Mono portraits

Today has been gloriously sunny with bright blue skies, and I believe the temperature has reached 18C which is warm for this time of year. So why am I taking an indoor photo when the blue skies outside beckon? I have to take some portraits for the online RPS workshop I attended last week, and so as Gavin was at home today (he is in to the office tomorrow) I asked him to help with fine tuning the focus once I was in position, after I had worked out the composition, the settings etc. It was an impossible task - he thought the camera was on auto focus so kept hitting the shutter button and got blurry shots, every time I got up to check the settings the composition would change - out of many, many shots I got one that would do. And it is so far removed from what I was trying to achieve - I planned moody Rembrandt lighting, hoping to get a serious portrait - instead you have me laughing at Gavin being hopeless behind the camera! I will have to try again on another day. 

I thought the woods would be so busy today as I think it is now school holidays but it was very quiet. Now that people can travel further as the lockdown restrictions changed today, I expect they are doing so.

I have been unable to get a ticket to visit RHS Wisley - it is always fully booked and I don't know why it has changed as I have not had a problem getting tickets before. I eventually sent them an email saying that members should get priority on booking tickets - no reply, but today when I went on to their website to try and book tickets I see they have a new booking system which seems to only allow members to book - but it is so slow....I was in a queue of 880 people and it took nearly and hour to book a ticket to visit there. Anyway I ended up with a ticket to visit next month some time and also to attend one of their photography mornings when you are allowed in at 8am before it opens to the other visitors. So a frustrating morning trying to book tickets but eventually I got some! And this comes after time wasted yesterday afternoon trying to book tickets to Glyndebourne Opera in the summer - it took ages to book but eventually I did get tickets, not my first choice as booking opened at 10am yesterday morning and by the time I booked after lunch there were only a handful of tickets left, the majority to all their shows over the summer were already sold out.

We watched The Peanut Butter Falcon last night on Netflix and loved it!