Yew Tree walk

Thankfully today was not as freezing cold as it has been recently, although sadly the damage is done and all the beautiful magnolia flowers and much of the blossom on the trees has turned brown from the frost and cold. Not so pretty to see a magnolia tree in bloom with brown flowers instead of pink ones!

This morning I met up with members of my book club for a walk - there are eight in our book club but only four of us could go. We had a good walk and I liked this section with the yew trees flanking this path. We did want to get a take away coffee afterwards but the closest café was closed and as it was too cold to sit in someone's garden we all just went back to our respective homes.

I got home in time for the garden irrigation system man to come and recommission it for the summer season - he checks for any leaks in the pipes and makes sure it is all working correctly. Although it has been very cold it has also been very dry so we may need to use it quite soon.

I am about to start my second and final session of 'Meaningful portraits at home' online course through the Royal Photographers Society. We had homework to do which I sent to the tutor earlier this week, we will now be discussing our images which should be useful. 

Last night I also watched a presentation by a landscape photographer Guy Edwardes who is based in Dorset - he has absolutely stunning landscape images and he does nearly all of it in camera. He also never uses gradient filters as they never fit the shape of the landscape scene (I agree with that) so instead he brackets about 5 to 7 images - which is more work but the result is a perfectly exposed image. He also focus stacks most of his landscape images to get perfect front to back focus. It sounds like more work but he takes fewer images and hardly ever has to delete any for not being good enough.