Brandon Country Park - Experimenting with Fungi

Beautiful autumn day on Friday for our visit to Brandon Country Park. Although not a bumper year, there were enough fungi to keep us happy for the day. As usual, I tried various techniques - in the comparison pairs here, the lefthand images are single shots either with 10mm (1) or 50mm (3,5,7) lenses, F18-F5.6, while the comparison images (2,4,6,8) are all focus stacked with the 50mm lens using 30-40 images at F2.8. In 9 and 10, the difference between the 24mm and 10mm ends of the wide zoom on the Fuji are apparent

 

Henry Moore Foundation Part Two

Second set of images form the Henry Moore Foundation. All from the camera (double exposures etc) with minimal manipulation - the shapes and colours are irrestible. I loved the way the sheep and birds interacted with the sculptures - many of these were placed in their position by Moore during his lifetime.

Henry Moore Foundation. Part One

A wonderfully inspiring place to visit, the Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green is where he lived from 1940 till his death in 1986.  It includes the artist's restored home, Hoglands, and its flower garden, his studios, and over 70 acres of less formal gardens and fields containing many of his monumental sculptures. The collections include sculptures in stone, wood, plaster and bronze, drawings and sketchbooks, graphic work, and preparatory materials such as found objects and maquettes. 

I concentrated on four or five of the large sculptures, enjoying the rain, reflections and shapes - here the first two.

Sailing onThames Barge from Ipswich to Felixstowe

Whenever I can, I like to record areas as they appear now so that I can look back and, hopefully, forward to see changes in areas. So here a log of images from the trip up the Orwell from Ipswich to Fleixstowe Port and back. Certainly the docks have changed with the old Brewery no longer in use and the large Oil Depot and metal recycling facilities.

Toad of Toft Hall

 We found this very large toad in a flower pot in our conservatory yesterday. Had fun photographing it before releasing it under some logs near the pond.

Bird-Watching Cruise on the Orwell

As there were very strong winds forecast on Friday, we weren't sure that the trip up the Orwell and into the Stour on the Thames Barge Thistle would run. A very skillful Skipper and Mate with the help of a small power boat to turn us, managed to get us out of Dock and onto the Orwell. We were unable to turn into the Stour or to get close to the banks so bird photography was a bit limited but here Herring gulls, Cormorant, Redshank, Blacktailed Godwits, Ringed Plover, Turnstone, Oyster Catcher, Widgeon, Bar-Tailed Godwit.