Cricket Returns to Bamville

It is an age since I have travelled south and to the far side of Harpenden to take photos of the Cricket being played at Bamville. I was hoping that I had not lost the fluidity of following the action and sensing the moment when I might catch the action. Bamville the Home Team were playing against a team from Hatfield, 'The White Walkers'
My arrival was later than I had hoped as my direct route was on divert, so although I did arrive before the match was due to start; setting my kit up was rushed, which is always less than ideal as it is all too easy to make mistakes. 
I barely had time to speak to Peter Carr, the Organiser and Scorer; I learned that Peter was operating single-handedly too. After the briefest of greetings, I started to set up the Benbo tripod and mount my EOS R with the Sigma 60-600mm lens on it.
Due to concerns over not using this combination over the last several months, this is the first time I have been out with this, or any heavy tripod and long lens, so I was less confident I would be as fluid as I had become with my smaller and way lighter, handheld kit. Fortunately, this insecurity did not last too long! It was good to be using the Sigma again, and to begin with, I was using it with the 1.4x Converter, but I soon returned that to my bag allowing me to benefit from the extra stop, and if the light was less, the faster shutterspeed.
On this occasion I did not keep changing my viewpoint as I might have done on previous occasions, in case I needed to change lenses or a battery, and I settled into trying to capture the action. It may seem perverse to want to capture a batsman being run out, or being bowled out, these are moments that depend on reaction speed, so these are the gems I seek, but there is no malice, and I am aware that my pleasure is not one that receives unalloyed glee from the batsman whose bails have been captured in the air by my fast finger! On the unfortunate batsman's return to the pavilion, he is unlikely to share my joy, so shouting: "I have a great shot of airborne bails" is not the best form of greeting!
However, my pleasure remains regardless, especially as capturing a fielder with a successful catch would be way too hard, and require considerably more knowledge of the specific bowler to even contemplate aiming for such an event? I did get shots of two separate batsmen who succumbed to the fate of being bowled out.
We did suffer a short intermission due to a short shower, and I was grateful that I was close to the pavilion to seek shelter and we were blessed with it being over fairly speedily. I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to capture the afternoon's action, and I am very grateful for one of the teams very kindly giving me a slice of pizza which was most welcome.
I hope I have managed to capture the atmosphere and action from the afternoon; I certainly enjoyed the opportunity to combine being out, and hopefully capturing the spirit of the match.

Sunny Afternoon at Broglake

On this particular afternoon, my younger daughter brought her two children over, and having fed and watered them at my place, was going to join me over at the nearby Brogborough Lake for a short while, prior to taking them back home, where she was due to meet up with another family close to home with the two youngsters and meet up with other school-friends at their home.

I had to verify there was somewhere to park, so I set off first, and soon arrived — but surprisingly, her two must have been keen to set off because, I had barely parked before they joined me!
On this occasion there was a good number of people who had taken the opportunity to visit, and my two young grandchildren were soon very close to the water's edge to catch sight of all those already out. The time they spent was all too short before they were back in the car, and I was waving them goodbye. I was sad to watch them leave, but I consoled myself with the joy of seeing them despite the brevity of their stay. I then turned back to the lake, and started capturing the varied activity that was in evidence this afternoon. There were many more present than my last visit, and the activities ranged from paddleboarders and kitesurfers to windsurfer's, with and without hydrofoils.
It was sunny, but typically the wind strength was varied, due to the various hills and wooded areas that surround the lake's location, which tends to surprise the unwary. However, I do feel this does add to the skill levels of those who train for these skills on our inland lakes when the more steady winds of the Coast are not available.
Understanding the wind's variability surely must add to the skill of reading the wind.
I made a point of trying to take shots which captured the differing choices of  kit on the water, as well as following the individual genres to point up the variety. The atmosphere was very relaxed in that there were several groups grabbing the opportunities offered by the warm water and sun, to remain close to the shore and chat while remaining in the water.
There appeared to be more small groups taking advantage of meeting once again after such a long time and catching up, so the gallery has hopefully captured the renewed ambiance of life on the Brogborough Lake with the loosening of the lockdown restrictions, and the slow return to some resemblance of normality.

