drink and an apple to keep us going (this was our lunch after the big breakfast we'd had at the hotel). While my wife sat on the bench I took a few shots from the castle wall. This first one was looking down the barrel of a cannon which was pointed out to sea. You might just be able to make out a couple walking with their dog down on the beach. In the hazy distance are the Farne Islands (I think).

Along the castle wall were a few more cannons pointing out towards the sea.

Looking over the castle wall is the view of the sand dunes which don't look as steep as the ones that we had climbed up, although it's quite hard to tell from up here. The ones that we had come over are around behind the gatehouse but the dunes do look bigger over in that direction.

This next shot was from the same place but looking more towards the castle. Here we can see some more of the cannons and also the inner wall of the castle, the second line of defence.

After we'd finished our lunch we had a quick look around the Armstrong aircraft museum which was in the lower part of the castle and then we headed towards the state rooms within the inner castle walls. As we walked around there seemed to be lots of building within the castle where people are living today, which we thought was a bit odd. This next photo is the outside of the great hall, on the left, and some of the living quarters on the right. Remember the the shape of the windows in the great hall for a later photo.

On one of the topmost parts of the castle wall was this small turret with a big bell inside. The weathering on the stonework is quite amazing and illustrates the variety of different stones that was used to build the castle.

We went inside the staterooms and the first room had this fantastic wooden model of the castle. I'm not sure that the dues are as steep as the model suggests though.

There were a few rooms with lots of old bits and pieces in cabinets which were fairly interesting but not worth photographing. We arrived at the great hall with had this lovely wooden roof construction. The hall had been completely rebuilt relatively recently which accounts for the incredible condition of the roof timbers.

The next pair of photos are of a very ornate clock which was in the great hall. The first one I took with the light from the windows reflecting off the clock face. Remember the shape from the photograph of the outside of the great hall. In the second shot I moved to one side so as to have no window light and therefore a better view of the clock face. I couldn't decide which version I prefer so I put them both here.

On a raised area at one end of the great hall was a random selection of furniture set out to appear to be a room setting.

In a later room was a dining table with this selection of glass bowls and decanters. The room was very dark but the light from the window lit up the glassware beautifully.

In the next room was this lovely fireplace with the glass screen in front.

The next rooms were the armoury where there was lots of displays of armour and weapons. Then we went down into the cellars where there were more displays of weapons and armour. I quite liked this display of swords on the arch of the cellar.The light was very strange in the cellar so I converted it to monochrome to make it look a bit better.

The final display in the cellar was the dungeon, very scary.

After that we had a quick look around the shop and then back out into the fresh air. Just before we set off to walk back to Seahouses I grabbed this last shot of an old cart near to the stables (and toilets).

Birds in Northumbria

2011-03-18T00:21:00.002Z

As I mentioned in my previous post I managed to get a few bird pictures while we were on the coast. The first few in this post were in the early morning at Low Newton by the Sea while it was still fairly dark so theres a lot of noise on the images. Later in the day we went for a walk from Seahouses to Bamburgh Castle and back where I had some successes and failures with the photos.

This first image was of one of a pair of Oyster Catchers which were feeding on the edge of the water.

Next to them were a pair of birds which I think may be Bar-Tailed Godwits. Of course I had to look them up on the RSPB Bird ID website because I really don'r have a clue. For a while I did think they could Greenshanks but I think the colouring of the beak made me settle for Godwits.

I tried to get closer but of course they flew away. First the Godwits ....

.... closely followed by the Oyster Catchers.

Further along the beach there were lots of smaller birds milling around the waters edge. In this next picture I think these are Turnstones at the front and Sanderlings further back.

The next image shows some more of the Sanderlings with some Oyster Catchers and a Godwit in the background.

I tried standing very still to see if any of the birds would come a bit closer and eventually a bunch of the Sanderlings started to head towards me. The little fella in the next shot came the closest but then they started to move away again so I went back to the hotel for breakfast.

After breakfast we drove to Seahouses where we parked up, put on our walking boots and filled my camera bag with all we needed (including a litre of water, a couple of apples and some sweets). We walked towards the harbour and there was a couple of Herring Gulls (maybe?) sat on the fence. This one was watching me very closely as I got nearer to him to take this shot.

I think this may be some kind of Turn (Arctic or Common possibly) that was sat on a rock down on the beach. It seemed to be looking out to sea.

A little further along the beach there was a couple of Turnstones sat on a rock and as we walked towards them I managed to get a shot of this one as it flew off.

As we were walking along the beach we could see a few large birds sitting out on the water between us and the islands (Farne Islands perhaps?). We couldn't make out what they were because even with my longest telephoto lens they were still quite far away. This image has been well cropped and when referring to my favourite Bird Id site I can identify this as an Eider (from where the feathers for Eiderdowns come).

Further along the coast towards Bamburgh we saw these geese at the other side of the seaweed covered rocks. I knew they weren't Canadian Geese, they were too dark for Greylag or Barnacle Geese so again I had to resort to the Bird Id site. So I am pretty certain they are Brent Geese. The RSPB site show them mainly wintering on the South East coast of England with just a little spot on the Northumberland coast.

We visited Bamburgh Castle and had lunch which consisted of a sit down, and apple and a drink of water. We'd had a big breakfast at the hotel so didn't really need much to eat. We had decided to dave ourselves for our evening meal.

On the walk back to Seahouses there was a group of Oyster Catchers walking along the beach in front of us. At one point they headed towards these rocks and so we managed to get level with them so I managed to get this shot of them.

There were a few other people walking on the beach so the Oyster Catchers kept flying up and down the stretch of beach. I was determined to try and get a good shot of them in flight, and I thought I'd got some really good ones when I looked at them on the back of the camera. Unfortunately once I'd uploaded them to my computer I could see that they were mostly out of focus on the birds. Which was a bit of a shame as one that I particularly liked had four of them in very close formation. I realised afterwards that I should have had my cameras autofocus on the AI Servo setting so that it followed the birds as they flew. Anyhow this was the least blurred of them all so it's going to have to do until I get another chance.

When we got back to Seahouses we stopped to sit on a bench for a while and my wife was talking to my daughter on the phone. I was taking a few shots over the cliff at the waves crashing against the sea wall as the tide was almost all the way in by now. A Herring Gull kept flying overhead so this is a shot of it going by.

We'd walked a few miles up and down the beach and also around the castle at Bamburgh so we were pretty tired, so we went back to the hotel and had a rest before dinner.

Next time will either be shots of the beach during our walk or Bamburgh Castle.

Low Newton by the Sea at Dawn

2011-03-16T00:10:00.000Z

After we had been to Beamish we stopped at the Masons Arms at Rennington near Alnwick and the room was quite nice. We had a lovely meal in the restaurant with a bottle of reasonable wine. The people running the hotel and restaurant were very friendly and made us feel at home.

I got up very early the next morning because I wanted take some photos of the sun rising over the sea. It's hard to tell when you get up when it's still dark to know whether the weather is going to be good to you so as I drove towards the coast I was just hoping I could get some good photos. Unfortunately I didn't have a map so I drove in the general direction towards Seahouses and looked out for somewhere I could find a beach. I saw a sign that said Newton by the Sea, which sounded promising, so I turned off and headed towards the town. I wasn't that close to the sea but another sign in the town pointed to Low Newton so I carried on until I could see the sea at the end of the road and I pulled into a car park.

It was starting to get light and I could see that there was just a narrow band of clear sky just above the horizon but lots of cloud above. It wasn't looking too promising but I thought I'd persist and see what I could catch. This first image was taken soon after I reached the beach, the tide was quite a way out and the sand was very wet. It was still quite dark and I had my camera on the tripod because I knew I was going to need some long shutter speeds to get enough light into the camera. There was a group of birds just on the waters edge and the redness of the sky was reflecting on the wet sand. The odd pebbles on the beach and the lines in the sand give the foreground a bit of texture. The focus is on the beach in the foreground so the birds and the rocks behind are a little soft but I thought it was quite a good first shot.

For the next image I had moved up to where the birds had been and had the camera low down near the sea. I closed down the aperture to give a greater depth of field and also slow down the shutter speed even further to six seconds. The effect it produces is to make the sea look very ghostly as the tide move in and out over the rocks and seaweed.

The next shot is a bit further along the beach and this time is over two and a half seconds so there's a bit more texture in the waves. I was thinking I could have done with my filters to cut down the light a bit more so I could get an even longer shutter speed. Next time I will try and remember to bring them with me.

Here I got low down to a patch of big pebbles and a small pool behind the rocks. I've never been to this coastline before so I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to find on the beach. So far there seems to be a lot of variety.

It was starting to get a bit lighter now although there was still no sign of the sun on the horizon. In the distance I could see what looked like the remains of an old castle out on a peninsular so I took a slightly longer telephoto shot of it. When I got home and looked up where I was on google maps I discovered that the ruins were Dunstanburgh Castle which might be worth a visit next time we come this way.

I continued walking along the beach and the sun was trying to get above the horizon. There also appeared another bank of cloud on the horizon so the narrow bank of clear sky became even smaller. These next few shots were all taken in a very short time as the light from the sun behind the lower bank of cloud was reflecting off the bottom of the higher clouds. In the first one I was trying to capture the texture on the underside of the clouds.

