France 2022, there and back again

By shendyNo Comments
These are from the journey down to the gite and back - we always drive, and have started to spend a few days on the way. We could drive all the way to the gite in one go but there are other bits of France we want to visit and it breaks things up a bit - it's 400 miles from Caen/Ouistream to Bordeaux but it's autoroute the whole way and actually quite an easy drive. As an aside, we bought a "Bip n Go" device, which enables you to use "Telepeage" on the autoroutes, meaning we didn't need to use cards to pay the tolls - roll up to the Telepeage lane and the device will beep and the gates open. So easy, it made the journey a lot less stressful for SWMBO, who always had to manage the tolls given the tickets etc are always on the left. It cost something like €20 to buy and activate, and something...
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2020 Bits and Pieces

By shendyNo Comments
This is just a small selection of other photos taken during the year - for obvious reasons I didn't get out much. The one of the SS Great Britain was actually taken at the end of December 2019, the same day as I photographed Ezku (see Ezku – December 2019) - and is actually processed a lot less than you might think. The next two were just particularly nice sunsets I saw walking from work to the bus stop in January and February. I haven't even seen the office since the 16th March... The lilac was photographed in next door's garden, the squirrel on the fence just outside the living room window. Then two from archery, which was open long enough to have a Halloween special. The last one isn't by me - it's of me. In February I ticked off something from the bucket list by going to a life drawing class. As a model.One of the artists, Lila, very kindly gave me her...
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Timelapse Videos

By shendyNo Comments
Something a little different - I've been occasionally dabbling with timelapse videos, and while there's nothing spectacular about them (the resulting image quality when shooting on a phone doesn't help) I'm relatively pleased. We'll start with one I took at Aust at the high tide came in and then ebbed. The composition and positioning could have been better but it works to some degree. Then we have two different views of dusk moving into night, both from France this year.The quality on these is better because they were shot on my camera - but I should have left the first one running for longer! And finally a couple of sunsets, again from France this year....
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France 2018

By shendyNo Comments
We stayed in Bordeaux on the way down to our holiday in France - I had a Big Birthday shortly beforehand and fancied visiting some vineyards and doing a couple of tastings.We visited Chateaux Siran in Margaux, Chasse-Spleen in Moulis-en-Medoc and Bouscaut in Pessac-Leognan. The tours were interesting, particularly the Siran nuclear bunker... Once at the gite we actually did very little (which was lovely), but I still managed to take quite a lot of photos - we had the usual good sunsets, as well as one morning with a thick fog. There will be more images from the gite in the film update I'll be posting later. On the way home, we stopped off in the Loire for a Chateau visit - Azay-le-Rideau this time. And of course there was a decent selection of meals... As we'd been to this particular gite before, we knew that there would be plenty of opportunity for photographing the stars....
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France 2017

By shendyNo Comments
We went back to France for our summery holiday, after a slight aberration last year when we spent a few days in a caravan in Cornwall - any mention of that holiday now gets us both whistling the theme tune to Peter Kaye's Phoenix Nights, given the quality of the evening entertainment the caravan park laid on... We went back to a gite we've been to a couple of times before - it's nice, it's a good size for the two of us, it's quiet, it's very close to the local wine producer and it's got very clear views of the night sky. So here's a few different sets: Giverny On the way down through France, we stopped off at Giverny to visit the Monet gardens - we'd been a couple of times about 15 years ago now and thought it time for another visit. The last image is a little different - not taken at Giverny but fairly close by. Slightly inspired by the...
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