Late evening at Mousehole.

Late one evening we found ourselves in Mousehole. What caught my eye was the line of coloured lights along the pier. It looked interesting but the sky was too dark to get an image. 

I then moved back a bit to look at the rest of the harbour. With only the slightest glow of light on the horizon and the harbour only lit by the street lights of the village, I had little idea expectation of getting a reasonable image. 

I did a few images and the results were a bit of a surprise. The green glow of the navigation light at the entrance to the harbour  gives an indication of how dark the rest of the scene was. 

The exposure was 30 seconds and during this time the boats moved around a bit. 

With a bit of post production on the image I think it works well.

Cornwall and the Hunt for the Milky Way

After our trip to Leicester we had the offer of some time with friends down in Cornwall.

It has been many years since we managed to spent some time in Cornwall, so we jumped at the offer.

Strangely enough my first thoughts were not about great beaches, cream teas or sun, but, yeah! dark skies.

Ever since I tried some star photographs when I was up in Scotland in the early part of the year. I have been wishing for dark skies, and by dark skies I mean really dark skies. The darkness that you only get away from large towns and villages.

I was hopeful, as we were staying only about 3 miles from Lands End and about 6 miles from Penzance which was the nearest town of any size but the weather forecast was not looking hopeful for clear skies in the evenings, except for the first night.

The drive down was slightly damp in places but we made good time. The sunset was spectacular

I then had to wait and hope that the clouds stayed away. By 10 o'clock it was dark enough to start shooting. My original idea, was to plan some possible shots during the day for a return at night. As I had not had time to look for locations I decided to just walk down the lane from the cottage, wait for all the security lights to go out and see what happens. 

The results were wonderful. The Milky Way was barely visible to the naked eye but looked spectacular in the pictures. A slight splash of torch light illuminated the foreground to give some interest on some shots. 

What was surprising though was how much Light pollution there was in the night sky, even at the tip of Cornwall. The orange glow of the lights from Penzance and nearby farms was enough to overwhelm the darkness on shots taken in most directions and although I was pleased with the images. It looks as though I am going to have to look elsewhere for really dark skies.

Victory Show final images.

Back at work now after a two week holiday and I have lots of images to work on. At the moment here are the last of the images from the Victory Show at Leicester. A bit of HDR processing and and a couple of images that I like.

Aircraft at the Victory Show

At the Victory show in Leicester, they had a few aircraft flying during the day.

The Victory Show

Staying with friends over the past days we went to a WW2 reenactment. It was really quite interesting with lots of things going on to see and watch.

Petworth

It's holiday time!!!

A trip to a national trust property I had not visited for over 25 years.

Petworth house in Sussex. 

Sissinghurst.

The gardens at Sissinghurst are always worth a trip. At this time of year they are not at their best as far as flower blooms are concerned.

The tower is well worth the climb to the top as the view is spectacular.

Rochester

I drove down to Rochester with the aim of shooting some HDR images around the town.

St Mary's Lower Higham.

I have been getting out to shoot images on a more regular basis recently. Since the start of the year I have had a couple of spells when I have produced a relatively large amount of images, then I would go through a spell where I was producing almost no new images.

Recently though I have made a conscious effort to get out with a camera and create.

I have started to experiment with producing time lapse videos. I don't shoot with a video camera, but with a still camera and then output the resulting series of still images as a video. I am also trying to get deeply into shooting HDR images. These here are produced from 9 images bracketed at 1 stop apart. The results are some of the most 'stretched' tonally that I have taken.

Cars at Greenwich Market

One night a month there is a car meet at the market at Greenwich. Undercover in the old market area a selection of cars and bikes gather. There are food and drink stalls around the sides and a life band plays.

Dartford Bridge images 22 years apart.

Another warm evening today and I decided to go out to see what I could find to photograph.

At this time of year the sun sets directly behind the Dartford Bridge as viewed from Greenhithe. It is a return to the scene of one of my most used image. Twenty two years ago, just before the Dartford bridge joined in the middle, I got a picture of the sun setting right in the gap of the unfinished bridge.

Shot on film, Ektachrome or whatever 100 ISO film I was shooting at the time. The camera would have been an Olympus OM1 or OM2sp lens most likely a 50mm or 35mm.

Luck played a great part in the image. The bridge had been under construction for some time but was completed very quickly from this point, as the risk of wind damage to the bridge increases as the two sides get closer together, due to vortices created by the wind interacting with the edge of the deck. The weather that spring had been very poor with few clear evenings only a grey overcast when I was free to shoot. One evening the sun came out and I was free, so I went out with my camera. I knew roughly where I needed to be to get the image as I had tracked the sun on an OS map, but I could only get the exact location by being on the ground. This was long before the internet and smart phones with apps that can work out all that information. Also I had to accept the tide as it was on that night.

The results were worth the effort. I shot several rolls of film and a couple of the images have been used on several occasions. This image was used as a magazine cover and won me the prize of Transport photographer of the year in 1991.

Tonights images are slightly different.

Evening by the river.

I had not taken any pictures of the wind turbines at Tilbury.

It was a fantastic day weatherwise. A trip down to Sevenoaks and a visit to Knole. 

In the car park was a Frog eyed sprite, in wonderful condition. The face on the front is always worth a picture.

More from Dungeness

Here are a few more images taken yesterday down on the coast. I have tried a bit of black and white conversion of the images just to see how they perform.

Dungeness and Rye

Day off again today and with the weather still good I went down to Dungeness and then on to Rye. Nice to be out in the sun even though the wind is still cold.