Day Ninety Three: The Beauty of Clouds

“Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.”
― Maya Angelou

After a week of sunshine, clear blue skies and starry nights – it’s all come to an end. Well it had to didn’t it – this is England after all! I don’t think anyone quite realised how much of a change we would be getting though. Last week much of the country bathed in temperatures exceeding 20 degrees celcius – this week a lot of Britain is covered in snow.

The South hasn’t seen any snow today – I doubt we will although we are forecast a pile of it for tomorrow. Driving around with the windows open and sunglasses on during work today made it very hard to believe that we’d have anything remotely like snow coming from the sky any time soon!

The day started out cold looking – with stormy clouds against a blue sky. The sun rose and cast a fantastic light across it all too which meant I grabbed the camera during work preparations and started taking a few brief snaps.

I hung out of the upstairs window again to capture much of these! It paid off somewhat – however it does mean that today’s blog is about – clouds!

They are beautiful – breathtaking – in the right light and with intriguing angles and tilts they appear even more as if they are out of this world. I love sunsets against clouds, but unfortunately it had greyed over enough this evening that there was no real sunset.

The good news is that we’ve got a sofa! After ours was ‘stolen’ on April fools day. Actually it was sold on Ebay to someone from London. Apparently he buys sofa’s and then takes them to Georgia – his home country. Or his wife. We weren’t sure. I presume he doesn’t take them as hand luggage anyway! So as an aside from the clouds here’s a shot of the cosy sitting room after the sofa’s had been installed…shame we went to DFS though, I did hear bad things about them! None of the chairs has escaped significant damage which means they will likely be returned!

 

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Day Seventy Three: Sunset and Droplets

“Droplets of yes and no, in an ocean of maybe.”

I’m proud of todays shots! I spent some time on them and didn’t rush uploading them so I actually worked on what crops I would use. It was quite nice to spend some time on Photography for a change rather than just take shots of the dusty house as and when I could. The dust is nearly all gone now! I spent a lot of time later on today helping to dust and I’m quite relieved because my lungs can feel that it’s mostly all gone!

My Mother took me out this afternoon/evening as the sun was going down to get a few village snaps here and there. We went to all the little quaint villages nearby whilst the dogs roamed the meadow with my Father. This shot above was taken in Wherwell. The estate itself used to be in the hands of Benedictine Nuns and according to wikipedia this was before the dissolution of the monasteries so way back in the 1500s.

We also stopped in Chilbolton where the cottages and country lanes are typical English postcard pictures. Chilbolton is home to an Observatory which is for research of atmospheric and radio purposes. It’s an impressive sight out in the countryside and one that I will be photographing one day!

I’ve always loved these bridges and piers that are long and stretch endlessly into nothingness. So I was really excited when we came across this one and I ventured down it a a little way to get some angled shots. It was beautifully peaceful and felt like a real Summer evening.

Afterwards we took a slow wander through the countryside which again was worth the trip because the setting sun cast a wonderful glow on everything…

We also ventured onto Leckford estate which is owned by John Lewis and is where most of the produce in Waitrose such as flour, dairy products and other bits and pieces is made. The blossom trees here are beautiful as my friend and I found when we went on a million mile trek through the countryside a few years ago! We just happened upon them and the beautiful bold whiteness of the trees was gorgeous. Unfortunately they aren’t in bloom yet but everything is starting to wake up so pretty soon I’ll have shots.

Birds were playing  lazily in the sunlight and I happened to catch them sillouhetted on this rather grainy backdrop! The colours were beautiful though, the pictures don’t do them justice.

Once back home I played around with some droplet shots – nothing spectacular but I like the abstract feeling that I captured. Plus it shows that the vibrant flowers are just coming into bloom which means warmer temperatures must be on their way!

I also played around with a telephoto lens to see what I could shoot of Venus and Jupiter as they carried out their ‘dance’ as dubbed by the media who are documenting closely the pathway of the two planets as they are at their closest yet.

The slight hue of light in the foreground happens to be some twigs I was shooting through. I don’t ever really plan to position the tripod in an intelligent way! But there you go – it just shows how close they actually are and indeed how bright they are out there.

And finally the sunset – wonderfully deep and pink and purpley! I thought that these trees looked like a couple holding hands – rather cute (or yucky) depending on how you view it!

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