one of those things

this old shipwreck is right under the cliffs in Hunstanton. Now, I've been to Hunstanton many times, and I never, ever seen it till this thursday, when we went there with my friend and turned the OTHER way when we came down to the beach, Amazing, really, It was always there and I always went in a different direction

poppy planet

pink poppies

those pink poppies, unlike the red ones, refused to raise their heads altogether, and dropped all the petals ithin few hours of opening.

view over Firth of Clyde towards Arran

I dunno where the rule about necessity of foreground interest in landscape arisen from. you don't need foreground interest in something as beautiful as this

poppy

I listened to advise by Vasilij Cesenov(check him out, amazing pics of flowers) and picked not fully-opened poppies this time, but the buds. Fully opened ones always drop half of the petals before you get them into water. Buds first went limp, but started to raise their heads in very snake-like manner next day. And today a first flower started to open

Solomon's seal

I can't quite see why exactly it is called Solomon's seal, but it is a pretty name for sure


big image of the same plant will be available for about a week at hiero.ru hosting here (over 4Mb)

Return of the Unpronounceables

I found it rather sweet that the B&B owner couldn't say the name of this castle (Caerlaverock) either, and she lives there all her life.

Admittedly, she lives about half a kilometer away from the border of England and Scotland, on English side. But still

swordplay

Timur, cameo appearance from Yuri, video taken by Kirill

sunrise

end of the tunnel

one of those pics that lay around for a long long time before I finally process them. This one is nearly two years old already, and taken on a journey from Wales, in our then-new Mithubishi outlander. Obviously, the original is all shaky, but a little blur helps the pic in this case

moon grass

collage of my two photos - recent of a full moon and today's of grass against murky sky + favourite scanned old paper texture


another version on flickr

a big square crop of panoramic version can be downloaded from hiero.ru (7.9 M), for approximately one week

dandelion boy

dandelion

I make a few of similar pics each year in dandelion harvest season

big version of this file will be available for approximately one week here

I spy with my little eye something beginning with c

this cat was a resident in our hotel on Fuerteventura. I am not a great fan of cat normally but I liked the color on this one, and the lazy dignity of its movements

pseudo infrared

first, standard photoshop conversion into monochrome IR was applied. To increase glow of highlights typical to IR, I selected the white and similar areas, copied them over to another layer, blurred it, mixed it with the first layer used "soft light" and played with the transparence of the layer till I liked what I saw.

the flowering tree was on the slope of the cathedral hill in Ely

the color original can be found here

Hunstanton, low tide

I first saw a real low tide in Scarborough, on a really hot summer day. Before that my seaside experiences where mostly with Black Sea (no tides as such, warm swimable water), so I naively thought that I would be able to swim there.

Water was relatively high what we came there. I bravely waded in (ankle-high, knee-high) and started walking into (I assumed) deeper water. I walked and I walked and it stayed knee-deep. I turned around. Water edge was moving the same way as me and was close behind. As a bonus, in the distance I saw Kirill, dying of laughter. I never before saw so much sea bottom exposed by low tide.

Low tide on The Wash (above) is even more impressive, but it doesn't cause such surprise as that first even encounter in Scarborough

walking in dunes

still fuerteventura, still hundreds of pics to go

full set on flickr

hibiscus

it seems to me that my canon 5d (mark 1), same as 20d before it, has a problem with red. red "bleeds" into the surrounding colors. not sure if the problem is in the optics of the camera itself

anyway, I am still to make a photo of hibiscus that will satisfy me, this is just one more attempt

(lime,linden, basswood, tilia

nio realy reason, except the weather decided to have mercy on poor people who are just back from better climes and is sunny and warm. I need to cut that lawn again one day

I planted some lily-of-the-valley. all the previous attempts failed, I am curious is this time me and plant re both lucky

small video of blowing sand

made by Kirill in dunes of Corralejo