Ladybirds and pine shoots

Further to my previous post about the emergence of spring flowers and the bright optimistic green of new foliage, I'm going to make a quick interim post with a couple more photos on that theme - and my next post will be the work in progress blog that I'm working on. I apologise for getting side-lined, but if I don't post photos I've taken here, they just languish un-loved as files on my hard drive.

We'd had such a lovely day last Saturday on our day out that we decided to avail ourselves of another favourable weather forecast for Sunday and do it all again. Just because we could.

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The bright green new shoots of the pine trees had developed tangibly in the intervening eight days and were starting to stretch out as new branches. It also must be the time of year that ladybirds emerge and we saw more in that one walk than I've seen in a long time. This particular young tree was especially abundant and I was able to get quite close to take some photographs. I loved the abstract of them against the vibrant green textures.


We also saw more of the delicate Pink Purslane flowers I posted last week too - they do seem to like to nestle against fallen rotting logs and where they must get occasional patches of sunshine too. The day was largely 'fine' but we did get odd flashes of warm sunshine through the trees and it's always such a delight to me to see the patterns that form as it fingers its way between the trees to the forest floor. One of my very favourite things.

It doesn't take much to make me happy and re-charge my flagging spirits.

Birthday walks and extreme picnicing

My husband's boss called it infantile - that he wanted the day off for his birthday this last week - "what are you; 12 years old, that you want a day off on your birthday?" he laughed. It's something we've always done, try to take a day holiday for birthdays so that we can get to spend it doing something nice.

We're not terribly adventurous in this regard, but it is nice to spend the whole day doing something that you choose, without feeling the need to get on with chores or meet commitments. Unless you're actually away on holiday, probably not many of us actually spend days just doing what we want, so it's a nice and much appreciated treat when we do - and all the more enjoyable for it.

When it was my own birthday in January, we had intended doing the same, but the weather was about as horrid as it ever gets and we were both laid very low with a terrible cough, so just decided not to squander a valuable day when we weren't fit to fully appreciate it and it just wasn't suitable to be outside.

So this week, when it was Mr Boo's birthday, it happily fell on the most perfect winter day - deep clear blue sky (albeit starting foggy) and very crisp cold air. The snow of the previous weekend was still lying and frozen solid, so it wasn't good underfoot, but we were determined to make the most of it and headed off to one of our favourite spots, with a picnic packed, including hot soup, freshly baked bread and pots of birthday sherry trifle that I made the evening before.

The area we visited had less snow, so although the ground was clearly very, very cold and walking on rutted mud that's frozen solid is an odd sensation, the going was pretty good and we wrapped up in many warm layers, opened an air activated hand warmer and managed a decent walk. It's always a treat to get out mid-week at this time of year as you often have the place to yourself and we only passed a few other 'mature' couples walking dogs or spending their days off doing the same as we were. So it was especially enjoyable and very peaceful.

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The cold did deter me from much photography as my hands were incredibly cold, despite the hand warmer and thick ski gauntlets, so I don't have much to show for the day. But as I've posted often, I do have a passion for the sight of sunlight through trees and occasionally it caught some of the lifting mist, highlighting the shafts of sunlight.

It's much easier to see in person than it is to capture well in a photograph, the light is much too subtle to freeze in a split second, but hand holding the camera I couldn't really allow a slow enough shutter speed to do it justice. But they're probably enough to show why it was such a lovely and enjoyable day.


I decided to have a tinker with the camera's built in panorama feature. I love taking panos, but usually take my own frames and stitch it myself, but the camera has the ability to take 120, 180 and 360 degree panos (in any direction) - giving rise to a reduced resolution but pre-stitched and finished image. It was too cold for messing to take my own frames, so I mounted the camera on the tripod screw my father added to my walking pole and just spun it round slowly to take this 120 degree frame of the woodland. The resulting image was rather poor quality at pixel level and almost entirely lacking in colour, but with a little work, I made something acceptable from it, although it isn't good enough quality for anything further than viewing at this scale.

