Walking along the street on Spice Island in Portsmouth, I noticed that the road had rails in it. Clearly, in the days when the area was getting freight traffic, rail vehicles would have come in to pick up and drop off cargo. While that is no longer the case, the rails were apparently easier to leave behind than remove. Even some points were still on display. It looks like there was a small passing loop on the street. Now it is just cars that come this way.
We took a walk through the area around Hinton Ampner a few months ago. This was in the spring and was a time when the bluebells were at their peak. There is a footpath around the grounds that takes you through a couple of areas where the bluebells are at their best and there is little chance that you will be alone on this walk if it is a nice weekend. Even so, it did not feel like we were somewhere busy as we took the paths.
The focus for the flowers was when we entered Joan’s Acre Wood. The conditions here are clearly ideal for bluebells and we soon found ourselves transitioning from normal woodland flooring to a sea of blue. It is hard to get an image that really conveys just how much the flowers take over your senses. The blue is intense and contrasts starkly with the green of everything else. In person this is much starker. Hopefully some of these shots will give some sort of impression of what it was like. We were surrounded by bluebells and quite blown away by it.
While walking along the shore at Portsmouth, I heard a deep rumble and looked out to see a boat coming in that was an interesting shape. My first assumption was that it was from the Second World War because of the high freeboard and the shape of the bow and, when I saw the shape of a large gun on the front this was confirmed. It was quite a chunky looking thing and, judging by the sound of the engine, I imagine it could probably achieve some speed.
This would have been an unusual thing if it was the only one but a while later, a second boat came by. A similar shape but a different paint job. When I was a kid, I had a toy Air Sea Rescue launch which I believe the RAF operated during the war to rescue downed crews. This was painted just like that, so I guess that is what it is. Again, a meaty sounding engine was within so it can, presumably, make good progress. Subsequently, I saw the docks over by HMS Warrior and there were three of these vessels tied up so I guess you can take rides on them when visiting the museum.
We took a trip down to Portsmouth to see the annual kite festival that they hold. It is actually on Southsea Common and attracts both a lot of spectators but also participants from across the continent. I saw performers from Belgium and Switzerland, and I believe there were others. It is a free event on the common, so you are able to walk around and see the different elements at your leisure.
We had gone to a kite festival in San Ramon when we lived in California and I was interested to see how they compared. This was a larger event with more to see but the San Ramon event was in a more enclosed area which made it feel more involving. Both had their pluses and minuses. There were two areas enclosed for performers. One was for large shapes that were tethered to a spot and floated above the event. The other was sometimes used for free flying but also was used for performers.
The performers are always worth a watch. Whether it is an individual with a routine or a group of flyers in coordinated displays, the skill and controllability is impressive. I used to do a lot of kite flying and did once fly a Revolution kite a friend of mine had. It was incredibly agile and could be manoeuvred in multiple ways, but it was also super twitchy which made it quite a handful. I see that design is still in use but there are now even more advanced shapes in use. The skill of the teams as they move around each other and overlap their lines to make all sorts of manoeuvres work is so impressive.
The free flying shapes were so varied in both concept and size. It took me a while to realise that they often had a separate kite flying above them that was used to support them rather than being fully self-supporting. There might be more than one shape on each line. A great white shark and a blue whale were competing for space. Betty Boop was with Felix the Cat. Other creatures that were the result of the imagination of the designers were also up there.
Our favourite was a dragon. It was designed in such a way that the lines to the head were separate from those for the body. Consequently, as it moved back and forth in the breeze, the head would respond to any changes before the body. This made it look more like it was deliberately changing direction. Such a clever piece of design.
The wind was pretty steady on the day (and the conditions rather overcast which had not been the forecast), but it did sometimes drop and also change direction. This meant that some of the shapes would drift out of the arena and over the spectators. This was not an issue until the wind dropped and there were a few occasions when they came down on the people outside the arena. Not a big deal but still rather amusing to watch as the size of these constructions become apparent when next to people. Probably got their attention too.
It was an interesting event and I’m glad we went. It was certainly popular with a ton of people there and a lot of the kids there had acquired their own kites. I bet the kite sellers did good business. I wonder how long they will be played with.
During a walk through the New Forest, I came across this fallen tree. When a large tree falls, it is always somewhat surprising because the scale of large trees gives them an impression of imperviousness. Of course, they will all fall eventually. When they do, it seems like it is a big shock. The roots are still bound tight with earth and standing beside this gives you an impression of the scale. I stuck myself in there just for reference!
We got some tickets to an event at Marwell Zoological Gardens that took place after normal hours. Having done some after hours events at Woodland Park Zoo in Seattle, we were interested to try this. It was a different format from what we had done before. Instead of lots of people being free to roam the zoo with various food outlets around the zoo, this was a more compact group of people. We were escorted by zoo staff including some of the keepers and they took us to specific parts of the zoo and were able to give us answers to any questions we might have while telling us about the animals and what they need/like.
While they wanted to try and keep everyone together, they were very accommodating if you wanted to linger a bit at one area. There was also a buffet mid way through the visit so we could all have a break and some food. The CEO was one of the people taking us around so you could ask any questions of how a zoo operates if you wanted to.
Zoo animals can always be a bit tricky. They do like to spend time in parts of their enclosures that are the least visible. Also, since this was later in the day, some of them were already getting ready to bed down for the night. However, we did pretty well with what we saw. The servals were the most elusive, but we did see one of them from a distance.
The rhinos were the trickiest. They have a large field that they wander around, and it didn’t seem to matter where around the enclosure I was, they were always far away. It almost seemed like they were following us around and making sure they stayed as far away as possible! I had not come with my bigger cameras and lenses and so the photos were a bit distant.
Whether it was smiling while watching the ring-tail lemurs, enjoying the giraffes as they lick everything with their massive tongues, seeing the tiger stretched out and dozing or debating whether the Dorcas gazelle where more interested in me than I was in them, I had a ton of fun. There was one enclosure that was particularly fun but that will get its own post. I would certainly recommend this if you are interested.
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.
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.
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.
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.
