Hever Castle

On the way home from our brief trip to Sussex and Kent, Harriet and I stopped off at Hever Castle.  It was a dull, grey day; and, since we had Amber with us, it wasn't possible to go inside the castle itself.  This was more than made up for by several marquees which were groaning with food from local producers.

Hever is famous for its topiary, as will become apparent from several of the pictures which follow.

Having exhausted the hedges, I turned my attention to the various specimens of Homo photographicus which were wandering around.

OK, so some of them weren't exactly "photographicus"...

The final shot shows some of the amazing ornamental carp which were swimming in the moat and begging for food from the passers-by.

Fairfield in Monochrome

While staying in Rye, we took a scenic and round-about route to Dungeness in order to visit Fairfield Church.  Dedicated to St Thomas à Becket, the church stands in the middle of Romney Marsh and is now surrounded by fields containing sheep.  It's also famous with photographers, for good reason, but a sunny morning in September was unlikely to yield any masterpieces.  The sky was impressive, though, so I felt that a monochrome treatment was the order of the day.

As with the trip to Tenterden Church, these pictures were all taken with the Fuji X-T1 and 10-24 lens, with support for the internal shots being improvised where necessary!

Tenterden

I'm a sucker for a good church, having been interested in architecture since I was at school.  As a result I grabbed the chance to spend half an hour or so looking at Tenterden church in Kent while Harriet did a bit of shopping.  I was travelling light (just the Fuji X-T1 plus 10-24 lens and no tripod) so a certain amount of improvisation was in order when it came to taking the interior shots.

I promise that I put the Very Useful Table (TM) back in its proper place before I left.

Sissinghurst

On the way home from our weekend in Sussex and Kent, Harriet and I decided to stop off at Sissinghurst Castle: the former home of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, with its wonderful Tudor buildings and justifiably famous gardens.  Now owned by the National Trust, it was a lovely place to wander around for a few hours.  The Cafe wasn't half bad either...

Dungeness Nature Reserve

The murky conditions continued for much of Saturday, so we decided to do a bit of bird watching at the RSPB Nature Reserve in Dungeness.  I don't often suffer from "lens envy", but bird photography is one of those occasions where bigger is definitely better - especially when one's subjects are on the opposite shore of a large gravel pit!

First, the nuclear power station which forms a truly romantic backdrop to the nature reserve.

The grebes came relatively close to the hide, but the more interesting birds - such as the great white egrets - were miles away.  The sequence below is cropped very tightly, but gives some idea of the quality of the 70-200/2.8L IS mkII with a 1.4x mkIII converter.

The only other beasties which ventured close to the hide were a couple of dragonflies.  Why is it that, whenever one manages to capture these superb insects in such a way that they're nicely sharp, the background is always rubbish?

[Later note:  I'd originally thought these were Emperors, but a Wise Man has just informed me that they are actually Migrant Hawkers.  Even having looked at some reference images, I still find it difficult to tell them apart from their profile view.]

I always marvel at the way dragonflies tuck their "undercarriage" out of the way when flying.  Amazing creatures.