Horned edition

During the week I was out and spotted Him with bigger horns!

Seeing I had my camera with me I took this picture, originated on Fuji Superia 200 film which was fun because you had to focus by hand and because of my poor left vision, I normally need a bit on the camera to make things in the viewfinder appear in focus so I could see what I was doing but realized I'd left it behind!
Thankfully I just spotted the point of sharpest focus on his eyes in this picture.

 

Then I spotted his neigh bour being ably looked after in the adjoining stable area which brought back memories cos the last time I had my film camera near horses, one of them stole me camera bag!

It was taken on a big 300mm telephoto lens, supported on a fence on the day realized my tripod (three legged support) was damaged.

If you think the last picture looks a bit more defined that's cos it's scanned at 3637 x 2433 which is over 8megapixels by  Photo Hippo Ltd, in Burnley, Lancashire who took over the Fuji Labs service whose turnaround is quite quick (five days from mailing film Saturday to arriving Wednesday) and comes strongly recommended.

Meadowland IIII

I knows, I knows, its a bit late but in groan up land things sometimes take longer than they really should and this was one of them.

 One thing I like about me Olympus camera is I can easily control how much either side of the what I make my main subject is in sharp focus and here is a good example of what people call differential focusing.
I like the local Meadowland areas heaps, finding it a great place to relax and find 'inner space' which can help when you're needing to switch off a bit from the stresses and strains and I took this a few days before the Picnic.
I used my 135mm fixed length lens as I find it really separates out the subject at a wide aperature on the OM20 using Fuji's Superior 200 colour print film which was then scanned from the negatives to digital.

Wild flowers have always intrigued me so this cluster just caught my eye, taking ful advantage of the close focusing properties of this lens to fill the frame

 I thought this corner to corner picture of wild meadowland came out rather well, bring out the peacefulness as insects go about their business.
Taken using Tamron 28-70 close focusing zoom in early June and again on Fuji Superia 200 film

Rest

The bright sunny start of the week as anticipated started to fade but nonetheless it's great to be out in the fresh air away from Status updates and the like just switched off, relaxing, in your hello kitty stuff.

One advantage of being in this part of the North-west Midlands is easily access to open countryside even if some of it is uneven due to severe subsidence from Brine Extraction that caused the plant and a good number of properties around this location to sink into the ground.
Quite often you can see a variety of different birds flying overhead, moths and butterflies about over the adjacent meadowland and the swans by the canal looking rather graceful with their young.
No surprises then that's where I rush to for an hour or so of peace and quiet.
Last night I spent sometime switched off listening to  Chamber music by Fauré - I'm going through a French composers phase at the minute - care of my music player totally engrossed in it. So peaceful.
*photo by me.

Little Moreton Hall

There's this really important big house near where I live in Cheshire that I like to stroll along to and admire the construction as well as reading all about it's history.

It's one of the finest Tudor black and white houses in the whole of England. The first photographs I have of it were done on a Kodak Disc camera but they weren't too good having heaps of graininess.