In the second shot I pulled back and was trying to get more of the secondary reflection of the light from the underside of the cloud in the surface of the sea.

Very quickly the light was getting more defused so I moved along the beach to behind the seaweed on the rocks. Here the light was reflecting on the seaweed as well as all across the sea. I had slowed the shutter speed down again to lighten the scene and also smooth out the waves.

I moved along the shore a little more so that I wasn't completely behind the seaweed for this next shot. The light in the sky was getting more and more fuzzy.

In the next shot I swung the camera back towards the south to get another shot of the castle in the distance. The sun was still coming up on the left and the light in the sky was even more fuzzy.

I took quite a lot of shots as the sun finally made its appearance above the clouds on the horizon. I chose the next shot because you can see nearly the whole disc of the sun in the ever narrowing gap between the cloud banks.

Shortly afterwards the sun started to disappear behind the upper cloud bank. I liked this shot because of the line of light right from the horizon up to the seaweed on the beach.

Soon after this it started to get a bit lighter but the colours in the sky we becoming less vivid. I took a few more shots but I felt they were becoming less interesting. I was also feeling a bit thirsty and ready for my breakfast so I decided to head back up the beach towards Low Newton. There were quite a few birds on the beach so I put my long telephoto lens onto the camera so I could grab a few pictures of the birds. I might put some on the next post. I turned around and saw the castle in the distance and there was nearly enough light to see some detail so I took one last shot before concentrating on the birds.

As a set of sunrise photographs these weren't the best but they weren't a total washout, I'm quite happy. I've had much worse days nearer to home but I was my only real opportunity on this short visit to the North East. We will no doubt come again and maybe I might have a bit more luck.

Beamish

2011-03-09T22:27:00.000Z

It's been a while, I don't know what happened. I have been busy clearing down my photographs from last year, then I got side tracked onto photos from 2009 and then pre 2009. I have deleted somewhere in the region of 10,000 images and I've still a way to go. I've also re-processed (or processed for the first time) quite a lot of images from 2010 and 2009. I don't seem to have had time to post on any of my blogs. Anyhow I'm back and I am going to blog more regularly from now on.

We had a couple of days off from work last week and made a trip up to the North East of England starting with a visit to the Beamish outdoor museum. It's spread over quite a big area and there are a few different parts of the site to visit. You can either walk along the paths or there is a regular service of buses and trams to pick you up and drop you at the main centres. I've left the photos small on the page because there are lots, but if you want to see bigger versions you can click on them. Many of the inside places were very dark so some of the images have a bit of noise, however if the noise bothers you the pictures can't be that interesting.

We walked down to the pit village where we looked into the school house. This classroom was set up for a class of children to come and see what school was like in the olden times,

In one of the rooms was a teacher screwing up bits of newspaper to use for lighting the fires in the classrooms. He was talking to a visitor and it struck me that he looked as if he was being told off by the teacher. Made me smile.

Here's my wife Lynne learning her 9 times table and how to add up in Pounds, Shillings and Pence. She seemed to be struggling a bit, but as an accountant you wouldn't expect her to be able to cope with money sums.

Across the road from the school was a row of typical pit workers houses. Two up and two down where anywhere up to fourteen people would live. Four generations under one roof was not unusual. The heart of the houses would be the big coal burning range where all the cooking and heating happens. The houses had old tin baths hung up outside which would be brought in and filled with water from the big kettles.

The next house in the row was a bit more grand and a lot less cramped. Perhaps a supervisor or manager lived here.

In their front room they had a lovely dining table set up for afternoon tea. The previous house had to have beds in the front room to accommodate the number of people living there.

At the end of the road was the pit head with the engineering shop and stores. Within one of the buildings was a small office where one of the managers would have worked.

We walked along the path towards the town and stopped off to have a look at the station. We really loved these old trunks piled up on the trolley and the old posters in the notice board behind.

From the station we walked along to the town where there was these old fashioned tin advertisements on the fence.

The houses in the town were much bigger than the pit houses and many of them had businesses being run from them. Here is the office at the solicitors house.

This is the dentists' waiting room at the entrance to the house and his surgery was on the floor above.

Upstairs in the house next door was a lovely nursery with lots of toys and games scattered about and the table set out with a dolls tea set.

While downstairs in the kitchen was a lovely dresser with all the Sunday best china displayed,

And in the front room was a typical Victorian clutter with all sorts of ornaments an nik-naks.

Around the back of the houses was a yard where the horse drawn carriages were kept. Inside one of the sheds there was a tool bench in the corner with boxes for nuts, bolts and other assorted hardware.

Along from the tool store was a little forge with the water bath for quenching the iron products made here.

Back onto the street and there was a row of shops including this sweet shop. In the back room they made their own sweets for sale.

Further around on the road was the bank.

Inside was the cashiers desks.

This lovely little safe was tucked inside the managers office but the main safe and safety deposit boxes were down in the cellars.

Back outside the bank we see the row of shops and a pub.

Opposite these shops was a garage and a big old co-op with a separate door for each department. We started off in the grocery department where there was all the old fashioned boxes of everyday products such as salt, corned beef and biscuits.

Next door was the drapers and then the hardware store.

It is an amazing museum and even though quite a bit of it was closed for the winter season we had a really good time. All the staff were very friendly and more than happy to recount their tales of how things were in the Victorian and Edwardian times. We also visited the Masonic Hall, the print shop where I "coined a phrase" with the printer and a few other places which I haven't included in the blog. We will go to the museum again in the summer season to see the bits that weren't open such as the farm and the manor house. They are constantly building new places and are hoping to open a bakery and coal fired fish and chip shop in the town sometime soon.

If you've never been to Beamish, go now.

Garden Birds in the Snow

2010-12-05T23:01:00.000Z

We've had the heaviest snow on record for November which has caused a lot of disruption but given me the opportunity to get a new selection of birds in the garden. I have made some videos of the birds on the bird feeders which I'll put at the end of the post. But I wanted to get some photos of the birds without the feeders in the picture. This first one is a little bluebird sitting patiently in the branches.

In this second photo is the first of three robin pictures. In this one the snow is coming down and the robin is hunched down and appears to be sheltering under the bigger branch.

Here we have a blackbird feeding on the bright orange berries from the bush. Not a particularly good quality photo but I just liked the way you can see the berry just before it disappears. I have a series of shots with the bird having a couple of berries from the bush but this was my favourite.

The next is what I think is a female robin,but I'm not 100% sure. It's sat in almost exactly the same place as the black bird in the previous photo but the sun was a bit brighter so it's come out a little better.

This little blue tit was eating snow, I guess because all the water about is frozen. I just thought it looked very amusing with the snow all around its beak.

The last two photos are the other robin pictures that I mentioned earlier. I think it's the same robin in both photos, quite a chubby little fellow.

The first video was taken after the first small amount of snow and shows the feeder with the orange berried bush behind and then one of the balls. Towards the end of the video is MacKinnley the cat from down the road. He's a bit of a bully, but quite a magnificent cat.

The second video is much longer is just has a compilation of bits from about 2 hours of recording. The first parts are of the nut holder looking down the road and the second set of parts are looking back towards the house. You might just see me looking out of the window sometimes

A bit of a mixture

2010-11-15T23:50:00.000Z

I hadn't been to Scout Dyke Reservoir since August so I though it was time I went back for a visit. I had intended on getting up early enough to make some sunrise images but I seem to be having trouble waking up at the weekends. So it was about 8am before I arrived and about a dozen anglers were already out on the banks of the reservoir. The sun hadn't been up too long and there was just a few small clouds in the sky although it did look as though more were on their way.

As I walked along the reservoir wall I saw that the early morning sun was coming through a gap and hitting these trees at the bottom of the dam wall so I went down the slope to get a closer look. The foliage on these trees was very light brown and a bit dead looking but the orange sun made them glow. The grass of the fields in the background was also being lit up by the sunlight but the rest of the foreground was very much in the shade. I used tone mapping to bring up the detail of the small stone building and the bridge across to it. On a normally exposed shot these details were purely silhouettes.

I walked along the bottom of the dam wall slope next to the woods where I spotted a couple of mushrooms in the grass. Yes more fungi, I can't help it, it's just that time of year. As usual it was pretty dark and damp so to get the shot I put the ISO setting straight up to 800 which has made it a bit noisy in the background but I'm not too worried. The things I love about this photos are the textures on the mushroom and also the little drops of dew on the tips of the grass.

The second mushroom was up the slope a little from the first and although they look to be the same type the top hasn't opened up as much as the first, making it look quite different. There was no way I was going to get them both in focus so, a bit unconventionally I guess, I decided to focus on the one at the back. Again there's nice textures on the mushroom and the dew on the grass but if you look closely at the background on the right there are lots of tiny mushrooms too.

I took some shots of this angler casting his fly with a deft flick of his rod. I took several shots as he fished but I liked the shapes in this one the best. This side of the bank was still in a lot of shade so it was pretty dark still.

