The Mist Descends - Autumn photographs

What a difference a day makes:


I took some autumnal photographs in the garden yesterday.

It was October 31st and I tried to capture the beauty of the light on the autumn leaves.

I couldn't catch the bird song

or the slight smoky smell in the air

so you will have to imagine those things.

On the left is the sun shining through the Rowan tree.

The birds have now eaten most of the berries. I hope they don't regret gorging. I hope it's not too cold a winter.

On the right is the Virginia Creeper.

It is always far more spectacular than my camera can ever portray

so loads of imagination required here please.

This is a seed head from an echinacae flower.

I suspect the birds have been gorging yet again.

Then came this morning, November 1st, and the garden is telling me that winter has arrived...

...Now, where did I put my gloves?

From National Smile Day to Diabetes Week

Special Days 

I’m sure that everybody, certainly living in the UK, will know that today is the anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta, but what else is June 15^th known for?

Today in the UK it is Beer Day Britain. Today we are supposed to celebrate Britain’s national alcoholic drink. I’m not sure that I feel amazingly excited about it. (I wonder if there is an Archers Peach Schnapps Day?)

Apparently in the US today is Lobster Day. I’ve never eaten a lobster. I don’t fancy trying one now and I don’t know why it needs its own day. (Anyone got any idea?)

Also in the US it is Nature Photography Day and National Smile Power Day. Now you’re talking! I can share a nature photograph…

A rose from the garden

And a smile, or better still two smiles from the grandchildren, always powerful enough to lift the heaviest of spirits…

My grand Grandkids

I Googled the list of 'special days' in Britain and I found that today is part of the following special weeks:

British Heart Week

Oxfam Water Week

National School Grounds Week

Diabetes Week

Diabetes Week has a special significance in my life because that lovely smile on the right of the above photo is my little grandson who was diagnosed with Type One Diabetes before his second birthday. 

To look at him you would never know that he has a pump permanently attached to his stomach to administer insulin. This means that at least he doesn't have to have four or five injections a day but he still has to have his blood levels monitored round the clock. He has to have all his food checked and weighed and when he gets overexcited his levels go crazy, which is sad because he tends to get overexcited every time we visit. 

Let's hope that one day they can find a cure for this awful disease. I know that the scientists are working on it but as with everything else, they need money. Here is the Diabetes UK website if you would like to know more. There is also the JDRF website which specifically raises money for research into curing Diabetes in children.

Problems With Photography

Last month I blogged about our Heritage Lottery funded project to catalogue and research the headstones in our local cemetery. You can read more about it here. Thanks to all those who commented. Some of you asked for updates and so here is my first.

We’ve been photographing headstones - not as easy as it sounds. Some headstones slant. Some are subsiding. This is precarious work! Some cameras run out of battery half way through a session. Some people [ok, so it was only me!] are so out of condition that squatting down to photograph one stone after the next is more painful than a step-aerobics class.

Overgrown shrubbery posed yet more problems. The cemetery is surrounded by a huge old hedge with trees growing through the hedge and, in some places, hanging over the stones. Cameras had to be repeatedly discarded while we removed ivy from stones, lifted tree branches, pinned back bushes, covering ourselves in mud, leaves and unidentified insects. [Shudder!] But the main problem has been the weather.

I knew that the rain would be an issue so when we arrived at the cemetery on a clear, sunny autumn day we thought how perfect it was… until we started to photograph. The sun cast such heavy shadows across the marble headstones that our automatic cameras couldn’t cope, and when it came to photographing the shiny granite headstones, all we got were shots of the photographer reflected off the granite. So if anyone can forecast when the next dry, dull, not-too-cold day will be, I would be very grateful.

The photography is almost completed. I’ve booked two training sessions at the Records Office and we’ll soon be absorbed in researching some of the more obscure names that we’ve photographed. You can be sure there will be problems. It won’t be as easy as they make it look on the TV programme, ‘Who do you think you are’ but I could be wrong so watch this space. I’ll be blogging about it as the project proceeds, warts and all!

If you're local to Leicester and you'd like to join our group of volunteers then let me know in the comments below or email me at rosalind.kathryn @ gmail.com

Butterflies are Back

They said that they were endangered but after the last few weeks of sunny weather our garden is once again full of flutter.

