Although I am slipping behind a long way already I am hoping to catch up a bit over the Christmas holiday. I seem to take a lot of pictures of Kipper the dog, but I just can’t help it! While this may look like I used some clever lighting it was just getting the angle right with the sun coming through the window.
I had to look this one up as I had no idea what it meant. It is interesting how a group of 3 does look better than just 2 or even 4. This is another photograph from my husband who is experimenting with his 600mm lens. A rather sunnier day at the beach and a group of 3 gulls taking off. They were most likely scared off by me swimming past!
I love the autumn colours but there they never stay around for long and after some very stormy weather of late the trees have become almost bare. So while I wanted to photograph these ancient beech trees with golden leaves, instead their amazing twisted trunks were the focus of my picture. It was a dull day and I thought I couldn’t rescue this rather dull picture but after applying some filters I was quite pleased with the result.
I had no time to go out with my camera today but since my husband managed to spend a little time at the beach with his camera this morning, we decided we would share the blog this year. Hopefully we will then be able to keep up with the challenge.
Although the sunrise was lovely it was this shot of a heron that I liked the best. Having spent a lot of my life around water, the heron has always been a favourite bird of mine and this one sat so patiently while he sought the best angle to photograph him from. I think it would have been a quieter moment without being pursued by a photographer, but he looks very pensive nonetheless.
I have not been getting out with my camera as much as I would like as other things seem to get in the way. I am hoping that signing up to this year’s challenge will give me some incentive to take some pictures. One thing that is taking up a lot of time at the moment is my new rescue dog. In May we sadly had to have our old dog put to sleep (old bloggers will have seen him feature in my photos over the last few years). In June we welcomed “Kipper” into our home. I had great fun photographing him in the wind this week, this is my favourite shot.
I am a little bit obsessed with taking panoramas so spend a lot of time sticking pictures together. I wanted something a bit different for this theme however and this weekend I found it. While out walking in the Cheviot hills I noticed that the hillsides have an interesting pattern. Some sections have well developed heather, while others have been recently burned (this is a process common on heather moorland), leaving what looks like a patchwork quilt. So here is my stitched together patchwork hillside, stitched together in a panorama!
Today was the Northumberland Resident’s Festival where many tourist attractions are open just for those living within the county. We decided to take advantage of this and visit the Chillingham Wild Cattle. This area of ancient parkland is home to about 100 cattle who have lived totally wild for many hundreds of years. The cattle are thought to be the only examples of truly wild cattle. The tour of the park is taken with a guide who gave us many warnings of how unpredictable these animals can be we really were on the wild side. The bulls have been known to gore each other to death and stampedes can be caused by sudden movements by visitors (I quickly switched my mobile phone to silent). Luckily we took our long lenses with us, so we could take some pictures without getting too close.
I’ve been working on this theme for a while. I was desperate to take some interesting cat pictures from underneath (see my attempts at the end of this post). I have however discovered that to achieve the look I wanted I either need a better lens or a more patient cat! So I decided to pick a different subject….coloured pencils sit so much stiller than cats. I saw some interesting shots of coloured pencils underneath a piece of glass, so I had a go. I really like the effect of the may reflections in the droplets (I used glycerin which holds the droplet shape better than water).
Here are my attempts at cat pictures…..
These are the most in focus….most of them looked like the one below! But despite being a very poor photography model he still got some tasty treats for his efforts!
The castle in Lindisfarne (Holy Island) has been undergoing some dramatic restoration over the Winter months. As part of this they have constructed huge amounts of scaffolding to access the stonework. Rather than ruining the beauty of the place it seems to add interest from a photographic point of view, and made it fit rather nicely into the tools of the trade theme.
You can’t get much more ordinary than pins and when I was using some recently I decided they would make the perfect subject for this theme. Of course it then took me several weeks to actually take the pictures.
The Chestnuts Blog 