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Archive for the ‘Pictures’ Category

Had I but World enough and time… I am very fond of the Herons I see down by the Rive Brue, they are truly spectacular birds but, if you want to get good pictures of them, you really do need to be as patient as them and sit and wait. However right now, I have to restrict my morning ride to no more than one hour so I’m grateful for what I can get, hit and miss as that maybe.

I sense the season starting to turn, Autumn my most favourite one will arrive a couple of weeks earlier than usual. I notice this because I find my self winding up the “film” sensitivity from my normally preferred 80-100 ASA to 200 and 400, it is getting darker in the mornings.

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A week ago I photographed a family of Canadian Geese in one of the ponds on the flood plain of the River Brue. Goslings like ducklings are very vulnerable and it was quite noticeable just how protective the parents were. Although we have a lot of Canadian Geese around here, they nest elsewhere and normally are found on the lakes in the Apex Park which is beside the River Brue.

This morning riding home I spotted them actually on the River and the parents still had all three, just a little bit bigger and fluffier. Of course I couldn’t get too close and didn’t have a long enough lens but never the less, it was good to see them again.

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As politics is a bit boring currently, I thought a picture entry might be more fun and I like these images which in a couple of cases, via a bit of careful work in the “digital darkroom”, could become very special. The other day I came across my friend the Heron again, he is such a magnificent bird. I suppose if I had more time to sit and wait as the Heron does, plus had a faster and therefore ludicrously expensive telephoto lens, I might be able to do better but I like this sequence although it was a case of a “quick grab”.

Herons are “cool creatures” and don’t panic whereas the majority of the wading birds and Egrets, are highly nervous and take to the wing at the slightest disturbance.

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I normally use the Press and the on-line blogs to provide me with thoughts and inspirations for my own but Lordy, Lordy, right now it is an “Anger Fest” with all rationality gone out of the window so, time for more interesting things and in this case, Canadian Geese. Whereas Ducks are definitely rather “Daffy”, Geese are really cool creatures unlike say, Speaker Mick Martin.

I spotted this pair with their three goslings on one of the shallow crab ponds on the flood plain of the River Brue. I had never seen them with their young before and it was charming, they were very dutiful and protective parents.

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Yesterday on my ride by the River Brue, I took these pictures that I thought I might share. To me the perfect conditions: Big sky, clouds and blue, high tide and still water, a sheer joy to be there and drink it all in.

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Born in London, I am by nature a “City Boy” and although I have lived in other places and other cities my love and feeling for London always plucks at my heart. For some, perhaps many people, cities can be both frightening and lonely places but I always find them motivational because when you are tired or have run out of ideas, all you do is standstill and both watch and feel the City move around you, it doesn’t take long to be back up and running again !

But for all that, in the almost 5 years I have lived by the coast, I have got used to seeing the sea everyday and would miss that if I moved away. I would also miss sights such as this, my friend the Heron who is a great character. Herons are very big birds and tend to keep away from humankind but I caught these moments a couple of days back and thought that I might share…

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Although like any youngster I had ridden bicycles, it was following a divorce over 20 years ago and encouraged by my youngest son, a keen cyclist to this day, that I got back into cycling. Moving back into Central London, quite apart from the economics, riding a bike as my main mode of transport and not owning a car, made most sense.

It gave me freedom of movement, cost effective reliability and, the most surprising thing of all – total predictability in the time taken to ride from one place to another, regular ‘commutes’ could be timed to within one minute regardless of traffic. I still have three of the bikes I bought along the way or should I say, three stories…

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I have web site where I post my photographs. I started it off some time ago with a collection of pictures called “The Months” which are pictures taken from my daily bike rides besides and on the flood plain of the River Brue in Somerset. Although not my original intention, having loads of pictures, I bundled them up into slide shows of 15 pictures a time for each month.

This meant that my initial 12 month posting amounted to 180 separate images many of which, same place each day, would tend to be a bit repetitive although the light and tides do change things. A couple of days back, I decided to add the latest two months – Aug08 and Sept08 along with nine other slide shows on various subjects…

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As we see our freedoms and rights to rule our own destiny given away by Gordon Brown and the hapless David Milliband in return for some “pay-off” by Brussels for them personally but, the enslavement of all UK citizens in the process, it is time to remind ourselves just why an “Albatross in a tartan waistcoat” and a slick smart boy with apparently little love and affiliation for the country that gave his family shelter and sustanance are disgracefully wrong in every respect.

Both these low life “chancer’s” should resign from public life and office, immediately because clearly, they are not “Fit for Purpose” in terms of elected representatives bent on representing their constituents personal needs. They seem only concerned with their own personal prospects and future career prospects within the EU bureaucracy, shame on them, I say.

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Three pictures from a December morning down by the River Brue Read the rest of this entry »