This week the photography club took a trip to the Lavender Fields in Ickleford, near Hitchin, Hertfordshire. We chose a very hot day, but the lavender looked good, the bees were humming and the occasional splash of red from the poppies added to the scene.
From a selfish photographers perspective, it was quite crowded but I managed some shots to capture the colour – and the atmsophere.
A busy white-tailed bumble bee.
Poppies against the lavender
This week some members of our local photographic club travelled to Ickworth House near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk.
Ickworth House is a National Trust Property, famous for its Rotunda, House, parkland and church. Here are some images I got on the day. The weather wasn’t brilliant – overcast at times – but no rain. We were grateful for that.
This is the famed Rotunda. The NT ( National Trust ) are in the process of raising funds to replace 7,000 pieces of slate.
This is the East Wing of the building from across the Italianate Gardens.
Another section of the gardens with the Rotunda in the background.
The last group are of St Mary’s Church in the grounds of the house – including two shots of the church interior. The lighting inside was superb. I just had to have a go at capturing it! I think I did. I hope you agree.
There was too much to take in on one day – almost certainly worth a return trip.
Just back from Zell am See in Austria – a little late with the post, but I’m trying to catch up. We’ve only been away for a week and there seems so many things to do!!
Anyway – up near the Großglockner mountain ( Austria’s highest ) in the Hohe Tauern National Park, the snow was still stacked pretty deep!
The Krimml Waterfall – absolutely stunning – too high to walk to the top – but you can get quite wet just by stopping to watch the water. Apologies for the water droplets on the lens. Perhaps i should have taken an underwater camera mount!!!
And a perfect reflection in a small tarn, as we would call it – or is it a reservoir? – just above Zell am See where we were based for the week. Some twenty seconds later the breeze came up and the reflection was gone!!
So, just three of my 700 plus images – and some bits of video. A fantastic week – and I travelled very light – my Olympus EM-1 MkII and a single lens – my 12 -100mm f/4 Pro lens. I did take a wide angle (8mm) and a macro lens but they never left the hotel room
Hi! Just a single image this week. My take on a ‘Shapes’ competition coming up at our local club.
Cheers.
Just back from a week away in Kent. We stayed south of Canterbury, on a farm in a small village called Stelling Minnis. Came back with too many images – can’t show you them all but here are a favourite four that might just interest you!
Maybe next week I’ll show you some more. On the other hand …..
The cloisters at Canterbury Cathedral. A superb building, but unfortunately covered in scaffold for a much need clean. 
The White Cliffs of Dover. We were lucky enough to see a ( two seater ) Spitfire ( maybe from Biggin Hill? ) that did a run past the cliffs then came back and barrel-rolled overhead the docks. Sadly, wrong lens on the camera – I was travelling light that day!
Coloured chairs outside the Turner Contemporary Art Gallery at Margate. Is this ‘Still Life’? Or just a picture of four chairs?
The evening sky the night before we left. Not quite my last shot of the week, but it certainly made me feel good.
More next week? Maybe. 🙂
So it’s almost May and the bluebells are with us. Here are some images all taken in the woods around Harlow, Essex.
Enjoy!
Last Sunday we took a ride out to Southend-On-Sea. It was a busy, bustling place – everyone encouraged, no doubt, to be outside in the lovely weather!
Passing the fairground near the shore-end of the pier we noticed this agitated crow – apparently concerned by the rumbling of the inverted people passing by on the yellow track.
We then discovered why he was agitated – the crows had chosen to build their nest inside the metalwork of the roller-coaster. Not a great shot, but you can just see the crow standing on its nest INSIDE the framework! We guessed this was the first day that the ride had been opened this year – and we wondered how long it would be before the nest was abandoned?
But at the other end of the pier things were a little more peaceful – but we were a couple of hours early for the anticipated ‘Folk Music & Beer’ event. ( Not its official title – and we didn’t stop for it.)
But we did spot the young Turnstone on the end of the pier. He (?) seemed a little distraught and kept calling but seemed to be completely alone. Lost or abandoned, I wasn’t sure – but I managed to get quite close to him and get these two shots. My favourite is the second one. Just a bit more movement!
This week I’ve been playing with Chroma Key effects. ( If that is the wrong expression, I apologise!! ) To most of us we know this as green-screening, but my attempt this week was actually using a blue background because, in an earlier shot, I had something green that I wanted to retain in the final image – but I later dropped that idea, but stayed with the blue backdrop.
So this is how the dinosaur ended up in Epping Forest. First of all I photographed the animal against a blue background. The objective here is to get the background as evenly illuminated as possible. Not that I succeeded here, but I was able to rectify this later in Photoshop CC.
Then, using the ‘Select > Colour Range’ in Photoshop I selected all of the blue and using Select > Select and Mask ( again in Photoshop ) tidied up the selection and created a new layer with a mask of the inverted selection. ( Colour Range selects the background and, of course, that’s not the bit we want in our final image. ) This was the result.
Because this is a JPEG copy of that result, all of the pixels I masked out have now been replaced by white. If you save the image as a tiff or psd file those transparent areas ( where there are ’empty’ pixels ) will be preserved.
Next I hunted through my Lightroom library for a suitable new background. This one happens to be Epping Forest, just down the road from me. I copied the images into my working image of the dinosaur and dragged the ‘forest’ layer so that it was positioned underneath the beast.
A few tiny adjustments and ….
Success, I would say!!
Following on from my last post, more evidence that Spring is with us!
… and a lovely piece of carving in an old, fallen tree!
All taken at Pishiobury Park, just north of where I live.
With the sun shining, a walk in the local park is the thing to do. And to show why, here are some images from our visit last week.
Enjoy!
