Northampton Saints v Bath Rugby

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Coo, some photos at last – my first set of rugby photos this season, as Northampton Saints comfortably beat Bath on Christmas Eve. We also took my mother to her first game for 40 years!

The full set of photos are up on my website

More stars

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I got the opportunity to take some more star photos at the weekend when I camped in deepest darkest Dorset. This was better than France as there was no moon and even less light pollution – there were an incredible amount of stars on display.
Tweaking the images a bit in Lightroom showed one thing – there is a huge amount of information hidden in those images. Check out the two copies of one image below – one as it came out of the camera, the other with auto-levels applied.

The two long exposures were about 45 mins and have come out really well, but I think I need to experiment a bit more with the short exposures. 2 minutes at ISO400 is producing just a bit too much movement in the stars and makes the image look out of focus, so I probably need a shorter exposure – but that means a higher ISO and therefore more noise. More experimentation required I think. Still, at least it’s easier during the winter as it’s properly dark so much earlier!

Starry Starry Night…

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After an unsuccessful attempt at photographing stars in Dorset in May (see previous post), I was determined to have another go in the dark skies of rural France while on holiday.
And I have to say, it went quite well. The new batteries did the job and I was able to take some very long exposures.
The first two are 687 and 3642 seconds (yes, an hour), while the others were taken on a couple of nights a week or so later and are 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. The only problem was that there was quite a full moon on the later days which reduced the amount of stars you could see. I experimented with lighting the trees in the foreground by the simple method of shining a torch onto them.

Coming home yesterday, the view from the middle of the English Channel was excellent while the view of the skies over Hampshire while driving back from Portsmouth was superb. I’m going to have to try some more of this, although finding somewhere dark enough isn’t easy.

Red Arrows

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Given the news today about the crash at the Red Arrows display, I thought I’d post up the photos I took of them last Sunday – they were doing a display over the Bristol Balloon Festival at Ashton Court, but we could see them from the spare room window. A bit distant, but not a bad view!

Mmmm, steak

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A fantastic dinner last night, which deserved a few photos.
We picked up a lump of beef rib from the new butcher on Whiteladies Road (Ruby & White) and cooked it carefully on the barbeque.
Served with our own potatoes (boiled, rolled in olive oil, parsley and rock salt, and then put on a skewer and lightly cooked over the barbie) and courgettes (cooked in garlic butter).
The result? A stupendously good meal, served with a bottle of Tavel rose from Corks of Cotham.

Ducks On Tour

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This is going back a fair bit – something we did in 2004.
We “borrowed” two plastic ducks from our then-landlords, SWMBO decorated them in a His and Hers stylee, and we took them on holiday to France. It was the early days of my having a digital camera and I also had a portable Canon postcard printer, so we sent postcards from our travels.

1) Hampton Park, Bristol. 31/08
Hello! The rubber ducks are off on their holidays.
See you in about 3 weeks time.
Tarquil & Jocasta

2) Newbury. 31/08
Are we nearly there yet?
Sebastian & Ludmilla

3) Giverny. 01/09
You know what’s missing from Monet’s water garden pictures?
Duck! That’s what!
Jacquies & Nigella

4) Chateau de Chambourd. 02/09
OK, if we must slum it tonight.
Hector & Clarissa

5) Puy-de-Dome. 03/09
No ponds!
Claude & Henrietta

6) St Flour. 03/09
Ah, the joys of a luxurious hotel.
Jeremy & Cynthia

7) Pas de Payrol / Puy St Mary. 04/09
The views are so good that I’ve taken up photography.
Timothy & Audrey

8 ) Tournon d’Agenais. 05/09
Hooray! A pond at last!
Edmund & Hermione

9) Tournon d’Agenais. 10/09
Making new friends here at the pond.
An interesting sounding museum has been recommended – we shall investigate next week.
Gerald & Persephone

10) Musee de Foie Gras. 16/09
Mon Dieu!
Quelle Horreur!
Orlando & Saskia

11) Tournon d’Agenais. 17/09
These are the lovely people we’ve been sharing the pond with.
Victor & Athena

12) Soulac-sur-Mer. 18/09
Nudist beach!
Jason & Kylie

13) Carnac. 20/09
Hey dude, standing stones.
Pretty damn cosmic!
Dweezil & Moon Unit

14) Mont St Michel. 21/09
Crap, apparently. We didn’t go any closer.
Homer & Marge

And some outtakes…

Flat Holm

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I went to Flat Holm today – an island in the Bristol Channel for those that don’t know. 

There are some fairly interesting Victorian gun emplacements, and it’s particularly notable for a substantial colony of aggressive seagulls that will dive-bomb you with poo if you get too close to their nests and chicks. Couldn’t have asked for a better day – the hottest day of the year so far, and completely calm for the crossing.
The boat goes from Penarth, just by the Cardiff Bay barrage – this is the counterweight for one of the bridges.

As seen previously, I’m always a sucker for lighthouses, and this one came with a nice rusty gun as well.
This one was taken from down in one of the old gun emplacements
A load of the flying crap factories. I didn’t get pooed on fortunately, but it was close a couple of times.
Next month I’m going to Steep Holm, which is nearby and apparently steeper than Flat Holm.

Dorset

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We spent a couple of nights in Dorset last week – the first night happened to coincide with the 20th anniversary of our moving in together, which was nice. We stayed in Burton Bradstock on the Jurassic Coast, also the home to Billy Bragg. I thoroughly recommend the B&B we stayed at – Chesil Beach Lodge.
We didn’t really do much for the time we were there, not venturing away from the beach during the day and no further than the village for dinner in the evening. I also took quite a lot of photos…

The sandstone cliffs are really photogenic, particularly when combined with a blue sky and some light cloud.

This is a fence that’s been built on top of the cliff to stop people using the old bit of the coastal path – erosion and rockfalls mean that the cliff edge tends to move inland somewhat, and there’s quite a drop over that edge.
Due to enjoying dinner, we didn’t quite make the most of the sunsets – we missed it completely on the first night, and could probably have done with being there a bit earlier on the second. I think what you really need is to be there earlier in the year when the setting sun shines directly onto the cliffs, as the warm light on the cliffs would be superb.
Someone had been mildly creative with the stones on the beach…
On Friday, we went over to Portland Bill before coming home, and you can’t beat a nice red and white lighthouse in the sunshine against a blue sky.

I spend some time playing around with my 10-stop ND filter again, blurring out the waves.
This one was 30 seconds at f22, taken at 3pm.
4 seconds at f6.7
3 seconds at f32 (3-stop ND filter)

28 seconds at f22
8 seconds at f22, 9:20pm
I did start to experiment with some really long exposures in the evening, but only got 2 minutes into a 3 minute exposure when the battery gave up.
And finally, on the last night, I got round to experimenting with photographing the stars.
283 secs @ f5.6
314secs @ f5.6
This was intended to be a much longer exposure, but my second battery ran out after about 5 minutes – the other one was still re-charging after the beach shots above. I was a bit annoyed by this as I’d only used it for about 15 minutes of exposures – reading on t’interweb suggests I should be able to get 80 minutes. I’ve had the camera and batteries for just over 5 years and have taken somewhere in the region of 15,000 photos, so it could well be that they’re reaching the end of their useful life. Thinking about it, I should probably have been turning off the image stabilisation for the long shots (especially as I’ve been using a tripod) as that uses a bit of juice, but surely not that much?
Looks like I need to get a new battery or two, as I want to do more star photography in France in the summer.