Framedlight

I decided to convert a few of the early morning misty pictures from Point Reyes into monochrome, as they were nearly monotone anyway. I used Silver Efex Pro 2 for the conversion and added a small amount of coffee toning.

When we returned to the campsite of the night before, we were slightly disappointed to find that the racoons had moved on. I had planned to get the flash out and snap them using that - maybe the once only. I  am always concerned about using flash with animals but after tussling with my conscience I had reckoned that the racoons were man enough to take it. So all that pondering was wasted!! We woke to fog but set out to drive across Point Reyes to the lighthouse which lies on the extreme south west tip of the peninsula.We only got as far as Inverness when the sun started to break through the mist giving lovely conditions to photograph in. Further on down the road we passed the fingers of Drakes Estero, a series of inlets where Francis Drake is supposed to have landed on his circumnavigation of the world. Here again the mist was hanging on, but by the time we had got down to the lighthouse the sky had turned blue and the view over the ocean was a lot clearer. ...

We had had an interesting night in the Samuel P Taylor Campsite, close to Point Reyes and on the Sir Francis Drake Boulevard, named as Drake stopped on Point Reyes in 1579 to make repairs to the Golden Hind. The campsite was a large forested area where they had turned off most of the water, allegedly because of drought. This meant of course that showering was out of the question, even though our clothes were now clean. I am not sure whether it was our odour that attracted the racoons but a family descended on our picnic table while were eating and chattered round the surrounding branches. So delightful, although they apparently carry rabies. An early start saw us driving to the Bear Valley Visitor Centre which was closed at that hour. This is the parking place for the earthquake trail, a short walk around the fault line. The San Andreas fault lies along the line separating the peninsula from the mainland, where Highway 1 now runs. The visitor centre had an invasion of small...

In May 2015, we made a visit in May last year to Arbor Low, a neolithic 'henge' in the Peak District, near Moneyash. It was a cloudy day with rain gusting in over the hills as we drove there.  The henge has several attractive stands of trees overlooking it. We just parked in a rough lay-by at the side of the road, opposite the footpath that leads down to the stones. The way passes through a farmyard where a cat was watching us through a broken barn window. I was surprised when reviewing the pictures to see that the only ones I had of the stones were taken in infrared. The circle comprises around 50 large limestone blocks which may once have been raised vertically and it is surrounded by an earthen bank. During excavations in 1901 a skeleton was found in the middle of the circle. We ended the day with a quick visit to Dovedale, where I again used my infrared camera.