Framedlight

In January we took Alan's mum back to her home near the lakes and it was a good excuse for a wander. We visited Blackwell, an arts and crafts house near Bowness, built by Baillie Scott for a Manchester brewer, Sir Edward Holt. It was to function as his 'holiday home'! It is a lovely house overlooking Lake Windermere. After a spot of lunch (they have an excellent café) we drove over to Rydal water where there is a pretty footpath that follows the course of the River Rothay. The excellence of the walk can be verified as we were following Sir Chris Bonnington, presumably working off some Christmas excesses, down the track. We finished off with a quick visit to Grasmere church.

I had my, new to me, infrared converted camera with me and Muncaster castle seemed a very good subject for infrared. As well as the castle itself the wooded grounds are extensive and the views over the hills breathtaking. The foliage was young and soft, ideal for infrared photography.

We had a smashing breakfast in Morrisons and a good chat before departing for a very picturesque small quarry south of Derwentwater. I do not know when the quarry had shut down but the bottom now contains a small pond and saplings have grown up around the sides. It is roped off so it is not possible to get right in but you can take pictures from the front and also, by climbing up from the sides, down from a more elevated position. The sun came through the clouds while we were there catching the tops of the trees on the top edge of the quarry. These were the best pictures I managed to take over the 2 days as it was such an interesting area. Again I made extensive use of the 70-200mm zoom and I was so glad I had packed it (and lugged it about). I am afraid I got rather fixated on a small birch that was growing in front of some strange streaked yellow stains in the slate and there are too many pictures of this. As time goes on I will come back to the blog and remove some!! After lunch we...

At the beginning of November I went on a workshop with Doug Chinnery based in the Lake District. It was a great 2 days where I learnt some and was able to selfishly indulge my photography. There were only 4 of us, including Doug who gave us all masses of attention. The first day we met at the Tarn Hows car park at 6.00am. I had booked into a B&B in Keswick and it was a forty minute journey down to Tarn Hows on the coldest night of the year so far and I had to scrape the frost from the windshield before starting out. The satnav seemed to have planned my journey around the narrowest roads but I got there for 6.00 and the cold night led into a bright and sunny day. Dawn was gentle as there were few clouds in the sky but the morning light was beautiful. We must have spent 5 hours around the Tarn and here are a few of the pictures. I am not entirely happy with them and have spent the whole of November in search of a good autumn shot. They were all taken on the Nikon D800e with mainly t...

A couple of weeks ago I went up to visit an aunt in Glasgow and stopped at Alan's mother, Rene's house on the way up. Mairi and I went there by car and all three of us continued up to Glasgow. Before we left we had a little time in the Lakes and visited Fell Foot on the shores of Windermere and also Arnside on Morecambe bay. By the time we got to Arnside the sun was setting - not a spectacular sunset, but a soft gentle one.

We spent the weekend with Alan's mum who lives in Milnthorpe on the southern tip of Cumbria. On Saturday we decided to go for a trip round a part of the Lakes I had not visited before. We made a circuitous journey through Ambleside and Keswick, around the western shore of Derwentwater, over the Honister pass, past Buttermere and Crummockwater to Cockermouth. There we visited the house Wordsworth was born in and came home late via a more straightforward route. The weather started out wet but as we went over the pass the rain turned to snow and shrouded the hills in mist. Very cold but atmospheric. Here are the photographs from that trip, starting at Derwentwater. I really like the effect the snow has given to two of the Honister Pass photographs I have a trial version of Heliconfocus loaded and have tried to do some stacked focus landscapes, without much success. The Derwentwater picture I hadn't actually needed to stack but when I ran about 4 pictures through Helicon I got ...