One, Two, Three, Four ... Poppies

I have a small raised bed underneath an apple tree at the bottom of my garden. I use it for courgettes an cucumbers but this year we had a very bad and very a late spring, and consequently my plants for this position did not get a very good start.In fact I ended up with one courgette and no cucumber plants. Even now in August, I am not sure I am going to get any produce from this plot.

However, because I did not weed it as my crops were not growing I have had a great display of poppies and violas. I usually put the old compost from my flower baskets on this plot as soil conditioner, with the output from my compost bin, this makes a great growing medium. The violas definitely came from self seeded plants from the baskets but where the poppies came from I simply don't know. They were however a wonderful, delicate shade of mauve.

As ever, I was taking pictures with my digital camera of the flowers in the garden and the largest poppy kept on flowering. I took a photo of the first bloom on the plant; then a second; a third and finally caught the fourth in bud. I thought this made an interesting series and so I am sharing it with you here.

The photos are fair but not great, the shade from the apple tree was a problem for my camera. Perhaps it could have been used better (a poor workman blames his tools, I know) but even after all this time I still use it on the auto setting. Perhaps I should experiment?

Answers on a postcard please!

Springtime Garden Flowers

A simple and straight forward title. I really enjoy pottering in the garden (at least when the sun is shining) and what's more this provides me with an endless range of subjects for my lens during the year. In spring and summer particularly of course we have the colour of the flowers which line the borders in abundance.

Although we are now in high summer and thinking about holidays by the sea, I am taking the opportunity to show off a few of my spring flowers. They herald the coming of the new year and the fact that the holiday season (still thinking about it!) will soon be upon us. So here they are, My springtime favaourite - or at least a few of them.

Shrubs and perennials are what I mainly grow in my garden, low maintenence plants which just require a quick pruning or division to propagate new individual plants. Weeding becomes the only real work.

To start with one of a beautifully coloured hellebore,

I had this as a "moveable" plant at first. I grew it in a

large pot. But I left it in one place too long and the roots

must have decided that they liked the ground and now it is 

a permanent fixture.

Now this is a real beauty, Forsythia.

Brilliant yellow flowers in early spring

without being hidden by leaves which come 

after the blossom. And cuttings are so easy.

One year I used some pruned sticks as supports 

for my peas after they had been lying around for 

a long time. They actually started growing and 

sprouted new leaves - I was amazed, life after death!

A Japanese Quince, unfortunately not an edible variety.

Each year the bush is filled with these tight little red 

blooms, before forming hard fruits.

You may not immediately ecognise this as a Magnolia,

but it is a variety called Magnolia Stellata. Or the Star 

Magnolia because of the shape of its flowers. A very 

welcome early flowering shrub, a little short lived but

beautiful flowers when they are on the plant.

Just to be different, this Christmas cactus (aka Easter cactus, 

depending on the weather?) was on my mom-in-laws kitchen

windowsill for many years. As she passed away recently we

gave it a home and it is still flowering away happily in our kitchen.

I will be posting a few more photos of the flowers in my garden and maybe even some of the photomanipulations which I have created using them. Its all great fun. And look out for some of the wild life in the garden coming up. Birds, amphibians (frogs and toads) and insects including some beautiful butterflies.

Keep taking those photographs and remember - HAVE FUN

The Rollright Stones and Avebury

Just back from a visit to Wiltshire, famous for its neolithic megalithic monuments. Of course I took my camera.

 Adam and Eve, part of the Avebury monument

 The Swindon Stone, Avebury's largest standing stone

 The king's men at Rollright Stones

A close up of some of The king's men

I guess it has been a while since I posted here, but to be honest i have found a new venue for my writing, where I can write about all the subjects which I blog about and get paid quite handsomely for it. What is more people actually come to look at my posts and connect with each other.

Should you feel like trying this new site out visit Bubblews I have almost decided to mothball my several blogger blogs including this one for the immediate future at any rate.

Images of Cleeve HIll

Spent a couple of beautiful days (for early March) at Cleeve Hill, at one of our favourite hotels. The weather was too good to miss an opportunity for a little photography even though we have many images of the area.
It was very sunny with a heavy haze shrouding the distance. Cleeve Hill is the highest point in the Cotswold hills and offers a view of 90 miles on a clear day. This weekend the view was very much curtailed by the haze but nevertheless, the camera was used frequently.

Wonderful place to live, at least in the summer.

