Category Archives: photography

personal, photography, pleasures

More Maytime Flowers

More Maytime flowers from our garden …

[As always, click the images larger views on my Flickr]

Fuchsia
This fuchsia struggles on as a small standard in a
shallow planter; and it has survived the winter
unprotected although in a fairly sheltered spot

 

Buff Beauty (Again)
No apologies for another shot of the absolutely glorious
Buff Beauty which is ramping up through our biggest
silver birch: a profusion of so many flowers some of
the stems are threatening to break under the weight

 

White Dog Rose
Like all the dog roses in our garden this is another
sucker from an unknown rose. We appreciate the dog
roses as much as the cultivars, so where possible tend
to leave them to clamber naturally through the trees

 

15 Feet of Rose
Rose (variety forgotten) flowering 15 feet up one of
our silver birch trees

 

And finally a different sort of flower …

 

Tilly Investigates
Birthday Cat: Tilly is 7 years old today (as near as we can know),
not that you would think it. She’s still a big kitten (when she chooses),
inquisitive (as here, investigating the new planters), picky, skittish
and a rascal in her own quiet way
photography, pleasures

More from Our Garden

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A few more photos of flowers in our garden this afternoon.

Click the images for larger views on Flickr

Buff Beauty
This is our Buff Beauty rose, which did nothing until we moved
it a few years ago and has now gone mental, scrambling
up through our largest Silver Birch with the lowest of
the wonderfully scented blooms well above head height
Buff Beauty
Buff Beauty: gorgeous scented flowers
Dog Rose (with Tennant)
This Dog Rose is a sucker from Buff Beauty: both are
growing up through our largest Silver Birch tree with
the Dog Rose flowering at the top of the 30 foot tree
Lady Hillingdon
Climbing rose Lady Hillingdon is absolutely smothered
in large (but not very fragrant) apricot blooms
Philadelphus
Philadelphus flowering in the shade of the trees
amusements, natural history, photography

Squirrel

In the latest episode of photos from my Flickr, we have the local squirrel and it’s hunters – finally captured on film this morning thanks to my new Canon 90D and a mega-long zoom lens.

[Click the images to get a larger view on Flickr]

Squirrel 1

We have this grey squirrel around the garden who has almost no hair on its tail. It looks very odd, especially when he sits around doing that squirrel thing of waving its tail. It’s been around all winter and otherwise looks to be in good health, so there’s no obvious reason for the hair loss.

Squirrel 2

As this next photo shows he’s male, and has been observed knocking up the ladies!

Squirrel 3

While he’s happily devouring our bird seed, Tilly cat approaches from starboard …

Squirrel Hunt 2

… and Boy cat undertakes a blocking manoeuvre to port, while desperately hoping the squirrel falls off!

Squirrel Hunt 1

Needless to say, the squirrel won with a good six foot leap from the top of the feeder pole to the apple tree. But it needs to be careful as Tilly is known to have caught a squirrel in the past.

And notice the wildlife-friendly, aka. unkempt, bottom half of our garden. It is sort-of half intended to be woodland floor!

photography, pleasures

Horrible Times 5

And it goes on, and on, and on … and t will do for a long time. So I thought we’d have something to cheer us up.

It’s a lovely sunny, warm Spring day, and this tulip was flowering in the planter outside our back door:

Tulip
Click the image for a larger view
personal, photography

A Birthday Present

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Having had a birthday recently, I bought myself a present. As as one of my aims for this year is to do more photography I bought an expensive new camera: a Canon EOS 90D and three lenses (plus some bits & pieces), to replace my ageing Olympus E620. The Canon’s a beast of a 32 megapixel camera with far more facilities than I’ll ever understand, let alone use – although it’s going to be interesting trying.

Of course having got the camera it has had to be tested. So here are the first four serious shots I’ve taken with it: of our cats, of course.

Click the images for larger views

Boy cat washing paws
Boy cat looking astonished:
just look at those curly whiskers!
Rosie trying to charm tea from the food provider
Tilly looking cute and trying to doze

Now all I have to do is to get out and get my money’s-worth from such an extravagance! So hopefully more images to come during the year. And possibly a photographic 100 day challenge.

amusements, environment, photography

Buggered Britain #26

It’s a long time (like 4 years!!!) since we had an entry in Buggered Britain – my occasional series documenting some of the underbelly of Britain. Britain which we wouldn’t like visitors to see and which we wish wasn’t there. The trash, abused, decaying, destitute and otherwise buggered parts of our environment. Those parts which symbolise the current economic malaise; parts which, were the country flourishing, wouldn’t be there, would be better cared for, or made less inconvenient; but which seem to have got steadily worse over the last few years.

So here are three offerings, all taken in west London on the same day a couple of months ago.

Click the images for larger views

beliefs, books, freedom of speech, medical, people, photography, sexuality

Womanhood: The Bare Reality

Laura Dodsworth, author of Manhood: The Bare Reality has a new book coming out, but unfortunately not until next February.

Its title: Womanhood: The Bare Reality.

You can, of course, pre-order it on Amazon or from the publishers Pinter & Martin.

The book promises to do for women, what Manhood did for men: tell of the variety and the stories of man and manhood. As the blurb an Amazon says:

100 women bare all in an empowering collection of photographs and interviews about Womanhood.

Vagina, vulva, lady garden, pussy, beaver, c**t, fanny … whatever you call it most women have no idea what’s ‘down there’. Culturally and personally, no body part inspires love and hate, fear and lust, worship and desecration in the same way.

From smooth Barbie dolls to internet porn, girls and women grow up with a very narrow view of what they should look like, even though in reality there is an enormous range. Womanhood departs from the ‘ideal vagina’ and presents the gentle un-airbrushed truth, allowing us to understand and celebrate our diversity.

For the first time, 100 brave and beautiful women reveal their bodies and stories on their own terms, talking about how they feel about pleasure, sex, pain, trauma, birth, motherhood, menstruation, menopause, gender, sexuality and simply being a woman.

Laura comments further in a recent Facebook post:

“A major issue for women is that men and society are really interested in defining womanhood for us and without us. A lot of the time, women don’t have an awful lot of input into the definition of womanhood, yet we’re judged against it. Women have to make choices that men don’t ever have to make.”
From Womanhood: The Bare Reality

A bold first quote to share from Womanhood. I’ve already been #notallmen-ed on Twitter, so let me say, I love men, this is not anti-men. (I LOVE men.) Remember Manhood?

But this is the point; Womanhood is an exploration of female experience through the embodied stories of 100 women. We define Womanhood on our own terms and in our own words. We reveal ourselves to ourselves and to each other. And it’s about time.

Laura’s previous books (Manhood: The Bare Reality and Bare Reality: 100 Women, Their Breasts, Their Stories) were amazing, revealing and informative, so I’m really am looking forward to reading Womanhood: The Bare Reality. My copy is already on order.

Full disclosure: I was one of the 100 men featured in Manhood.