I’m always up for a nice walk around some National Trust grounds (member for quite a few years now), so when they announced a ‘Fungal Foray’ at Calke Abbey we signed up for a couple of tickets.

This wasn’t a walk intended to show us which mushrooms were edible, it was to show the variety of fungi that exist in the Nature Reserve. I have done one of those at Calke before, but that wasn’t organised by the NT. The walk was guided by one of the rangers who was a pretty keen amateur mycologist but she was keen to correctly point out that she couldn’t 100% identify everything and to trust nothing. I decided to take the DSLR along as it’s been a while since it’s been used.

The walk was very informative. Specimens were a bit sparse due to the glorious weather we’d been having, so there were some points where the leader had to produce one she’d found earlier, or in a couple of occasions had moved from another site.

So here’s some photos from the day:

Really loving the crispness and textures that I’m getting with the black and white film, being able to see all the saw marks on these stumps. And the extra isolation from the lager film area is great as well, really like the way that the backgrounds on these 2 photos are full but they’re cut off from the main point of the photo.

More playing with film. A quick couple of shots from a trip to the National Trust’s Sudbury Hall.

I like the perspective in the first one, though I should have been a little more careful with the framing of the bottom ball. While the viewfinder on the EOS 3 is larger than the 30D it’s still not 100%.  I think kneeling down would have helped this shot a lot as well, if I could have place the centre point just about the middle step maybe, though then there wouldn’t have been quite the same sense of perspective. That and it was a filthy day so I’d have got muddy, note to self; one must suffer for one’s art.

I do like the tones in the 2nd one. The ball looks almost like a small moon. And there’s enough apparent ‘depth’ that it still seperates nicely from the wall at the back. Divided on the almost complete shadow at the bottom, while it definitely helps to define the shape of the ball, it would be nice to have some detail in there. Possibly a touch more exposure, or maybe a reflector of some sorts?

Taken with a Canon EOS 3, Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 lens and Ilford HP5+ @400. Developed in Ilford DD-X. Scanned on an Epson v500.

An old tiger skin rug in the main entrance hall to the National Trust’s Kedleston hall. And as a nice easter treat someone’s given it a little chick to eat (not me!, though I am impressed by the NT’s staffs thinking :))

And nothing says spring like Daffodils

All images take with a Canon EOS 30D and a Sigma 24-70 f/2.8 DX.  Minimal tarting done during RAW conversion.

A quick shot taken on top of Skelgill bank while on a little walk up to Cat Bells.

Taken with my old trusty Canon S3, which still occasionally comes out to play when I don’t want to lug all the accessories around for the SLR. Taken on auto, and then played around with in photoshop. As the S3 only take jpgs it’s not quite as neat. I altered the jpgs to give me 2 exposures, 1 for the sky and 1 for the foreground. Both were then layered up with the darker sky allowed to show through. Then using 2 saturation/hue layers I pulled the colours back. The original ‘smart object’ was then sharpened and denoised.

Something slightly different from the gigs. Waking up to a nice bright bank holiday sunday we decided to put our National Trust memberships to use and head over to Calke Abbey for a little wander around.

We had a nice walk around the woodlands and parklands, grabbed some food from the cafe and then wandered up tot he church to sit and eat it.

The grounds are huge and very green at that time of year. As can be seen from the photos I was quite taken with the Bees and Cows around the place :)

All photos were taken with the Sigma 24-70 2.8 DG on a 30D. I had a CPL with me but never got around to attaching it. Quite impressed with the bee photos given that:

• it’s not a true macro lens
• I was handholding the camera
• The amount of wind, those purple flowers were all over the place

Got to admit that I am very tempted to get a proper macro lens now, just have to justify the pennies to myself.