beads

it took me over a year to decide what to do with those sponge coral beads, and then the necklace was done within thirty minutes when I needed to liven up a dull grey dress. It would have taken less, but the lacey metal beads are difficult for getting the leather cord through. I am quite pleased with the result - the beads are light, quite long, and move around my er chest in most intriguing way, even is I say so myself

greater bindweed (Convolvulus sepium)

I photographed this bindweed over back wall of one of the gardens surrounding the short stay car park on Mill Road, Cambridgem while waiting for Arco Iris Samba Band to start towards Harston and Newton Primary School Fête. While I was finding the best angle, a woman and her child arrived on their bikes and got through the back door of a garden. I turned and found her looking at me, smiling. We had a short chat, her saying that "it's so nice somebody notices how beautiful those white flowers are" and that "Ipomoea (the type of bindweed with large blue-purple flowers) is a weed in my country". Unfortunately, I didn't have time to establish what her country actually was, but the conversation made me remember that Ipomoea is also weed in Portugal, where we were on holidays last year. Porto, especially old town, seems to be pretty much covered in it in august.

fearless one

I would be terrified, but Timur jumps off those things like a little kangaroo

kite

taken on the same day wjen I finally discovered that there is a shipwreck in Hunstanton

hammock

this bindweed certainly took its time before it finally decided to open the first flower.

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