Autumn scenes and a heatwave

As those in the UK will already know, we've had a glorious Indian summer period this week, with record breaking temperatures and wall to wall sunshine lasting several days. A fabulous and much-appreciated treat.

Please click on any of the photographs for a larger, better quality, view.

I just love to see sunshine filtering through trees - which can be quite a challenge to do justice to photographically - your eyes are much more efficient at taking in the subtle nuances of the lighting on the scene than the camera can manage in a single shot.

We didn't want to waste the opportunity yesterday of the last fabulous day forecast in this run, so we dealt with our errands in the morning and packed the picnic basket and set off to get some much needed fresh air and to stretch our legs.

I don't know much about them, but I do love taking photographs of wild fungi - maybe because they grow in my very favourite environment, so are synonymous to me with being in places I love.

I think this particular photograph was my favourite of the day - I like taking low level macro shots and especially with a slightly wide field of view to give a hint of the wider scene for context.

It was rather incongruous to be walking through very autumnal woodland, with dry golden leaves underfoot and some trees already almost bare, yet for it to be sweltering hot and us to be glad of the shade under the trees and the gentle breeze. We often get a lovely period at this time of year, which is why we're usually away on holiday at this time, but it was incredibly hot for the first day of October.

We chuckled when we remembered doing the same walk in August in fastened up coats, scarves and gloves when the brisk wind was too bitter to eat outside and we retreated inside the car for lunch.

This tiny emerging fly agaric mushroom was about 6 feet away from the clump I photographed and posted recently - no doubt part of the same colony, which grow on the roots of trees and these are the above-ground fruiting bodies.

I can't resist little scenes like this where a natural detail is highlighted in a shaft of sunlight, emphasised by areas of shadow behind.

I took this frame, then as I turned the camera to take a more vertical shot from the centre, the sun vanished behind the trees and was gone for the day.

I don't have much else to report this week, I've been dealing with things that are beyond the remit of my blog and not very interesting, but I'll try to add something more worthy and interesting next week - I really should address some of the many tutorial or technical subjects I have as 'works in progress'.

In closing I'll add a couple more photographs from the first of the nice days earlier in the week before it got quite so hot, but I managed to get a nice walk in during the day - after all, I can work when it's dark and it's a shame to miss out on such nice - and rare - opportunities. This is one of the lovely advantages of being self-employed, you can at least manage your time in this manner.

I've taken this standing in the local park and looking towards a field that usually has several horses in it, but they were out being ridden at the time. One of them at the fence would have finished this off nicely. I took this particular series of shots using an in-camera film simulation (Astia) which tends to give a rather yellow tone to images, thinking that it might work well with the colours on this particular day.


I posted a similar frame of this scene last week, but the light was rather better on this occasion and I made a better job of metering the scene and it has some additional warmth from the film simulation used too.