25 May 2008

A trip to the East Coast this Bank Holiday Weekend saw us blessed with dry weather while half the country was drenched... Managed to get out and about with the new camera on the Sunday...

It was very windy, hence this movement and the leaves being upturned


Wild Flower (no, I don't know what it is...yet)


My eldest daughter Rebecca and my son Robert...


The rough North Sea...


Robert trying not to get wet.. being watched by his cousin Josh..


I've said before that I find skies fascinating.. more so when the sun is setting... Close up view...


Long view....


Cloud colour over the North Sea...


Getting darker...


Close up in landscape...


Close up in portrait..


Glow behind sand dune...


Lines in the cloud...


Reflection of glow in dyke...


Colour in clouds...


And we went on a short five/six mile walk on Bank Holiday Monday...
Follow the Yellow Brick Road (even though strictly speaking it ain't yellow, nor brick!)


Decayed tree stump...


Dave managed to use the camera for this one, a feat in itself... Left to right is Bobbi (Dave's daughter), Rebecca and myself...


The exit (and entrance) to Fir Hill Quarry Nature Reserve...

17 May 2008

This was a shortish walk over the salt marsh to the sea and then heading south towards Saltfleet Haven, walked parallel to the Haven then back round along the road to our start...

I started by taking a photo of some cracked mud...


Then as we got to the edge of the salt marsh where it meets the beach we came across this dried dyke bed... The whole of the salt marsh is punctuated by these dykes. They're good to jump over in summer...



Someone has placed this fallen tree into the sand here... Whoever did it has dug quite a way down as we couldn't shift it...


And then it's down to the sea...


I tried to get it closer, but didn't want to get too wet...


There are lots of wormcasts on this beach as the tide goes out...


So I thought I'd see how close up to a cast I could get...


Tide Mark, the black marks left by the tide are coal slack, left from "The Try" a coal carrying ship that was wrecked about a mile and half further south on the coast at a place called Rimac on February 19th 1882...


Then it was off to the haven and Jack found mud... and kept laying down in this hedge to clean himself... He failed...


I think he's fed up of trying to clean himself at this point...


He can't ever stay still...


and then he's back and trying to clean himself again, but why?


I ask why because he's soon back in the mud fetching branches that Dave threw in for him...


I'm glad he's not my dog...


And a view looking up Saltfleet Haven towards the main A1031 Mablethorpe to Cleethorpes road...

Miscellaneous 3

I don't think I've said, but the miscellaneous pics are the one's I usually take when I'm not on a hike, or when I'm walking at the coast, a lot of them are taken when I'm walking my dog in a morning...

Immature bluebells...


Closed bluebells...


Open bluebells covered in morning dew...


Dandelion seedhead...


Dried Thistle...


Crab Apple Blossom...


Sunburst view through tree canopy...


Looking up through tree canopy...


White Dead Nettle...


Wild Garlic...


Misty Dandelion Meadow...

GIMPed photo's

I guess most people would call these 'shopped photo's, but I dont use photoshop, preferring instead to use the GIMP under Ubuntu Linux, anyway, these are a few of my photo's that I've been playing with as I am learning how to use the GIMP to it's full potential instead of just using it to rotate/crop my photo's...

With this one I added a red mask...


This one was the first one I played with, I'm pleased with the way it looks, but I've not changed the colour of my hat... It's a brown hat, no idea why it looks blue... But, it was a very bright clear day with no clouds...


Berries... I'm pleased with this one too... Took quite a while...


This was the second one I attempted, this particular photo is the third incarnation after I'd cleaned up the edges of the butterfly. This was taken the same day as the one above of me with the hat...


Dandelions... Again, I'm quite pleased with this one as it took some doing...


This one took the longest amount of time, used the old photo filter in GIMP and added the sepia, then had to create a duplicate mask, open the original colour photo and cut the dandelion from it to add it to the sepia mask...


Bluebells...