Daily Photo 46

Old photo, from the grounds of Royal Holloway university.

Daily Photo 38 – Over The Fence

Taken on 35mm film with a Diana Mini, at the back of my old student house.

Daily Photo – Arrow

Part of the campus at Royal Holloway University.

Daily Photo – Wintry Reflection

An old(ish) photo from a couple of winters ago, taken in Virginia Water, walking down through Windsor Great Park. It’s actually the reflection in a lake, and I deliberately flipped the image vertically so it’s as if I’m shooting through the ice that was covering the water to produce a ghostly effect.

Buy a print of this photo.

Photo Set – Hampton Court

Just down the road (well, trail line) from me is Hampton Court palace, on the bank of the River Thames. So a couple of days ago I decided to go down and check it out before the good weather completely disappears.

It was surprisingly quiet, in fact the busiest part of the area was the river itself with what appeared to be a school rowing team out for practice. Rather than go into the palace grounds, however, I chose to take a walk alongside the river.

The autumn colours were out in force, but there were even plants that were still flowering alongside trees that had lost their leaves completely. This strange mix of weather we’ve had recently has really thrown things for a loop.

Eventually I decided to turn around and head back up the river towards the palace, since if I had kept on walking any further I would have ended up back in Kingston and there was more to get out of Hampton Court. Besides, I had a return ticket to use up.

It was certainly worth turning back as the setting sun lit up the bridge with a golden glow and cast shimmering light over the water.

By the time I reached the other side of the bridge the light had turned to a deeper orange, lighting up the underside of the bridge with its glow.

While the furthest arch was lit up by this fantastic light the others were completely dark thanks to the angle of the sun’s light as it struck the bridge.

Underneath the nearest arch the water was completely black., which created this great abstract silhouette effect.

With no-one around a barely a breath of wind Hampton Court seemed very quiet, much more so than its touristy reputation would lead you to expect, but perhaps that’s to do with the time of year. Still, it’s a beautiful area and seeing it free from hordes of tourists and school trips for once was a nice surprise.

Once again the Panasonic performed very well, and since I went while there was still plenty of light I managed to avoid low-light noise issues. I didn’t put the ISO any higher than 100, and luckily there were plenty of places to rest my camera for longer exposures, although I’ll have to start using my (admittedly cheap) tripod more often as it opens up some more opportunities in terms of the type of shot you can take. I guess I’m still not used to taking it and using it out in public yet, so that’s something to work on.

Still, tripod or not, I think I can call this a pretty successful trip.