Bluebell Walk at Beacon Wood Country Park

Here are some bluebells pictures, taken at Beacon Wood Country Park, Bean, Kent, taken on 22 April 2012. I love bluebells, it just looks so lovely, and once the bluebells are out, you know spring is in full swing.

Here is my friend Claire (also a keen photographer), being ambushed by our dogs Fefe and Bonnie

River Thames near Dartford

Here are some pictures from a walk down to the Thames last weekend. (near Dartford / Kent/ UK)

Dartford Bridge

It took us about 1 hour to get her clean. The mud literally sticks!! and the mud on her back is when one large Boxer dog tried to jump her - she didn't take well to it and soon showed him!

Medway's snip and my new camera

And here he is, our little man - or not any more? Yes, Medway's had the snip today. Dropped him off at the vets in the morning amidst loud protests from the family (and from him!), but I'm just too aware that not castrated tom cats will just stray and get into fights, and also... he started spraying around the house - now that's something I can definitely without. So, here is his first picture as a new 'man':

My new camera arrived last week - after a week of reading endless reviews online and (most importantly I guess) trying compact cameras out at the shop, I went for a Canon Powershot SX210. One off the main selling points for me was the exceptionally hight zoom range of 15x optical zoom, so I've almost got a mini-DSLR which can easily fit in my pocket. The other point was that I am used to the Canon models e.g. the buttons, software, layout is easily recognised by me, and this is so much easier than getting used to a completely new model.

The first few days I went through all the shooting opions and found it surprisingly easy to get to grips with it, in short  - I love my new camera. ok, it won't replace an DSLR, but it has many of the functions a DSLR will give you and is so handy for travelling, well, even if I walk the dog across the road, it is much easier to fit this little baby in my pocket, and also I won't attract unwanted attention as I sometimes feel quite uncomfortable having a big and very expensive looking DSLR around my neck.

So, here are a few shots from last weekend and today:

Beacon Wood Country Park, view to Southfleet

Beacon Wood Country Park

' The Bridge' Estate, just across the road from us.

Again, at 'The Bridge', view to Dartford Bridge.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

Holidays booked and photoshop (ped)

 Well, after 16 years... I will be going back to Pakistan on holiday to see DH Nafees' family. Veeery excited and happy. I will be going with Nafees, Imran and Ruby. Dan is going to stay here in the UK, mainly for our pets. He is going on his on holiday with his mates in the summer to Greece, so its not a big deal. What was holding us back to go was mainly the money - flights are not cheap especially when going with all the family. but hey.. if we don't do it now we'll probably never do it. So there it goes, we've finally booked it and will be going in April.

here is a picture from my walk yesterday, taken in Beacon Wood Country Park: Ruby said this tree looks like a toilet seat lol

I've also played around with simple photo editing software - still can't get to grips with Photoshop. One of those days I will have enough time to get into it.

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And I've got myself a new toy - eagerly awaiting the arrival of my new 'baby' - a Canon Powershot SX210 camera. I wanted to get a compact camera for the holidays. Can't really take the big Canon EOS DSLR with me. Firstly, it is heavy to carry around, and I don't really want to walk around in Pakistan with a big fat camera hanging around my neck. So it will be much easier to have a little compact camera in my pocket. I went for Canon again, as I basically know the brand, and have all their software already on the computer etc. First I thought about buying just the cheapest camera, but than I thought I might as well spend a tiny bit more and get especially better zoom. So, the SX210 has 14x zoom, so perfect. I ordered it off Amazon, and should be with me in the next few days. Oh, the excitement!

Alien snowdrop circles and searching for spring

Alien Snowdrop Circles in Kent??????

Chestnuts                                                            The frst snowdrops

The weather was just beautiful today, and I couldn't resist taking the camera out with me and go in search of the first signs of spring.

Others have crop circles... I  have found this strange 'circle' with snowdrops right in a middle of a field ... no idea how it got there in that strange formation right in the middle of a field...made me laugh and I had to take a picture.

Lazy Saturday and my first walk

Weekend is here - not that it makes a difference to me at the moment. I had a bit of a scare last night when I realised that my scar is bleeding. Not badly, but... I hope this is not a setback, it's now 12 days after the surgery. I didn't lift anything heavy or anything like that, basically all I did was sitting here on my desk with the laptop, and sitting in the armchair stitching. All that sitting must have done it LOL.

The weather is really mild here at the moment, around 11 degree C,and nice winter sunshine. After some 'gentle' persuation on my part Nafees agreed to go out with me to walk Bonnie. I am really missing walking the dog, not to mention the look Bonnie gives me every time I walk past the closet with the 'dog-walking' stuff, her leads etc. But she is much too strong unforunately for me to walk her by myself. If there is no-one else around, it's fine, but if another dog appears on the scene...different story, than I won't be able to hold her in my current past-OP state. Here are a few impressions:

Nafees with Bonnie Honey outside our house, making a dash for it.

