Taking a Canalside Wander from Slapton

I decided to take a wander along the towpath from Slapton Lock, heading past the Lock Cottage and down the slope, taking a look at bees hard at work amongst the cottage's blooms and beyond. It was whilst I was concentrating upon bees, that I spotted the minutest daytime moth alight on a nearby leaf that had a wingspan that was barely two thirds of a centimetre across.

The clouds very occasionally parted to show shafts of sunlight on the boats, and it was close, even occasionally looking as if a shower might come.

I was passed by cyclists and walkers as I wandered by anglers, separated by around fifty to a hundred yards; some would turn and acknowledge me and I would enquire as to their luck, and on two occasions as I passed I would look back and see a taut rod curved under the pull of the fish versus the angler, and therefore twice I was able to capture that moment as the fish was carefully coaxed towards the bank; one was a Perch, the other a Bream, and yet another a Common Carp, but it was already landed, and I was asked could I take a shot of the catch in the man's hands using his iPhone. Only too happy to oblige, I forgot to try to record the accomplishment for myself, but it was a fine strong fish that a few moments later was free to chance its luck against the fisherman another day.

I continued my stroll in search of the small glimpses of Nature's beauty as couples took their narrowboats through the locks, and I observed that in most cases I observed it was the fairer sex that worked the locks as their menfolk took the tiller and the easy life, so Chauvinism lives on, along the Grand Union Canal! I did however try to redress the balance by coming to the rescue of one lady who had sought her partner's help in vain, and was warmly thanked.

As I turned around and returned to the bridge by Slapton Lock a few desultory raindrops fell and returning home a few more splashed the screen, but it never developed into a shower.

Leaves & Flowers at Stockwood

Having not taken any photographs for a while and now, almost over an intransigent cough, cold and conjunctivitis, I felt a trip to the Discovery Centre coming on. The near certainty of it being crowded by half-term hordes of children was only to be expected, but considering that it was not even sunny and warm, even I was surprised at just how full it was.

There were less blooms than I had imagined, but there was at least a good number of bees, though I heard none of the buzz because of the high ambient noise and the not infrequent passing of landing aircraft passing directly overhead.

Although sunlight does bring both flowers and leaves to life, flat lighting does offer quite good saturation of colour, so the gallery of images fortunately do not disappoint, so I was able to make the best of my time there, especially as leaves are at their freshest.

Clerkenwell Design Week 2014

Since my meeting up with fellow photographer Geoff Dann was going to be late morning, I decided to visit my erstwhile working partners at the Colour Company before visiting various showrooms taking part in the Clerkenwell Design Week. Since it is some time since John and Annie Swift and I had met, we spent much longer catching up than I had planned, resulting in less time spent visiting the various venues, but I had no regrets. It also meant I would try to catch a few moments with another former colleague Steve Warner on the far side of Clerkenwell.

It was good to see the area buzzing with activity as numerous visitors thronged the streets of an area I have always considered to be the working centre of London. I have considerable affection for the area having spent a goodly proportion of my working life treading the local pavements, and it is good to see just how much the area is welcoming change. It used to be home to numerous photographers, graphic designers, printers and small advertising agencies, most of those I knew well have left, but their spirit lives on.

I visited and was made welcome in all the showrooms I, and later Geoff, visited. We broke for a snack lunch alfresco in Clerkenwell Green and discussing what we had seen and reminiscing. After our repast, we headed for Sans Walk so I could introduce Geoff to Steve Warner. On arrival we met Mark who shares this bijou workspace, and despite my having no recollection of meeting Mark, his memory was far greater than mine and was able to recall that we had met and he was able convincingly to prove it: he knew of my interest in motor racing and my knowledge of Photoshop, so advancing years are having a greater effect on me than I had thought! Both Steve and Mark showed us some of their recent impressive work, resulting in even less time being spent on touring locations connected to CDW 2014, but we assured them both we were headed for the dungeons of the House of Correction with its underground catacombs of cells, now given over to artists, craftsmen and women and their exhibits.

