A few more of my favourite shots from wandering about in the snow this weekend. The whole set is here, and a few more of the best ones are here. Click to enlarge.
Too dark for a high shutter speed, so this is the best I could do - lots of tits' arses. But you can see it holding a nut in its beak
Squirrel with robin in the background
Quite pleased with the beating wing of this coal tit
One stuffs its face, the other keeps watch
This time I focused on the robin rather than the squirrel
Decent abstract effect from this sculpture
Same sculpture, different focus
Another bird's bum
Tree outside my office
The view from the top floor. I was pleased with the colour
Hello, dear readers. I trust you survived Snowmageddon, which round here meant about 5 inches of the white stuff and widespread panic.
It is like The Day After Tomorrow in my flat: in the film the stragglers end up barricaded in the New York Public Library with no heating. My flat also resembles a book cave and likewise has no heating other than a little fan heater. I didn't burn any books to stay alive, though P D James's Death Comes To Pemberley almost got incinerated on grounds of quality…
I was going to go walking in the western Peak District but my friends chickened out had very good reasons why they had to cancel, so I ended up taking my camera out to a local park and gardens - not at strenuous, but pleasant none the less. The whole set is here, but I'll show you some of my favourites here and in the next post. Click to enlarge.
Abstract - I won't tell you what it is.
Bureaucracy! I was really pleased to spot this office window down a back street
Fire escape in the snow
A crow.
Sage plant being eaten by a snow monster!
Crow. I wasn't set up for a fast shot, so was lucky to get the wing like this.
Really please with this one - again I had the camera on a slow shutter speed for a different shot, so got lucky here.
Cormorants roosting in the snow
Another slow-shutter speed shot of a gull
Squirrels: taste as good as they look
Blue tit and nuthatch
Again, slow shutter speed but a bit of luck with these coal tits.
I had a real Mark Corrigan (sorry about the ads) experience last night.
As I walked through the Monkmoor estate in Shreswbury, wearing my warm old-man's clothes and dragging my fencing bag behind me, I met a group of kids, who must have ranged from 8 to 12 years old. 'Oh no', I thought to myself. 'I've seen this episode. They ask menacing questions then call me a paedo and kick me up the bottom. Then I lock myself indoors and resign myself to a lifetime of bitter hate and fear'.
Sure enough, they gathered round me shouting something. I remove my earphones (Philip Glass's Heroes symphony). They're not calling me a paedo or laughing at my garb. They're asking if they can throw snowballs at me. I'm so stunned that I find I can only reward their good manners by acquiescing. 'Sure', I tell them. 'But not the face'. They keep their side of the bargain, and we all walk away happy, and reassured that society hasn't yet descended into barbarism.
Here's another similar experience from the sublime Attila the Stockbroker.
It's snowing! Only delicate little flakes, but at least The Dark Place is going to be obscured for a short time. Call it God's Photoshop. I wonder how many students will turn up for my lecture on Celtic mythology. I left them hanging last week with the promise of the Three-Penised God.
Yesterday I did a lecture on new media which saw me saying complimentary things about Twitter, within reason. I'm sure @benjaminjudge would be proud. I see from his feed that he's reading Thoreau's Walden. It's one of the very few books which I would say changed my life and my philosophy. Not only that - I recently bought the t-shirt!