We walked up to the far end of the reservoir and onto an area which is normally under the water. Although we seem to have had a lot of rain recently the water level in this reservoir does't appear to have gone up very much. The clouds in the background look a bit threatening for more rain as they started to move in front of the sun. This pile of rock in the foreground is the remains of a platform that the water bailiff had built for the herons a couple of years back when the water was low. I have some photos of him building it and also of a heron sat on top of it looking down into the water below. I'm surprised he hasn't rebuilt it while the water level has been so low. Maybe the anglers aren't too keen on providing perching facilities for the herons as they probably take a lot of the fish.

This is the main channel of water coming into the reservoir at the very top end. As you can see the sky in the opposite direction to the previous shot is completely clear blue. Although this channel is only five of six feet wide it is very deep and if you look closely at the foreground you can see how the edges look to go straight downwards below the weed.

As I walked down the other bank of the reservoir the clouds that were threatening earlier moved completely away and the sun came out. I was quite intrigued by this pile of stones because it wasn't here last time I came to the reservoir. I'm guessing that someone was a bit bored and decided to collect some of the stones from the old dry stone walls that were here before the reservoir was built and make a pretend boat with them. I guess it could be the beginnings of a pier to fish from and maybe the herons or the cormorants would find it useful. When the water level does finally come back up it will disappear below the water and fall apart just like the herons perch in the earlier picture.

Well I was a bit later than expected posting these pictures and I have some more to post on my computer and still more still in my camera to look at from this last weekend. I guess I need to spend some time and catch up before I have to start thinking about not taking any new shots for a while.

Autumn Scenes

2010-11-09T00:02:00.000Z

There was the promise of a nice day so I thought I'd get some autumn leaves pictures in the woods a couple of miles from my home. In the middle of the woods is a field which has about half a dozen nicely shaped trees scattered around where I was sure there would be some good photo opportunities. I have photographed the trees many times before and I thought they would be looking good in their autumn colours. On the drive to the woods I spotted some trees in a field next to the road that looked quite interesting so I stopped and took a few shots. This first image is a tone mapped HDR of the trees with the houses behind and Holme Moss transmitter on the horizon. The power lines and post in the foreground spoil it a bit but I decided to leave them in the frame anyway.

When I reached the woods the sky was becoming a bit dull as a haze covered the sun. I took quite a few photos in the field but I wasn't that happy with any of them. I've included this image in the post as a starting point for what I was trying to make.

I decided to go for a walk in the woods and then if the light had improved to return to the field for another attempt at getting the shots I wanted. I walked up through the woods and then out to some fields at the top of the hill where there was a crab apple tree with loads of apples around its base. I took a few shots of the apples from different angles and different focal lengths and the two I liked where this one and one that I've used on my Begin Photo blog.

Further around the fields I spotted the head of a bird poking up under a tree in the corner of the field. I took a few shots and tried to get closer to try and get some better shots. To begin with I hadn't recognised what sort of bird it was but as I got closer I realized it was a young pheasant. As I crept closer the bird had obviously spotted me and had started to make its escape across the ploughed field. There turned out to be three of them making there way slowly away from me. One of them stopped briefly and opened up its wing before continuing on its way. I'm not sure if this was a way of making itself look bigger than it was but I think it makes a good image of the birds feathers.

After a bit more of a walk I returned to the field and took this next shot of my favourite tree in the field. Its the one in the background from the earlier photo. I like this shot because the cloud behind it is almost exactly the same shape on the top.

As I took more photos in the field the clouds in the sky continued to get smaller and separated. I'd swapped my lens to a very wide angle zoom to take this next photo. It's the same tree again from a slightly different angle and again I see a repetition of the shape of the tree in the clouds behind. There is yet another photo of this tree in my Begin Photo blog taken from a bit closer and again a slightly different angle. I probably took about fifty shots of this tree in the two visits to the field on this day.

The final shot was taken as I was leaving the woods and the sun was shining very brightly through the trees. Here the ground was covered with a layer of orangey brown leaves which contrast with the greeny orange leaves still on the trees.

I've taken a lot more photos in the last couple of days and I'll try to post some more before the end of the week.

Chateau Serrant

2010-10-23T01:36:00.000+01:00

The first image from Serrant is the first view of the chateau as you leave the visitors payment desk. This is effectively the side entrance where you would go on the bridge over the moat and through the smaller set of gates and into the courtyard. The weather was lovely but at times a little too harsh for decent photos.

As we crossed the bridge over the moat at the side gate there were some big fish swimming about below us. This one was very excitable and looked as if was trying to get out of the water.

Once inside the courtyard we had this wonderful view of the main gate which had a straight drive down to some more gates onto the main road. At either side of the drive was a stretch of lawn and then a few avenues of trees all in straight lines.

We waited in the courtyard to join the guided tour around the inside of the chateau. The tour started in some dark passages through the cellars where we were shown the original wiring from when the chateau first got electricity. It looked quite scary but it's all been replaced by modern circuits because it was dangerous. The tour then went around the kitchens which were also in the cellars where we saw some amazing old kitchen equipment. Then up the stairs through the dining room, library music room and then up more stairs into the bedrooms. There were some amazing things in there but I wasn't allowed to take photos so nothing to show here. I could have bought some postcards or a guide book and scanned them but it's not the same.

After the tour we went to walk around the lake where we had some wonderful views of the house reflected in the lake. I love the clump of trees beside the lake and you can just see at the other side of the trees are some steps down to the water. I guess they would probably have had boats on the lake at one time.

It wasn't possible to walk around the lake as it was fenced off so we had to head back towards the house where I took this next shot using some of the trees around the lake to frame the shot.

It's quite odd how, what effectively is, the back of the house was much fancier the the front. I suspect people living here used to spend more of their time at this side of the house by the lake. There were probably some lovely formal gardens down each side of this path but now there is just grass. Directly behind me when I took this shot are the steps down to the lake that I mentioned earlier.

This shot shows the little bridge from the back doors which don't look as if they are used any more. There is a little door under the bridge which I think is where the kitchen is situated and someone had put bread on the step for the swans that were in the moat. The family that own the chateau still live here up on the top two floors in the roof space and the two wings at the front of the chateau.

We walked all the way around the house and this shot shows the bridge that we crossed to get into the courtyard and the bridge to the main gate. On the right of the picture is one of the private wings of the chateau where there is a little chapel for the household to use. In the centre of the image is one of the two separate buildings which flank the main gate. I'm not sure what these were used for but I suspect they could have been the servants quarters because the damp dark passage where we began the tour started in the cellar of this building.

There were some other buildings where we entered the grounds from the car park but they seemed to be private residences now apart from the first one where we paid to come in. There was another lake next to the one where I took the photos but that looked more like a mill pond or a little reservoir. There was also a pigeonerre on site but it was currently being refurbished and was completely covered by a tarpaulin. It's quite a nice chateau but certainly not one of the best in the Loire Valley.

More Fungi

2010-10-14T23:47:00.000+01:00

It's that fungi time of year and any walk through the woods or any other dark, damp places will find some kind of mushroom. As with my previous fungi post the challenge is to find enough light to get a decent shot or ramp the ISO on the camera as far as you can without getting a lot of noise.

This first image was taken near Bretton in a pile of big old logs piled up at the side of the path. The logs have obviously been here a while with the part of the image on the right showing a lot of woodworm holes. These two little yellow mushrooms were tucked in between the logs and are quite colourful. There were some other mushrooms of a different kind up on the top of a pile of logs but it was too dangerous to climb up and photograph them. We also saw some other big mushrooms out in the field and although the light was a lot better the mushrooms were in a very sorry state.

The rest of the shots in this post were taken in Beaumont Park near Huddersfield. This first one was on its own at the entrance to some caves. I had to remove a layer of old leaves from around it so I could get a clear shot. I decided to covert it to black and white (using the blue filter setting) because I felt it brought the contrast up nicely and there wasn't much colour to be seen anyway.

These next mushrooms were growing on an old log floating in a swampy looking pond. I couldn't get very close to them so this was the best shot I could take. The green dotty weed on the top of the water was very bright green and I thought it really detracted from the main subject of the mushrooms so I selectively desaturated the green and yellow so that the mushrooms came forward a bit.

This next mushroom must have been six to eight inches across and I think the weight of the top must have made it fall over. This one was just in a patch of sunlight and you may be able to make out another

one fallen over in the darkness of the background.

Just under one tree there were several patched of this strange spiky mushroom. Some of the patches were old and had started to decay but the others were quite fresh and bright.

In the last photo I converted to monochrome with a hint of brown as a comparison to the previous photo. I'm not sure which version I prefer. I think the colour in the leaves are a bit of a distraction in the first version but maybe the second one is too plain. Now I'm looking at the second photo again I'm feeling the leaf on the left in the foreground is a big distraction so I might have a go at cloning it out or darkening it drastically towards the corner.

I realise that I still haven't posted any of the other photos from my previous visit to Beaumont Park and I have lots of photos from France still to process. I think I might need to try and post more regularly to catch up a bit. The thing is I've been considering starting a new blog about getting started with digital photography, very much a beginners guide. I've only had a decent camera for about three years so I don't consider myself an expert but I might be able to help some people who are at the same stage that I was three years ago. I guess I need to think it out a bit more first but I'll post some links if I ever get it up and running.