Whereas above ground in the various showrooms and outside I was shooting at ISO levels from 200-400, down here I was handholding shots as low as 1/6th of a second at 256000 ISO! Both Geoff and I recollect the days of film, when such shots could only be undertaken using a tripod and heavy lighting gear with its attendant loss of atmosphere and spontaneity, and a lengthy delay before seeing the results of our labours!

We had also earlier paid a return visit to Zaha Hadid’s gallery and one particular installation still held and enduring fascination as it yielded new viewpoints, and it was interesting to note they had brought down some of their historic models and concepts and placed them on open display where last year they had been in a secure area only available to the fortunate few.

Altogether the day was once again a success and was full of interesting encounters.

I hope the gallery of images gives as much pleasure to those viewing as it gave me capturing them.

Bamville Away to Ley Hill at Amersham

Peter Carr had mentioned that Bamville Cricket Club were to play away at Amersham on the Saturday, and as I had missed their first match which had been a winner for them, I made a concerted effort to try to attend this match. Fortunately Peter’s  pessimistic message that they were not fielding a strong team of members, but a series of friends and friends of friends did not reach me till I arrived at the venue, as had I received it before setting off I might have given it a miss.

However, the team was strong, and the ground much larger than Bamville’s own, and largely level at the boundary. The weather was favourable but variable, sometimes sunny, sometimes cloudy, but bright. I had brought two different lenses and a 1.4 converter which was fortuitous as the distance to the creases was much farther than Bamville’s and I learned that there was more than one snag with using the converter with my 100-400mm lens; I was aware of the vignetting, but had forgotten that the autofocus was limited to a single central spot, so when using AI Servo placing my subject at edges was not on, so composition was often compromised.

What also did not help is either my EOS 7D or my 300mm lens was suffering a glitch, so I have to find the time to investigate further and more than likely pay a visit to Canon’s workshop sometime soon, and dip into savings!

I spent time at different spots around the boundary trying to meet Peter’s desire for me to concentrate on shooting their team’s batsmen when they were in, and their bowlers and fielders when the Ley Hill team were batting, I had to resist the temptation to choose what I felt was more interesting at any one moment in time. I had very little chance of catching bails in the air at the distance I was away from the action as that was not really practical which was a shame.

I must be a handy mascot as Bamville won, so maybe I’ll be invited again! We spent a short time downing a drink at the Eagle which was literally a bridge across a stream from the far boundary, before we both went our separate ways back home.

One sequence I shot I have made into a short animated GIF for fun. I have since learned the name of the bowler featured is Nigel Quinton. I hope it is enjoyed.

Brogborough Lake – Saturday in May

A second bite at the cherry, though once again I am not arriving at the beginning of the show; I arrive at around midday, and the weather does look more promising, and there are way more windsurfers today. However, I have come with different lenses assuming there to be racing, and yet within moments of arriving at the foreshore, I see the very definite signs that the brisk, and gusty wind is inviting some of the surfers to jump.

Alerted to the colour of the sail to watch I keep him/her in my sights (at this distance working out whether male or female is not possible without prior knowledge). One thing is certain from my previous visits to this club, is there are girls aplenty that have taken to this sport and there is no shortage of talent amongst their number.

For those who do not know this venue and are interested in taking up windsurfing, I can highly recommend you take a look at what they offer, everyone is welcoming and friendly, and the new managers Emma and Sam Barnes would be happy to hear from you.

It turned out that I was able to follow several surfers when it was gusting to try to capture those moments when they took to the air, and due to the slight change in wind direction, much of that activity took place nearer than had been the case on Friday.

The rain did come down and the wind certainly blew, so there were times when I chose to keep my camera gear inside the cabin, despite there being several who were making the most of the wind whilst I was inside.

Altogether I was happy with the shots I got, and certainly the 100-400mm lens was the choice, though 200-400mm would certainly not be turned down, but that's way out of my budget, and so far no one has made me an offer to handle one in anger, but I can dream!

