Scenes from the Wirral

The weather at West Kirby was very windy with rain clouds being brought in frequently but by the afternoon at New Brighton it had cleared to give a fine afternoon.
The Travelodge at New Brighton is right on the Promenade and we have a fine view of the lighthouse and Liverpool Docks from our secong floor room. Walking further round towards Birkenhead gave us views that made us realise how much the skyline of Liverpool has changed.

Yellow Horned Poppy and Chicory

Yellow and Grey at Duxford

Rather a long gap since my last entry - I have been busy putting together a Blurb book of flower and landscape images from my eight trips to Wengen in Switzerland. This is finished at last and so time for an outing. We visited Duxford Air Museum as Phil always enjoys the airplanes and I was happy to have a go at the yellow and grey decor.

Bletchley Park

It is probably 2 years since our last visit to Bletchley Park and, as expected, the huts are deteriorating quite fast. The wooden huts above are part of the museum displays but the brick buildings are at the moment leased by a commercial company and are obviously not maintained. Great excuse for a bit of infrared photography. I have a new Gallery on my Website if you want to see more images.

The Luck of the Draw

Well today was beautiful light, but - guess what - the tide proved to be not quite high enough to drive the waders off the mud so today we had to settle for single birds (Ringed Plover, Knot and Turnstone) and one small flock of Dunlin.

Waders on the Wash

I would put this as one of the hundred things to do before....... The sound and sight of flocks of thousands of waders passing overhead is amazing.


The rain stayed away more or less for the early morning so we got our time with the thousands of Knot, Dunlin and Oystercatchers that had been driven off the wash mudflats onto the shingle banks by the very high tide.
I tried all combinations of shutterspeed, aperture and ISO and am still not sure I got quite what I wanted so will return tomorrow and hope the tide is high enough to drive the waders off the Wash.

Eye Green Peterborough

We arrived at the Travelodge in Eye Green in the middle of a very heavy thunderstorm so had to wait for 30 mins for the rain to ease off enough to get out of the car and wade to the lodge entrance. Once the storm had passed we took a walk round the local Nature Reserve. Lots of wet pictures.The hawthorn berries made an interesting subject for monochrome conversion using either maximum or minimum red channel

Sunshine in London

Saturday was a bright sunny day in London - very contrasty light even at 5 o'clock when I was crossing Trafalgar Square on the way to the station. The tourists in the square are very different to even five years ago in that they now spend much of the time huddled in threes, pairs or singles reviewing their camera images rather than feeding the pigeons.

Covent Garden was really quiet when I passed through in the morning in contrast to the crowds in the evening.

London Folks

Intrigued by this set of people in Trafalgar square - styles of dress, interaction with each other and especially their feet had stories to tell. The Festival Hall and Embankment was taken over by a Vintage Weekend so lots to see and photograph - again the feet took my eye.

Dragonflies (Again!)

After a week of cool and cloudy days, we were very lucky that the sun shone and the temperature was reasonable for today's RPS Nature Group and CCC visit to Burwash Farm. Each of the six ponds had its patrolling Emperor dragonfly and by the afternoon there were quite a few laying females. I used manual focusing as the constant ripples and movement of the foliage prevented the autofocus picking up the moving dragonflies. I was surprised to find in one of the shots, the Emperor Dragonfly was doing a roll of victory as it passed me.
By the afternoon there were plenty of Common, Azure and Blue-tailed Damselflies.

Enjoying Grantchester

A few images taken around Grantchester Meadows with the infrared camera