To the ends of the roads.

Before I went of to Anglesey I had purchased the OS Explorer maps for the island and also spent time on Google maps, looking for suitable areas for photography. This still did not prepare me for all the locations I found. Mostly I was going to the ends of any road I came to, just to see what was there. Nothing made my heart beat faster than a 'dead end' road sign. 


What I did find was that a large amount of the dead ends ended with a church or holy site.  The images here are from four different sites that were at the ends of roads or on Island of Anglesey.

Parys Mountain

Near Amlwch, is Parys Mountain, a spectacular deep rip in the earth's surface that are the remains of copper mining that took place on the mountain since the 1780's. 
The colours are fantastic and the whole area is a rich tapestry of coloured rock. 

Anglesey

I am just back from a few days camping on the Isle of Anglesey. 
Over the next few days I will posting a few new image from the trip. It will not be a blow by blow account of each day, more a small selection of images from some of the locations I visited.


The first three images were taken at St Tysilio's church on a small island in the Menai Straits between the two bridges connecting Anglesey to the mainland. Although I had both my standard camera and my Infra Red camera most of the shooting on the trip was done on the standard camera, but at this location the most interesting images were shot in Infra Red.

Rochester Dickens Festival

This weekend is the Dickens estival at Rochester. I had not visited for a year or two as my weekends 'on' did not allow. This year I have just started a few days off work and as the weather was fine we went down to see the 12 o'clock parade. As ever it was full of colour and people dressed as Victorian and Dikensian characters. 

Late May light.

A few images from the past days.

The day the rain came!

It has been VERY dry here for most of April and May. Today has been a series of thunder showers, which have delivered much needed rain for the garden.


The image is taken out from the upstairs of our house and tweaked with a bit of HDR processing.

Evening light

I am trying to do a bit of photography each day to get my eye back 'in'. Tonight I did some images of plants in the garden.

Sunset

The sunset this evening was especially spectacular.

Wind

The willow tree at the bottom of the garden was blowing around in the strong wind we had today.

The camera is my Infra Red converted Nikon D70.

Metal Working

I have tried producing multi image panoramas in the past, the results have been ok when I have produced images without foreground interest. The problem has been that the point of rotation of the camera had been around the tripod and not the exit pupil point.It is possible to buy kit that overcomes this problem, but this costs money and that is in short supply at the moment. 

Last night I went through my 'Bitsa' box and found a few bits that could be adapted to produce a solution.


Tonight I spent about an hour with a drill and some files.

A Metz flash holder bar was the main component. This needed drilling out to enable a Manfrotto tripod screw to be fitted to attach the camera. Next I needed to reduce the length and diameter of a another Manfrotto tripod screw to enable a Hex plate to be fitted. If I had a lathe this would have been easy, but as I don't, a little work with a drill and a file gave a good result.

When the diameter was reduced enough it fitted well. 

A little experiment with positioning will give good results. but a first test looks good.

The stitching was very fast in Photoshop and had no noticeable errors, so possibly I have got very close to the optimum position.

The panorama also shows why I have done little photography over the past few weeks. Gardening has been the main focus for me it may still look unfinished but it is much further on than four weeks ago.

Catching up

Although the weather has been great over the past few weeks I done little in the way of new images. My time has been spent doing major work in the garden. This is new coming to a finish. So here a couple of images shot over the past few days.