Ely Cathedral Sunlit Interiors

Yesterday a party of photographers met at Ely Cathedral to explore the interior architecture. It was a clear sunny day so plenty of light bouncing around inside to show off the vibrant colours of stone, tile, painted wood and glass that comprise this 'Ship of the Fens'. Lots of techniques in evidence from putting camera on the floor to capture the  ceiling,  HDR (high dynamic range to control the contrasty light) and photographing projections of the window colours onto the floors. There were even a couple of Tilt/Shift lenses to help cope with the very high ceilings without distortion of the verticals.

Light Painting 2

Although Peter Wood's floral and bird set ups were favourites, he has a very wide repertoire of other set ups. Here are a few that I enjoyed.

 

Light Painting

Last night, Peter Wood treated us to an evening of his light painting displays. We were inside in a large Hall - not ideal as the light tended to bounce off door frames etc in the background but the polished floor made a great reflective surface to add an extra element without having to find a safe area of shallow water! I start with a Kingfisher as I had seen this on his FlikR site and definitely my favourite (www.flikr.com/photos/hugobia)

Birds at Our Feeder

Lots of squabbling at the feeders today with a very large flock of mixed finches attacking the sunflower seeds and each other with a lot of aggression. The Robin sneaks in while they are squabbling. Sunlit, through 3 panes of glass!! I need to work out positioning for a better background.

Paxton's Brackets, Jellies and Crusts

Today I concentrated on some of the young stages of brackets, crust, jellies and other less photographed fungi species today at Paxton. I was pleased to see when IDing the Crystal Brain that it does have the yellow dots seen in the second image - hence its species name 'nucleatum' presumably. Images are either single raw files or jpeg in-camera stacks - I will process some of the raw stacks at some stage!!

 

My Garden Birds

The birds were very busy feeding in the garden this morning with flocks of Goldfinches and Greenfinches visiting the garden feeders and pairs of Long-tailed Tits, Blue Tits, Great Tits, and Blackbirds all looking as if they are pairing and starting to set up territories. All three of the Dove family - Rock Doves, Wood Pigeon and Collared Dove, pair of Dunnocks, Robin, Chaffinch, Song Thrush and Wren (too fast to photograph!).. Also visiting in recent weeks Tree Creeper,  Starling, House Sparrow, Jackdaw, Redwing, Fieldfare, Jay, Magpie and Pied Wagtail 

I came across my garden list for Jan - Feb  in 1968-71. It had all these except Collared Dove and Stock Dove and also included Bullfinch, Marsh Tit, Turtle Dove, Corn Bunting, Yellow Hammer (still in Hedgerows), Tree Sparrow - all declined or absence with a change in the arable farming techniques.