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Tuesday 28 May 2013

Rhododendrons at Stourhead gardens


Last Sunday we went to Stourhead, house and gardens, in Wiltshire.  It was a wonderful sunny day, warm without being too hot.  The rhododendrons were in full flower. Yesterday's photo of the day was taken there too, from inside the house.



My friend the glass artist Gillian Hulse was showing her work at the First View Gallery, and demonstrating how to make fused glass pieces.

The whole place is beautiful and we should go again. There is a Summer Art Exhibition coming up soon. And the gardens are supposed to be especially fabulous in the Autumn when the leaves are golden.  

The combination of art and nature is irresistible.

Monday 6 May 2013

Photos of the day

I haven't posted my photos for a while.  The first year that I did this blog, I simply posted a photo a day.  It was hard work, making sure it was done every day.  I think I even filled the days up afterwards when I was away for a period.  (I didn't do it from my iPhone, and I didn't have an iPad then).

Then I used to put up a photo just one day a week. I don't want to tie myself up to doing things on a specific schedule at the moment, but I have been taking some interesting photos so I will post some of them on regular (but irregular) basis for the next while.

Today I have two photos of water (from a tap).  To achieve the opposite effects - catching the water in slow, and fast, movement - I had to think back to the things I learnt when I studied photography in the 1970's.  Then my camera was a semi-automatic SRL, which was easy to set up manually.  With the current automatic digital cameras, setting up the manual controls is more difficult, but perfectly feasible to do, as long as your camera is a little more complex than a very simple 'point and shoot' one (most likely it can't be done with a mobile phone camera).

Anyway, here are my water photos - fast moving and slow moving.  The effects are achieved with exactly the opposite photographic controls:  for fast moving water, you need a slow speed; for slow moving, or rather frozen in time, you need a very fast speed. The short and long exposure times are noticeable in the background to the water.