Not Quite Spring

Its Easter Weekend, the beginning of April, its really cold outside and there are still patches of snow on the ground.

I have spent the weekend in the UK lake district walking and photographing in the hills and lakes around Grasmere.

Today it was sunny and bright but the other days were rather grey and cloudy, which overall I don't find very inspiring to photograph. I prefer to photograph in 'bad' weather, generally i find this provides the most interesting light and sky.

Of course there are always some interesting shots - like the shot below of Alcock Tarn with the tarn completely frozen, and the snow lying on the hills beyond.

This is a shot at ground level on the bank of the tarn showing last years grass stems poking above the snow drift

And this vista which shows the view on the climb from Grasmere up to Alcock Tarn

In a completely different style below I have a couple of iPhone shots, minimalist sky dominating the image with a strip of the landscape at the bottom. I really like this type of shot, but other people who have looked at don't always agree. What do you think ?

Looking ahead 2013

Here I am back from an extended blog break as a result of Christmas and a very busy work schedule at the start of the year.

This year I decided not to make any New Year Resolutions, in the past I had all the usual plans, lose weight, get fit, exercise very day, eat less and more healthily, drink less and so it goes on. I would start the year with grandiose improvement plans which would have all stopped or failed within a few weeks, sometimes leaving me a bit depressed by my apparent lack of will power.

It seems I meet exactly the remark of one of the characters in the Oscar Wilde comedy play Lady Windermere's Fan, " I can resist anything except temptation"

By the way when I was checking exactly where this saying came from i discovered a lot of other good quotes from this play
- you can read them at  -
http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1897835-lady-windermere-s-fan  

At least so far I have stuck to my "no resolution" almost exactly.

Anyone who has been following my blog will recall that a few months ago I started a collection of photographs taken out of my Hotel room window whenever I was travelling. As my job takes me all over Europe I have lots of opportunities for this collection.

Well this year I have taken this a step further by joining a website called Blipfoto, which allows you to upload just one single photograph each day, with the aim to have a photograph each day. This has two impacts, both to create a record of the year but also to make you think all the time what your photograph can be today, so you end up always looking for things to photograph.

Yesterdays photo is below and if you are interested you can find the others at....http://www.blipfoto.com/Bizonderimage

 It was incredibly cold and quite windy when I took this photo, the display in my car said -5C but AccuWeather on my iPad gave a 'realfeel" temperature of -15C, taking one of my gloves off to adjust the camera settings left me with very very cold and painful fingers in just a few moments. 

Of course I took a few photos during my Christmas break, I have one I particularly like taken at Alcock Tarn just above Grasmere in the UK Lake District.

I like it because I think it shows the true nature of the Lake District, nice view across the Tarn with Lake Windermere in the background, raining but with the sun trying to break through, family out walking stopping to check the map.
 

It also makes an interesting black and white photograph showing how this same image has been created again and again over the years

 

Looking at things differently

Christmas is a family time and for us this year meant a visit back to the UK for Christmas with my daughter and her soon to be husband, combined on the Saturday before Christmas with the wedding of my nephew Christopher and his new wife Amy.

Chris and Amy had the great idea of photo challenge for the children, who they gave a disposable camera and a list of shots they had to collect, later in the evening I gave my Sony Nex 7 to my two young nephews of about 10 and 8 to go and take some shots.

They quickly filled the memory card(s) and used up the batteries but the results show a different way of thinking and looking at things. Of course there are some shots of the family and the guests at the wedding both in and out of focus but then there is a fascinating time lapse of one of the boys with a mask of a face on the back of his head and his waistcoat and tie on backwards walking up the stairs but looking as if he is coming down (or maybe the other way around - I don't know which way round they did it).

At midnight on Christmas Eve we went to the Christmas service at York Minster, a strange mixture of very busy with people but very calm in the way it all worked

I do not often watch the TV during the day but being the holidays I found myself channel hopping on the TV and found a continuous looping of shows by Dynamo a UK based street magician who did some quite amazing and for me anyway bewildering tricks.

I made a strange mental connection while watching Dynamo and slowly realising this must be who my little nephew had been talking about a year ago when he visited me and attempted walking on water "like Dynamo" on the lake near where we stay

I had imagined he meant some new cartoon super hero but did not ask - of course not wanting to reveal my growing old age  ignorance of such things / people but now I realise that he meant this magician.

You can see some of his magic at www.dynamomagician.com

I think he can be best summed up by a quote I found on the Internet

After much consideration...…I have come to the conclusion that Dynamo is actually a wizard who is slowly revealing his powers to the world.

In among my Santa presents was a cardboard 'make it your self' film pin hole camera which has taken me hours to build but is now ready for its first shot

 I also now have an infrared filter, I have seen some beautiful infra red photographs but my first shot using this filter is not too impressive. The top red image is direct form the camera, the black and white image has been cleaned up but only on my ipad

Hope to be able to include some better images in future blogs.

Today we took a chance with the weather which is alternating between light rain and very heavy rain with brief periods of very cold hailstones a bit wet for photographs apart from a few opportunities between the showers

We walked from Grasmere up to Alcock Tarn, but following our normal route backwards - the shot below is from just below Alcock tarn looking over Windermere

Shot below is looking across Alcock Tarn, with a young family silhouetting across the light, cheerful and lively despite the rainy weather (still needs a bit of levelling adjustment)

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