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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Elan Valley

By shendyNo Comments
We finished off our trip to the sunny delights of North Wales by driving down through the Elan Valley - a series of dams and reservoirs built to provide water for Birmingham. SWMBO was trying to convince me that the feral sheep of the Elan Valley were meat eaters. Mind you, this one was staring at me for quite some time. This tower is apparently the point where water is extracted for Birmingham. There was a real temptation to add my own personal donation... ...
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Waterfalls

By shendyNo Comments
Heading back from Bodnant across Snowdonia, we stopped at a couple of waterfalls. The first was the Ogwyn Falls, at the western end of Lyn (lake) Ogwyn - we just happened to notice it from the car and stopped for a look. The second was the more well known Swallow Falls in Betws-y-coed. As there had been a reasonable amount of rain, there was quite a decent flow over the falls. ...
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Bodnant

By shendyNo Comments
Having said that the weather on the Friday was awful, it was in parts. Fortunately we had decided to head to the north coast, and ended up at Bodnant Gardens - the weather had cleared up as we passed (we were originally headed for Penryn Castle because some of it was indoors) so we decided to go in. And what a good decision that was - one of the best gardens I've been to. Thoroughly recommended. It's made up of several levels. At the top, there's a fairly traditional formal flower garden With more butterflies! Below that, there's a rose garden, then there's this lily pond And below that, there's *another* lily pond And then below all that, there's a path through the woods, with a stream. And a particularly photogenic waterfall. ...
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