VirtuallyGreyPhotoBlog

A far more productive day than the last, but just one photo for each post. Day 5 took me to the edge of Worcester city centre.

I almost drew a blank yesterday but at the canal lock at the farthest point before turning back I found (after waiting 20 minutes for the right passer-by!) a photograph that works.

I've recently started a new photo-hiking project around the loop made up from sections of the Worcester Canal, the River Severn and the Droitwich Canal. As with all of my photo-hikes, I walk each section in both directions. The loop is about 21 miles around making my eventual hike total of about 42 miles. I've had 3 days so far, the 10th, 12th and 15th January. There will be about 10 days in all. I'll aim to add one photo herein for each day (hopefully) and then, if there are a sufficient number of images that I like I'll add a gallery to the website.

Ten days in The Lake District with my photo friends from the US was both enjoyable and productive. And whilst the weather in most of the rest of the UK was very wet, in The Lakes it was excellent for Photography - i.e. almost no rain. This link is to my Lake District Gallery with photographs from this and other visits.

A couple of days in Whitby gave me my first opportunity to photograph The Abbey.

There is a tropical garden where we stayed recently on a family holiday on La Gomera, a small remote island in The Canaries. I made a mini-project of photographing the amazing plants, mainly succulents and palms, then rendering them as monochrome. A selection can be seen in this gallery: Linked Here. Here are four of them ...

Last week I spent a day or so with my camera in South Wales on The Gower at Three Cliffs, Mewslade and Rhossili, and a short visit to Kenfig further east. Wall to wall blue sky was a challenge, but several satisfying images came to light. There are ten images from the trip at the top of this linked page.

I've replaced all of the slideshow images on my website homepage with a new set of eighteen taken at various locations during the last year or so in Pembrokeshire, Canada, The Severn Estuary, Kilve, Dorset, New Zealand, Derbyshire, Batsford Arboretum, and The Lake District.

I'm just back from a few days in The Lake District checking out potential locations for a photography trip with some friends later in the year.

A stroll along the Gloucester-Sharpness Canal yesterday between Purton and Sharpness turned up a few pleasing images, in particular around the Purton Ships' Graveyard.

We're just back from a week in the Peak District. On several occasions I walked along parts of the River Dove in and near Dovedale where the flowing waters provided several opportunities to make different moving water images.

A two hour walk this morning along the River Avon from Stratford was very productive, particularly for reflections in the river.

At the start of November I attended the third biennial ‘Meeting of Minds’ conference in the Lake District. It’s specifically for landscape photographers, is run by landscape photographers (@on_landscape & www.onlandscape.co.uk) and all of the excellent presentations were given by landscape photographers all of whom are highly regarded. And importantly, it’s not about equipment, tools, and techniques, it’s about the image, the experience and the adventure. About 200 of us enthusiasts attended the two days. Thank you to Charlotte Britton and Tim Parkin for the best yet ... no pressure then for the next in November 2020!

I added two more days to my stay, taking the opportunity to do some photography in the area. The two days were excellent in that there was no rain, little wind so calm reflecting waters, little sun and magnificent autumn colours making fine conditions for exploring the landscape for photographs. I’ve added several to my English Lake District Gallery, linked here: www.virtuallygrey.co.uk/english-lake-district

I've now added a gallery showing images from my recent visit to Banff and Jasper National Parks in Alberta, Canada - linked here.

Earlier this week I spent a few hours at Batsford Arboretum on the edge of the Cotswolds with a local U3A photography group. The colours were so intense, enhanced by everything being wet, and by there being no sun - just soft slightly misty light. I tried to make some of the images work in monochrome - but they just wouldn't! I had sufficient images from the trip to warrant a gallery of their own - linked here.

Just back from an excellent 10 days or so photographing in the National Parks of Banff and Jasper in Alberta, Canada. We were very lucky to have the first snow falls of autumn. Not heavy, just sufficient to add texture to the mountains and lightness to the dark fir trees. I’ll add a new gallery from the trip in the next few weeks. In the mean time ...

An evening stroll from home yesterday around sunset produced a couple of images.

An afternoon's hiking today on the Wychavon Way turned out to be very productive. A couple of examples here ...

Our ancient churches provide a wealth of material to photograph. Elmley Castle's church is no exception.

I spent several very productive hours on Sunday afternoon/evening exploring and photographing the amazing rock formations on the foreshore at Kilve. Sadly, after a promising few moments, the sunset fizzled out to grey. I last photographed there some 15 years ago with my 5x4 film camera. An amazing location to create images.