Northampton Saints v Rotherham Titans

By shendyNo Comments
To Franklin's Gardens in late August for The Saints pre-season match against Rotherham. This was combined with the club's open day, so the players not involved in the game were hanging around in the "village" area posing for photos and signing autographs. This is Neil Best - I asked if I could take his photo, and he paused and then posed for me. He was the only one to really pose - everyone else just stands there and lets you take the photo. Top bloke! Nikon D200, Nikon 18-200VR lens at 55mm, 1/125 @ f8, ISO 100   This is prop Soane Tonga'uhia (aka "Tiny" - all 6'3" and 19 stone of him) scoring. Nikon D200, Nikon 70-300VR at 300mm, 1/125 @ f8, ISO 100   Centre Jon Clarke takes a bit of a hit. Nikon D200, Nikon 70-300VR lens at 250mm, 1/1600 @ f5.6, ISO 400   "Tiny" might be a big old lump, but he's very athletic and an amazingly good runner. When you watch...
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The garden (again)

By shendyNo Comments
Another one from the garden at home, with a bee collecting pollen from, well I don't know, some plant or other. I can identify a rose, a lily and a tulip and that's about it. We had loads of bees in the garden this year (I won't use the term "summer" as we didn't really have one), really good to see. Nikon D200, Cosina 100mm macro lens, 1/160 @ f6.7, ISO 100  ...
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Croome Park

By shendyNo Comments
This was taken the day after Dyrham Park, at Croome Park near Malvern. It's one of those big Capability Brown jobs, where the landowner quite happily moved a village out of the way so that he could improve the view. This is the sort of picture I keep on taking - loads of sky, starburst sun (who needs Cokin Starburst filters?) and some photogenic clouds. Nikon D200, Sigma 10-20 lens at 10mm, 1/500 @ f11, ISO 100 I did also shoot some infra-red film at Dyrham Park and Croombe Park, but that ended up fogged for some reason. Really infuriating.  ...
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The garden

By shendyNo Comments
These were actually taken on the same day as the previous ones, later in the afternoon. This is a courgette flower, in the evening sunlight at the front of the house. Panasonic FX-37, 26mm equiv, 1/500 @ f4, ISO 100   One of our lilys - I think the water droplets come from watering rather than rain. Panasonic FX-37, 26mm equiv, 1/200 @ f2.8, ISO 100   This one is much less arty than the others, but does show just how many vegetables we* were growing! The plants in the blue Ikea bags are green beans, runner beans, peas, mange-tout and petit-pois, while the stuff in the black buckets at the front are potatoes. The metal cages you can make out at the back are supporting the tomatoes. Some of the tomatoes are still going, 6ft tall and with massive fruit. We've already made two batches of green tomato chutney (one of them a huge batch) as well as tomato sauce and tomato soup. * That's the...
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First lot – Dyrham Park

By shendyNo Comments
So that I've got something to show, we'll start by going back a bit into the summer. These are from Dyrham Park near Bath, taken when I had a couple of days off in July. I'm a bit of a sucker for skies like this, especially when combined with a nice building like that. Nikon D200, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm, 1/125 @ f11, ISO 100 I thought I'd dig out my (not terribly good) macro lens and get in really close to a few flowers. I really need to buy a decent macro, but that will have to wait. Anyway, a really vivid yellow.   Nikon D200, Cosina 100mm macro lens, 1/25 @ f11, ISO 100         There were an amazing number of dragonflies buzzing about the gardens. Most of them were small neon blue things, and they seemed to be hanging around in groups, shagging. But, there were a couple of real whoppers as well - totally impossible to photograph in flight, but they did helpfully land...
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