December - Catching Up

A great start to a new month, blue skies and a hard, crisp frost, what a delight after so many dismal days in November. Global warming doesn't feel so threatening after the weather in November which has generally been dull, wet and cold. For me this is the worst possible and its a time of year when I feel really low, physically and mentally. Its a real battle to keep motivated and cheerful, so this morning is wonderful.

Photographically I've been busy since last posting - a weekend trip to Snowdonia was a great experience despite the rain which persisted most of Saturday. Steve Lewis was the course leader for the day and was outstanding. A really nice chap, excellent photographer and first class leader/tutor. His enthusiasm remained until the very end - we were walking back to our cars at 5.30pm, it was dark and still raining, almost at the end of the walk was a footbridge across a thundering stream. Someone said they wanted to take a final shot of it as a joke more than anything, but he joined in and soon we were setting up our tripods and cameras by torchlight, too dark to focus, hands too cold to feel the camera controls, trying to get a reasonable image. There were still other people walking across the bridge during our exposures so at 30 sec there was still some camera shake.

This is my attempt - OK that big boulder in the middle is a bit dominant, but I was amazed at the result with just a little help from PS.