A summer of photos, and a new camera

By shendyNo Comments
Right, a bit of catching up to do - this post contains several sets of photos from the last few months - this is a re-post of several posts I put up earlier as I thought it better to lump them together into one. St Mary Redcliffe Back in April I bought a new camera - a Fuji X-T20, and this was the first trip out with it. Given that my office at the time was pretty much next door to St Mary Redcliffe, it was nice and simple to drop in one lunchtime. I'd worked there for over 10 years and this was the first time I'd been in to take photos... The main reason for looking at the Fuji was practicality - when we went to Cornwall last year, I found I was leaving some of the Nikon kit behind because it was so damn heavy and it's just daft to have kit and not use it. I'd been looking at...
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Meet The New Boss, Better Than The Old Boss

By shendyNo Comments
We took a trip up to London yesterday, for the first time in ages - well, years in fact. The primary purpose was to visit the Proud Gallery Ossie Clark exhibition, along with Mother and The Brother. Before that though, we had a wander - which gave me an opportunity to try out my new camera - a Nikon D600 with a 24-70 f/2.8 lens. We took the DLR to Canary Wharf, took some photos around there and then walked down to the river, under the Thames via the tunnel and to Greenwich. I reckon the last time I was there was about 35 years ago - the Isle of Dogs has changed a little! At the Royal Maritime Museum we took in their Ansel Adams exhibition. Some seriously gorgeous prints - the first time I've seen originals of his. The large print of "Clearing Winter Storm" was just fantastic. Afterwards, we headed over to Chelsea to see the exhibition - my dad's four...
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Wedding photos

By shendyNo Comments
Pretty much the only non-rugby photography I've done recently was at a friend's wedding in February. I wasn't the official photographer or anything like that - I just did my normal thing and took loads of photos. I think it's only the second wedding I've taken any serious photos at - the first was an odd one. I was involved in a sort of informal photography club at a previous job, and one lady in it asked me to go to her wedding and wander around taking photos. It was a slightly surreal experience - you had people asking "do you know the bride or groom", and I had to honestly answer "neither"! The photos came out really nicely and Nicky was happy, so that's the main thing. I don't normally take many pictures of people, so the candid part of it is probably what appeals to me. Caroline & Dom's wedding was at Tortworth Court in Gloucestershire - next door to Leyhill...
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Bletchley Park

By shendyNo Comments
We spent Monday at Bletchley Park, home of the wartime code breakers. The following day, it was announced that they were receiving £500,000 of Lottery money - and quite right too. Thoroughly deserving, as an important part of our national history, that is in disgracefully poor condition in parts. Without the geniuses that worked there, we wouldn't be where we are today. Whether that's a good thing just at the moment is a matter for debate... First up, this just made me smile - somehow I always imagined that Bomber Command would be far more impressive... This is a real, actual, proper German Enigma machine. It's in a glass case so that no nutter can nick it again. Anyway, why did they give it back to Jeremy Paxman? Stephen Fry must have been gutted. This is part of a superb slate statue of Alan Turing, father of modern computing. Without him, it is quite possible I would be doing something completely different for...
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Oxford

By shendyNo Comments
We spent last Friday wandering round Oxford, having deposited my mother at John Radcliffe hospital for a minor eye operation (all fine, thanks for asking). I think I've only been once before, and that was about 30 years ago when we had a French exchange boy over (well, when I say "exchange", he came over [as did his brother a couple of years later] but we never went to stay with them). There may even be photos of this somewhere in my dad's collection, but it'll take a while to get there as it must have been 1978 or '79 and and I'm only up to 1958...Anyway, the best shot of the day came from the top of the University Church of St Mary The Virgin, showing the Radcliffe Camera, with All Souls College on the right and Brasenose College on the left. No, that's not a bird above the dome, it's a speck of sodding dust on the sodding...
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