The Heron

2010-10-11T00:30:00.001+01:00

I've always had problems getting any decent photos of herons around home because they either fly away before I get anywhere near them or I see them when I don't have my camera with me. There was even one occasion when I had a heron in my sights and it flew off just before I pressed the button. When I looked up from my camera I realised the the dog had run after it while I was concentrating on sizing up my shot. So when I spotted a heron on this floating jetty I was hoping I might have better luck. It was looking quite relaxed and there were a number of seagulls sharing the jetty.

We were at the Lac de Maine near Angers in France on a lovely hot sunny day. It's a leisure lake just across the river from the city and had areas for boating and a sandy bay where the locals sunbathed and swam. As I crept closer the seagulls moved away and the heron began to look restless. It stood up and started waking along the jetty.

As I tried to get a little closer the seagulls took off closely followed by the heron. I was ready for it to take off and had adjusted my camera for a bigger depth of field making sure that the shutter speed was still quite fast. Because it was sunny I was still able to get 1/750th of a second at F8 keeping the ISO at 100 and setting the exposure compensation to -1 ev. I was also panning as I took the shot which is why all of the background was blurred even at F8.

The heron kept quite low and went across the sky rather than way from me as it flew so I kept re-focussing and shooting. In the next shot it was heading towards the beach area of the lake and then over some trees at the edge.

After it had gone we carried on walking around the lake area and noticed a couple of pods next to the lake where people were fishing. As we came closer to the pond I spotted the heron wading in the shallow water next to some water lilly pads. I am fairly sure it was the same heron that I'd seen on the lake as this pond was in the general direction it was heading when it flew off before. I again tried to get closer without it seeing me and the trees around the pond gave me a bit of cover.

Just after I took the previous shot it must have seen me and flew off again. When I first looked at the display on the back of my camera I thought I'd got a great shot of it taking off but when I got a closer look I realised the it was mostly blurred. I guess the reason was that it was a bit darker around the pond than by the lake so the shutter speed had dropped to 1/250th of a second and the heron was moving its head, neck and wings too fast. The legs, tail feathers and the back are almost not blurred but I really needed the head to be a lot sharper and I could have got away with the wings been blurred I suppose. I should have aimed to get 1/750th or even 1/1000th of a second on the shutter speed to have got a better shot. I should really have bumped the ISO up to 400 or 800 to achieve the faster shutter speed, so it's a lesson I need to think about more when trying to photograph wildlife (or anything else) which is likely to move fast.

Fungii

2010-09-28T00:26:00.000+01:00

As I mentioned in my last blog I took a couple of photos of mushrooms and a few others that I was going to post later. On Saturday we went to Clumber Park, near Worksop and I took a few more mushroom photos so I thought I'd bundle all fungii shots together in a separate post. One of the things to mention straight away is that mushrooms tend to grow in gloomy places so it's usually a challenge to get any light on them without using a flash, which I didn't have with me either day. The first photo is of a very tatty looking mushroom which I took with my 17-85 lens at 85mm and even with the ISO at 800 and I could only get 1/15th of a second. Much too slow for this focal length but the image stabilisation did a pretty good job.

This next shot was using the same lens and focal setting but it was a bit more in the open so I lowered the ISO to 640 and managed to get 1/90th of a second this time. The challenge for this one was that my camera was down on the floor so I couldn't look through the view finder and I also had to rely on the autofocus doing it's job. I guess I could have laid down on the wet grass but as I wasn't in the best of health I decided that was probably not a good idea.

So on to Clumber Park and in this next photo the mushroom was in a patch of sunshine which had managed to find it's way through the trees. Unfortunately the mushroom was a bit covered over with grass and brambles so I tried to pull as much stuff out of the way but I was concerned that the sunshine could disappear at any moment so I took a quick shot. This time I was using my 70-300 lens at 105mm and managed to get 1/90th of a second at ISO 100. The main problem with this lens is that the nearest focussing distance is about a meter (3 ft) so I had to backup a way to get the composition I wanted.

This next photo was back into the dark again so I turned the ISO back up to 800 so I could get this shot at 1/180th of a second.

I moved around a bit to get this alternative shot of the two mushrooms and this time I was looking through a gap in the undergrowth hence the green blurry areas at each side. I think maybe when I look at it now that maybe I should crop out some of the green because it's too distracting. However I think I prefer this angle to the previous one because the stalks of the mushrooms are more visible.

The final photo was the least blurred of a set of half a dozen shots that I took of this mushroom. It was in a very dark spot underneath a load of brambles so I couldn't get very close to it at all. As a result I had the lens on full telephoto at 300mm and tried to take shots at 1/20th of a second which is sheer madness even with the image stabilisation on this lens. To be honest the mushroom wasn't that good so I didn't bother spending the time trying to get a better shot. It shouldn't really be in this post but I thought it wouldn't be too bad.

So next time I'll post the other photos from Beaumont Park and maybe some from Clumber Park too.

The Old Entrance at Beaumont Park

2010-09-24T00:11:00.001+01:00

So it seems, referring back to my previous post, that I wasn't just suffering from post-holiday blues and I've had a week off work with viral pleurisy. It's where the lining between the lungs and the chest wall (pleura) get inflamed and it is extremely painful to breathe. Anyway I'm back at work and although not completely at full health I am well on the mend.

On the day before I went back to work I decided to venture out for a walk to see how I managed to get about and I was OK but took it very steady. Anyone who may have been to Beaumont Park (or read my post from the 6th June last year) will know it's perched on a steep hillside with many sloping paths and steps, perhaps not the best place to go when it's hard to breathe. The original main entrance was at the bottom of the park and the visitors used to arrive on the railway and enter the park through the beautiful gates under the bridge. It guess it was more like entering the grounds of a castle than a park and I would think that it would have been very busy at the weekends in the summer from the early 19th Century until after the Second World War. I imagine that people would have been dressed in their best Sunday clothes to promenade around the many paths, past the water cascade and up to the bandstand at the top of the park. The railway line has long since been abandoned and the main entrance is now at the top end of the park.

The bridge over the entrance has been closed for a while with red and white tape preventing access and spoiling the view somewhat. I was so pleased when I walked down the steps towards the old entrance to see that it has been re-opened and the tape has gone. This first photo is as I approached the entrance using my fisheye lens attachment on my Lensbaby Composer. Everything is a bit overgrown down here so it feels a bit like descending into a abandoned fort down a canyon within a tropical rainforest.

On the bridge the old stonework is overgrown with moss and ivy and some of the bits of stone look as if they've been dropped here from somewhere else. This next photo was three shots taken with a 50mm lens at different exposures and tonemapped to bring out the rich detail in the stonework.

At the other end of the bridge there are step up to where the original cascade used to flow under a little bridge down a fifty foot cliff face and into a deep pool. In the centre background of this photo you might be able to make out apart of the cliff face. This photo and the next two were also taken using the fisheye because I wanted to get the very wide angle shots and I quite like the distortion around the edges.

This next shot is looking out through the main entrance under the bridge. The stonework here is very impressive and I would think that without the moss and ivy could look even better. I had one gate open and one shut for this shot. I experimented with them both open and both shut but in the end I preferred this shot (mainly because it was in focus, the Lensbaby has to be focused manually and with my eyes it can be a bit hit and miss whether anything is in focus). Through the gate you might be able to make out the iron girder which is where the railway line goes over the path into the park. It's all very overgrown out there now so I'm not sure whether there was another path from the old railway station which is a couple of hundred yards down the track.

This shot was taken from the old railway bridge and looking into the entrance. From here you can get a better idea of how overgrown it is with the ivy and bits of trees everywhere. I imagine that in its heyday this area would all have been kept very trimmed and clear of ivy. I'm not sure whether it shows up on this photo but the stones on which the gates are hung have been replaced with nice newly carved stones. The workmanship is good and matches the original stonework very well apart from being clean. I guess it won't take long for them to weather and merge into the old stonework better. Behind me there are more trees towering above the old railway line and it is quite dark down here even on the brightest days.

I had probably spent a good half to three quarters of an hour down here taking photos and opening and closing the gates so I think I had exhausted the subject for today. Next time I come here I might take some closer up shots to capture more of the detail in the stonework. I took this final shot of the entrance as I started up the path towards the site of the old cascade. I included the old bit of stone in the foreground to add a bit of depth to the shot.

I wasn't going to include this last shot in the post but as I've mentioned the old cascade a couple of times I decided to add this one. In the foreground are the steps coming up from the old entrance and in the top right corner you can see the little bridge where the water for the cascade used to come down. I imagine that when the cascade was in full flow this would have been quite a spectacle. The pool no longer exists and has been filled in for safety I would think. A new cascade has been made near the top of the park with a pond and a fountain (see my post 06/07/09) but I don't think it's as impressive as this old one would have been. However I shouldn't complain as they making improvements to the park every time I come back to see it. I don't suppose it will ever be as popular as it used to be but I quite like the old abandoned areas as much as the newly refurbished ones because there are so may photo opportunities here. I have a few more photos from the day (fungi, flowers and butterflies) and I might post them later.

Ethnic Dancers at Lire in France

2010-09-14T06:56:00.000+01:00

We've been back from France for over a week so I thought it was time to start posting some stuff from the holidays. To be honest we've not been feeling too bright since we came back and I don't know whether it's just post-holiday blues or maybe we've got some sort of flu like bug. Anyway less of the excuses.