I was pleased with my afternoon, but it has not made my cough go away or restored my voice.

Brogborough Lake Break

Having been somewhat indisposed since before the May Bank Holiday due to finally succumbing to the generosity of my my young grandchildren in being gifted a nasty cough cold and Conjunctivitis, I felt the irresistible urge to be outside. It was windy, and the morning had even had spells of bright sunshine, so it was hard to consider anywhere else than the shores of Brogborough Lake and the likelihood of there being ardent followers of the wind taking advantage of the windsurfing opportunities.

Sadly I had to clear the decks before going and that meant it was early afternoon and the spells of sunshine were now were overtaken by cloud and rain, but that still offered a chance for the brave to be more than happy with the wind, and me to be content to grab the opportunity to capture them using the wind to jump. I managed to get a small gallery of images, but more importantly learn there was an even better opportunity on the Saturday.

Following on, the Gardens at the Discovery Centre

After taking in the exhibition, Colin and I  had coffee and cakes before we parted company and I took a look around the gardens to see what I could capture, and the gallery of pictures is the result.

The refurbished Victorian Greenhouses are nearing completion, and the small conservatory was being worked upon.

It was just a shame that there was no sunshine, but it seemed a waste not to stay that bit longer whilst I was on site. On this occasion I did not visit the long Greenhouse against the wall.

Visions of the Universe

This exhibition, on display in the aptly named Stockwood Discovery Centre till the 8th of June shows some amazing images from a variety of sources that add to our knowledge and understanding of our place in the vast wilderness of Space; although many of the images are obtained from sources other than by photography in the accepted form, they are beautiful art in their own right. Many have been created in false colour to differentiate what they show, but despite this scientific basis they can also be judged by their pure aesthetics.

When you see some of the drawings of earlier scientists obtained laboriously over often many days with comparatively crude equipment by today’s standards, you cannot fail to be amazed by their tenacity, patience and artistic skill to which they apply their intellect. There are examples of sketches that were made set beside today’s technology-created imagery and you can only marvel at the accuracy they achieved.

I visited with fellow photographer Colin Bowles, and both of us were reading items out and recounting our own recollections of when some of the more recent discoveries were made and where we were at the time. I hope the schools make every effort to bring students to view what is displayed here, so they can better appreciate what we now know of the Universe in which the Earth, the planet we inhabit, is a mere speck of cosmic dust.

College Lake – Greylag and Lapwings

Armed with my 100-400mm lens a short visit to College lake near Bulbourne seemed like a reasonable choice to make. Due to the excessive rains this year the pathway beyond the octagonal hide was flooded, so I took a chance that the hide might just allow me to get some shots.

The first to come my way were a pair of swooping Lapwings, and as I watched I began to get some idea of what was happening, as it seemed as if it was often the female who landed on the spit just beyond the hide and who was then dive-bombed by the male, but this was only supposition my part as I am not a clued-up bird watcher.

I decided I would try to capture what I took to be their mating ritual as the female would display on the ground, than as the male swooped she would squat lower as if in submission, and then they would fly off together for a while before she would land again and seem to repeat the action. I may have misinterpreted it all as the pair flew again together for a while before they went their separate ways and the female flew to an islet and started drinking casually as if she were no longer interested.

The greylag geese which interrupted these goings on announced their departure in typically raucous hooting and I managed to get a reasonable grouping of three in flight, as well as an earlier singleton landing on the water. In the milky sunshine, another pair made interesting reflections on the water as flew by.

Easter Sunday, Stockwood Country Fair

The Discovery Centre in Luton hosted their Country Fair on Easter Sunday, and my daughter had mentioned that there was a very interesting character, Ray Smith demonstrating the craft of making a straw beehive, known as a skep. However, for some reason, he did not appear, but I met some of his colleagues and got chatting and was shown some modern wooden ones that could be built from flat packs of wood, and I learned a bit about how they were constructed and why.

