I took Phil and my iphone with me on my daily stay alive walk, and used the hipstamatic app, which is about the only photography thingy I have on my phone other than it’s inbuilt camera. Can’t wait for Sophie to get back and us to start up our outings again!
Here we go then!
Just outside our house on the drive
Lord Vincent
at the end of our drive are some unruly rose bushes, at least I think they’re roses,
maybe roses
round the corner and back on ourselves, up the pedestrian path and we found blackberry bushes growing amongst the trees by our fence.
jam!
The path that leads to the common has really grown over since last I was here, in summer last year. I used to be able to see to the end of this bit of path.
foliaged
Not sure what little flowers these are, they were all over the wilderness part of the common.
pink flowers
The common is actually marshland, and half of it has been left to go wild, and the other bit has a nicely mown large lawn about the size of a tennis court, maybe a bit bigger, where kids can play footy, and people train their dogs to fetch. In the marshy bit there are 2 ponds which serve the wildlife and birds, but even though we’ve had 2 days of heavy rain last week, the ponds have gone down the road of drought.
pond life
the oak that a few of you might remember, well Pete will anyway š, is still going strong, all alone in the ridge between the ponds-that-were.
The Wardley Oak
after the common we got to a path that used to be a road
5
and then we walked back home through the estate. The buildings here are a small busness kind of estate, mostly car fixers and pimpers.
MOT stations
This is the long road that cuts through the middle of this estate, from the metro station and out towards the A1 or A19. The trees are lovely.
This is one of the houses we walk past on the way back and I love the giant cactus in the porch, it’s been there a long time, and whoever lives there decorates it at christmas š¤£.
Cactus – house.
A random flower poking out of someone’s fence, think it’s a honeysuckle but could be wrong.
I like the shared creeper here, I’m thinking it’s liking No.32 best.
32 for the win!
this is the last one, just before we turn into our bit, beyond the trees.
So that’s it, stay tooned in case I do something interesting for next time!
Into a new week, away from the trauma of selfies, and into the following week of dreaded landscapes. Dreaded because I’m such a fairweather photographer, I don’t like going out in the rain, it makes me miserable, and who wants to be miserable doing a hobby?? But luckily snow happened so I did manage to get out and about. I was hampered a bit by working and getting home too late in the beginning of the week, even though it’s getting lighter in the evenings. I made do with urban landscapes from my windows, but it’s not like this is an exam so it doesn’t really matter. Anyhoo, on with the show!
Day 38 ~ Surprise ~ This week’s theme is landscape photography, which covers a lot of photos with different sub themes–natural landscape, cityscape, urban landscape, abstract, to name just a few. Some mornings you look out the window and are surprised that the sun is going to be shining and it is going to be a beautiful day. What surprise in the landscape can you show us today? As it happened there were no surprises at all! It was grey and moody all day and still that way when I came home from work. There’d been a smattering of snow/sleet but nothing major.
No surprise
Day 39 ~ Macro Monday ~ Rough ~How do we combine ‘landscape’ with ‘macro’ and also tie in the prompt word “rough”? Impossible? Nothing is impossible! I took my camera and macro lens to work with me, there’s a field next to our building and a college behind it and I thought I might find something there in my lunch time. I was quite chuffed with the result.
rough
Day 40 ~ Ambience ~ Light can set the mood or tone of your image. Just think how the ambience of the day can change from sunrise to sunset. Bright days can feel enchanting, cheerful, even optimistic whereas a low light day often feels dreary, moody or even mysterious. As you go through your day, take notice of the landscape around you at various times. How does the ambience of the day change? Do you prefer the morning or evening light? I went for evening light due to aforementioned working, and took a night shot with the Iphone, not great quality but quite ambiotic I think!
Ambience
Day 41 ~ Petal ~ We donāt always have the opportunity to capture a typical ābeautifulā something, but remember that you will always have the opportunity to capture whatās beautiful from your day. What petals do you have access to today? Haha petals in February in Northern England, not going to happen. I took my camera for a walk over to the marshland across the way and some petals from the flowers Phil got me the other week. I scattered some on the frozen marsh ponds and took a few shots but didn’t really care for them, plus it felt a bit like cheating! I liked the look of the bullrushes though so I used my lensbaby to blur the edges and isolate them, and they’ll have to stand in for petals.
petal (not š¤£)
Day 42 ~ I think landscape week is the perfect theme for today’s word, spectacular. We’ve all seen amazing landscape photos that awe us. I bet there are plenty of magnificent sites in your area. Show us what spectacular looks like to you. Off to the coast with Phil to have a walk along the cliff face. I was hoping for big splashy wave crashes against the rocks but it wasn’t that kind of day, in the end I used a shot of the beach and Trow rocks. Not sure it’s ‘spectacular’ but I like it.