I've decided to randomise my posting because day by day over three weeks seems a bit of an ordeal, plus I've not made that much progress on going through the nearly 1300 photos and 50 video clips since we got back. I'm starting with the ethnic dancers at Lire because these a straight video clips that all I've had to do with them is upload them to YouTube. I made mention of these dancers on the 1st September in my post about Chateau Brissac being closed but didn't have any photo to include of the dancers. They did about 10 or a dozen dances which were all brilliant and I videoed these three clips, hope you like them.

Poix de Picardie

2010-09-03T16:37:00.000+01:00

We left the gite and visited a few places on the way to Villaines la Juhel which were recommended by the eyewitness guide to the Loire. We weren't too impressed, the first was a small town that nothing out of the ordinary, then there was a big monastery which would have been OK if they actually allowed access to more than the church. Although the church itself did have some amazing carvings but as usual I couldn't take photos, had to buy a couple of postcards. The next place to visit we didn't even get out of the car so we just carried onto the hotel.

It was very hot again on the way so we had to shower as soon as we got to the hotel. There was a pizzeria on site so we decided to go there instead of venturing out again in the car. The food was very good, we had a lot of wine and when we left the barman insisted that we join him in a shot of calvados for his birthday.

Today we moved onto Poix near Amiens. As usual we took an unexpected detour around Rouen, I think we get lost every time we get anywhere near the place. Finally arrived and the hotel is quite nice, there is a bar and restaurant in the hotel so we may well eat here tonight. We went for a walk around the town and there's nothing much to see although we did visit the local ancient church. In the attached cemetery we were surprised to find a plot of World War Two war graves of commonwealth airmen. There were almost one hundred graves and there was a big plaque explaining all about why they were there. Many of the airmen were Canadian, Australian and from New Zealand but most were from the UK. The photo attached was taken in early July this year and looks exactly as it did today.

Apparently there is a three day festival of hot air balloons going on here and some of the balloonists are in the hotel. We've found some information on the interweb that there are eleven balloons which is far less than the hundred and fifty plus that we saw last year at the chateau at Brissac. Lynne just picked up a brochure in the bar with the itinerary and tonight is the inauguration so we'll give that a miss. Tomorrow they're doing a competition during the day and then in the evening they are at the nearby racecourse when they are doing a blowing up the balloons and there is a concert by 'Un Notre Parfum' from Rouen followed by fireworks. We might go to that although it depends when we get back from Amiens. There is another competition Sunday morning and something else in the evening but we will be heading back to Calais so will miss it.

Chateau de Brissac, Ferme a Mardi

2010-09-01T15:00:00.000+01:00

On Sunday we went to the Comme Dans l'Temps (as in time) country fayre at Lire, just south of the Loire from Ancenis. As promised there was music, dancing, country crafts, jalopies, old farm machinery, food, drink and surprises. We arrived during the lunch break so we had sausage sandwich, crepes with sugar and a glass of cider. After lunch, on the stage we had a brass band doing some French favourites and 'Roll out the barrel', then some dancers in Victorian type dresses followed by some ethnic dancers from either eastern Europe or maybe Greece or Turkey. Around the farm and fields there were all types of crafts being demonstrated including clog making, horse shoeing, bread making, wood working with old fashioned tools and a laundry in a pretend river using wooden boards and bats. There was an area with old mainly French cars and another area with old tractors and other farm machinery. There were stalls for the Poste, brick making, a pretend school, lace making, tombola, raffle, bowling and interestingly Esperanto. We had an M.C. In full top hat and tails with a radio mike wandering around and commenting on everything that was going on. Free parking and free entry made it a great afternoon out for a Yorkshireman. After a few hours we'd seen it all, had another drink and went home to sit by the pool.

The next day we chilled out around the gite and I went out for a couple of hours on my own to take some photos. On Tuesday we decided to got to the chateau at Brissac-Quince where we had been to the hot air balloon festival last year. We took a scenic route on the south side of the Loire and arrived around lunchtime. Went to a pizzeria where the waitress earned herself no tip by ignoring us as much as she could and serving everyone else before us. Fortunately the food was good otherwise I'd have given them 1 cent tip as a protest. After lunch we wandered down to the chateau where there was a sign that it would re-open at 2pm so we sat and waited a while. When there was no sign of life after 2 we had another look at the sign and noticed a small addition which said 'Ferme a Mardi', so I guess it doesn't open on a Tuesday, great. So we took a different scenic route back and chilled out by the pool again.

Today is our last day at the gite so we've been getting stuff packed ready to throw into the car in the morning and head towards the next hotel at Villianes de Juhel. We've picked a few stops on the way there as it's only a couple of hours from here and we can't book in until after 5 pm. It's quite hot again today but very windy as usual which keeps it quite cool unless you're out of the wind.

Angers Market

2010-08-29T10:58:00.000+01:00

The tribe left the second gite yesterday morning to our very great relief. It's so peaceful here now and the weather has changed to being much more sunny and also a little cooler. Yesterday we went to the market at Angers which took a bit of finding which was strange as when we did find it it was massive. The flea market was mainly fleas but the fruit and veg was amazing, but unfortunately we didn't want any food. After the market we walked through a little park next door which had some beautiful gardens, a bandstand and a big fountain. I managed to take quite a few photos and some video of the fountain. Then we went to a creperie and had the gallette de jour and a bottle of cider de ferme which was great.

We wandered back to the car and drove a little way to the Lac de Maine which is a big lake just outside Angers. There is a big boating place and a beach area where people were swimming and sunbathing. Near the boating place we spotted a heron on a little jetty along with some seagulls. I managed to get a few photos of the heron before the gulls saw me getting closer and spooked it. There was another smaller lake next to the big one with a path around it so we had a little walk.

There was a big sporting area too with courts for different sports and a play area for the kids. Had an ice cream from the little kiosk as we hadn't had a pudding at the creperie. On the way back to the car the heron was in a smaller pond and I managed to get a few more shots of it before leaving. Back at the gite sunbathing and swimming in peace until after 8pm, it was a good day.

Feeling Unispired

2010-08-27T06:30:00.001+01:00

So the second week of our holiday is reaching an end and I am feeling somewhat uninspired photographically. Don't get me wrong, I'm having a great holiday, lots of good food and drink and very relaxed but nothing has really got my juices going for taking photographs. The weather on the way here was a bit mixed and although we went to some nice places there was not too much to get me into the rhythm. I guess part of it is not being able to upload any of my photos while we are away due to not being able to get the camera conector for my iPad before we set off but I think the weather while we have been here hasn't helped either. We've only had one morning when it hasn't been either cloudy or misty and the cloud has also returned every evening so there's been little scope for sunrise or sunset photos. When it has been sunny during the day it's been too damn hot to do anything much but sunbathe. The gite is also a bit uninspiring. It's OK but is doesn't match up to Les Fourneaux where we originally booked to go. The building is a converted barn which doesn't have much in the way of features and the inside is purely functional.

Also we have the neighbours from hell in the adjoining gite. Maybe an exaggeration, but they turned up in a massive camper van. The drunk grandad who thinks he's Adge Cutler and sings Wurzel songs all day and night, his very plain missus who busies herself doing things all day. The daughter and her husband who's idea of starting a barbecue is to use half a gallon of highly inflammable, highly toxic and eye stinging fluid until flames appear out of the top of the chimney. The two kids, a boy in his early teens who grunts a lot, a younger girl who screams and whines a lot and then the two dogs that piss a lot, especially around our gite. On the odd occasions when they leave the gite the performance of turning the camper van around is something to be seen. I know it's been windy but when they shut the doors it sounds as if they're slamming it as hard as they can and the wall between the gites must be paper thin because all we can hear all day is their noise. We were late to bed last night so as a bit of revenge I slammed our bedroom door twice at about half past midnight, about an hour after the din had subsided next door. Childish yes, but so what. They appear to think they can use every inch of the site as their own, their stuff in strewn about everywhere and the drunk grandad even came in our back door thinking it was the spare loo at the rear of the gite which he seems to use all the time. Thankfully they leave on Saturday and nobody is renting the second gite next week so it should be much more peaceful.

Anyhow today we haven't much planned so hopefully we can laze around while next door pack their stuff away ready for setting off on Saturday morning (early I hope). Tomorrow we're going to the market at Angers which includes a flea market bit so that could be exciting. Then on Sunday we're going to Lire which is just a couple of miles South on Ancenis. We went to the market at Ancenis yesterday and when we got back to the car there was a leaflet about something going on at Lire, couldn't understand most of the leaflet but it seems the day starts with something in the church at ten, then stuff is happening all day until midnight. There are jalopies, farm machinery, a brass band, some dancers and stuff from the surrounding regions. There's food and drink and surprises, so it should be good.
Couldn't find a photo to steal today, it's too early in the morning. Maybe tomorrow.

