Birthday Lunch

Its Cathy's birthday today, so we've been celebrating - well it helps one get over the shock that the advancing years always seem to bring.  Still, as I have pointed out to Cathy, she's not a day over 56, yet.  Needless to say, that did not entirely endear me to my beloved this morning...  inevitably, she took great delight in pointing out in return that whilst she was only just 56 I would actually be 60 next year, very true, but needlessly harsh when I've only just turned 58 myself :-)

We've taken down all the Christmas decorations and that task completed went into Bath for lunch at the newly opened branch of the Ivy Brasserie chain for a bit of a celebration.  On our return the lovely flowers shown in the extra were waiting for Cathy, courtesy of my brother Brentastic and his family.  

The main shot of a quiet backstreet in the Georgian City was taken whilst Cathy shopped immediately after lunch.  I've used Affinity to achieve a tone matched HDR merge from 3 exposure bracketed shots here.  I've very much dialled back the HDR contrast mapping which to my eyes creates a very stylised image, its not unattractive, but was not what I wanted to achieve here.  The end result is, I think, still tolerably realistic ... but you are free to disagree.

Back at the celebrations, there will be birthday cake in a bit, but we both need to let our lunch go down first :-)