Avoncroft Interiors from 1950s

There is a furnished prefab from the 1950s at Avoncroft, which I enjoyed as many items were familiar from my London childhood.  Prefabricated buildings were put up in England at the end of the war to replace houses destroyed in the bombing. I particularly liked the sitting room with an old TV as a very early memory is Muffin the Mule on a small flickering screen

The Tollhouse brought back memories of a great aunt's house in Woolwich, South London, that I visited as a child regularly. There was no electricity and the water supply and toilet were in the outside yard. All cooking and heating was via an iron range in the kitchen; the metal teapot would stay on the stove all day producing incredibly strong brew. Lighting was with oil lamps and the house was always damp so they were continually wallpapering. I used to enjoy making the rag rugs from cut-up textiles. The two sisters remained in the house until demolition in the mid 1960s.

Avoncroft Museum

Four valiant CCC members had around three hours to spare on Sunday morning before viewing the Smethwick International Photography Exhibition, so decided to visit the Avoncroft Museum. It was not an ideal day for the interiors at the museum but the fog and frost certainly added atmosphere to their collection of traditional buildings. Interiors to follow.

New Year's Day 2015 Paris

Considering the mountains of Champagne and beer bottles, there were an amazing number of people around the Eiffel Tower and Trocadero early on NYD. It was definitely service as normal for the trinket sellers. A walk to the Arc de Triomphe and then the Metro to Monmartre amd Sacre Coeur where a very agile football acrobat entertained the hoards.

Paris - Skating, Sunset and Champs Elysee

I tried various lenses to capture the skating rink in front of the Hotel de Ville. The 24mm gave an undistorted but narrow view of the rink so I preferred the fisheye even with the distortion. I also did some slower shutterspeed panning with a longer lens and tried the sweep facility on the Fuji, which gave a very strange result if I didn't keep it horizontal during the movement. Another beautiful sunset - golden rather than red and then twilight on the Champs Elysee. Witnessing all the crowds around, we decided to give the midnight celebration a miss!

Sunrise and Sunset, Paris

One of the advantages of a December trip to Paris is that sunrise is at a civilised hour (8.15am at present). This gives plenty of opportunity for my favourite backlighting shots on a walk from the hotel to Les Invalides. The first panorama at Les Invalides was shot using the Fuji sweep facility, the second with a 16 mm lens cropped. A bride just happened to arrive in the scene.  The last two are from the opposite end of the day as the sun set at the Botanic Gardens.