My first released portfolio of lockdown flower close-ups

During a very grey and largely wet Christmas week staying in the Lake District we did have one beautiful day which just happened to be Christmas day. Instead of opening presents and pigging out on chocolates and roast dinner we got up early and did a wonderful walk up Coniston Old Man and around to Dow Crag. As well as being a lovely mountain walk I had some good winter light to get some nice shots. We took the main path in ascent, which despite being a constructed stone path

Well happy new year to you. My new year will be largely taken up with restocking after a bumper set of Christmas markets and starting to think about moving house, which means decluttering, DIY and such like to make our current house look as desirable and saleable as possible. Hopefully I’ll still have time for some photography in between. In the meantime here are a few shots I took on a local wander around the back lanes where I live on new year’s eve. I put my Olympus OMD-EM

This is positively the last set of shots currently in my catalogue from Holme Fell. It was such a beautiful autumn afternoon that I couldn’t resist. Setting the white balance of the pictures is interesting when the light is like this. The sunset was very purple/orange and you’d think we would try and keep that colour in the shot – that’s why we shoot at sunset, isn’t it? But I find that a very strong sunset colour cast can flatten the picture. You can see this effect yourself

Finally deciding it was time to move on from my obsession with Holme Fell I tried a new area for the first time. Driving north alongside Coniston Water in the Lake District I had several times thought it was worth a look and today was the day. Just to have a look. The weather wasn’t promising and I didn’t know the area well. Initially I wasn’t hooked and the day was very grey. I put the camera (the Olympus, with its electronic viewfinder) into one of its art/scene modes – “Ge

Langdale Pikes This was the first day’s shooting with my new Panasonic lens for my Olympus OMD-EM10 and I was excited by it. Also the first time I’ve been able to try using my Lee neutral density graduated filters with the Olympus and I was interested to see how that would work ( here’s how it worked) . The weather turned out fantastically well and I went back to my current-favourite place – Holme Fell again. I hope you’re not bored with shots of the Langdale Pikes and Fairfi

Here are a few more shots from Holme Fell, the location I’ve been visiting so much recently. I’ve been asked to give a talk to a local natural history society (they’re booking well in advance – this is scheduled for February 2021!). For my subject I’ve decided to talk about how our supposedly natural landscapes are actually man-made. This was prompted by a TV programme I saw recently about some part of the countryside where a woman was asked why she helped out with the local

I just found this post in my Drafts folder in WordPress and realised it had been there since early summer and never posted. I think I held it back because the trip hadn’t fully worked out and I didn’t get many shots from the morning sunrise. Looking at it now though, there aren’t many shots here but they’re nice ones so here’s the post, to remind me of summer wild camping trips. After a good night’s sleep in warm, calm weather I eventually awoke to my alarm from a deep sleep

I’m still catching up processing the shots of Holme Fell I’ve been taking over the last few weeks. The autumn colour is now largely gone and we’re getting into winter scenery but in these shots there is still plenty of orange and gold. On this trip I started at the quarry. There is a lookout on the edge of all things with a great view of the Langdale Pikes, those hills of unmistakable shape. Then I explored upwards, going out onto the open fell for more spectacular views. Thi

my new lens a couple of posts ago. One very useful side-effect is that it has a 52mm filter thread which just happens to be one of the sizes I have of Lee filter system adapters. This means I can finally use my Lee filters on my Olympus OMD-EM10, especially my neutral density graduated filters. Ever since buying the Olympus with the kit pancake lens, which had an absurdly small 37mm filter thread, the fact that I couldn’t use the ND grad filters on that lens was the main reas

In Holme Fell part one I wrote about finding this fantastic location between Ambleside and Coniston. Two days after that visit I went again, drawn by the fantastic autumn colours and beautiful views. I wasn’t disappointed. There is a huge quarry there worked for two hundred years for slate. Long abandoned, the quarry is now being taken over by nature and is a paradise of wonderful trees. The exposed rock and, strangely, the old slate spoil heaps add a really nice contrast of