I also took a quick trip around the gardens to see how they were growing and watched a flying display of a vulture and owl, but because my intention had been to photograph a craftsman at work and possibly any flowers or plants of interest, I had left my 100-400mm lens behind, and really the 24-105mm was less than ideal to make the most of the aerial display!

I rounded off my trip by a very cursory glance at the exhibition of the Visions of the Universe exhibition, but I will visit that at a later date, when it is less crowded, but it will be well worth a visit as the images and their stories are fantastic.

Update – Been Busy with WORK!

It must have been obvious to any regular visitor to this blog that there has been little activity here, but I have been far from quiet; truth be told I have been busier than for a long while. Sadly, this has meant many normally highly important activities have had to be curtailed. Also irritatingly over the last ten days I have been plagued with intermittent connection to Broadband, coupled with numerous visits from Openreach engineers as they struggle to find the cause which broke my concentration at critical times and caused work to come to a crawl.

On the retouching job for a fellow photographer I was working on, one composite image that after some forty odd layers was flattened three more times before adding between ten and twenty further layers to those threw up an interesting dialogue box when saving.

A way through the first stage when saving to TIFF, I received an alert that read: "… some TIFF Readers may not be able to handle files that exceed 2GB, would you like to continue or save to another format?" – the last time I had worked on files that large was a few years back whilst creating a montage that can be seen covering the entire length of the corridor at the charity Refuge, where the ten overlapping images I was working upon, all individually exceeded 7GB, the largest being 8.67GB! Oh, and they were only black-and-white – this job was in full colour at 16-bit.

No sooner had I completed the second part of that job than I was packing for a trip to the coast in Sussex for a spell setting up another photographer to help with his Lightroom catalogues and associated images and setting up his Time Capsule.

Just before finishing the big retouch, I learned of the LaCie Fuel with its 2TB of wireless disc to expand on the memory available to my iPad. On my return it had arrived but I had to collect it from the courier's depot. I had hoped it might be really simple to work, but I am still hard at it trying to get my head around it, but it promises to be an excellent way to have a large body of work to show clients on the iPad.

I just wish LaCie had put as much effort into taking the user through the various steps to set it up as they obviously spent on their promotional videos and the packaging. The packaging is a work of art, and is exceedingly well produced, but it's the box it comes in for heaven's sake, I would rather they provided a soft case for it to travel in! The box is destined to decorate more lofts than be used to house the device. The Product packaging itself is exquisite but there again I would like a user replaceable battery; there's just no pleasing me.

Marsworth Pastel Reed beds

The Sunday afternoon was surprisingly warm for the end of March, but the sky was overcast with an occasional milky sun seen through the cloud cover.

Having arrived at Marsworth reservoir it was obvious many people had also decided to venture out as witnessed by the numbers of cars parked nearby, and I had my camera with me despite not expecting to capture much of interest. I was not destined to be surprised!

There was certainly much to be heard, as birdsong filled the air, but only rarely did I catch sight of the singers, and when I did the branches made capturing an image of them impossible, especially since the light was poor. I took a walk towards Bulbourne alongside the canal. Finding nothing of significance I retraced my steps and on my return the light grew less but with subtle shades of pink, orange and blue, so I took a few landscape shots of the reed beds, and later listened to a pair of raucous Greylag Geese and watched, as I believe the male, remained ashore for longer before deciding it would finally join its partner on the water.

This was a far cry from the abundance of birds I had experienced while in India, especially in the grounds of the Deo Bagh Hotel in Gwalior!

Sawston Village College Concert 2014

http://www.fntn.co.uk/rodwp/SawstonVCC14-1

Catherine alerted me to the Sawston Village College Concert, being held once again in the West Road Concert Hall in Cambridge, and this time both girls were to be in the Samba Band, and Poppy would also be playing her saxophone with the Sawston Saxophone Sound.

