After a day on the hills, a decent dinner and a glass of wine, I went back to the jetties for last light. Not a spectacular sunset, but better than forecast. I hung around for a while, hoping for post sunset colour. Sadly, it wasn't to be, so I went back and finished the wine.
Last week, I had a three nights in the Lake District, staying in Keswick. It was another walking focused trip. But it seemed silly not to take the camera and head to the much photographed Keswick boat jetties. Sunrise was a little too early for a busy day, but I was there at around 6am for some lovely early light and mirror calm water.
Allow me to add my small collection to the vast tidal wave of aurora images that has hit the internet over the weekend. On Friday night a 'G5' geomagnetic storm resulted in the aurora borealis being visible across the UK and Ireland, and as far as Germany and the Czech Republic. I headed out to the fields behind my house after midnight to see an aurora for the first time. Never having photographed one before, I chose fairly long exposures, between 2 and 3 minutes. This maximised the colours but did mean I lost any patterns.
More solar activity was predicted for Saturday night. So it was back to the fields for the witching hour. This time I found a little more foreground interest. Although, my location meant I was shooting across a B-road. A B-road than normally sees few cars, but on this night was proving to be busier than the A1. Sadly the sun was less active. The intense colours of the previous night were a distant memory. All I managed was a feint greenish tinge.
I tried to go to the centre of Cambridge over the May bank holiday, but it was far to busy. Instead, I settled for a walk around the West Cambridge Site. It was a bright contrasty day. Perfect for the infra-red camera.
The bluebells have been at their best, several weeks earlier than typical. This has followed a very wet winter (and not much drier early spring), that caused widespread flooding. Many local woods are still waterlogged. Beds, Cambs and Northants Wildlife Trust, which controls most of these woods, has closed them to visitors to prevent damage. Gamlingay, Hardwick, Hayley, Waresley, Wistow and Lady's Woods are all closed. Brampton wood is technically open, but the advice is not to visit. Luckily, the little known and little visited Gamsey wood is dry, open and, when I visited last weekend, the bluebells were at their best.
Gamsey is a small wood and has a fair amount of undergrowth. When I went last year, cleavers and nettles were drowning the bluebells. This year, the bluebells had a head start on the greenery and were giving a much stronger showing.
A few weeks ago, I had a week's break in the Lake District. It was mainly a hillwalking holiday, and the hill days were fairly foggy. So no interesting photos there. But on our rest days we did spend a couple of high tides at Seascale. The beach had a small jetty and enough rocks to keep us interested. The second tide was higher than the first. Both times the sky was pretty grey, and all interest was in tide, which was fast and choppy. I played around with exposure duration, but found that 1 or 2 seconds gave the most pleasing result.