We relocated the car a couple of times during the day to enjoy the best light and views and as sunset approached we settled in one of our favourite laybys to catch the sun setting over the Fylde coast (Lancashire England) and we had a little snooze in the car before heading back. As darkness drew in, the light went very cold and the atmosphere grew misty again and diffused the last rays of light from the sunset, leaving these three closest trees in relief against the mist and pastel coloured sky. Not a bad way to end a lovely day.

Frost and blue sky - perfect for a walk

First of all, may I wish everyone a Happy New Year and I hope that it will be kind to you.

I'm pretty horrified to see how long it is since I blogged - I hadn't realised it had been so long over the festive holidays. Mr Boo and I have both been laid pretty low with a bug - not sure how to describe it, it was a severe cough with flu like symptoms. Not a cold as such, just a rotten, exhausting cough. I came off pretty lightly in comparison, but Mr Boo had a pretty miserable Christmas - it's tricky to manage a very robust, spasmodic cough when you're waiting for surgery for an abdominal hernia.

Thankfully, he suddenly seemed to improve over the weekend, so when we saw how good the weather forecast was for today, we put together our stuff yesterday evening so that we could get out for the day today and we managed a walk and in-car picnic at one of our favourite places; Beacon Fell in Lancashire.

I suspect half of Lancashire had the same thought too and for the first time ever, we couldn't find a space in any of our favourite car parks, so settled for a roadside spot we've used before, a little off the beaten track and walked a slightly different route - which worked out perfectly and proved to be a blessing as it was a smidge quieter.

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There was thick haw frost in the shade near where we parked, so we wrapped up warmly and set off in lovely winter sunshine and I took my camera along, as always. Unfortunately, whilst I had all the right equipment with me, I seemingly failed to engage my brain. I didn't take many photos, for a variety of reasons, from the bitter cold on my hands, to meandering children within the frame and those photographs that I did take ended up lacking in technical competence, like totally failing to notice the very slow shutter speeds and consequent lack of sharpness. So this is all far from my best work, but the best I have to offer just at the moment.

I think I've almost certainly shown similar scenes to these before as I just love sunlight through trees and as we walk the same paths often, largely for this reason, I've surely taken these same shots before, although I'm pretty sure that I haven't done them with this particular camera, so I'll treat them as new images.

This is certainly a favourite spot as the shadows falling across the path always give rise to lovely curvy abstract shapes and even at this time of year, the sunlight is a deep golden colour as it dances through the trees.

I was also grateful for the nice spell of weather before the weekend when I managed to get out for a decent walk at lunchtime, having been held inside for a few days by the ferocity of the cough and an indecent amount of wind and rain. I had my camera with me then too, but the shots I took were specifically to test something out we'd been discussing on one of the camera forums, so this was as interesting as it got.

The camera I was using is the Fujifilm HS20 EXR - the EXR designation refers to the 'extended dynamic range' feature - one that I really do love and one which works well for the type of photography that I do. It allows you to capture a good range of tones in contrasty scenes like this. Most non-EXR cameras would burn out the sky and that white house if you exposed the foreground in the same way. This shot doesn't look anything unusual, as this is what your eye saw and it just looks right, but the range of tones captured in an image like this is pretty fabulous and I love that I can get results like the two below with minimal post processing and confident in knowing that I'm unlikely to blow highlights like white cloud detail. Even the examples above with the trees show the same feature at work - one I'm becoming very fond of.

Apologies for the lack of worthy content in this post, I'll aim to do much better next time.

The ingredients of a good walk

I apologise for posting several recent blogs on a similar theme, but it just so happens to be what I've taken photographs of - and where we've spent time recently.

It was my husband's birthday earlier in the week and as he has a few days of annual leave to take this financial year, he thought that he might as well take a few days around his birthday, so that we'd have a choice of days on which to try and get out for some fresh air, should the weather not co-operate on the actual day. As it happens, Tuesday proved to be the best day of the week and an ideal one for wrapping up warm and heading out to stretch our legs.

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The summit of Beacon Fell. the very grey and misty start had thankfully lifted to the most glorious day.