Brogborough Lake Activity

 

I drove to the lake at Brogborough, and parked opposite the entrance to the surrounding lakeside path, off which are several Anglers' Swims. The gate to the Watersports gate was locked, so after locking the car, I walked back to see how many cars were there to ascertain the likelihood of Windsurfer's taking to the water. Seeing there were at least four, and there being some wind, I returned to the car and got out my EOS R, and added the Tamron 100-400mm lens, which I had considered was light enough to use handheld, and walked to the second swim to see what activity there was on the water. There was none!
I then walked further round the lake keeping an eye out for dragonflies and damselflies; damselflies were present, but because it was warm, they seemed happy to fly, only very occasionally landing; for less than a second! In such a situation the odds were not favourable, so I returned to the car to improve them, and mounted the camera on my monopod to help shorten them. I did manage a few shots of damselflies and a cricket, but they do not appear here, because I now heard the distinctive crack from a sail being snapped in the wind, and I turned my mind to windsurfer activity.
The first shots were of someone using a wingsail with a hydrofoil board, and from that moment, since there was not a lot of insect activity, I changed tack. Soon the number of sailors on the water rose, but even after my time there had ended the number remained in the lower single figures, but it was good to be using the EOS R again, and also using the light Tamron zoom for the first time this year. Using the monopod and the Tamron is handy as I can move around with ease, yet get reasonable stability, and not wear myself out lugging a heavy tripod.
This day was the first time I had seen more than just Sam using a wingsail and hydrofoil, so it will be interesting to see how many will take to it. The height out of the water was interesting to note on occasion this particular afternoon, in one case I actually caught sight of the aerofoil itself partially clear of the surface! I also noted an almost clear gybe with a good height on the hydrofoil — I wonder whether I will catch sight of a jump with a foil?! That is a shot I would delight in catching.
Overall, considering how few were on the water on this particular afternoon, I certainly I felt I had got my fix for the day, and it is only other circumstances that have resulted in this gallery arriving late.

Totally Self-absorbed Coot

On an earlier visit to Priory Park, I extracted a series of images of a Coot from the main gallery in case it was simply a distraction. But by itself, I felt it worth a gallery, purely because the Coot had absolutely no interest in me; it was totally absorbed in its own life, and I represented no form of interest or threat, so if I took pictures, well so be it! It had allowed me to capture many more shots than I am displaying here, so these are simply a snapshot of those moments in its day.

I was not dressed in camouflage, or ensconced in a hide; I had just quietly dropped to a squat, and just started recording the scene that unfolded, and was rewarded by the bird simply ignoring my presence. It is rare to find my attempts at capturing the activity of insects, animals and birds with blissful acceptance of my presence and proximity – in general, I have to be lucky to work fast and silently to capture a fleeting moment, before the opportunity has passed!

I admit that a Coot is far from the most exciting of bird species, and more often than not, the activities of a Coot that I have captured has been the frequent antagonism of one bird angrily chasing another amidst much frantic flapping of wings and splashing of water! This was a relaxed and private few moments of quiet searching and feeding.

Apology to Readers (and perhaps read by Google):

New Blogger has several bugs, and although it has taken three days of frustration to bypass several of them when creating this entry, I have yet to find out how to get past the appalling hyphenation from some line ends. Hopefully, those tasked with bringing New Blogger in line with the simplicity and functionality of Blogger, will work with their longtime users of Blogger who have enjoyed a decade and more of using the former Great Product to tidy up the current Downgrade!

Should this reach the eyes of a human at Google, I would be very pleased to describe the issues I (and likely many, many more Users have been suffering recently) – I do genuinely wish to help resolve the problems that the Update has inadvertently created as when it is able to work as efficiently as Blogger used to perform, it is a great product.

Two separate issues that need attention are Tabbing and Uncropped headline Images. When any narrative has paragraphs (sepecially when being viewed on phones) readability is VASTLY improved by Initial Paragraph indenting.) I am not asking for a full Word Processor, I just want Images and text to be WYSIWYG; so if I set a pixel dimension for width I expect this to be honoured relative to the display width, not automatically lopped from the right.

Brogborough Lake – Two Worlds

                    I parked on the Opposite side of the road to the entrance to The Windsurfers Area, and strolled to the water’s edge outside their boundary to see what activity was like on the lake, and found none initially, so I returned to my car and chose the camera I was going to use to capture the life that lies onshore.

