Watendlath Beck

We went for a circular walk that goes along Derwent water, into the woods to Lodore falls, up more or less along the Watendlath Beck (small river that is falling at the falls, so to speak) and then looped back down to the lake. I am reasonably sure we went slightly wrong at some point, but we got there in the end. The diversion didn't really matter, and one fellow walker poiter to us - "you can't go wrong, it's Lake District, it's pretty everywhere".

I agree with her, it's beautiful, and especially in autumn.





Cumbria pics on shutterstock

feather

on our way back from the lakes yesterday we took not the most direct of routes but went for scenic instead, going along the smaller roads for large portion of the journey, including A65, which runs along south border of Yorkshire Dales

It took us past Skipton, where we stopped for some food and drinks. On our way back to the carpark I've noticed a very tasteful flower display in front of BLOEMIST florist, and went in to have a look. Inside the shop was also very nice and unusual - sort of spare and designery, not the more commonly seen chaotic floral abundance.

I bought myself this peacock feather. When I got out, both Kirill and Timur wanted to have one, and got one each. Kirill wanted it to complete a costume when they do samba drumming. Timur went for it in his usual magpie "grab a pretty thing and carry it to the nest" style.

old-fashioned tea

we are back from Cumbria. Stayed in a cottage close to lake district. Weather weren't that great, but we did have two ok days, so not too bad

Cottage was full of old stuff that just asked to be photographed. Some of it I ended up not photographing due to lack of light and this and that, but this kettle and old tea things asked the loudest

Zelkova serrata

Interesting name - the "zelkova" bit, "serrata" is pretty straightforward. I was half-expecting to find that it was named after a botanist (Russian or Bulgarian perhaps) with surname Zelkov. But Wikipedia has this to say on the subject

"The name Zelkova derives from the native name of Z. carpinifolia in one or more of the languages of the Caucasus, as shown by the Georgian name, ძელქვა (dzelkva). ძელ dzel meaning "bar", and ქვა kva meaning "rock". The tree was often used for making rock-hard and durable bars for building."

There is a very nice tree in the Cambridge University Botanic Garden, and it is of this interesting yellow-orange-brown color right now.

Zelkova serrata at shutterstock

what is Cassandra wearing today?

She's wearing a monkey-head knitted hat and no arms.

In the article below it is explained that one hand went missing last week. When I popped into the shop today, Pamela told me that since then one arm turned up, then another went missing, so the mannequin is guarding its street corner "completely 'armless".

She also told me of her call to the police. She wished to report a theft, she said. Policewoman on the other end of the line, preparing it write it down, asked what was missing. An arm, said Pamela. You can probably imagine that it was not a very straightforward affair, that report.

wild grape vine leaves

at least I am pretty sure they are. They don't give change in the parking meter on Mill road in Cambridge, and we didn't have the right coints, so decided to gain something extra out of the overpriced stay visit - collect some of the turned leaves from the brick wall surrounding the car park.
I had to scrape ice off my car in the morning - hopefully that means that leaves will finally start turning en masse. So far it was only the old reliables that did

dirty face

Timur spend whole day doing activities with cubs and scouts. He came home looking like this. I am sure this war paint rendered him perfectly invisible.

trombone

continued experimenting with lights. I always wanted to do some pics with strong-contrast side light and now I have the wherewithal. Two lights with umbrella reflectors to the side and back of the model in a darkish room worked nicely.

So here we are. Kirill was the model, and there are a few more pics here but this one is most laconic and I like it the most.

all music-related pics on shutterstock

backlit one

As one of my birthday presents, two small-ish studio flashes (similar to ones on amazon, but different ones) arrived a few days ago. I never have enough courage to unpack and test things immediately after their arrival, so they stayed for a few days in their box

this is first experiments with them and my still-beautiful birthday flowers.

today's flowers for tomorrow

received two huge bunches of birthday flowers today for tomorrow

I mean yesterday for today :)

figs

I am not great fan of them, I do eat them but I can just as happily eat something else. The colors are beautiful though, especially on black

black mirror images at shutterstock

scroll

Keywording processed images sometimes brings me knowledge that I somehow managed to happily avoid before. For example, I never knew that this wooden spiral bit is called scroll.

