Newborough Forest

The last day of the Easter break saw me wandering around Newborough Forest near Maeltraeth, Anglesey. It was a new location to explore and the light and weather were quite stunning. I found several lovely glades where new life was blooming and captured spring at its very best. Please enjoy this small selection of pictures...

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Click the image for the bigger picture

Click the image for the bigger picture

It's the First Breath of Springtime*

Spring really is here - hurrah!


The beautiful weather of the past few days really has been inspirational and after listening to Heather Angel at Focus earlier in the month I was eager to try my hand at a bit of macro photography. The light on Saturday afternoon was perfect and  I set up a simple studio, fitted my Nikkor 60mm macro lens to the D700, dusted off my Lastolite reflector and got to work. The reflector helped to illuminate the inside of the flowers - tulips - while backlight from the sun helped to create a high key effect in the first picture and to saturate the colours in the second.

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Click the image for the bigger picture

Once I uploaded the pictures into Elements I decided to have a play with some of them using Niksoft's Silver Efex Pro 2 plug-in, which I upgraded to earlier this week. Here's my first attempt using some presets with a tad of tinkering in Elements once I was satisfied with the effects. Enjoy!

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There is an awful lot more to version two of Niksoft's package and I think it will become a much used tool in the coming weeks.


As always, your comments are welcome.


*Thankful by Rumer from the album 'Seasons of My Soul'

Spring Approaches...

March is here and the world is waking up from its winter slumber. Monday was a lovely day if cold. I set off for an afternoon's photography stretching the 30 minute rule to its maximum in search of some new places to capture.

Astbury is a lovely village and in early spring the village green is ablaze with daffodils making a lovely foreground for the church behind the green. Sadly, its becoming more and more difficult to get a photograph of the church and village green without cars or other modern obstructions spoiling the view. I was too early for the daffodils and there were too many cars around so I contented myself with this picture using the arch of the main gate to frame the church. It's shot with my Leica compact, which really does produce a nice picture.

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There's a gorgeous old yew tree in the churchyard, too, with beautiful textures and I'll be going back with the full kit soon.

I made my way home via country lanes and stopped off at a spot I'd always intended visiting when I lived more locally to it. Rode Pool is part of the Rode Hall estate and is a very quiet and peaceful place. By now it was late afternoon and the sun was getting low in the sky. The water on the pool was perfectly calm so out with the Leica to see what the location offered for the future. Here's a shot at the eastern end of the water and once again I'm amazed at the quality my tiny Leica produces.

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Sailing Home

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Another Anglesey sunset... this one is a photograph from the original Menai Bridge looking west along the Straits. The sun had just dropped below the horizon when a small boat passed under the bridge and into view creating some lovely foreground interest.


Hand held for a change and very minor tweaking of the levels and saturation.