 The Hill, just behind the hotel, is a favourite for a very rich source of subjects. A wide variety of natural beauty and architecture, many images from here litter this blog. For example, architecture and scenery at nearby Winchcombe. Although looking back for a couple of links, there really aren't as many as I thought. Mmmm, something to put right!

Higher up the hill, limestone craggs.

Because it was so early in the year, sunset came early and almost surprised me, I took the first of these shots from our hotel room - throught the window - and the second as the light faded and lights came on in Bishops Cleeve below the Hill.

Bishops Cleeve at twilight, the line at right is the M5 motorway

The haze is still apparent in these photographs, but I think it adds to the charm, don't you.

One photograph on the Hill, which I later played with in Photoshop, was an image of a stand of trees. I was playing with all sorts of effects and this one, INVERSE, struck me as very interesting. An air of mystery pervades the image.

Finally for today, I have an image taken of Hailes Abbey, which is just down the road near Winchcombe. Unfortunately closed for another two weeks or so but I managed to take a few photos over a fence at the rear. A very interesting ruin, built in the thirteenth century, currently owned bby the National Trust.

I really must add more images of Cleeve Hill, I can't understand why our favourite weekend spot has not been better represented in this photo journal. Back with more soon.

Buzzards, a new sculpture in Malvern

Visited Malvern this week (bought lots of second hand books) and saw this new sculpture in Rose Bank Gardens just above Bell Vue Terrace. It was added in November to celebrate the Queen's Jubilee as the gardens were being updated. We saw the sculture from well away and I couldn't resist find what it was all about.

As a complete contrast, here is a photograph of a lilac tree after a recent small snowfall.

It wwas actually taken thru the kitchen window with a 10x zoom, when I thought I saw a small bird in the branches. It was actually a blue plastic hook from a chinese lantern which had blown away in the winter winds. I photoshopped it out. LOL

Another failed shot....................

Photographing Artwork

I am never quite able to obtain the exact colours of a painting, and for my style of painting which relies on colour to a large extent, this is a nuisance. I always try to photograph artwork in daylight but it is not infallible. Here are a few examples of the differences which I find in one piece of art.

Firstly, the image from a photograph taken at night

under light from ordinary incandescent light bulbs. 

A washed out appearance results. 

The Blue in the sky is almost grey and 

the red on the horizon has become orange,

I applied an image/adjustment selecting auto-levels from the 

menus, this made quite a difference. The blue in the sky 

was bought out quite well and the sillouettes of the trees 

were much closer to the original painting. The red on the horizon

however, was still far too orange.

I used the hue/saturation tool to try to change the redness 

of that colour on the horizon.

This now has a feel of the original painting but is just not right. Trying to place this for sale on the internet would simply not be fair to the prospective buyers. DO NOT take photographs under the wrong sort of light.

Now, let's see a photograph taken in daylight. This 

was again a very washed out image, but note the 

colours. The blue is OK and the red now looks red.

I again selected the auto-levels and this again adds

contrast to the image, but still not strong enough.

I now selected the brightness/contrast tool and reduced 

the brightness to bring back the solid sillouettes.

It now looks very close to the original painting.

I do not consider this editing to be cheating, since I am simply re-creating the atmosphere of the original painting. In my work which, as I said relies upon colour and tonal contrasts, this is absolutely vital to create the right impression of the artwork.

The issue here I think is that I took the natural daylight photo quite early  (early February) in a room close to a window and the light was probably not strong enough to give the correct tonal values. I do not have a set-up to achieve this sort of image without this minor editing, although it does produce a profound effect.

Finally, I do play with photoshop sometimes but will always say so when I do ...............

......................... smiles!

The limitations of my camera

I was in a hide (i.e. a wooden building with a smallish window) at a garden centre / farm shop this week and found myself watching a procession of wild life partaking of the fruit and veg and stale loaves which were laid in front of the hide - specifically to attract them, of course.

I had my compact camera with me but the limitations have been made painfully obvious by the images captured. The wild life was at a distance from the window and I used an optical zoom to bring them closer. The resulting images are mostly blurred, I did not have a tripod but for some used the windowsill to steady the camera. This explains the difference in degree of blur. All the photos have been heavily cropped.

  A muntjak deer, never seen one of these at this feeding ground before

 woodpecker

 deer and friend?

 thrush

 blue tit

?

I will have to make sure that if expecting this sort of outing again, I have a tripod handy in my pocket.