37mm, f7.1, 1/20, ISO800
27mm, f9, 1/9, ISO 800
31mm, f5.6, 1/13, ISO 800
55mm, f7.1, 1/25, ISO 800
It’s a grey, drizzling day here, the sort of weather that people imagine when they think of England. A day for editing images rather than shooting them.
55mm, f8, 1/40, ISO 800
I hope you can forgive yet another mushroom-related post. There were so many toadstools and other fungi in the woods near Friday Street yesterday. I snapped a few of the nicest, or strangest, depending on your point of view.
55mm, f4, 1/150, ISO 800
The last couple of days have been bad back days so I only had my little Fuji along. But it coped well with pretending, using the 18-55mm kit lens, to be a macro shooter.
55mm, f 4.5, 1/80, ISO 800
One or two of the mushrooms were kind enough to pose above ground level.
55mm, f4.5, 1/60, ISO 800
Using a wider lens than I would normally gave me the chance to try something a little different from my usual shallow depth of field, isolated subject, loads of bokeh style. In the shot below I wanted to make more of an environmental shot, using the log to lead the eye into the frame.
18mm, f5, 1/40, ISO 1600
It was while I was taking that shot that I noticed the cute little toadstool posing on top of the log featured in my post yesterday. Here it is a bit closer. Well, I couldn’t keep the bokeh at bay for long.
55mm, f7.1, 1/12, ISO 800
Despite having now edited all of the images from the shoot, the image I posted yesterday remains my favourite of the day. But I have made a better edit of it, muting some of the brightest highlights in the background.
18mm, f.5, 1/50, ISO 1600
Tomorrow, one more secret of the forest, but not a mushroom in sight.
Hot off the presses, two toadstools snapped in my garden this morning.
Turkish tent and five arch bridge
As regular readers of this blog will know, one of my favourite local locations is Painshill Park, an eighteenth century landscape garden in Cobham. When I woke up one morning late last month to find a heavy fog, I took my trusty Fuji down to Painshill for a ramble.
Gothic temple and five arch bridge
The mist had coated everything in the finest dew and the spiders’ webs were looking stunning against early Autumn foliage.
Autumn web
Every tuft of grass bore a sparkling hammock of silk.
Hammocks of gossamer and dew
Berries of every hue reminded me that, in the words of the immortal Keats, this was a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.
Red berries
Elderberries
Not to be outdone, fungi of all kinds were busy decorating the grass,
A toadstool in the park
the forest floor,
Toadstools in the wood
and every tree stump.
Bracken fungus (maybe)
Most of the trees had yet to start turning, but there were a few obliging maples dropping their pastel leaves prettily onto the banks of Painshill Lake, just to give me some foreground interest.
The ruined abbey
In the mist, everything was still. Even sound seemed to be muffled, and it felt as if I had the whole park to myself.
Painshill Lake
The Grotto was closed but I explored the outside.
View through the Grotto window
Nature colonising the Grotto
I often think the Gothic Tower, one of Painshill’s many follies, is a little too pretty to be truly gothic, but in the mist it did look a little bit spooky. A very little bit.
The Gothic Tower
In the woods, I came across these dens, no doubt made by parties of children. Blair Witch, anyone?
‘Mysterious’ dens
They were not far from The Hermitage, one of my favourite follies.
The Hermitage
For a while in the eighteenth century, every self-repecting landscape garden had to have a hermit. Painshill was no exception although story has it that the first man hired for the job lasted only two weeks before he was discovered in a local hostelry drowning his sorrows! He was never replaced.
Inside the Hermitage
Every time I go to Painshill I find something new, whether it be one of nature’s works of art or a fragment of the craft of people.
A fragment of times past
I made a mental note to go back again later this month to see the Park in its full Autumn glory.
The Chinese Bridge
Another of my posts about Painshill, including some of its history, is here.
Focused Moments 