Across the road from us.

High Heels, East Ham and Autumn colours

// Sunday, 27. September 2009 //        

What's new ... another busy weekend. I spend most of Saturday ferrying the children (and mostly Ruby) around here, there and everywhere. Birthday parties, bank appointments, swimming, gym - you name it, i drive there. And most of. the time being stuck in traffic!

Saturday afternoon Nafees and me went to East Ham, Queen's Road market. Queens Road Market is a noisy hotch-potch market of Asian and African food and clothing. Nafees usually buys his Asian spices there, and I just love the Asian sweets, they are really sweet sweets! We took Bonnie with us, so I had to stay in the car with her- she wouldn't be any good with big crowds. After the shopping, we took her to Newham Central Park. We sat on the bench, eating somosas like an old couple ... haven't done that for a while.

Ruby went out shopping with her best friend Natasha, they were hitting all the clothing and asseccorize shops. She bought this pair of high heel sandals. It's been a long time since I've worn anything like that, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to walk very far in them - it's trainer's for me.

Sunday was a lovely Autumn day. It's still extremely dry though, and the colours are all dried up browns/yellows, there is hardly any green. The rosehips are beautiful though, there are my favourite autumn fruit.

Beginner's photography

Finally, nothing else planned this evening, and so I had the chance to take the camera out to put some of the learned stuff into practice today. Now, coming back from work, doing the dinner, and then by the time of course I was ready to go out with Bonnie and take the camera, it was coming up to 7pm. It was not quite dark, but not far off. I've read somewhere the best light is at dusk and dawn, so here we go.

So, there is me, the beginner with the camera. As recommended by Michael, our teacher, I kept the setting on 'Manual' to really get the experience and try different things and not to rely on the automatic mode, because this is exactly what I want to come away from. I tried to get the exposure right with aperature and shutter speed - was quite glad that I remembered it quite easily, and managed to get the right exposure by changing shutter speed. It was getting dark pretty quickly, so the aperature had to stay at 4.0. To get enough light in, I had to put the shutter speed really slow, around 1/8 sec. and of course that's when the effect of camera shake started to appear - Bonnie is just a blurred shape! I was quite proud that at this stage, I remembered that one can also change ISO to make it more light sensitive and thus go down to a faster shutter speed - reducing the camera shake somewhat. Well, small beginnings.

Bonnie with flash

and Bonnie without flash

I like how the autumn colours appear here. 

By than, the night was really drawing in and I was presented with a beautiful orange sunset. I tried to capture it with the houses as a 'skyline', but unfortunately not very successfully. I know there is a trick somewhere - I don't remember it, not at this stage anyway. I think the camera exposed for the very lit sky, and than the foreground became too dark:

Or, with a different exposure setting, the whole picture became too light:

I think the best picture I took right at the end:

Lessons in Photography

Today was the first day of my photography classes at North West Kent College. It's the 'Introduction to Photography' at the Dartford Campus. I had signed up for it already a few months ago, when I'd just bought the camera. I've since read a few books, and especially the 'Dummies' guide on the camera was really good (well, you all know them, one of those yellow 'bla bla bla for Dummies' books. After reading the book I had started to use the camera almost every day, and tried the manual features rather than just always sticking with the automatic setting. But I still found it all a bit too overwhelming - aperature, shutter speed, ISO, white balance, point of focus etc etc.

So here I am, back in College. The course will run for 10 weeks, every Tuesday evening. Not cheap, I paid £175 for the pleasure. But I enjoyed it today - there's about 15 people in our class, a good mixture. It brought it all back (I hadn't used the camera for a while I have to admit), and now I feel that I want to go out and take pictures straight away. I'd forgotten most of the settings and how to change bits and pieces, so the Dummie's guide will come out again!

I've discovered this good photo shot opportunity a while back while out walking Bonnie in Beacon Wood Country park, this beautiful Kent village peeking through a hole in the forest. At that time, earlier on this year, I didn't had the right camera to get the houses in the background zoomed in. I finally shot it today - notice the typical Kent Oast houses. I really like the composition, with the trees framing the village in the background, but not too keen on how the colours turned out. Can't manage to change them so far - the countryside looks 'washed out'. Wish I could get more into Photoshop, but it really is not as straighforward as I'd thought. I started reading the 'Photoshop for Dummies' book, but after only 3 pages I'm as confused as anything - its peppered with words I don't understand. Hope I can get into it....

I 'm off work this week (lots of flexi time). I was hoping for good weather, and continue to work in the garden. This is b****y hard work – I am preparing the vegetable beds and tried to dig up the soil. After about 20 cam, there is just rubble in the ground. Apparently, this is what’s happening commonly in newly build houses, were the builders, when they leave, just dump the rubble in the garden and top it with a whimsy layer of top soil. Yep, that’s exactly how my soil is! Great. I dug about 30 cm deep or so, but can’t do no more, it is just too hard going through the rubble. I’ve done about 60% of the border in the last 4 weeks, planted so far runner beans, tomatoes, broccoli,coriander, rocket.

