Tag Archives: hampshire

Hello Piggy

Nancy and I were out walking through the countryside not too far from home. As we came along one of the little lanes, I thought it seemed familiar from a previous bike ride I had done. On that ride, I was surprised to see some pigs rummaging under the trees alongside the road just the other side of a fence. I mentioned this to her at the time and, as we walked on this day, I wondered aloud whether they would be there again. Sure enough, there were a pair of porkers snuffling in the ground for food. One was closer to the fence, so I took her picture before we continued on our way.

Who Flies Over Our House?

Our location in Winchester puts us close to the approach path to Southampton when traffic is on a southwesterly flow. I assume there must be some airspace constraints in the area because the standard arrival procedure involves overflying us at about 3,000’ and then entering a left descending turn to come back past us when established on the approach to Southampton. While things are a bit far away, I can still get shots from the front of our house.

There are a few airlines that are regular visitors along with a pretty steady flow of bizjets. Aer Lingus Express comes in with ATR72s, KLM Cityhopper brings in the Embraer E175s and E190-E2s, Loganair has some EMB145s and then there is an airline I had never heard of before – Blue Island Airways, which also operates ATR72s from the Channel Islands. After a little while, I have got used to them all and don’t spend a ton of time watching them, but I will still look up if I hear something – I haven’t changed that much.

Getting Closer to the Old Floating Bridge

In a post from a previous trip to the UK before we moved back, I had included some distant shots of the retired floating bridge that I took from the Spinnaker Tower. More recently, I had cycled to Gosport and was taking the ferry across to Portsmouth to catch a train home. The pier for the ferry on the Gosport side is very close to where the floating bridge is still moored – I guess the plans for disposal are still not worked out. Needless to say, I grabbed some shots from the pier and from the ferry as we passed by.

Experimenting With Sport and Silly Frame Rates

I recently wrote about spending a bit of time at a local cricket club watching a couple of games for a while. I haven’t really photographed cricket much so didn’t have strong ideas about what to try and get with regard to angles and action. I was just playing around, really, to see how things came out. I ramped up the frame rate for some of the shots that the batsmen were making. I was interested to see how I might miss the critical moments and how far the ball had moved between frames.

Now, clearly getting the shot is something that technique and skill should deliver. Compensating with the tech is not ideal but I wasn’t trying to prove anything to anyone. Instead, I was just out having fun. Consequently, I decided to use a feature on the R3 that I only occasionally drag out and that is the super fast frame rate of 194fps. This will not use autofocus or auto exposure once the sequence starts, but that isn’t a problem in the 0.2 seconds that it takes to shoot the 50 raw frames that are the limit.

It is amazing that, even with such a high frame rate, the ball still can move quite a distance between shots. You do end up with a ton of frames that are going straight in the bin. Since the ball either hasn’t arrived in frame or it has gone. That is a pretty easy process of culling of course. You also never know whether a given delivery is going to result in anything. You can get 50 frames as the batsman lets the ball through. Those are even easier to cull! Did I get anything I really liked? No, to be honest, I wasn’t too excited by any of them. However, it has got me thinking about what would make for a better shot. I shall have to work on that and head back to see if I can improve things.

Someone Needs to Clean Their Roof

Walking through Lyndhurst one gloomy afternoon, my eye was drawn to an old building that looks like it is in need of some attention. The roof seemed to have become a bit of a home from some plant growth, and I was fascinated by what had got established. I wonder how much damage the roots have done to the structure beneath!

How Quickly Do Young Cattle Grow?

When we first moved into our rental place in Winchester, I explored the local pathways and quickly found the Barton Meadows Nature Reserve. It surrounds a pair of fields that are still part of an active farm. When I first walked in the area, there were a lot of young cattle in the fields. Over the coming weeks and months, I saw these cattle grow from youngsters to sizeable creatures. It was surprising just how quickly they grew. Their fluffy mops of hair on their heads made them look cuter than the average cow/bull. After a few months, they were gone…

Spying on the Trout

On a few occasions, when we have been in Stockbridge, I have spent a bit of time watching the trout swimming in the river where it runs under the road and alongside the pavement. This has got me thinking about how to get some good video of them. I figured the Insta360 X3 might be something to try. The invisible stick is pretty long which would allow it to go into the water and the camera itself is waterproof. I was too sure how the image quality would work out but, when we went to the Trout’n’About festival in the town, I took the camera along.

Initially the arrival of the camera spooked the fish which was not a surprise but leaving it there for a while meant they got used to it. It didn’t hurt that some people were throwing food into the river which the fish were way more interested in. I wanted to use the app to control things, but the connection was lost when the camera was under the water. Instead, I just started recording before putting it in the water. The images are not great, but they do give a good view of the fish moving around. Check out some video below.

Not the Oldest Tree I’ve Seen, But…

A walk we took through the New Forest brought us to the Knightwood Oak. The New Forest is an ancient forest, but this tree is older than many that are there. Supposedly, there were laws enacted long ago regarding the practice of pollarding trees. The fact this one was pollarded suggests it will have predated this time which suggests it might be 500 years old. That is not the oldest tree I have come across. Our travels in California did bring us to some extremely old trees too. I can’t recall exactly how old but possibly older than this. Even so, 500 years old isn’t bad for a tree.

I suspect if I had come here when I was young, you probably would have just walked up to the trunk. Now, the need to protect the tree means that an enclosure has been set up around it. The good news about that is that it keeps people out of many possibly photos you might want to take. (Funny how, when you are interested in getting photos, you are “focused” on different things to other people.) I had a wander around the perimeter of the enclosure to check out the whole tree before we continued on our walk.

Wherwell Looks Like a Postcard

Since moving to Hampshire, one thing that has struck me repeatedly is just how picturesque all of the villages in the area are. It feels like every place is a combination of thatched cottages, a pond, a little church and probably a nice-looking pub. When you say it that way, it doesn’t sound too bad. Nancy had found a local walk that seemed like it might be interesting, so we decided to try it out.

It started out in a village called Wherwell. Wherwell does its very best to fit in with the profile that I outlined above. The pub is currently being refurbished and there is a river instead of a pond but otherwise, it ticks all of the cuteness boxes. Here are some images of the village from our stroll. It is a linear village, so everything is pretty much along the one road and that means you have to be conscious of vehicles coming through.

The Lambs Might Be Bigger but They Are Still Cute

Our visit to the rare breeds farm included some not very rare breeds too. They had a bunch of lambs in one of the barns. These lambs were clearly a little older than some of the others I have photographed through the spring, and they were growing quickly. This hadn’t impacted on how cute they were, though. Adult sheep are not the cutest of the animals out there but, like many creatures, the youngest ones are just cute. From a photography point of view, I appreciated that these have not yet been marked up with ownership markings. They look more ideal as a result.