Chateau de Serrant

2010-08-24T21:48:00.000+01:00

This morning was the first morning when the sky was clear blue rather than cloudy or misty. However the clear night meant that it was quite cool first thing. We went to Chateau de Serrant in the morning which was very good. We had a guided tour in French but we did have most of the blurb in a folder in English. There was some amazing stuff inside the chateau but we weren't allowed to take any photos. In the kitchen there was lots of brass pans and some lovely china. The guide was asking us to recognise some odd kitchen implements but we couldn't understand what the people were saying. The bedrooms were very interesting and there is an amazing library with some massive books and also some games tables. Some of the rooms had the walls covered with tapestries with some incredibly detailed and strange scenes on them. There wasn't a lot to see outside of the building except the building itself and the lake and moat around it. At some chateaux there are extensive formal gardens but there was nothing like that here.
After the chateau visit we had a crepe at the nearby town St. George sur Loire and then went on to see the abbey town of St. Florent le Vieil. The abbey church was lovely but the abbey itself had mostly disappeared. There was an exhibition of some things from the original abbey in the crypt of the church. We went down to a path along the edge of the Loire and went for a bit of a walk which was very pleasant. There were lots of people fishing and the path was very busy with cyclists.

La Moulin du Rat

2010-08-23T17:08:00.000+01:00

It's been very hot and sunny for the last two days so we have spent the time around the pool and outside the gite. We popped out to the shop yesterday and I managed to lose the key to the gite. Had to confess to Hazel so we could get the spare key.
Last night it came cloudy and then overnight it rained very hard. This morning had to go to the Super U at Cande to get some spare keys cut so I can give them to Hazel in case I lose them again. The weather forecast told us we were due for thunderstorms around five this afternoon so we went to Challain le Protherie to have a look around and go for a walk. We had a look at the chateau which is a hotel so we couldn't go in but the sign say they are open for visitors on Sunday afternoons so we might go back then. We walked around the lake which was quite nice but it started ti drizzle some more. Decided to walk to La Moulin du Rat in the picture. The signpost said it was three and a half kilometres so we set off in the rain but it soon cleared up and we saw some sunshine. As you can see from the photo there's not much there and what the signpost didn't say was that it was the highest point in the area so it was all up hill on the way there. By the time we got back to the car we were both quite warm and getting tired as we'd walked well over five miles in the humid heat of the early afternoon.
It's just after six and although there are some very dark clouds in the sky there's no sign of the thunderstorms yet. Tomorrow we're planning a trip to the Chateau de Serrant just south of Angers near St. Georges sur Loire. The weather is forecast to be fine tomorrow so let's hope so.

Lizards

2010-08-20T17:34:00.001+01:00

This morning it was a bit foggy but it didn't matter because we had to go to the supermarket to get all the things we need at the gite. As well as food and drink we bought some decent sized drinking glasses, a bread knife and a couple of knives for cooking. Not sure how previous occupants of the gite managed without them and why they aren't in the gite already. We'll probably leave them here as they were cheap and we have limited space in the car.

This afternoon it is incredibly hot, windy and there's barely a cloud in the sky. We sat outside under the umbrella for a while but it was still too hot for me. We've had to sit inside most of the afternoon reading. There are lots of lizards on the patio an last night one of them came into the gite. While we were sat out last night there was a little mouse playing on the gravel area in front of the gite.

I'm just a out to summon up the courage to go outside to light the barbecue because it's still very hot out there. Unfortunately there's no thermometer about but I think it must be in the mid thirties and there's precious little shade to hide in.

Cholet

2010-08-19T17:50:00.000+01:00

Today we left the hotel Jardin du Lac and headed North to the gite. The day started a bit overcast but quite pleasant for driving. We decided to keep off of the motorways and take steady route through La Rochelle and to Cholet. A little way past La Rochelle there had been a very bad accident and the firemen where cutting people out of one of the vehicles. Not sure what had happened because it was a straight stretch of road but there appeared to be a caravan and a trailer in the wreckage.
We stopped at Cholet for lunch and to have a bit of a look around. In the photo is the cathedral and the theatre with the square in front. The sky looked very much like it does in the photo and while at Cholet the temperature shot up to 29 degrees. The remaining journey from Cholet to the gite was very hot and sticky but we're here now and settling in. Hazel, the owner, has made us some bread and put some provisions in the fridge so we don't need to go shopping until the morning.

Hoopoe at Dinner

2010-08-18T10:36:00.001+01:00

We had dinner at the hotel Jardin du Lac last night which was very nice and a bit posh. We went for the 40 Euro menu which gave us three courses and some extra bits. We started with a champagne cocktail which was a house speciality. We were also served canapes which were a little bread with pate, a melon ball with cured ham and a redcurrant and what looked like a tiny toffee apple which had tomato inside. Then we had a hot lobster soup with salted cream. After that we had the three courses we had chosen and it was all very nice. During the meal we saw the strange bird on the grass outside the dining room and the waiter told us it was called a poo poo because it smells. I guess he was kidding because when I looked it up it was called a hoopoe. This morning it is a bit overcast so we went to a little local market (3 stalls) and had a look around the abbey at Trizay. Later we are going to walk around the lake here at the hotel and have a look at the gardens. This afternoon we are going back to Rochefort to look at a shop museum, the naval gardens, possibly the royal cordorie (rope makers) and then have dinner at one of the brasseries in the Place Colbert.

Place Colbert, Rochefort

2010-08-17T18:25:00.000+01:00

It's a beautiful sunny day in Rochefort. This photo was taken by Planete Vivante (Marie Sophie) yesterday and I have borrowed if from flickr. Unfortunately al of the photos on my blogs from France are. Going to have to be stolen because I couldn't get the adapter for my iPad before I left England. I apologise and give regards to everyone who owns the photos in advance. I will, of course acknowledge any where I know who took them and will remove them if the owners object.

The photo is the Place Colbert in Rochefort and when we were here the man came to fix the fountain. I have some photos and video of the fountain in action so Marie Sophie can steal them if she wants when I post them sometime in September.

We have just arrived at the Jardin du Lac hotel in Trizay which has wifi and the reason I am posting to the blog in earnest. It's my birthday today and we are eating at the hotel tonight. I will post more from here tomorrow but I'm just about to show ere and change ready for the evening.

Vendomme

2010-08-17T18:08:00.001+01:00

Another rainy journey on Sunday from Northern France to Vendomme on the Loir. Walked around the town on the evening in the rain before going back to the hotel for our evening meal. We are stopping at the Manoir du Foret at Ville le Clercs a few miles North of Vendomme. The meal was very expensive but very, very good. The next day the weather improved and went for walk along an abandoned railway line starting at Troo. In the afternoon we has another look around Vendomme and went up to the castle high above the town. The views were amazing and they had lots of photographs and artwork on display in the park at the castle. In the orangery they had a display of photographs of monkeys wearing clothes, but we weren't impressed at all so we walked straight back out of there. The woman in there was ranting about something to do with here son I think. I don't know if he had taken the photos or was the monkey in the photos, I didn't wait around to understand what she was saying. In the evening went to a pizzeria for dinner, it was very good and even with the carafe of wine the whole meal cost less than the botle of wine at the hotel the previous night. The photo is the Abbaye le Trinite in the middle of Vendomme.

Rue, France

2010-08-17T17:49:00.000+01:00

On Saturday afternoon we arrived at the hotel Auberge de la Dune after a very wet journey through Southern England and Northern France. The weather brightened up nicely for us to have a walk on the beach nearby. People were riding horses along the beach and we saw a couple of horse and carts drive by. We had our dinner at the Brasserie Central in Rue opposite the chapel in the photo, but it wasn't brilliant. Had a glass of wine at the hotel which was also pretty dire, so went to bed.

Weeds, crops and battery problems

2010-08-09T23:40:00.000+01:00

I've been having problems with my camera batteries recently with them going flat very quickly. I have three batteries, the original one from when I bought the camera and a couple of cheapo ones from 7dayshop. The thing is I'm not very organised with charging them up and keeping track of which ones are fully charged so I wasn't too sure if I had a problem or not. Anyhow yesterday (Sunday) I was sure that the original battery was dead so it went in the bin and I put one of the others in the camera and went out for a walk with the dog. Guess what, the battery that I put in the camera was also a bit dud so as soon I took the first half dozen shots the battery icon on the camera started to flash and of course I hadn't stuck the other one in my pocket.

So you may think this was a very bad thing, but I'm not sure it was because I had to change the way I worked. I switched off the camera when I wasn't using it, normally it's always switched on a ready to fire off a blast of shots. I framed my shots carefully, looking a a few different angles before committing to the shot I wanted and switching the camera back on. I only took a couple of shots for each composition rather than blasting off half a dozen at a time. I used only my 50mm prime so there was no zooming back and forth and no image stabiliser draining the battery. Then when I got home I just had a couple of dozen images rather than a couple of hundred and almost half of them are worth posting instead of 4 or 5 percent. See what you think.

This first image of the weed was my second attempt because in my first attempt the depth of field was far too narrow and only a small part of the flower head was in focus. The 50mm lens goes as wide as f1.8 which is what I started at, but then I stopped down to f3.5 for this shot. The other weeds in the background are well out of focus which simplifies the image very well. The main problem with this shot was the light colour in the background at the top of the frame which gives far too much weight to that area. I couldn't get high enough to fill the background with the other weeds, maybe I should clone some weeds into the top area to darken it down.

The next three shots where the one time I fired off a few shots in a row. A bit opportunist as the bee was emerging from the flower and then flying off.