Lingmoor Fell and Bowfell I’ve been all around this area of the Lake District for many years and thought I knew it well but there is a square mile in the middle that I’ve overlooked and turns out to contain treasure. The only other time I visited Holme Fell was in summer some years ago and it was a wilderness of ankle-breaking rocks and chest high bracken. The weather and light weren’t encouraging that day and I never went back. I’ve seen a number of shots from other photogra

My camera equipment is always on the leading edge of the technology curve – I’ve just bought a second hand Panasonic 14-45 mm zoom lens, a ten year old design, for my battered old Olympus OMD-EM10. I bought the Olympus with the kit lens – the M.Zuiko 14-42mm pancake. I liked the lens. It was pretty sharp for the price and very small, small enough that the camera could fit into a jacket pocket. The only problem was reliability. I had two of them in four years and they both bro

Tarn Hows is one of the most beautiful lakes in an area renowned for beautiful lakes – the Lake District. In the Lake District there are Lakes (e.g. Bassenthwaite Lake), Waters (e.g. Coniston Water) and Tarns (e.g. Angle Tarn, Sprinkling Tarn). Tarn Hows is, presumably then, a tarn – don’t ask me the difference. From the small knoll at its side you can see Wetherlam, the Langdale Pikes and the Fairfield/Helvellyn range. It is also surrounded by very colourful trees, making it

Wow, it’s been about six weeks since I last posted. Holidays, laziness, and generally not actually getting any good pictures for a while in the rainy summer we’ve had this year. I finally got some nice shots on a trip to The Roaches. This is presumably a corruption of the french word “rocher” and it’s a large area of exposed gritstone crags, famous among english rock climbers and very popular for walkers and picnickers. It’s also pretty popular with photographers and I’ve usu

Every thursday I go to the Museum of Science and Technology in Manchester to volunteer as a demonstator on the SSEM replica, also known as the “Manchester Baby” – the world’s first stored program computer. In 1948 this machine has only 128 bytes of non-permanent storage. Soon after they added a hard drive that had about 10 kilobytes of storage, a useful amount in 1948. My current laptop, on which I’m writing this and which I use for all my photo processing and storage, has a

Wensleydale Another trip around Wensleydale, this time through the meadows and fields at the bottom of the valley around the villages of Bainbridge and Askrigg. Again the fields were full of flowers and everywhere you see the pattern of drystone walls and barns that the Dales are famous for. Right now I’m really concentrating on the Dales and I’m hoping I’ll get the chance for more overnight wild camps before the summer ends. Doesn’t look very likely with all the rain we’ve h

A walk around the south side of Wensleydale. Gayle 9 miles 560 metres View the route on plotaroute.com This is a beautiful and varied walk from one valley to another on the south side of Wensleydale, showing some of the best scenery and views in the Yorkshire Dales. At this time of year the meadows are full of wild flowers and despite being in the school holidays I barely saw another soul during the walk. Wensleydale The walk starts at Gayle, just south of Hawes. Straight up

OnLandscape magazine has had a series on neutral density graduated filters, with one part on colour accuracy. Tim Parkin, editor and author, happens to mention that his very old Lee resin filters had changed colour over the years and now had a strong colour cast. I had suspected this myself with my own set of Lee resin filters. A quick test confirms this. Here are some shots I took, the captions tell the story. I took several shots of my landing, which is directly underneath

I wrote last week about my overnight wild camp to Eskdale and the wonderful viewpoint of Border End. The evening before had been good but with the sun setting behind the Scafell range leaving it in dark shadow I had been really looking forward to a good sunrise. The south-eastern face of the Scafells looking over upper Eskdale is a magnificent sight of rocky crags. I really wanted to get some shots of this view in good light. Getting up out of my bag at 4am I hoped for a good