I photographed these three within ten minutes of each other and I almost added a Small Tortoiseshell to the collection but it was too quick for me.

A Peacock Butterfly soaking up the sun

A Gatekeeper on the window sill

A Small White fluttering its wings

What kind of butterflies are fluttering though your garden right now?

Spontaneous Photography

It's that time of year again when I keep bursting into spontaneous attacks of photography.

I'm sure you recognise these flowers from last year but you do realise that...

...they're not the exact same flowers as last year, don't you?

I mean, these flowers have appeared from the bare earth in our garden 

and even though it happens every year...

...it makes me wonder why people don't believe in magic... 

...because it doesn't get more magical than this, now does it!

We all have our limitations

I've just been on a photography course. I took my little compact Canon camera with me, the one that's taken all the photographs on this blog, the one that I was really fond of.

It was an excellent photography course, theory in the morning, practical in the afternoon, but I now know that my much-adored little camera won't do all the fancy things that we learnt about in the morning session. I want it to take a portrait with a blurred-out background, catch a bird in flight or a water droplet in mid-air.

I did love my camera until I had its limitations pointed out to me. So before I go out and spend vast amounts of money on a high-tech version that could capture a flea taking flight from a pin head I thought I'd share my favourite four photos that I took during the second part of the course using my very small, limited-capacity camera.

The Door: The keyhole to this door was thick with cobwebs. It hadn't been opened in a long time. Maybe not for hundreds of years. I do love doors.

The Thistle: Not a bad image for a dead thistle!

The Horse: Getting up close and personal. I'm just a teeny bit afraid of horses. They're so huge but this one was rather a sweetie, [even if I did lean on an electric fence to get the shot - ouch!]

The Stone Rose: I love those tiny specks of lichen, a basic form of life on an old and crumbling gravestone.

We all have our limitations. The important thing is knowing what they are and working within them. This little Canon Compact Camera knows that it can't catch water droplets in mid-air but it can still take a fine picture.

So do I stick with my compact camera or do I get an all-singing, mid-air-droplet variety? Any suggestions?

If you're interested in going on a photography course, I'd recommend this one which is run by Glen Tillyard from Digital Photography Courses. He runs regular courses for all levels and abilites and he's based in a little village in Leicestershire.

Five Favourite Flowers

We've been to Ireland to help friends celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. If you've ever been to Ireland to help anyone celebrate you'll understand why we're both still feeling a little weary. How do they party all night and then carry on partying from lunchtime the next day? At their age? *groan* *yawn*

So I'm spending time in the garden regaining a little strength and clarity of thought. Mr A has excelled himself this year. Our garden is amazing in spite of the rain and here are my five favourite flowers that I photographed over the last two days:

In 5th place comes echinacea - I love those tiny bobbly bits (not a technical term) in the middle.

4th sedum - The tiny flowers fascinate me.

3rd geranium - We have a number of different geraniums in our garden. I told someone at the party in Ireland that we almost had the National Collection. Wrong person to tell little white lies to!! He has over a 100 in his garden and he started quoting Latin names at me. I went and chatted to someone else.

2nd gladioli - There's just the one spike opened so far, such an elegant shape.

In 1st place comes the rose - I couldn't blog about favourite flowers without including a rose although I had trouble finding one that hadn't been mushed by the rain. When I was a kid Dad bought me a rose bush of my own, deep red, lovely perfume, and he was the only person to ever call me Rosey Posey. Roses have always been my favourite flower.

Street Photography and a Weather-Related Moan

I’ve been exploring the blogging world a little this last week and I’ve found a whole group of bloggers who post up a photograph every Wednesday using a weekly tagline from a website called Sticky Fingers. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I’ve enrolled for a photography course so this will be a good photography-based focus for my brain. [As it’s so hot in the UK this week I’ve chosen photographs that allows me to incorporate a little moan while I’m at it.]

The tagline for this week's Photo Gallery is: Street Photography

You don’t often find streets like this in the UK, streets where you can escape from the glaring Jerusalem sun and wander in relative comfort.

