Very Mild New Year

Enjoyed a walk with Millie (now over 11 and slowing down) round by the Church in Toft. Amazed at the variety of flowers in bloom - violet, aconite, cow parsley, dandelion and white dead nettle) but then it has been very mild since before Xmas.

Woolwich

The trip to Woolwich was a nostalgia trip for me as I was born in Woolwich and lived in Charlton close by until I was 18. 

• We visited  the Woolwich Royal Arsenal, which had carried out armaments manufacture, ammunition proofing and explosives research for the British armed forces since 1670s until its final closure in 1994. It is now being developed as a residential area. Assembly is a sculpture by Peter Burke made up of 16 hollow figures standing in a cluster. The cast-iron quarter-ton body moulds give the optical illusion of a convex face - the fact that the right and left sides are in focus while the face is slightly out shows the concave nature of the sculpture.
• We stayed in the newly opened Travelodge which occupies the The Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society (RACS) building in Powis Street.  This store opened in 1903; the statue is of founder Alexander McLeod (1832-1902).  It has been empty for a decade. The front of the Italian Renaissance-style grade II listed building, its clock tower and dome have been restored and incorporated into the new hotel.
• Opposite an Art  Deco extension was opened in 1938, designed by the company architect SW Ackeroyd. The metal Crittall windows are a notable Art Deco feature, the same firm did windows on the Titanic. It is semi derelict but there are plans for its redevelopment.We sampled the excellent fooed in Woolwich's Choice Cafe and travelled back north on the Woolwich Free Ferry. 

Cutty Sark - Architectural Carbuncle?

 The Cutty Sark rebuild has been given the Carbuncle Cup as the worst architectural project.The ship reopened to the public in April 2012 after a £50m refit following a devastating fire in 2007. The clipper, built in 1869, has a new design which allows visitors to move both aboard and underneath the three-masted sailing ship but the new design has obscured the Cutty Sark's distinctive shape on the quayside. Even the part of the ship we can still see includes an obtrusive lift tower looming over the deck. It is popular with visitors and we certainly enjoyed our time aboard.

 Images taken with 15 mm  Fisheye or 24mm Shift lens (first and last images).

Christmas Portraits

To finish the year, Christmas morning shots of Sadie and Meredith.

Birds at Wicken Fen

 Beautiful winter sunshine at wicken Fen this morning before the rain arrived - again!

Season's Greetings

Floods in Toft

After a night of heavy rain, the Toft to Bourn Road and Brookside were impassable to normal traffic by 7am yesterday morning. This didn't stop a few people trying to get through. This car made it but others had got stuck. The water at 9 feet is as high as I have recorded in recent years. The last image shows our personal flood problem - getting the drainage work signed off by the building inspector is not possible when you can't see the new drain pipe!

Contrast in Cambridge

I am still testing out my new RX100 compact to see the best everyday settings as mainly I will be using it as a 'grab' camera where there is no time to think about modes etc. In each of the pairs above, the lefthand image uses the built-in HDR, which takes several images and combines them in camera. This obviously only works as a jpg. The other image is a RAW image adjusted as fully as possible in the Raw converter. The greater saturation of the HDR image works well where the light is very contrasty as in the first pair but not so well when bringing out shadow areas as in the second pair.

The two images below also use the HDR mode - both into the light and work well.

Fowlmere Birds in Winter Sun

 A few more images from Fowlmere yesterday. The Moorhens were disputing territory, as alway,s so there was quite a lot of chasing and splashing. The Kinfisher looked beautiful in the low winter light on the little tree but didn't stay to fish unlike the Heron who remained there the entire visit. We were delighted to see the Water Rail - always surprised at how small they are compared to a moorhen.