We were talking in the car on our way home about what a nice day we'd had and listed some of the highlights and decided that these were often the ingredients that went to comprise the more enjoyable days. So these are the bullet points that seemed significant and entertaining - to us:

• It was quiet - although we went to a popular and favourite beauty spot, it always feels like a bonus to go mid-week when you often get the place pretty much to yourselves.

It had rained relentlessly for the previous 3 days and it was rather squelchy underfoot in places, but sunshine after rain of that nature does provide a rather special atmosphere.

• We only really passed the occasional dog walker and other mature types like us taking advantage of a day off or enjoying their retirement. We passed grandparents with a cheerful small dog and equally cheerful young grandson, wearing the most fabulous fleece hat adorned with dinosaur spines. When admiring said headwear, he provided a suitably loud dinosaur roar, just in case we weren't certain what type of beast he was. He advised us that he was looking out for real dinosaurs and bears, so we were more vigilant from that point forwards. Just in case he was lucky.

I must admit to looking a little more carefully into the dark corners once I knew there were dinosaurs and bears lurking. But thankfully the only wildlife we saw were some squirrels chasing each other along the branches, obviously thinking spring was in the air.

• This encounter left us with a question - why do dogs always prefer disproportionately long sticks to carry? What primeval instinct drives them to drag one along, seemingly far too large for them, causing passers by to swiftly take evasive action to save their shins. You'd think that there would be an optimal size of something like 4 times the width of the dog's skull - but not so, it would seem, dogs, even quite small ones, will valiantly persist in carrying a stick or branch several times their own length. And for some reason, equally unfathomable, Mr Boo obviously sports the look of a man who would be good at throwing said sticks and he often finds himself with a stick at his feet and a hopeful looking dog attached.
  

I have posted photographs of this fabulous carved snake before, but the light made the fabulous textured carving on his head rather more visible and we approached it from a different angle. It might just make you jump if you didn't know it was there.

• Talking of dogs, whilst we had our favourite car park almost to ourselves, there was one other very small car parked nearby and our lunchtime entertainment took the form of an extremely large (sans stick, presumably he never found one quite large enough) Irish wolfhound that had to be shoe-horned into the aforementioned very small vehicle before departure. I was so sorry that I'd put the camera away at this point. But I had to admire the fact that he'd clearly done it before and knew just what was required to cram himself into the inadequate space. Clearly his daily walk was worth that effort.
  

I'm not keen on snakes, I certainly wouldn't have got this close to a real one, but he does have a rather lovely face which is beautifully carved from a massive hunk of timber, with lovely and very tactile textures.

• I saw my first lamb of the season - very small and still wearing its protective plastic coat, presumably only born in the last few days.
• We had a very brief and fleeting encounter with a barn owl. As we were driving back towards home, we must have disturbed it on a fencepost at the roadside. It took off and flew alongside the car for a few yards and by the time I'd tried to get my husband to take appropriate action to allow me a photograph, it had veered off to the side and was now behind us, but the close proximity of another rather impatient driver close to our tail meant that we were unable to stop quickly and by the time we'd extricated ourselves from the traffic, the barn owl had seemingly settled somewhere out of sight, despite returning and carefully scanning the area he'd last been seen. I was gutted not to have got a better look or an opportunity for a photograph.

You always know that it has been a good day when you drive home to a sky like this.

Sunlight through trees, one of my favourite things

As I've posted many times, I enjoy walking in the outdoors, preferably somewhere natural and away from people and man-made structures and most preferably; amongst trees.

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I absolutely love seeing sunlight filtering through trees, those little flashes of golden light you see playing on the trees and ground to make infinitely variable abstracts. Being amongst woodland is good in any weather and often the very shelter it provides makes it a good choice on days of extreme weather; lessening the effects of rain, wind, or hot sunshine.

As the weather forecast for today was for clear skies and temperatures not far above freezing, it was too good an opportunity to miss and the domestic chores we should have been addressing were abandoned in favour of a nice drive to a favourite spot (Beacon Fell in Lancashire), a walk and some soup and fresh bread for lunch - which always tastes much better outside.