It is quite windy today, and not very warm, sitting in the garden and reading is not an option (that’s what I did yesterday, my ideal holiday occupation – bliss!). I took the camera out with me when I walked Bonnie. I still feel a little uncomfortable, walking with a big camera and enormous lens around my neck. I don’t feel very safe to be honest. Maybe its because I’m not used to it, but on the other hand I don’t want to miss out on photo opportunities. Today it was too windy to attempt pictures of flowers, they were blowing all over the place. So I did some more of those ducks/ducklings – all good practice. Downloading is easy peasy. I hadn’t realized what big difference the photo editing software makes to the quality of the pictures. I only did so far level tools. Takes up all my time, but is fun. And than there is a big book to read, all about Photoshop… Only 695 pages. Yes, I do enjoy it.

Oh, and I set up that Flickr account www.flickr.com/thepegster2009. Not a lot in there yet - another thing I gotta do!

Here is an example of my (still veeeery amateur) work in the photo editing programm. I did not use Photoshop for this, but the simple software which was supplied by Canon with the Camera. Didn't dare to look at Photoshop yet hee hee - that big 695 pages long book is waiting for me.

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edited with level / curve tools

Big news - well, for me anyway. I have finally bought my first D-SLR camera. Have been toying with this for the last few months, as I enjoy walking and wildlife/wildflowers more and more and really want to get more serious about photography. So... I have saved up on a deposit and got a Canon Eos 450D. There is sooo much to learn, I've been submerged in the 'Dummy' guide for the past few days and taking my first shots. I love it.

Problem is that this is going to be an expensive hobby. Already I realised that I may have to purchase more lenses with the stuff I want to take pictures off. I got 2 lenses with the camera (as I kit), and I want to get completely comfortable with everything in the first place. I'm still on the 'Automatic' setting for the camera, but hopefully will explore more in the next few weeks and can start experimenting with the manual settings.

Completely neglected cross stitch as a hobby, but will definitely return to it sooner or later - just enjoy taking pictures so much at the mo (and playing with all the new equipment). Here are some of the first pictures I took - completely unedited(haven't yet got the hang of Photoshop - another Dummy-guide I gotta get through LOL - Amazon is making tons of profit with me at the mo.

Out and about

Beacon Wood Country Park is turning out to be a favourite of mine, so much so that I now come here every Sunday. It is much quieter than Shorne (no Cafe or visitor centre here) and no car park charge. And the forest is dense, well as much as one van expect in the south east of England .




-- Post From My iPhone

Shorne Wood Country Park

We went to Shorne Wood Country park today - that is Bonnie, Dan, Imran and me. Yes, I could talk my two teenage boys into coming with their old mum on a ramble through the woods. The boys came because they wanted to have a look at the fishing lakes in the park. And -- they liked it and want to come back!

The park is massive, and it was very very busy. We had trouble finding parking and had to cruise for ages on the (massive!) carpark. There were so many people on the main walk ways, it felt like London Bridge for rush hour!! But once we were into the deeper woods, it was a bit better and I saw the first wild primulas - right in the middle of the forest - beautiful.

Why are the weekends always sooo short? My Saturdays are usually filled with doing the shopping here and there, cleaning the house, taking Ruby to swimming. Not much left for anything else. Last Saturday we went to Bluewater (big shopping centre near where we live) and bought Danial's birthday present). I have given him the choice of having a 'smaller' present and a large party, or a big present and just us as a family having a meal - latter option is what he went for and we bought him the desired X-box 360. I'm not into gaming whatsoever, and can't understand why he needs/wants an x-box when he already has a Playstation. Apparently two completeley different things. go figure... I'll never understand.




I didn't fancy going anywhere in the car on Sunday for our walk, so I took Bonnie down to the Thames. It is about a 20 mins walk for me to the River - but it is not a very pleasant walk. There is a path, but it is very lonely, no-body ever seems to walk there, and the bushes/undergrowth is very very dense, creaking. It freaks me out and I'm not easily scared. there are a few fields with horses in the middle, so that is a bit calming, but apart from that... I like it down by the river. It was on low tide. I was a bit scared Bonnie might decide to jump into the River - but she didn't. She isn't overly keen on water anyway, would just go to the edge and drink. There was also a lot of (manmade!!) mess, e.g. rubbish / flytipping everywhere, from plastic drink bottles (sooo many, everywhere) to 3 piece suites! Disgusting! I walked back home in a loop a different route, which is not much better, because there is a motocross-track and a shooting club - the noise! And cars were going up and down on the path, I felt like on a Motorway. As much as I like it down at the River, I don't think I'm going back soon there.