                    The wind that was presently blowing, favoured activity such as the windsurfers, but only once I had returned with the Lumix FZ 10002, did I espy a mere couple of sailors on the lake, whereas I spotted a few Damselflies within seconds of looking; some paired up, exhibiting their heart-shaped linking, and I often wonder whether it was this shape observation that gave us humans the shape to depict our romantic inclinations. Although I observed a couple of restless Dragonflies, they eluded capture by knowing my reactions with this camera were well less than their elapsed time stationary! At least with this camera! However, a Bee, a Cabbage-white, Meadow Brown, a lone Cricket, and Damselflies were far more patient and less wary as was another flying insect. The tenuous grasp of one pair of damselflies, warranted a repairing of bonds before flying was resumed.

                    The initial interspersing of windsurfers amongst the insects is due to time differences between my two camera bodies, not simply my distraction from one subject and another! Once human activity on the lake grew, I returned to get out a tripod and the Canon 5D MkII with the Sigma 60-600mm lens which is far better suited to capturing fast action. However, the temptation to heed the over-secretion of the Want glands in relation to the Canon EOS R6 body is definitely tempting for much of the subjects that interest me, and considering up until very recently the 7D MkII body almost permanently attached to my long lens Sigma, the 60-600mm is still short of the lesser of the R5 & R6 pairing in pixel numbers, the R5 would seem a natural successor, for the burst rate would definitely be more suited to my needs, since it exceeds the 7D MKII in the one area I really feel the need.

                    The Lumix camera need not fear being sold to fund this potential camera body since it fulfils its role superbly as a quality camera with less weight and excellent focal length range that can accompany me at all times, as unlike many a mobile phone camera which simply does not compare for my needs.

                    The shots I took later with the 7D MkII certainly brought a smile to my face on occasion, since it seems an absolute age since I got shots of the Windsurfers; the only disappointment being that the wind conditions did not suit jumpers, which is a subject that keeps my senses alert when shooting windsurfers. The only shame on this occasion was that the light became less favourable as the day progressed, but the wind direction did generally keep the action reasonably close to where I was positioned outside the Club area. Windsurfing action and spray comes alive in bright sunshine.

                    It was good to get some time with two very different cameras as that keeps my brain from atrophying.

Priory Park Walk

  Priory Park in Bedford is quite varied in content, and ideal in which to walk, yet feel quite alone in the open space I find. On this visit, I was unsure whether I would find subjects for my camera, after parking my car at my destination, so initially made the decision to walk the route sans camera. that was less than ideal as it turned out as the point at which I entered the park was one long and less than exciting straight path. having walked its length, I decided I should reconsider that decision, so turned around and headed back. On a day with such oppressive heat, this was definitely a poor start, and wasted a considerable amount of energy and time!

I returned to the car and made a new decision, I would take my light rucksack and add food and flask, as well as my camera; in this instance the Lumix FZ10002 once again. Then I headed back along the recently walked path with its proven lack of interest to go deeper to see what I might find. The first item of interest I feel sure was a jackdaw feather – Its condition was pristine, which I found to be surprising for such a well-developed feather.

Early in my walk, I came across a lone Coot, that’s feeding from a part of a currently dry weir, and it seemed totally oblivious of my presence, so rather than take up a large part of the gallery of general images, I have created a standalone gallery that covers the bird’s activity as a separate entity.

The direction I later took was beneath one of the bridges along the river, which displayed considerable colourful graffiti and across the water from me, a group of youngsters set fire to something then stood around watching it envelope in flames. On my side, I spotted a partially full bottle I supposed was a lager, on a ledge, little realising that one amongst that number of kids a moment later was to appear on the same side as myself and pick it up, and wantonly throw it to the ground, smashing it. Sadly as a lone witness to his vandalism, there was little point in remonstrating since in total, the group possibly numbered around ten youths, so I just recorded more graffiti and took a shot of more civilised and relaxed behaviour beyond.

The road above my chosen path was carried in a curve around these various waters with some very interesting architecture of a far more recent bridge, which had far greater appeal, since much of my career had been spent photographing varied aspects of architecture in and around London and further afield.

As my walk continued I found myself recording bees, butterflies and cygnets and then I left the river to return to my car, and spotted an overflow of luxurious grapes hanging beyond the bounds of the house offering a bounty for passing walkers when they are ripe! Alongside also some very young acorns caught my eye, as did the skies that greeted me on my return home.  I should add also, that the route I took to leave the park was foolishly chosen beyond the bounds of the park and made the journey back to the car even longer than the walk within!

In terms of satisfaction, the shots beneath the road bridge gave me the most pleasure on this jaunt as I appreciated its curves and structure.