But I really do love seeing shafts of sunlight between trees, it's something I never tire of and must now have taken hundreds of photographs of, but it's also something very difficult to do justice to in a still photograph. Sometimes, you just have to be there and enjoy it in the moment.

I get a great deal of comfort for being amongst trees and I cannot conceive of living anywhere where I wasn't in close proximity to trees - I am blessed in being able to see them right outside my windows and to be within walking and driving distance of some totally gorgeous woodland areas.

All of my favourite walks are in woodland and if I'm stressed or unhappy for any reason, it's the idea of being amongst trees in the fresh air that comforts me and gives me something to look forward to. It's where I take my mind to when I want to be distracted.

It had clearly been below freezing overnight and we woke to visible frost, but within the forest park we encountered a number of areas with different weather conditions, from a light snow covering, to thick frost and in more sheltered spots, areas of mud where it hadn't frozen at all. This pond was surrounded by a dusting of snow and the water itself was completely frozen - someone had already broken the ice near the edge and flipping over some of the pieces we could see that it was over an inch thick.

I've shown photographs before of this willow woven statue of a deer that has recently been built in a little clearing in the forest and you just encounter it at the side of the path as you walk along. I took this photograph with a wider angle lens than previously as I wanted to check the status of the small pine trees growing around it. the ground was well covered with seedlings of different sizes and I was curious as to whether they'd been planted or were self-seeded - considering that the ground is littered with cones from the adjacent trees.

My new camera has a 30x zoom lens (from wide angle 35mm equivalent focal length of 24mm and 720mm at the telephoto lens) and I was curious to see the range it offered me from the same spot. Both photographs were taken from the same place and are both full frame. There's a little camera shake in this close shot as it was taken at a very slow shutter speed. You can see the willow is starting to bud, so presumably this will sprout leaves in spring, so it will be interesting to see how it develops.

I also wanted to do some more work with my new camera, but it was bitterly cold, especially in the shade under the trees and as a Reynauds sufferer, I was really struggling with numb hands today and trying to operate the tiny buttons on a camera - and keep it still - wearing thick ski gauntlets (recently purchased and just not up to the job) wasn't the best methodology for good results. And don't even get me started on how hard my hat, scarf and hair was fighting me today, variously getting in my eyes and causing me to steam up my glasses.

This is one of my favourite spots on our walk - and as we did a figure of 8 walk we walked this section twice today - you drop down quite steeply through a plantation area which is quite dense with conifers and even on the brightest of days is very dark and the light rarely penetrates the area as it never gets direct sunlight, being in the shadow of a hill. But there is a clearing ahead where paths cross and the trees in that area are often in a shaft of light, making this lovely glowing focal point to head towards.

The deep contrast of the lighting makes it almost impossible to photograph well and do the scene justice, but I think you'll get the idea. The patch of trees ahead of you in the path always seem to glow as they catch the sunlight.

If you go down to the woods today . . .

I've said it before and I'm sure to repeat it in future - I find one of the most powerful restoratives - both physically and mentally - is to get out into the fresh air and preferably amongst trees. I find being outdoors to be absolutely vital to my health and a brisk walk somewhere lovely is as good for me as anything a doctor could prescribe.

No matter what life throws at us, as long as I get to walk in woodland periodically, I can usually cope with whatever I have to. The last month or so has been a little demanding with two minor operations and trying to recover whilst still working and ensuring that no customers are let down or inconvenienced - along with a multitude of minor domestic irritations like a broken shower and computer and guttering coming down in bad weather.

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Our walk today was around Beacon Fell, a county council run country park, north of Preston in Lancashire. We've been visiting there for something like 40 years and they've recently reworked some of the woodland sculptures - this fellow is magnificent and stands around the same height as me and something like 40 feet long.

