week 19&20: Chelsea flower show

This week past was the Chelsea Flower Show here in London and I finally managed to remember early enough this year to get a ticket. Quite a spectacle, but with the amount of people attending I suspect I saw more of the gardens properly on the BBC TV shows. Still I'm glad I went. I got some more ideas for my garden and even a couple of nice photos. Strange though that when I was narrowing down the photos I liked the top 5 did not contain any gardens/plants except some scenery backdrops. But then again the ornamental stalls held much more interest for me than most of the plant stalls and with the amount of people there I have no good shots of any special gardens.

Not that much to say photo-wise. The top one with the wire horses I cloned out the pathway on the right and in the bottom one I had to merge two exposures to get the sky the right colour. I thought afterwards I probably should have used a fill-flash - I need to work on that aspect a little.

Week 18: Abstract

Right, its about time for a guess-what-this-is photo. I found this amazing metal sculpture not even 5 minutes walk from Liverpool Street station. Now taking a nice side on photo (see below) of the sculpture in my mind shows nothing of my creativity, but just reflects that of the original sculptor, so I was looking of an interesting way of showing the beauty of this. I love the curves and shapes used, the semi-spiral design makes it into everything and the blue gems are just wonderful. I also liked how the little bits of rust is starting to colour the legs and contrasting with the blue glass.So this photo is of the knight's knee and lower leg with the horse's harness in the back and a bit of the spear. Bet you didn't think of that when you first saw the photo :-) 

This sculpture was commissioned to commemorate the Cnihtengild, which was apparently a group of 13 Knights from the 10th century. They were granted the piece of land on which the sculpture now stands. I'm not going to give exact directions of the piece of land since it doesn't fully make sense to me, and I know the London landmarks, except to say that  piece of land extended  "south to the Thames as far as a Horseman riding into the river at low tide can throw a lance". That just brings home how different things were.  Oh and the knights had to each fight 3 duels to be given this land, one duel above ground, one under ground and one on sea.

Below is a small photo of what the statue in full looks like

week 17: Chapel at Lincoln's Inn

I've learnt a new word, or more accurately I suppose, I've learned a new meaning for a word I knew. Here in London, the word Inn don't just refer to a place which rents accommodation and sells food to travellers, but also used to refer to large houses of important persons whose business brings them to town. These Inns could  house the magnates and their retinue. These buildings were not always occupied and due to their proximity to the (legal) courts, they were often used as shared accommodation for legal students while not in use by its owner. As time went by some of these Inns became places of legal education and 4 of them became known as the Inns of Court. 

This photo is of the vaulted open crypt under the chapel at Lincoln's Inn. So much of London's beauty lies in the incredible architecture and attention to detail on the older buildings. This chapel for example is almost 600 years old.

This photo has been perspective adjusted to correct the skewed right angle - happening because it was take from a side angle to get the vaulted roof to show through. But the stairs still shows it side on and the faces look to the left. I'm going to have to spend some more time working out how to fix all of that next time. Otherwise not much done, oh and I've dodged the darker areas on the inside to show more of the details.

week 16: Early morning sun rays

I've been wanting to take a picture of sun rays for quite some time, but apart from the occasional rays showing through the clouds which would invariably only appear when I'm on a train with dirty windows, I haven't had the opportunity to do so.

Arriving in South Africa it was grey and rainy, not quite what I hoped for and the weather prediction wasn't too promising either, but I did want to go out walking in a nature reserve with my dad as I always do and we picked the day it seemed most likely to get some sunshine. Got up early that morning to find a beautiful day with no rain cloud in sight. And as we were about to get in the car to go, I saw the sun streaking through the trees. I knew I wanted to get the wooden well my dad built in the picture too and not knowing how much time I had I didn't bother with my tripod. It turns out I only had about a 10 minute window, so it was a good thing too. 

I tried again the following day and though the sun shone, the air conditions must have been different because the sun rays just didn't quite show up like the first day. That was a pity because this time my tripod was all set up and I would have been able to bring down my ISO significantly. I also think this may have worked better if I had bracketed the exposure (on a tripod) to avoid the white blown out areas. As it was I did have to play with getting some more detail in the darker areas (thankfully I do shoot RAW).  But I do like how the trees frame it making it look a lot more secluded than the actual large garden lawn which is really there and for once I actually remembered to put some foreground interest in too.

week 15: Akasha (Snake warning!)

I'm doing this post a little different from usual because I know some people are sensitive about certain kind of photos, and I would hate to scare off any of my precious readers :-) So I'm going to do the writing bit first, put in a huge warning and then the picture in the hopes that you will have to scroll down to see it.

The below information is likely to change as soon as I've spoken to my sister to confirm seeing at this is her snake.

Akasha is a constrictor, though she is still quite small. She is approximately 1.5 years old and her beautiful red/orange colouring is due to the fact that she is an albino (hence also the red eyes). She gets fed once a week and when she's warmed up a little she is very active, we suspect this is why she is not growing as quickly as her partner who is very lazy.

I was fortunate enough to arrive when they were about to be fed. With smaller mice, she does not need to constrict to kill her prey and can just swallow it whole, but she did have to use her body to restrict the movement of the mouse until she had it in her mouth. The mouse in this photo was still too young to have had its eyes open, making it easy prey.

Photography wise, this was taken outside on an overcast day, the snake was confined to a glass tank and if I'd thought it through I could have gotten some nice reflections off the walls, but with 2 snakes in the same tank and a curious cat walking around the outside, I just didn't quite manage. Its something to keep in mind next time I go visit them though.

WARNING: PICTURE OF SNAKE EATING A MOUSE