Last year I gave my 100-400mm its very first outing, as I only received it the morning of the last concert, but I learned from that evening that there were times when I wanted a wider view, so this time I also took the 70-200mm. As before I arrived early enough to get a position as far forward as possible on the left flank gallery, and there is fortunately just enough light to shoot at 6400 ISO with manageable shutter speeds to ensure most movement was captured effectively.

I had not yet cleared my 32GB cards of shots taken in India, so I foolishly omitted formatting any of them and chose to work with the space available, forcing me to change cards, which meant that when I started to create the gallery, I completely failed to spot I had missed most of the Samba Band shots. This means I now have two separate galleries and the chronology of the concert is lost unless I start again. I have more pressing things to be doing, so two galleries it is!

Here is the second.http://www.fntn.co.uk/rodwp/SawstonVCC14-2

Ten Days in India

For avid readers of my blog (if such there breathe?), I sincerely apologise for the absence of anything new or even vaguely interesting for the last several weeks – this is due to my paying a ten day visit to India to spend some time in the two cities of Mumbai and Delhi with my niece and nephew respectively.

I spent a mere ten days on the sub-continent, taking any and every opportunity to take photographs, but since for me I was travelling very light with no computer, this meant that only when I returned to these shores was I able to get the galleries of pictures up to the server.

Succumbing to the natural changes of diet and water also took a day out of the ten, and the knock on effect of that resulted in my only seeing Mumbai between the internal airport and the new Mumbai International, which was not really enough to learn something of the life of my niece with her work with advertising films and her Beauty School, Fat Mu.

However, I have now done some sorting and for the moment will not write anything extensive, but allow the pictures themselves to tell their own story. Here are the links in approximately the order in which they were taken.

Abu Dhabi Airport
Nizamuddin West, Delhi
The Amer Craft Colony at night
The Qutub Minar
Old Delhi
The Taj Mahal
The train journey to Jaipur
The Sheraton Hotel
A Hill Fort in Jaipur
The Amber Palace
The Deo Bagh Hotel in Gwalior
The Man Singh Palace and Fort
The Scindia Museum at the Gwalior Palace
Fatehpur Sikri Hill Fort and Palace
The new Mumbai International Airport

I was extended great courtesy by two owners of shops, one in Jaipur itself another in the Amber Palace, I hope you appreciate the photos taken in both places by way of a thank you.

The difficulty is choosing a single image to head this piece yet do justice to India, so I hope the shot of the Sweeper in Old Delhi says something about Optimism! I hope anyone looking at these images is able to sense something of the spirit of my trip and share in my enjoyment and gratitude to Virginia, Alex, Palka and Junaid.

Trafalgar Square and the Strand

This was in fact the first strand of the day I visited the London Fashion Weekend and just a glimpse of the end, and what a day it turned out to be.

The rainy start began in Caddington and continued till I parked the car close to East Finchley Station; by the time I stepped out at Charing Cross, the rain had abated, but the colour had not altered from Slate Grey (back at base my choice of Creativity background paper!) But at the far side was the Bright Blue Cockerel, which immediately brought a smile to my face – the contrast from the greys and blacks of many of the buildings and the Edwin Landseer Lions was wonderful to behold. The Lions still held their charm for climbers of all ages to be photographed between their benign forelegs, and it was a greta way to relax before the more serious task of trying to do justice to the models on the Fashion Show Catwalk in Somerset House.

I wanted a record of the new Routemasters plying their trade along London’s thoroughfares, and the cyclist on a Boris Bike, now snubbed by Barclays for our daring to criticise their flagrant disregard of their customers, their financial gambling and their extortionate bonuses. One sign caught my eye, and I realised just how poor we have become when I spotted a capital ‘L’ replacing a lowercase character on a small sign!

I used to work in London, but spent my time only considering the fastest route between one place and the next, only very rarely stopping to look around me, well not this time. The entire gallery of images were my personal observations over a period of just over thirty minutes as I strolled and observed, and after one chance encounter, started singing the words from ‘Streets of London,’ I will leave readers to guess the precise moment when my singing started.