There is a fair amount of blotchiness in the blank areas of the sky but judge for yourself whether you think the image is useable. I propped the camera on a wall and set the self-timer. Then it is just a question of half-pressing to get focus, and then completing the press on the shutter and making sure I was not in the scene.

I desaturated the image more or less completely, to get rid of the orange glow from the streetlights.

This is a big image – 1000 pixels wide – so it won’t fit on this page, but it is not a big image in file size, so it won’t strain your connection. Click on the thumbnail to see it.

Stopped off to talk to a man fishing. I asked him whether the water was clean. He said he would not eat a fish from this section of the river because when it floods, effluent goes into the river and the hormones in discarded sanitary towels affect the fish, causing them to change sex.

Makes you think, doesn’t it…

Nikon D200, 12-24mm lens at 24mm

We spent this afternoon driving over the moors in the Yorkshire Dales. As the sky turned a gentle pink in the mid to late afternoon as we were approaching the village of Masham, I leaned out of the car window and we were greeted with a very pungent smell of whatever the last tractor and trailer had deposited on the road.

Looking on the lightbox in Camera Raw at the three shots I took of this tree, I heard myself say again that it is all about the quality of the light.

Some shots I took earlier, when the sun was higher and the shadows harsher, were not so interesting to me.

1/35second at f3.5, ISO 200 – Nikon P5100

Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, is 52 degrees north of the equator and on the eastern side of the Pennine mountain range that snakes down Britain. It is February 7th 2008 and the daffodils in the grounds of a church that stands in the centre of Leeds, are out.

There was a time I would have thought to myself that the daffodils are out early, and enjoyed them. But those days are past. Now I think also of the long chain of consequences for the balance of the ecosystem that may result from the early warm days, long before Spring.

The heads were blowing about in the chill wind, which accounts for the blur. Well, that and me bending over and swaying about to get the shot.

I had the camera set at ‘Auto ISO’ in the range 64 – 200 ISO. And look what a lovely ISO the camera chose for the lighting conditions: 117 ISO. Who ever heard of such a thing! Ah, this modern world with all its gadgets.

Nikon P5100 1/60 at f4 and ISO 117 and -0.7 exposure compensation