The violin is on loan from the music workshop, and you might expected, it scratched, dirty and looks like it was used to repeatedly bash someone with. Only partial side view is relatively free of marks. I am not complaining, just stating the fact. I wanted to process the full violin reflection image, but it required such extensive digital repairs that I gave up.


music-related pics at shutterstock

guitar

Now it's Timur turn to learn the guitar. He himself seems like playing violin more, but I must say that it's a lot easier to extract ear-torturing sounds out of violin than out of guitar, so I kind of enjoy his guitar more.

Interesting. While I am typing my post, amazon associates panel next to the editor window gives me various suggestions as to what I can link it to. I was overjoyed to find that there is such thing as Guitar For Dummies Acoustic Guitar Starter Pack (Guitar, Book, Audio CD, Gig Bag). I mean, most of the "for dummies" books are excellent, it might actually work :)

music-related pics at shutterstock

isolation on white

after going through all the pics from zumba mastercalss with Naomi Mokoena I figured that this one might just be isolate-able. I caught a lucky break there - the tips of the hair were against a relatively light background, and Naomi is dark-haired, otherwise it won't work at all. I did have to spend some time with selection tools and eraser, but not excessive one

However, my predictable conclusion was that maybe I don't want to do that again :) shots for isolation are best done on plain background and with good light to start with. Then it's doable in a couple of clicks, like here. But it was a nice challenge and it worked reasonably well

I can't really explain why the reflection, except the angle was such (Naomi was on podium) that the soles of her trainers are flat and horizontal - necessary condition for half-convincing reflection.

spooky beauty

don't know about you, but for me full-face mask are always spooky, even the most beautiful venetian ones.
fortunately, the one I have is small, so it's not so scary. but when pics are taken, the scale becomes unclear, with expected effect.

It was very weird to look at people in full masks and costumes the only time I went to carnival in Venice (years ago). They would chat merrily between themselves, and laugh, and while body language will say "I am happy and relaxed and chatting with my friends", the masks will maintain that slight haughty smile that says "I am so not interested in anyone, I am the most beautiful creature for miles around"

white mask and black mirror on shutterstock

reflective one

I don't know what to write here, really. Pepper was very bright and shiny and my "tabletop" setup suits this type of object very nicely and that's enough reason to make a picture

upd: and it was yummy :)

black and, er, sort of white

It seems that I am slowly but surely going off monochrome images. I used to convert to monochrome a lot, which was not altogether unconnected to the fact that my very first digital camera produced an awful lot of digital noise and incorrectly exposed images (well, the last bit was my fault too). Monochrome conversion was a handy way of hiding those defects.

Sure, there are situations where pictures are asking to be converted, but it happens less and less somehow. Even in where the color is very difficult to handle, it feels a shame to destroy it altogether.

zumba masterclass

some pictures from zumba masterclass yesterday in Chilford Hall with Naomi Mokoena (lady in grey above with her back to the camera) hosted by Natalia Bull (heading the dancing line in the next picture). Participants enjoyed it :)

It was interesting to see how my old cannon 5d will perform in these rather extreme conditions - the hall is quite large with high ceiling (bounced flash useless) and lit with not very bright (to put it mildly) and mixed light. I had to push ISO up to the maximum in some cases (1600, may the god of photography forgive me), and have the diaphragm open to the maximum (also not ideal on my lens, but lesser crime in comparison with that ISO). Pictures came out extremely noisy and colors are off and seem unfixable, short of converting to black and white (mixed light!). Pics had to be reduced dramatically and are only good for the web, but I like them anyway.

I still have, oh, I dunno, half a thousand of them to look through :)

it is doing it again

our oldest orchid plant is starting to bloom again. it's one of those objects in our house that paid for itself many times over - I just checked how many images of it I have for sale and it's quite a few(there are some different plants in that search result, but still a few)

well, hope it'll turn up as photogenic this time and will sell just as nicely or better again

zumba demo in Saffron Walden - ahead only

There was zumba demonstration on Saffron Walden market square. It was by my zumba instructor Luisa Curbelo (lady in blue belly dancing scarf), and she was joined by another instructor, Natalia Bull (one in bright yellow trousers).

It was sort of chilly today, but the workout is so energetic, everybody who took part looked hot, not cold.

A few very young girls joined, (one in pink tutu!), which looked very sweet, but I didn't take any pictures, so as not to upset parents by accident.

I must say I myself find zumba excellent fun- considering I never liked really liked fitness, it's saying something I guess.

All the dancing, skipping and jumping was done on the big white letters on the road spelling "ahead only", which seems oddly appropriate