The next image is the same sort of weed but these ones had far richer colour than the ones with the bee. I spent a bit more time composing this shot and tried to get some more of the flowers in the background. I think I needed even more depth of field on this shot as the flower on the left of the three is pretty soft.

The last of the weeds was a bush with these tiny white flowers. Each of the little flowers seemed to be at a slightly different stage of development which makes them quite interesting to look closely into. I was also intrigued by the bits that look like snow flakes, what are they I wonder.

All of these photos where taken from around Scout Dyke reservoir although there's no sign of water in any of them. Around the reservoir there are several farms and in some of the fields the grain crops are getting close to harvest time. The next two shots are the edges of corn fields where I'm trying to show lots of detail of the heads of the corn. They look to be two different varieties with the first ones being short and fat whereas the second are longer, thinner and a darker colour. Maybe they are just a slightly different stages of the growing cycle.

The final two photographs are at the edge of a barley field. In the first shot I have gone close up in the same way as the corn fields but in the second I am shooting higher up and getting more of the field in the background. There are almost lines across the field as it stretches back into the distance.

In conclusion, I guess it was a good exercise to limit myself to the number of shots I could take on a trip out and I think the resulting images are better than my average. I have to admit I didn't really like having a limit put on the number of shots I could take and I have ordered a couple of new batteries which I hope will arrive before I go on holiday. In the future I think I will try to take less shots and take more care with composition but then again old habits die hard so we shall see.

Harlow Carr Gardens

2010-07-06T12:51:00.001+01:00

Sweet Pea 1
Originally uploaded by Let Me Show You What I See

We had a lovely day at Harlow Carr Gardens near Harrogate in Yorkshire. I haven't been here for a couple or more years and I was amazed to see how much had changed. The main car park was much bigger and now there are two overflow car parks at the other side of the road. The additions of a "Betty's" cafe was partly to blame as the place was heaving with people when we arrived just after midday. A new study centre had recently been opened by Alan Titchmarsh with a library, work rooms and an outside teaching area with a new little pond.

The weather was good with some cloud but lots of sunshine. The wind was a bit blustery but wasn't a problem except when trying to photograph some of the flowers with long bendy stalks. We wandered around, I took a few photos and just had a most relaxing time. If you follow the link on the photo there are another 37 photos in the Harlow Carr Gardens Set.

Bodnant Gardens

2010-06-12T00:44:00.001+01:00

Bodnant House 2
Originally uploaded by Let Me Show You What I See

It's getting to be quite a habit at the moment going to National Trust properties. I think it's because I've recently noticed how much it is costing me to be members and I need to get some value from it. We've been members since the girls were small so it must be nearly twenty years.

So Bodnant Gardens is in North Wales a few miles South of Conway and LLandudno. The Hall is not open to the public and has been owned by one family for over 125 years. The gardens are magnificent and there are two separate areas, the formal gardens near the house and the wild gardens down in the "Dell".

Within the formal gardens is the Laburnum Arch, flower beds, lawns, big trees, two lilly ponds and the white arched folly. In the dell is a stream, an old mill, lots of very big trees, a few bridges, lots of paths and a waterfall. I would highly recommend a visit and I hope you like the photos I have put on Flickr. Click the photo to take you to the rest of the pictures.

Dunham Massey

2010-06-07T23:35:00.001+01:00

House Across the Lake
Originally uploaded by Let Me Show You What I See

It's a couple of weeks since we visited Dunham Massey and I've finally posted all the best photos to Flickr. We had a good day with a good walk around the deer park in the morning and then a picnic followed by a walk around the gardens in the afternoon. When we first arrived there were a few deer very close to the house which were very tame and allowed us to get quite close up to them to take photographs. Later in the day when we returned to the same place the deer had moved away, probably because of the number of people about.

The deer out in the deer park were much less tame in it was hard to get too close to them. The little rabbits seemed quite brave and the photos of them are quite clear considering they were in the shade of some big trees. In the park we also saw a little brown stoat running along one of the paths. Unfortunately it was too far away and running too fast to get a decent shot.

The gardens were very well laid out with lots of different areas with different themes. There was even a moss garden, which to be honest was not terribly exciting or particularly interesting. However it was quite cool in there under the trees.

The buildings were quite nice too including the main house, the stables next to the house and the orangery. Out in the deer park there were a few other barns and buildings scattered around. Close to the house was a little water mill with working wheel inside. Click on the photo to link to Flickr where you ca see the rest of the photos from Dunham Massey and the rest of my photo stream.

Biddulph Grange

2010-05-22T19:42:00.001+01:00

House Across the Pond
Originally uploaded by Let Me Show You What I See

Last week we visited Biddulph Grange which is a National Trust Garden in Staffordshire. The house is not open to the public but the gardens are beautifully laid out in different themed areas. Next to the gardens is the country park which has lots of walks through the trees and next to the stream. There is a large pond in the park with a variety of water fowl and fish. The Talbot pub just along the road has a wide ranging menu and the food is excellent quality. The weather wasn't brilliant but we had a wonderful day out. Follow the link on the photo to see the rest of my photos from the day.

Mother Coot and Last Baby

2010-05-22T00:22:00.001+01:00

Mother Coot and Last Baby
Originally uploaded by Let Me Show You What I See

It's just over a week since I first found a pair of Coot with six chicks happily swimming around so I returned to see how they were progressing. Now there's only one chick and it is sticking very closely to it's mother. It looks a bit traumatised so I didn't hang around. Hopefully when I come back in a few more days it will still be here.

Tadpoles near West Bretton

2010-05-14T23:48:00.001+01:00

A little while ago I bought a Kodak Playsport video camera which is able to take video and still images under water. I have been taking some videos as I've wandered about but I've been looking for an opportunity to use it under the water. While I was walking around West Bretton and Midgley at the weekend I spotted some tadpoles in a fishing pond and thought this would be an ideal subject.

Can't see many in this picture with the light through the clouds reflecting on the water.

Her's a shallow area with some light coloured mud on the bottom which shows the tadpoles quite well. Unfortunately the mud gets stirred up very quickly and makes the water very murky.

The area of water in the foreground is where the tadpoles are living. Beyond the reeds the water is much deeper and this is were the anglers were fishing on my first visit. These still photographs were also taken with the Kodak Playsport and to be honest the quality isn't too bad.

Here's a video of the tadpoles from my first visits to the pond. The pond is on my way to work so I am going to drop in every now and then over the next few weeks to see how the tadpoles are getting on.

Coot and Chicks near Midgley

2010-05-12T00:07:00.001+01:00

Adult Coot and Chicks 2
Originally uploaded by Let Me Show You What I See

While walking around Bretton and Midgley I spotted a footpath with a hand written note on it saying 'Pond'. I was intrigued so I followed the path which went through a small woods and then into a bit of a meadow where there was a pond with a fence around it. As I got closer I could see that there was and old duck house (nothing as grand as the one belonging to that MP) and nearby was a pair of Coots. As I got closer still I also spotted some little fluffy chicks, six in total. Ugly little things but I'm sure their mother loves them. It's quite exciting because this is the first chicks I've seen this year. Follow the link to my flickr account to see some of the other photos of the coots and chicks and also some more of my recent bird photos.

Bluebell Woods

2010-05-05T23:06:00.004+01:00

Bluebells 3
Originally uploaded by Let Me Show You What I See

I've decided after all this time to join Flickr and start posting my photos there. I need to get more exposure to my work and hopefully get a bit more feedback from the other Flickr members. I made the mistake of putting Woopra onto my blog to find out how much traffic was visiting and found that no-one was coming here except me and Liza from work. I might not get any more visitors but it's worth a try.

I'm experimenting with publishing my photos to Flickr directly from Aperture 3 and I need to make a few changes to how I do that. Firstly I need to name my photos before I publish them otherwise I have to rename all within Flickr. I need to experiment with my next set to see whether adding keywords in Aperture get carried through as tags in Flickr and also if I geo tag the photos in Aperture whether that information is passed through.

I'm also seeing how useful it is to create my blog posts within Flickr using just one of my photos and then linking back to Flickr. So let's try this link to the rest of the set. Well I need to add the link from within blogger but it's OK I guess.

Stanage

2010-04-27T00:47:00.000+01:00

I've been looking back through my most recent posts and I notice that there's an awful lot of birds and nothing much else. So in this post and the next I will concentrate on the landscape and things I see as I'm walking around. Carrying on from my last post I was in Stanage which as I have mentioned in a previous post is derived from Stone Edge, which describes this place very well. The stone edge is very popular with climbers and the paths along the top and bottom of the edge is popular with walkers and runners.

When I set of from home the sky was a bit cloudy but it looked as though it was going to brighten up. When I arrived at Stanage the clouds had increased and was just letting little shafts of light through. The first two images were taken on the top of the edge in an area where there are a few big rocks. I have used the rocks as a foreground and am looking into the sky to see the God rays.

Looking in the opposite direction near here there is an old wall that stretches a little way along to where the ridge begins. In the background is a view of an area of the Peak National Park.

This is where the path splits between the one along the top of the ridge and the one that goes along below the ridge. I had decided to walk for a while along the top and then come back on the lower path. There is what could be a gatepost with W W on it but I don't know why. If you click on the image to make it bigger you might just be able to make out a part of Ladybower Reservoir in the distance just to the right of the post.

