Woolsthorpe Manor

Woolsthorpe Manor, near Gratham, is the birthplace and was the family home of Sir Isaac Newton.  It is now managed by the National Trust.  The half dozen rooms of the main house are presented as a typical seventeenth century yeoman's farmhouse. One of the former farm buildings now houses a series of hands-on demonstrations of basic principles of physics, as well as the essential NT cafe.

 

Of the interior spaces, I found Newton's bedroom the most interesting.  It was there that he did his experiments into the composition of white light.  Sadly, when it came to light, and as is usually the case with NT properties, there was limited available natural light in the room.  This meant that all images had to be at high ISO and thus quite noisy.  I decided to run a couple of shots through Nik Colour Efex and try to get a kind of old master painterly feel.

The orchard next to the house has 'the' apple tree, under which Newton supposedly pondered the nature of gravity.  It survives despite having been blown over in a storm in 1820.  It's not a pretty thing.  Neither are the apples. Those I could see still on the tree were all small and gnarled. 

Stowe Gardens in Infrared

I have been having a lot of fun with my old 40D since I had it converted to infrared.  But the leaves on the trees are starting to change.  All those chlorophyll greens, that look so good in IR, are starting to disappear.  There won't be many opportunities left this year to use the camera to its full effect.  So I thought it deserved one more decent outing. 

I have seen from both Ann and Barry's blogs that Stowe was a good place for shooting infrared.  So, as a I had a rare Friday off, that's where I headed.

 

 

 

Cambridge Botanic Gardens

I went to the Botanic Gardens to test out a 60mm macro lens that I have just bought for my Olympus E-M1 Mk II.  I took a tripod with me, but it turns out that these are no longer allowed in the glasshouses.  So, all of my shots had to be hand-held at wider apertures, which meant this wasn't quite the test I was hoping.  But, at least the light camera and very light lens made hand-holding much easier than it is with my Canon 7D Mk II and Sigma 105mm.

 

Saturday Afternoon on Brick Lane

I was in London on Saturday, and after a quick visit to Wex on the Commercial Road, the next logical stop was Brick Lane.