Merry New Year!

 

Best wishes to everyone for the new year, lets make it a great one!

 

No new year resolutions, no promises to blog more photos, no wishes for anything .. just wishes for a great 2015.

 

Below is a moon rise I took recently on a trip out to photograph the Geminid meteor shower, which turned out to be too cloudy.  However the fast moving hazey clouds were great for this kind of long exposure.  Note - I think that was Uranus in the sky above the moon - but not sure without checking though.

 

 

ISO1600, 35mm, f/5, 30s, tripod, cable release, hot pixels cloned out (long exposure noise reduction disabled)
Okay, so I forgot to change my ISO after meteor settings!  Doh!  Noise is pretty good despite this, but lots of hot pixels.
Might have to go back to doing black frames to mask out the hot pixels if I do star trails again...

Rural Graffiti

 

A couple of photos taken on a wander to Farleigh Down tunnel outside Bath.  Now rusted and graffitied it was once the rail entrance to Monkton Farleigh ammunition depot, a huge underground storage vault carved out of the Bath stone hills.  Train fulls of bombs, bullets and shells were moved on a series of conveyor belts down a hidden, underground tunnel into the stores a mile away.  It was designed to offload a 1000 tonnes of ammunition a day, but despite running 24/7 for 30 days during the D-day preparations it couldn't keep up with the vast quantities required!

 

The third photo is a cheeky (un)festive effort, underneath the road bridge in Chippenham (I actually like the reflection in the beams and the natural vignette).

 

 

Merry Christmas!

 

A rapid post just to wish everyone a happy, merry, cheerful and peaceful Christmas.

I thought I'd go with some full on cheesy Robins in the snow to go with the season.

Here's hoping for some snow at some point over the next few months so I can top up on some frosty winter-scapes.

 

The blog may be slow, but I have been out a few times between decorating, working late, Christmas shopping and generally being lazy.  I still have some photos from Scotland and Amsterdam to post as well as some fairly cool urban graffiti and a failed trip to shoot the Geminid meteor shower, which turned into a pretty extreme sub zero hill top long exposure session .. all will appear at some point - possibly all in a rush while I have time off over the next couple of weeks.