A little way along the ridge I took this panorama looking over the edge with more of the Peak National Park in the background. A bit of Ladybower Reservoir is in the middle of the photo and behind and to the left is Kinder Scout, the highest peak in the park I think. Oddly the cloud was getting thicker but then there were bigger breaks of blue sky.

Along the ridge there are a lot of water holes cut into the rocks which I guess is to provide water for the livestock that roam about up here. I quite like the way the grooves are cut into the rock to guide the water into the trough. It has been quite dry for a while so most of the troughs are empty but this one had a bit of water in it. I was trying to get the reflection of the sky into the water for this image.

In the next image is another part of the old wall and the beginning of the higher bits of the ridge.

Further along the ridge again and another view across towards Kinder Scout. It's hard to tell but beyond the rocks in the foreground is a drop of about fifty foot down a sheer rock face.

On the way back I dropped down to the lower path and I took this picture of another old wall. It's quite hard to tell in the image but the wall goes up a very steep bank and meets up with the base of the rock face. The big flat stones on top of the wall look a bit like stairs.

In a previous trip to a different part of the stone edge I had seen a few old mill stones which had been abandoned. I guess they used to make them here and at some time production stopped and all the stock of millstones were just left here. I think this stone must be for a roller rather than a millstone, unless they make them like this and then cut them down to size.

Near the roller there were a few other millstones so a took quite a few photos here. For this next one I used my Lensbaby to throw the area around the stones out of focus.

As I walked further along the path there were more and more millstones scattered across a wide area. There must have been around a hundred that I saw just lying around or piled up in twos and threes. Eventually they became less of a novelty and I got a bit fed up of making pictures of them. They were all different sizes and I saw a couple that had no hole in the middle which was a bit unusual.

Towards the end of the path someone had cleaned the dirt of one of the stones to make this smiley face. In the background there is a bit of the stone edge. I just realized that I didn't take many pictures of the rock face, maybe next time I come here I will take a few more.

In the last image I was trying to get a rock in the foreground to mirror Kinder Scout in the background. I tried a few different rocks and I think this one turned out the best.

Next time the photos will be mainly bits of waterfalls taken at Woodhead.

Birds at Stanage

2010-04-22T23:31:00.000+01:00

On Sunday I went to Stanage edge to take some photographs of the landscape and some of the birds. In this post I will just show the birds as I took a lot of photos and I haven't finished processing them yet. It gets quite busy along the edge with the walkers, runners, cyclists and climbers that use this area and so I guess the birds get used to people being around. A couple of years ago I caught a good image of a grouse perched on top of a rock sticking out of the bracken. On the moorland above where I live the grouse don't let you get close enough to get any decent shots, I guess they're used to being shot with guns rather than cameras.

In this first image this red grouse was happily chirping away as it sat in the grass. I chose this picture from the bunch that I took because it had its beak open as it sang.

A little further along this next grouse was hopping along all over these rocks and keeping a close eye on me as I moved towards it. It flew off before I got very close.

This next one was perched on top of the highest point on a group of rocks looking quite pleased with itself.

As I was walking along I just caught in the corner of my eye this grouse peering out at me from behind a rock.

As I moved towards it, it strutted out from behind the rock and into the sunshine to have its photo taken.

When I got to the furthest point on my walk I was a bird watcher looking down the hillside with his binoculars. Now in my previous experiences with bird watches they are a very strange bunch, but this guy looked pretty normal so I went over to speak with him. I asked him what he was watching and he said he was looking at some ring ouzels. I must admit I thought he was pulling my leg, I always linked the ouzel bird with comedy sketches which were on the television when I was a kid. He said that I had disturbed a pair of birds as I had walked down the path towards him so I apologised but he said it didn't matter as they would come back once I had gone.

We chatted for a while and then I said I had to move on. I still wasn't convinced about the ousel bird so I asked him what I should watch out for as I went down the path. He started to tell me that they looked like blackbirds but with a white bib and then he pulled me towards the edge and pointed to a tree down in the field next to the path. I put my camera up to my eye and used the long telephoto to get a closer look and I could just make out what he was looking at. We chatted bit more and then when we looked at the tree again the bird had gone, he said it's probably just dropped down to the floor to feed. He said that I should look over the edge as I went past them but I said I didn't want to disturb them any more for him. He said it's OK they won't go far.

So as I walked down the path I looked over the edge by the tree but I couldn't see the bird, but then about twenty yards further down I spotted the pair of them down in the grass. The male bird was perched up on a rock and the female was hopping along the ground.

As I watched them the female continued to hop along past the male bird.

The male bird then flew to a different rock that was a little closer to me where I got this next shot.

About a couple of miles away from this first sighting I spotted another pair of ring ouzels up in the rocks at the bottom of the ridge where I took this las image of the ouzels.

In the rest of the walk the only birds I got close enough to to photograph where the meadow pipits like the ones I had seen last week near Digley reservoir. There were quite a few of them and they seemed quite keen to have their photograph taken.

During the walk I had seen some other birds but hadn't managed to take any decent photographs of them. There was a golden plover running along the grass with what I thought was a young bird. I mentioned it to the bird watcher but he was doubtful that there would be any chicks yet this year. I could hear plenty of curlew in the distance but I never caught a glimpse of any. There was also a hunting bird of some description. I'd heard it squawking but couldn't spot it. Then all of a sudden I saw it flying along quite close to the ground. I wasn't close enough to identify what it was and I took some photos but they were too blurred to make anything out.

Next time I'll post some landscape photos. Although the weather had seemed promising when I set off from home it was quite variable while I was walking so there is a pretty mixed bunch.

Birdwatching above Digley

2010-04-15T00:40:00.004+01:00

It's almost exactly a year ago that I made a rant on my blog about why I'm not a wildlife photographer, yet one year on here I am with a post using birdwatching in the title. Not only that, but in the last twelve months I have posted many images of animals and birds on my blog and also have hundreds more that haven't been posted. So what's changed? Well, nothing really. I still think that birdwatchers are weird and I still can't justify spending thousands of pounds on big telephoto lenses, but there's just something about seeing and photographing birds and animals in their environment. Even if I had an inexhaustible amount of spare cash and spare time I still don't think could go down this route, but I always enjoy doing something different and trying to get better at it.

So Sunday morning I set off fairly early with the intention of photographing Curlew and Lapwing up on the fields and meadows above Digley Reservoir. I've made photographs of these birds here last year and have been waiting for them to arrive this summer from wherever they go in the winter. Although it was quite nice when I set off the low cloud on the top of the Pennines made it quite foggy where I was heading. I had arranged to pop into Mosley to drop off my daughters phone charger which she had left at our house so I carried on along the A635, dropped off the charger and then came back. Luckily the cloud had lifted enough for me to stop and seek out the birds.

I parked in a little lay by near an old lane (Magdalen Road) where I have seen Curlew and Lapwing before. I could hear the birds I was searching for and also the grouse who live here all year around. My first sighting was of a couple of grouse sat on the wall and I managed to get this first image before they flew off.

I could see a few Curlew and Lapwing in the distance so I headed toward them. Sometimes they land in the fields and wander around so I kept looking over the walls to see if I could spot any. But all I could see was this little rabbit sat at the edge of the field.

I guess the birds were being a bit shy today because as I walked down the track they got further away. So I started walking back to the road when I spotted one of the Curlew land in the field. I sneaked up quietly and managed to get quite a few shots of it wandering across the field and occasionally pecking at the ground.

I carried on back to the road and then went down another track at the other side (Springs Road). When I first parked the car I had seen some lapwing flying about down this side of the road so I went looking for them. I could see a pair of them flitting around but they move so fast and randomly in the air they are quite hard to catch. Here's a little clip of the pair flying around.

I took lots of shots that just didn't turn out right. I made the same mistake as before by not having a fast enough shutter speed to get shots that weren't blurred. Eventually I got a few acceptable shots so here are a couple of the pair in flight.

One of the Lapwing landed in the field behind me so I set off towards it to see if I could get a better shot of it. It was too far off and I could tell that if I headed towards it then it would just fly off. I turned around and there behind me was this little Wheatear sat on the wall. I took quite a few shots of it before it left but I liked this one the most because there is just a hint of catchlight in its eye. (click to get a bigger picture). From the colouring of this bird it is either a female or a juvenile, the male is more of a grey/blue colour.

When it flew off it went to join up with another three of its friends. I followed it and managed to get these next two shots. Essentially they are the same shot but on the first one the male bird at the back is in focus and on the second the female at the front is in focus. I think it might be possible to merge these in Photoshop to get them both in focus in one image but then there would still have a blurred bit in the middle.

As I headed back towards the road this little Meadow Pipit stood on the wall posing for its photo taking. I have a few pictures of these little precocious birds over the last year or so. One of them with Evey the dog about a foot away from it and another with the bird stood on top of a post with a beak full of insects. I had only identified them as little brown birds before but this time I think I have an accurate id.

So there we are, a couple of hours sat in a field trying to get pictures of birds then home for breakfast. Not a bad life really. Could I have got some better shots with a £7000 lens? Yes probably. Would I still be married? Possibly not, who knows.