Devon

By shendyNo Comments
After wading my way through a bit of a backlog, I can finally get round to posting some photos from a trip to Devon in June. We spent a few days staying in the luxurious glory that is the M5 Travelodge in Exeter, and got around a bit. The photos are of: A La Ronde in Exmouth - a rather odd 16-sided house Dawlish Warren, some long exposures Some bits from around Exmouth, including a rather nice tea room/cafe, Bumble and Bee The last bits aren't Devon, but are Montacute House in Somerset....
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Venice

By shendyNo Comments
Having waded through the 1600+ photos that I took in Venice, I've finally come up with a moderate selection to post on here. This was our 4th trip to Venice, each of them for a week, but I never tire of the place - it's absolutely wonderful. We did pack an awful lot into the first few days - probably too much - and were pretty knackered by the middle of the week. The 60+ steps up to the apartment (overlooking Campo Santa Maria Formosa) didn't help, especially as they got steeper nearer the top. I think the most I did was 5 times in one day. The first lot of photos are just some general views. One thing I love to photograph in Venice is the decay, although the tourist people would probably hate me for it. I think that the rusting ironwork, the rotting wood and the decaying plasterwork add to Venice, showing that it's a real place, not some sanitised...
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More stars

By shendyNo Comments
I got the opportunity to take some more star photos at the weekend when I camped in deepest darkest Dorset. This was better than France as there was no moon and even less light pollution - there were an incredible amount of stars on display. Tweaking the images a bit in Lightroom showed one thing - there is a huge amount of information hidden in those images. Check out the two copies of one image below - one as it came out of the camera, the other with auto-levels applied. The two long exposures were about 45 mins and have come out really well, but I think I need to experiment a bit more with the short exposures. 2 minutes at ISO400 is producing just a bit too much movement in the stars and makes the image look out of focus, so I probably need a shorter exposure - but that means a higher ISO and therefore more noise. More experimentation required...
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Starry Starry Night…

By shendyNo Comments
After an unsuccessful attempt at photographing stars in Dorset in May (see previous post), I was determined to have another go in the dark skies of rural France while on holiday. And I have to say, it went quite well. The new batteries did the job and I was able to take some very long exposures. The first two are 687 and 3642 seconds (yes, an hour), while the others were taken on a couple of nights a week or so later and are 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. The only problem was that there was quite a full moon on the later days which reduced the amount of stars you could see. I experimented with lighting the trees in the foreground by the simple method of shining a torch onto them. Coming home yesterday, the view from the middle of the English Channel was excellent while the view of the skies over Hampshire while driving back from Portsmouth was superb....
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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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