Welcome to 2023

This blog has been very quiet over the last couple of years, but I’m hoping to make it more active now Spring is almost here.
These were my first photos of 2023 – a return to my favourite place for a local photo walk: along the river embankment in Bedford.
All photographs taken with my Canon EOS 60D with an 18-135 USM lens, and processed using Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop.

The river from the “Engineer’s Bridge”
Lamp Post against a great sky
Weeping Willow
The bench casts a long shadow in the low sunlight
The view from the road bridge towards the new footbridge
The road bridge.
Egyptian Geese – we don’t normally see these in Bedford.
Reflections in the river
More river reflections

Around The Village

Just a Saturday afternoon walk around the village with my camera…

The friendly horse in the field at the top of the village
St. Mary’s Church
The Thatched Cottage
The Watertower
Is this Hemlock?
Daisy – with a tiny visitor
Dandelion Clock

Tintagel – September 2021

We paid a very brief visit to Tintagel on the way back from Boscastle. It was too late to visit the castle, but we did see the Old Post Office – a 14th-century stone house, built to the plan of a medieval manor house, now owned by the National Trust. Photos taken with my Panasonic TZ-70 and processed in Adobe Lightroom.

Mevagissey – September 2021

Some photos from the Cornish fishing port of Mevagissey, taken in September. All photos taken with my Panasonic TZ-70 and processed in Adobe Lightroom.

View back from the outer harbour wall
Cormorant (or is it a shag?) rests on a fishing boat
Shag (or is it a cormorant?) dries its wings
The Harbour
The Harbour
Rusty Boat

Boscastle – September 2021

Some photos from Boscastle in September – all taken with my Panasonic TZ-70 and processed with Adobe Lightroom. Boscastle – now fully rebuilt after the flash flood that devastated the village in 2004 – is one of our favourite places to visit.

The Alley
Harbour Light
The Witchcraft Museum
View from a Bridge
And in the other direction…
And here’s the Bridge!
The Harbour
View back to the Village

Looe – September 2021

2021 has been another poor year for my photography with Covid seriously restricting my journeys out, but we did manage to get away to Cornwall for a week in September. Here are some photographs from East Looe – all taken with my Panasonic TZ-70 and processed in Adobe Lightroom.

The Banjo Pier
The Beach, with St. George’s Island in the background.
Pasty Thief!
The Old Lifeboat Station
View from the Beach
Dave’s Diner
View from the Bridge
The Estuary

First Photos With The New Lens

In an effort to motivate myself back into photography as lockdown slowly relaxes, I bought myself a Canon EF-S 18-135 lens (USM version with image stabilisation). This will hopefully be my new ‘walk-around’ lens as the range of focal lengths covers most of what I normally shoot.

The following photos were taken on my first outing with it – just a walk around the village.

The Thatched Cottage. (Yes, I know I should clone out the overhead wires!)
Broken Window
Wider View
Land Lines
Edge of the Village
The Water Tower
Tree Silhouette and Water Tower

2020

Covid has pretty much put a stop to my photography this year as I have hardly left the house since March. Fortunately, I’ve been able to work from home and we’ve managed to keep the Hitchin Camera Club meetings going on-line using Google Meet.

Here are a few of the photographs that I have managed to take over the course of 2020:

February – a trip out to Letchworth on a sunny Saturday afternoon, with no knowledge of what was to come a few weeks later.

In the Arcade, Letchworth – I always like the strong lines and graphic shapes here.
Looking up – a triptych of images from a structure in the Kennedy Gardens, Letchworth.
April and a month into Lockdown – this was in our garden.
May – a socially distanced walk through the village “nature reserve”.
July – back in the garden, this grasshopper was making a meal of our Japanese Maple!
August – my wife had a hospital appointment in Bedford. Covid restrictions meant that I couldn’t go in with her so I took a socially-distanced walk along the river while I waited for the phone call to go & pick her up.
Still in Bedford – this lady was rowing hard!
A Bedford Swan
September – this dragonfly visited our garden.
December – morning dew on a Passion flower in the garden.
Finally – A project we had for one of our on-line camera club meetings was to reproduce a famous work of art. This is my interpretation of Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist”. (See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Guitarist)

Bodmin & Wenford Railway

Another day out in Cornwall – the Bodmin & Wenford Railway is a heritage steam railway that has been running since the mid-1980s.  There was just the one steam train running on the day we visited – the 4612, which was built by the GWR in 1942 and retired from active service in 1965.  After restoration in 2001, it was moved to Bodmin.

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Engine 5552 – built in 1928 and withdrawn from service in 1960.  It has been at Bodmin since 2003 and is currently undergoing a major overhaul.

 

 

Birds of Paradise

Catching up on some more photos from our recent trip to Cornwall – Paradise Park in Hayle is a wildlife sanctuary with over 1000 birds, plus a few small mammals such as red pandas and otters.
Photographing some of them was a bit challenging due to the fact that most of the birds are behind wire fencing, but here are a few that I did manage to get.

IMG_9277Ground Hornbill

Owls

IMG_9305Spreo Starling

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Golden Eagle

IMG_9401
Humboldt’s Penguins

Rainbow Lorikeets
Visitors are allowed into the aviary and can feed them with cups of “nectar”.

IMG_9406
Carribean Flamingo

 

IMG_9407My favourite photograph of the day – the flamingo tucked its head back and stayed still long enough for me to zoom in and take this.