Framedlight

Last week I went into London twice. On the first occasion I was meeting the family at Ronnie Scotts and went in in the afternoon intending to 'do' the Dennis Hopper exhibition at the Royal Academy. Unfortunately I got sidetracked by taking photographs in Burlington Arcade, having a cup of tea and getting engrossed in a book and did not leave enough time for the exhibition. I was not over worried as I was coming into London again the next day. Here are the results of my perambulation down Piccadilly. As you can see it was quite a stormy day.

While I was staying in Cumbria we went to see Blackwell in Bowness.This is a house designed by Baillie Scott for Sir Edward Holt, a brewer, and built in 1901. It is constructed in an arts and crafts style with rooms based around a hall with minstrels gallery and contains furniture and artifacts made by Morris and Co, William de Morgan and Ruskin and Co amongst others. The grounds around the house are lovely but the weather was foul while we were there. Lunch in the tea room was very good however! Photography is permitted and so I let rip with the Fuji. There are a few double exposures (you can only do 2 multiple exposures with the Fuji XE-1) and I have put those at the end.

I went up to Milnthorpe again to see Alan's mum. Milnthorpe lies south of the lakes in Cumbria and to get to it you drive up the M6 and then left onto the A6 which takes you the rest of the way in about 15 minutes. The road goes through the edge of a village called Beetham and I have always been attracted to a group of trees on a hill and a building when driving past. The building is a sort of fortified house which is now used by an undertaker!  I have never had both the right light when driving through and the opportunity to stop, but this day I was blessed with both. I am showing colour and monochrome versions. The last shot is a multiple exposure photograph taken in camera with the Fuji XE-1.

In the same vein as before - a soufflé of images with little cohesion. The two Fowlmere RSPB Reserve images (nos 2 and 3) were taken with an 8 stop neutral density filter on a really windy day. The rest were taken in and around Arkesden, my home village.

Here follows some miscellaneous pictures taken recently that don't fit any collective description, including some infrared photographs from Bridge End Gardens Saffron Walden and the gravel pits at Earith, some sunsets and an ICM. The third sunset was developed using Enfuse, a plugin for Lightroom which allows the merging of several different exposures to give an effect more subtle than HDR. It was very windy in Earith and the vegetation was waving around during the infrared exposure. The infrared photographs were taken using the Nikon D800e, the 24mm tilt shift lens and a filter. I get no 'hot spot' using an infrared filter with this lens.

As promised - a few pictures from the Design Museum in London which I had never visited before. I expected to see a permanent collection of design through the ages or something like that. Instead there were 3 temporary exhibitions. One on an architect Louis Kahn, another of the contenders for the design of the year 2014 which Archie enjoyed as it was hands on, and the third was called Time Machines - clocks by Daniel Weil. This was the most photogenic part as the clocks were placed against a translucent glass wall which had circles of clear glass in it allowing you to see the sky beyond. The museum is going to be relocated next year and they will have the space for a permanent exhibition. The first picture is of a car with a steel chassis but polystyrene body - most useful to avoid those little paint chips.