Flat Holm

By shendyNo Comments
I went to Flat Holm today - an island in the Bristol Channel for those that don't know.  There are some fairly interesting Victorian gun emplacements, and it's particularly notable for a substantial colony of aggressive seagulls that will dive-bomb you with poo if you get too close to their nests and chicks. Couldn't have asked for a better day - the hottest day of the year so far, and completely calm for the crossing. The boat goes from Penarth, just by the Cardiff Bay barrage - this is the counterweight for one of the bridges. As seen previously, I'm always a sucker for lighthouses, and this one came with a nice rusty gun as well. This one was taken from down in one of the old gun emplacements A load of the flying crap factories. I didn't get pooed on fortunately, but it was close a couple of times. Next month I'm going to Steep Holm, which is nearby and apparently steeper than Flat Holm....
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Dorset

By shendyNo Comments
We spent a couple of nights in Dorset last week - the first night happened to coincide with the 20th anniversary of our moving in together, which was nice. We stayed in Burton Bradstock on the Jurassic Coast, also the home to Billy Bragg. I thoroughly recommend the B&B we stayed at - Chesil Beach Lodge. We didn't really do much for the time we were there, not venturing away from the beach during the day and no further than the village for dinner in the evening. I also took quite a lot of photos... The sandstone cliffs are really photogenic, particularly when combined with a blue sky and some light cloud. This is a fence that's been built on top of the cliff to stop people using the old bit of the coastal path - erosion and rockfalls mean that the cliff edge tends to move inland somewhat, and there's quite a drop over that edge. Due to enjoying dinner, we didn't quite...
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Gnaargh!

By shendyNo Comments
So, I'd got this smudge on the sensor, which buggered up a few reasonable photos. I also discovered a downside to the long exposures - the longer you leave the shutter open, the more chance of dust landing on the sensor. I spent the afternoon at Buscot Park in Oxfordshire, and at one point it clouded over a bit - this shot is a 1 minute exposure and is pretty much everything I wanted to achieve with the 10-stop filter - you get the movement of the clouds and the water smooths itself out. And a couple of bloody great dust sports. I really like the picture, but it's been ruined by dust and the mystery smear. ...
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Been a while…

By shendyNo Comments
Been a while since I posted - mainly explained because I haven't taken any photos... Anyway, I recently invested in a 10-stop ND filter - it only lets through 1/1000th of the light, so a 1/30sec exposure becomes 30secs, making it easy to get long exposures in broad daylight. I spent Monday morning wandering along the Grand Union Canal just outside Northampton. Took me ages to find it, as the roads bear no relation to what they were when I last went (probably about 25 years ago), and it's mainly a big set of distribution centres. It's one of the places I can genuinely look at and say "I can remember when all this was fields". A 15 second exposure 30 seconds - really annoyed by the smudge top-centre. I cleaned the sensor before the rugby on Sunday and still ended up with it. Really annoying. As the canal passed under the M1, there was an interesting juxtaposition of the old canal and the stark...
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