Spectacular
Day 43 ~ Chilly ~ Today your challenge is to capture a chilly landscape. That could include snow, or ice, or post processing magic. Well any of the shots for this week would count for chilly, but Phil and I went on a walk around the woodlands near us, then I had too many photo’s to choose from!
Chilly
Day 44 ~ Resourceful ~ Landscape photography is a wide open subject, both literally and figuratively. As the photographer, we have to decide the intended subject, message, or purpose of the image we shoot, beyond being just a pretty picture. As you photograph a landscape today, do so with intention. You may also want to try a “less is more” approach and see what happens. You may be pleasantly surprised! Well that flumoxed me. Resourceful. Hmm “Think of resourceful people as āfull of resources,ā or tools for coming up with solutions. They adapt well to new or difficult situations and they are able to think creatively. For example, if a snake gets loose in the pet store, a resourceful person will be able to figure out how to lure it back into its cage again“. Really??? I’d run a mile! Well there’s no snakes or pet stores in the vicinity so I had a wander over to the marshlands again and took some pictures there. I found this tree/bush thing with bobbles on it that reminded me of milk chocolate Lindors and I figured whatever the were they would have been a food resource for birds.
Resourceful.
Well that’s another week gone by, and now we are into a colour week again. This time it’s to be pink. (I’m really not a pink kind of person so bear with me!)
and a little treat for any landlubbers, a few seconds of seashore sound š
Yipee I made it to the end, didn’t miss a single day and am chuffed to pieces with my project. Ā I learned a lot along the way, about composition, slowing down, being disciplined and lots of technical bits I hadn’t bothered with before.
Next year will be a different beastie, it will be a 365 as it’s not a leap year and will be tied in with my starting the ‘walk 1000 miles in 2017’ project. I’ll be using my phone and film cameras for it and it will be posted on my Fraggles Other Place blog, leaving this one clear for Fraggle reports with the fuji again. Wish me luck!
Another busy day yesterday as we had our 2 grandkids staying over, I got my shot but by the Ā time we’d got the last one in bed and had something to eat it was too late to faff on the net.
Also we’ve had 2 sunny if cold days, so the first shot is of the sunlight coming in to my bathroom just before it goes down behind the houses.
At this time of year the sun is very low in the sky all day, so doesn’t get above the houses at the back of where we live, but for 15 minutes or so it shines through the gap between 2 houses and streams through our back fence.
When Phil is on a late shift and I am on an early, or when he’s on an early shift and I am off so want to stay up reading, or if I get insomnia and don’t want to disturb him, I trot off to sleep in the spare room. Ā When I snuggle down, and turn off the lights, this is what I can see š
For the past 3 years we’ve had a pair of Robins visit our garden and The Happy Eater tree, but this year have hardly seen them. Ā Today though Phil spotted this little robin jumping from the car window ledge onto the mirror back andĀ forth, weĀ think he thought there was another robin in it! Ā He seems to be alone so am not sure if this is one of the pair and the spouse has died or if this one is a different one all together.
this next one’s a bit out of focus but you can see his reflections in the mirror and window,
Lava Lamps, invented by a British accountant Edward Craven Walker in 1968 who t hen set up a company ‘Mathmos’ to sell and distribute them. Still going today in the original factory in Poole, Dorset.
Interesting factoid:-Ā In 2004, a man fromĀ Kent,Washington,USAĀ was killed by a lava lamp on a kitchen stove while closely observing it from only a few feet away. Heat from the stove built up pressure in the lamp until it exploded and a shard pierced his heart, causing fatal injuries. Ā Probably won the Darwin Award that year š
A lot of people on our estate now have their outside Christmas lights on, but ours are broken, so a candle in a jar hanging off the branch of our tree is the best I can do at the minute š
This is the last day of Crystal Ball month. Ā I worked today so thought I’d end up doing a fetchingly creative night shot, but the universe gifted me an amazing sunset. Ā Didn’t have time to get to high ground, so made the best of it in the upstairs bedrooms and my garden.
This is a shot from my front bedroom window, with my largest crystal
I haven’t faffed on with these shots, I could have lightened the shadows but really it wouldn’t add anything to the shot, it’s all about those colours in the sky.
The back bedroom windows don’t have such a great view, but thats where the sunset is more intense, so I took a shot first in the back garden,
and then ran upstairs and hung out of one of the windows to get a full shot of it, not easy because Skye came bounding up and tried to jump out past me!
It’s ages since I’ve seen such a red sunset, it does happen here now and then though and am so pleased I got the last shot in the ball with it. Ā Tomorrow it’s on to ‘light’. Ā 31 days to go!!
fraggle ~ rocking a camera across the Universe 
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