Jerusalem's Old City, October 2011
Taken with Canon IXUS 115 HS

Jerusalem's Old City, October 2011
Taken with Canon IXUS 115 HS

And my moan, as if you hadn’t guessed, is about the glaring UK sun. I got up very early this morning and was showered, dressed and out in time to beat the heat. I needed to do the food shopping without melting both myself and my butter. Irrespective of the weather, this is the best time of the day to shop. The shelves are stacked high, members of staff are fresh, friendly and helpful and the car park is empty. I may even start doing early morning shopping all year round. [I’m kidding! I won’t really!]

The UK is meant to have a temperate maritime climate. So far this summer we’ve had torrential rain, floods, tornadoes, electric storms and now searing heat. Could this be the global warming that scientists have been predicting? If this level of heat continues we’ll have to build sheltered, walled streets like the ones in Jerusalem’s Old City. As for the flooding, I know nothing about the grand scale, but I’m convinced that locally we’d benefit from a little less concrete and a lot more garden area so that rainwater at least has a chance of soaking away... It would be nicer to look at too.

When it Storms

Torrential rain. 

Plants flattened. 

Flowers destroyed.

But if you look hard enough you'll always find a survivor.

[I've enrolled for a photography course next month. I've been told that my small camera isn't sharp enough for producing really high quality shots. I was really pleased with this shot of the rose but I have to admit that it was taken with my iPod and it wouldn't look right to take photos with an iPod on a photography course... or would it!]

What does your computer screen wallpaper say about you?

Some people don’t bother to upload personalised wallpaper [background] for their computer. They’re content to make do with the Windows default one. My theory is that these people are practical and business-like and don’t want to be distracted by personalised add-ons.

I, on the other hand, am neither practical nor business-like and I’m more than happy to distract myself with personalised add-ons! I’m certainly spending rather a lot of time trying to decide on suitable screen wallpaper right now. It all went wrong when the dog died just over a year ago and I couldn’t bear to look at his adorable face on my laptop screen each day. I decided to go impersonal. I started to photograph flowers in the garden but I soon got bored with each one. The following three are some of my better attempts. [I've never been much of a photographer!]

Autumn Dahlia                        Clematis head                             Daisy

Every few days I would be out in the garden, camera in hand, but now that it’s winter there’s nothing inspiring out there to photograph so at the moment I’m using a picture from that lovely holiday we recently had in Jerusalem [did I mention that we went to Jerusalem?!?] I’m sure that I’ll soon be changing it again. I may go for ducks next time because, as I said in a recent blog post, ducks make me smile and we all need an excuse to smile while we’re working, don’t we!

• What wallpaper do you have on your computer screen?
• Do you keep changing it or have you had the same one for so long that you hardly notice it?
• And what does that say about you?

Are words more powerful than photographs?

I think so. Photos show the superficial. You don’t get to see the thoughts, the before and the after. On the other hand they can be pieces of art, carefully framed, pleasing to the eye... except when I’m behind the camera. I’m very much a novice. If one of my photos is pleasingly framed, it’ll be a complete accident but I’m working on my skills. I’ve just signed up to the 365 Project which means that I’m posting a photo a day on this website.

I suppose the idea behind it is to produce a diary in picture form. If this was a written diary I would have no problems. I could record and relive any number of experiences in just a few short sentences but as you’re only allowed one photo each day I’m finding it difficult... and I’ve gone and set off in my usual unplanned panster style. The first two photos were of the cats [naturally]. The second two were flowers in the garden and now I’m wondering, should I decide on a theme or should I just snap and post?

This was yesterday’s contribution. It’s a close-up of a dead clematis head but it looked so pretty sitting amongst the yellowing leaves that I thought I’d capture it. [Between you and me I’m a bit pleased and a lot surprised at how it came out.]

Today’s contribution could be a lunch table filled with food... provided I remember to get my camera out. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve arrived home from a visually spectacular outing and realised that, although my camera was in my bag, I’ve not used it once! Today is my book group/ladies who lunch time again. We each take a dish to contribute to the meal and it always works deliciously. All I’ve got to do is to remember to take a photo before we’ve eaten it all.

What theme would you choose for a 365 Project or would you be a panster?