Around Lake Windermere

Drove into the Lakes from Lancaster this morning or rather crawled in the traffic. I therefore decided to stop at Brockhole, Windermere and take the launch up to Ambleside round to Wray Castle and back, having a walk at each point. Autumn colours are fairly limited this year - a lot of trees have lost their leaves but some colour around. Wray is owned by the National Trust and is a Mock-Gothic Castle with turrets, towers and informal grounds. No contents but obviously from the number of visitors very popular with children. Final shot of Porcelain Fungus, which does arches rather better than the castle

Skipton

We stopped in Skipton overnight on the way to the Lake District as I was lecturing to Otley Camera Club - thanks for the very warm welcome. Skipton was voted the best place to live in England (admittedly by Sunday Times) for its independent shops, town attractions such as the Castle, church and canal systems and its reasonable house prices. We certainly enjoyed our 2 hours there. They are very proud of their role in the Tour de France with yellow bikes and bunting still in evidence. The church offfered some interesting views, reflections and shadows.

Welney Wildfowl Trust

Welney Ouse Washes was looking its best yesterday afternoon in the sunshine. We saw five Marsh Harriers in the air at once so there were at least that many hunting there and putting up vast flocks of Lapwings, Golden Plover, Widgeon, Teal, Pochard, Gulls etc. A group of around a dozen Snipe flew in to join the Lapwings at one stage. About 800 Whooper Swans have already made the 1200 mile journey from Iceland to spend the winter at Welney and there are always the Mallards, Pochards and Mute Swans to enjoy.

Greenwich Shifted and Tilted

At the beginning of our day in Greenwich, I used the Tilt and Shift lens. By mistake I had the barrel of the lens in the wrong orientation when taking a view of Canary Wharf (the barrel has to be rotated for portrait orientation shots) which gave a tilt to the plane of focus so it is horizontally through the centre of the image. I corrected this for the next shot but, in fact, rather like the effect in the first image. I can see why it is called the toy town lens. Tilted shots inside Canary Wharf, 

 a  shifted image of the Painted Hall  and a bit of both for the Chapel at the Naval College

A Walk along the Thames at Greenwich I

For once, I had to admit to an overcommitment of time and pulled out of attending the PAGB Finals in Ormskirk as I needed Friday and Saturday to catch up with life after the 5 days of chaos with the grandchildren. I was sorry to miss the event but pleased to hear Cambridge did well - just missing a place in the Final 8 by 1 point and coming second in the plate by 1 point. 

By Sunday things were straighter and I felt able to join the CCC trip to Greenwich led by Alan Clarke - many thanks for a great day out. These images are from the end of the day - I will post more from earlier in the day when time to sort them. The panorama shows the area visited. We started our day in Silvertown where we parked and then by DLR to Canary Wharf. Here we refreshed with a coffee, took a few images and then used the DLR to Greenwich Cutty Sark area. We took the SouthThames path along and round the Greenwich Penisula to the O2 building; then by the Emirates Cable car back to Royal dock area. The day was grey and overcast until we arrived at the Crystal building when the skies cleared to give lovely evening light over the Royal Docks.

Contrasts

Images of my Christmas Cactus (yes, it does start earlier every year) taken on a lightbox with overhead flash (on the left) and with a polaroid sheet and filter (right) showing the beautiful detail you get on the polarisong sheet.

I am returning to my blog posts after a week's absence - all due to my two grandaughters who entertained us while the Mummy and Daddy were in Chicago for 5 days

Bath After the Rain

The rain stopped in time for an evening stroll in Bath.