Painshill Park

This morning Xena went out with P the dog walker, and so I went and did a few errands before going to Painshill Park. It is an 18th century landscape garden in our village, so easy to get to - I don't know why I don't go more often as it is so beautiful there. I was busy taking photos and a couple came up to me and asked me what I was photographing - when I said the beautiful landscape they looked puzzled - surely everyone can see beauty in such places? We discussed how slow autumn has been this year, and how we have not yet had our first frost - it's still too warm - but very wet.

I find I seldom use ND grad filters anymore, as with my camera and it's brilliant sensor it has such a good dynamic range and can easily handle the extremes of light areas and dark areas in a scene. I also hate the way using a grad filter darkens the tops of mountains or trees, it can always be seen when someone has used a grad filter. The last photo workshop I went on the pro photographer said the same thing, that he never uses grad filters anymore unless there is a very strong contrast between the light sky and a dark foreground.

Tomorrow we were going to Cambridge to watch Thomas' rugby match but he has injured his shoulder so is not playing tomorrow. We will plan to go another weekend as it will be good to catch up with both Thomas and Adam and hear all about Adam's research at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute* which sounds amazing. Just as well as it is forecast to be very wet! On Sunday we have a dog walk with Xena's mum and two of her sisters which will be fun to see how they have all grown.

* The Sanger Institute was conceived as a large scale DNA sequencing centre to participate in the Human Genome Project, and went on to make the largest single contribution to the gold standard sequence of the human genome.