Day #185

Title: Molten Lead
Location: Buttsbury Church
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I deliberately left it late for today’s picture as I wanted to revisit the location of Day #64’s image, which faces west. Despite taking quite a few ordinary sunset pictures there, I wasn’t really very enamoured with any of them when I got home. I much preferred this view of the sunset reflected in a window of Buttsbury Church. It reminded me of some of fellow 366 Flickerite touchingthelight’s images.

Day #135

Title: The Cowparsley Bridge
Location: Good Easter
Camera: Canon EOS 300D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I attended a training course in Margaret Roding for most of the day, but it had finished by 3pm, so I took a detour to Good Easter on the way home and had a potter around the village. There is a pond with bullrushes (and big, splashy fish). The pleasantly cool church was open for visitors. I particularly liked this scene, at the rear of the churchyard, where a footpath crosses a stream on a little wooden bridge. It was surrounded by gently waving Cowparsley and numerous Dandelion clocks.

Day #124

Title: Festa di Santa Guista
Location: Chiaramonti, Sardinia
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Practically the whole town turned out for the Festival of Santa Guista today. A few hundred locals gathered in the shade of the trees next to a church outside the town and spent the afternoon eating, drinking and making merry. We were invited along as guests of the Accorra family (friends of the friends we were visiting) and so we sat down to the feast of pasta, salad, mutton, potatoes, cakes, and home made wine. There were market stalls too, selling local produce, kids running round with waterpistols, men surreptitiously playing Burra (an illegal counting game only played when drunk), and everyone chatting merrily. Some of the more aventurous townsfolk also had a go at paragliding off the nearest big hill. All great for photos! This is Santa Guista herself, installed in the church before being paraded back into town in a convoy of cars and tooting horns. It was a lovely day out, and great to be involved in some real local customs; we were made to feel very welcome. See more pictures taken today.

Day #104

Title: Rainbow Pews
Location: East Bergholt Church
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: The weather was sunny and blue when I woke up, so I spent a pleasant Sunday morning pottering round Flatford Mill, a place I hadn't visited in 15 years or more. When the crowds got too busy, I decided to head to East Bergholt to photograph the Bell Cage at the Church. But the clouds were rolling in, so I went inside for a quick look around after the service had finished. It was still overcast, apart from about 20 seconds as I looked at one of the side aisles, when wonderful rainbow light came through the stained glass windows at the top of the main nave and illuminated the pew ends and flagstones. It was so fleeting, I managed only three shots before the light was gone for good.

Day #77

Title: Verdant Shades
Location: Botolphs, Adur Valley
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: The weather was a little disappointing again today, but I enjoyed a pleasant 4-mile walk with another Flickr-366 friend, touchingthelight. We started off in Bramber and followed the river to the lovely little church at Botolphs. This was taken on the return leg, with the pub beckoning! A few shafts of sun kept coming and going, but the sky in this shot was particularly pale, so I cropped it out altogether. And the myriad greens are appropriate for St. Patrick's Day today.

Day #67

Title: Spick & Span
Location: Margaretting Church, Essex
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I was intending to take a walk centred around Mountnessing Church this morning, but got distracted on the way by St. Margaret's at Margaretting. It's not often open, and I happened to notice the Church Wardens and a few other parishioners were in there giving it a Spring clean before Easter. There were half a dozen of them (the youngest about 4, wearing a Batman costume and brandishing a feather duster!) polishing brass, plumping up kneelers and hoovering the aisles. This picture presented itself to me as I wandered around near the Font; the brass ends of the ropes were looking very shiny in the sun, and contrasted with the lovely polished pew end.

Day #66

Title: The Bell Tower Door
Location: Blackmore, Essex
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: A bit of a contrast from yesterday's architectural shot! Dull, flat light for most of the day. I took a detour into Blackmore on the way to the supermarket this morning. The Priory Church of St. Laurence has a Medieval bell tower and this is the door on the north side. I liked the details in the beams, and the slightly wonky look it had. But it's been standing since the 15th Century, so it's unlikely to fall down any time soon.

Day #43

Title: Sunset Over Buttsbury
Location: Galleywood Common
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 75-300mm EF f/4-5.6 IS USM
Notes: I was busy for most of the day, and was waiting in for a delivery, but by 4:30pm I'd finished my jobs and the delivery had come. I grabbed the camera bag, jumped in the car and headed for Galleywood Common where I managed to snatch some pictures of the sun sinking while getting a little 1.2 mile walk.

Day #41

Title: All Saints By The Canal
Location: Ulting
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 17-85mm EF-S f/4-5.6 IS USM
Notes: I enjoyed another walk this morning, along the Chelmer & Blackwater Navigation around the village of Ulting. The weather was superb, and there were pictures to be had every few yards along the towpath. I had seen there was a church by the water when looking at the map, and I wasn't disappointed by the scene I was presented with, as I rounded a bend in the river.