Framedlight

We had the rest of the immediate family over for Boxing Day - Joe, Wendy, Archie and April. April is almost 6 and this is her first Christmas with Joe and Wendy. She seems to be getting into the swing of things. Archie is almost 14 and managed to lose the cynicism of the teenager for Christmas! He had some beanbags and a Superdry coat from Santa and spent most of the afternoon dressed in the one and lounging on the other..

We had family with us for Christmas - Mairi, Hugh, Lizzie, Rene (Alan's mum) and Sheila a friend from the village. I had spent the morning on preparations and was feeling a little stressed by the time we came to serving up. As soon as the first plates had been loaded we noticed that the dog Hettie had disappeared. Hettie is very set in her ways and does not like any change in routine, so more people in the house along with lots of laughter and an alteration  in the dining room furniture was obviously too much for her. Alan and Hugh both had kilts on but went out to search, Hugh along the stream bank where he got nettled! The girls sat down to eat but I couldn't face it so Mairi and I went out in the car, leaving Sheila and Rene alone for dinner! Sheila is a great dog lover anyway, that's how I met her, and she too was anxious. An hour and a half later Mairi and I drove up a farm entrance and saw the poor bedraggled dog walking down the road towards us. She was pleased to g...

With a belated sigh of relief we took shelter from Christmas for a couple of hours in Fowlmere bird reserve. I now think that the word reserve is applicable to the birds as they were nowhere to be seen apart from 2 moorhens and 3 mallards. Alan saw a green woodpecker fly past but I was looking the other way at the time! I did take some photographs though. The latter ones were snapped with the Holga pinhole lens.

I took the dog and the camera for a walk in Wandlebury on the outskirts of Cambridge - a piece of natural woodland surrounding an 18th century house (now turned into residences). I am still experimenting with the 24mm tilt shift lens so the following are taken with that. The first was taken at f/3.5, the third at f/16 and the other two at f/8. It was fairly dark in the woods so I used a tripod.

I am receiving a Nikon 24mm PC-E or tilt shift lens for Christmas. But before it is wrapped I am having a play with it. The Nikon lens, unlike the Canon equivalent, comes with the tilt and shift function set at 90˚. I have read that the lens needs to be sent back to Nikon for reconfiguring so that the two functions are aligned, but I was not sure what this meant. After a little use in the last two weeks I am beginning to understand the limitations without this adjustment. Let me first say that I am primarily a landscape photographer, although I am planning on doing more architectural work, for which the shift function is more useful. Here is a picture taken when I first had the lens. I tilted it by about 1˚ to try and get in focus the very foreground and the books in the extreme background, while keeping the aperture at f/8 This has resulted in a narrow wedge of focus between the book on the table and the books in the far bookcase, through the door. Things on the left and right...

The weather produced some cold foggy days last week and I took a couple of pictures with the Fuji XE-1 of the fields around my dog walk. This camera does very well at high ISO showing low noise levels. The last photo has some intentional camera movement.

We could only spend 2 nights in our lovely snug rented cottage as we all had work on Monday. I had booked Sunday lunch at the local pub, but we would need a walk before we tucked into our lamb. The kids and I had gone on a short walk after breakfast, around the church and a smallholding, but we needed more than that. I had noticed a signpost to 'Lambert's Castle' on the way into Hawkchurch. This proved a good place for a walk and the site of an ancient hill fort. On our way we played 'disc golf', a game using frisbees of different weights for clubs and objects like 'a tree' for holes. We also met a lady walking wolves (no pictures I am afraid), alsatians crossed with timber wolves, who apparently could make a meal of a small dog. Luckily Hettie is not small and the wolves were on leads. They were elegant animals and had the lope of a wolf. I used the D800e for these pictures as I was getting withdrawal symptoms.

Here are a few snaps of our afternoon in Lyme after the crab lunch. We wandered up and down the prom and then walked over to the headland on the west of the town. The light was beginning to fade as we returned and driving through Axemouth we were treated to a full on sunset.