Framedlight

Alan cycled over and met me at the fen and we had a walk along the Lode. Seeing the windmill reminded me that I had always intended to snap it with the Holga. After lunch the sun was really burning and after the frustrating effort of trying to photograph the dragonflies in the dipping pools I walked back and spent my time by the river. I took a couple of Holga shots and then some macros with a variety of lenses and extension tubes. The first yellow flower picture is of the bladderwort growing at Wicken - a rare carnivorous plant and I was rather taken with the dandelion table with the 4 dining hoverflies. It was Saturday and as it was so fine Wicken became exceedingly busy. As the heat intensified I realised it was time to go home. Thanks to Ann for arranging and hosting the outing.

Last weekend I went to Wicken Fen in Suffolk as part of a trip out with the RPS Nature Group, led by Ann Miles. The weather was overcast and cool in the morning but in the afternoon the sun came out and it got very hot and humid. Good for the dragonflies in the dipping pools where the group was mainly stationed and during the afternoon some effort was put into trying to photograph the brown hawkers who were doing aerial displays back and forth on a swift, tantalizing, zigzag path. Ann managed to get a couple of very good shots but all I saw was a small blur passing the lens and never even managed to press the shutter! Here are a selection of the pictures I took in the morning when the light was even and the dew still on the reeds. I was using a Nikon 105mm f/2.8 macro lens on my D800e body

Walney Island is separated, just, from the Furness peninsula at the tip of Barrow. It was a stomping ground for Alan when he was a kid and so brings back fond memories of sand and ice cream, although it lies between the mouth of the River Duddon and Morecambe Bay and there are dangerous currents in the channels. We had lunch on the Barrow side as it was very windy and so more sheltered here, but then we stopped at various places, finally crossing back to Barrow and visiting Roanhead, which has a fine view over to the hills of the south lakes. On the beach in Walney there were strange clusters of crab skeletons which had been bundled together by the tide. The first 6 pictures are from Walney and the rest from Roanhead. They are a mixture of straight and ICM images.

We went up to Milnthorpe again to visit Rene, Alan's mother, to see how she was getting on with her new knee. The weather going up was pretty dire but settled into a dry but overcast Saturday and a windy scuddy Sunday. As Rene had not been able to drive and also because we did not want to sit in the house all day we went on a couple of excursions, Saturday to Wasdale and Wastwater and Sunday to Walney Island on the Barrow peninsula. On the Saturday we had lunch in the Wasdale Head Hotel and then walked through fields down to see St Olaf's church, reputably one of the oldest and smallest churches in England. It lies snuggled between yew trees looking towards  Great Gable and Scafell Pike. There are a number of graves of climbers in the churchyard, all with views towards the mountains and a memorial to a group of climbers who died on the Karakoram in the Himalaya (excuse the plastic cup). We drove back via the Hardknott and Wrynose passes and sat in a layby at the bottom of Har...

Not too far from where I live lie 3 corrugated iron barns, snuggled up close to each other and gradually sinking into dilapidation. In fact the third has been almost totally submerged by brambles. Every so often I have a go at photographing them and I have had a yen to try out some blends of colour shots and infrared shots. The day was quite dramatic and while  I was there the clouds rolled in followed by a thunderstorm. As I was leaving it started to rain torrentially. Needless to say under such conditions there was some gusting wind which affected the longer exposure infrared shots. I photographed the barns with and without a 650nm infrared filter on the front. The filter is from Japan and I don't think of particularly good quality, unlike the Hoya 720nm one I have. As the light was from behind the barn I bracketed my exposures so that I could make an HDR image or blend the exposures in photoshop if I needed to. I made a gentle HDR conversion of the first image which was not t...