One of the perils of being self-employed is not ever really being able to take proper time off. You have to work like the clappers in advance to cover as many eventualities as you can if other people are going to cover for you. Any down time leaves you itching to get on with something and feeling guilty when you don't and then putting in extra time after any break to clear the accumulated backlog. So something innocuous can end up feeling like a military campaign.

They were just installing this new natural sculpture when we were last there two weeks ago, but we were delighted to see it finished today - you just happen upon it in a clearing as you round a corner in the path.

When we got up this morning, the sky was clear blue and the sun was shining. There was a bite to the air, but it was a perfect day to get out and stretch our legs, so soup was warmed, flasks filled, scarves and gloves packed and off we set. Even though we had lots to do, we felt that a dose of perspective-realignment, fresh air and getting the blood circulating, were rather more important today.

I was a little off my game still, so the walk was a relatively modest one, but the trees did it again. I just love being in woodland - I just cannot conceive of living without being surrounded by trees. By the time we had travelled 20 miles from home and had set off walking, the weather had deteriorated somewhat and the sun was only evident occasionally, but even in cooling damp air, the smells of the woodland and the feel of leaf litter underfoot was a great joy to me.

It really pleases me that even in the current economic climate, the county council still do things like this, I really do hope that art of this nature won't be a future victim of the economy. Their worth isn't something that can be calculated on a spreadsheet.

I love to hear birds amongst the trees and to be greeted by the occasional stick-carrying dog and to exchange a few words with fellow walkers and to me, there probably isn't a restaurant on the planet where I'd enjoy my food any more than eating hot soup and fresh bread in the outdoors after a brisk walk. And there aren't many restaurants where you can eat still in your muddy boots and survey the scenery - although my husband did declare today that it's a tad disconcerting to eat whilst wearing a hat.

It was a butterfly sort of day

The weather has been atrocious lately. We had summer for two un-seasonably hot weeks in June. We have returned to the rather more typical English summer weather of continuous rain and grey skies.

But the forecast was for a nice day yesterday - rare that it should occur at a weekend too. So we decided to mark this special occasion with a proper day out. I didn't want to be anywhere there were drunk chavs lighting barbecues with flame throwers or to be serenaded by obnoxious, undisciplined children. I wanted fresh air, trees, peace and quiet. I wanted to hear nothing but the sound of bird song, bees going about their business and the breeze through the trees rustling leaves. I wanted a nice walk to blow out the cobwebs and ideally I wanted some photo opportunities. I wanted somewhere suitable to eat our picnic and warm sun with a cool breeze. So we didn't want much really.

We consulted maps for location, packed the picnic basket and cold box and by the time we left we had everything we needed, except one key factor - the weather wasn't quite as nice as we both hoped and expected. The sky was grey and threatening and the breeze was certainly cooling - a bit too cooling.

But the day gradually improved and in the end, by the time we were walking, it turned out incredibly pleasant. We found ourselves near the Stocks Reservoir in the Forest of Bowland (in north west England for overseas readers) and spent some time walking around the perimeter of the water and found a bird hide on the water's edge and spent an enjoyable time in there with binoculars. We found a nice picnic table in the sun and enjoyed a leisurely lunch al fresco - although I did have to correct Mr Boo from thinking that 'al fresco' meant nekkid.

A view from the bird watching hide we spent some time in.

Part of the path we walked was through some marshland with vegetation growing to chest height - and there were as many insects as I've ever seen in one place, it was positively humming with bees and butterflies. Below are some of my photos from the day - which ended up at Beacon Fell, a lifelong favourite spot of ours. Most of the photographs were taken with my compact camera, I decided against carrying my DSLR as we walked - a sure way to ensure plenty to see - although my little camera, with some coaxing, performed pretty well.

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they don't display that well here on the page.

The start of our walk, I love to see old gateposts - no one would bother with that sort of effort these days.

I think these 'butterflies' are possibly large skippers.


There is a cluster of paragliders above the distant hill enjoying the last warm thermals of the day.

A Painted Lady butterfly - they travel all the way from North Africa to fetch up in Lancashire - astounding that something so delicate can make the trip. This was taken with my DSLR in the low evening sun.