A breeze in the grass.......

I'm not quite sure what I am trying to do here except that when the breeze is blowing through the grass, heather and the gorse at this time of year it really is quite special.

Pembroke lichens.......

Early on a wet morning I came across this lichen on some rock just out of reach of the highest tide. I had great difficulty getting the exposure right to bring out the colours.







These ring structures take years to develop - whenever you see them you know that something is pretty old.

From the Algarve......

I just love the textures and colours in this sedimentary rock.



Another splash - a bit of a theme developing



Crikey! Echelon folding on the west coast.

Kilve beach earlier this year.....

Catching up on some photographs from earlier this year. These are from Kilve Beach on the North Somerset coast.



I stumbled on this little arrangement whilst scrambling over the rocks. The ammonite is now on my office mantlepiece.



Some ankle snappers were coming in from the Irish Sea.

New lenses......

I'm developing a new approach to photographing using dewdrops as lenses. I spent hours rolling around in wet grass trying to perfect this - but I think it's going to need a bit more effort.

An early session on the river..........

I took this early in the morning at the end of April. There was quite a thick mist although the river was quite clear. This cut down the light and has given everything an eery black and white feel. Except my shirt which looks as though it has been tinted when processing. It hasn't - this is exactly how it was.



It's mornings like this when I have the river to myself and absolutely no-one else is around that I really love. Makes you feel part of natures ingenious tangle - almost as much as being eaten by a lion.



Some refreshment at the end of a long session.

Tyrol at Easter.

A few pictures from a walk I did from Neustift whilst skiing in April. We had a week of beautiful weather and I wanted to see if I could get up to Starkenburger Hutte. Attempted three different routes but was stopped each time by the snowline at around 2000m. Again! Will have to try once more in the summer.



I'm not quite sure if this is Habicht above.




Elfer Hutte is just off this picture to the left at 2004m and the peak is Elferspitze. At 2505m a little way above me. Beautiful colours in the sunshine though.




Passing through an Alpine meadow I shot this one. It's Kesselspitze. Austrian woodpeckers are something else - their drumming sounds more like a heavy machine gun and was reverberating all around these woods.

Black and white......

At this time of year the sun is quite high in the sky but the leaves on the trees have not yet come out. On sunny days you get a striking and cryptic effect between the light falling on the trees themselves and the shadows they then cast on the ground.




Aso lovely contrasts between branches, blue sky and clouds.




I was struck by the lovely vertical effect made by this oak tree and the ferns growing in the cracks in the bark against the blue sky.

Skylarks

Up on the hills yesterday the skylarks were warming up - not quite at full throlttle yet, but definitely on their way. Much of the snow has cleared - although there are still some deep drifts.

I wondered, as they shot up singing into the sky, what did they do when everything was covered in a thick blanket of snow? Do they hide underneath it, cosy amongst the heather (which would be a bit like sitting underneath rhododendron bushes) or did they escape to the wooded areas nearby and sit in the bushes and the trees?

Anyone have any idea?

Winter weather on the Quantocks

Lots of snow and ice recently to remind us that spring really doesn't start in January - despite our annual attempts to delude ourselves.



This is one of the fine detail in the drift over the path I was walking along. It reminds me of finely bedded eroded sandstone. Which would probably remind me of drifted snow - but there you go.



Looking over Crowcombe. The road from the bottom of the hill was impassable in a vehicle from the west side - so this involved a fun trek up through a foot of snow. On top it had drifted and on the left of this picture you can see that the deep pathway has been completely filled.

I took this shortly before the snow arrived during a period of dense fog. Beautifully it was clear at the top of the hills for a while so I could capture this bank of cloud moving in.

I can't work out if it is better cropped a bit as it is in the photo below.

Some more recent pictures......

Brrrrrrrrr.......

Someone said they didn't realise mud could be so beautiful. I love it so much I have a degree in it!

It was as cold as it looks. The rock is Jurassic limestone up near Kilve.

A stream on exmoor.