We rarely get sunsets worth mentioning in Sussex — our atmospheric conditions are mediocre at best. However, with a little bit of fun (HDR), I created a landscape that has an awful lot to look at  — the tree in the foreground, the line of trees in the background, the details of the grass. And of course, quite a spectacular sunset!

This is a post for Skywatch Friday.

This is another sunset picture from Sussex, my home county, in England. This one is early on though, with there still being plenty of daylight to bring out the detail in the foreground.

While the sky has a creamy and dreamy quality to it, I love the texture of the frozen pond — and the ducks that are huddling for warmth! Poor things. This is an ‘original’ photo with only minimal cropping, and no colour correction.

This is a post for Skywatch Friday.

This is a recent photo of mine, taken on some heathland in Surrey. For some reason (which I still don’t know!) a herd of Highland Cattle had been transplanted to this heathland in the South of England — some 600 miles away from where they’re meant to be.

Anyway, the focus of the photo is undoubtedly the cow, but it just so happened that the sky decided to spoil me at the same time. It may not look very real, but I assure you it is!

This is a post for Skywatch Friday.

If you don’t like pretty photos, just scroll on by.

If you DO like pretty photos, well, you just might like these photos taken of some daffodils on our estate. I skillfully waited until that ‘golden hour’, as the sun was making its final descent towards the horizon and then… I STRUCK! Like a velociraptor, or some other rapidly-descending creature that brutally captures its prey. Only my prey was daffodils, and I don’t move very quickly — but you get the point…

I know they look almost surreal: it’s because the sun is so low that it’s only hitting some flowers, and not others (there are obstacles that you can’t see in the photo, like fences/trees). If you’ve ever driven or walked through some woods in the autumn (fall) and marvelled at how just the tops of the trees are set alight by the golden rays of sun, then you’ll know what I mean.

Anyway, these are the last daffodil photos I’ll be taking, so… enjoy them! Next up… um… bluebells?

There’s one more which is nice, but I couldn’t quite get the right crop on it. I’ll just leave it as a link here, if you really dig daffodils. Or my photos. Or both!

I think I like this one. It’s not an AMAZING photo, but it’s interesting. I’m not quite sure why the depth of field is quite so shallow… might be because there was a lot of reflected light into the camera.

Anyway, if you know your foliage, you’ll be able to identify this is a honeysuckle plant! It’s a long way off budding though, as they don’t usually flower for another few months. The leaves are usually a rather dull red, but you can see here that when you let a low sun shine through their leaves you get some startling oranges and pinks and yellows!

Oh, and the spider web was an added bonus — note the sun glinting off it in the far bottom left!

I really hope the sun continues into the weekend. It actually feels like Spring is finally here!

I caved and went for a stereotypical seaside photo for this week’s Watery Wednesday: the western coast of Seattle, USA. As if to make sure I ticked all the boxes, I also made sure the sun was setting.

Hopefully you like it though. I think it’s interesting enough to warrant more than just a quick glance!

If you like this one, there’s a few more in the series, over in the USA gallery!

You can find more watery, and alliteration-friendly photos over at Watery Wednesday.

Here are two photos from my short trip to Poland in 2008.

If you want more info about Poland, or my fun stay there, and more pretty photos, you can read one of my stories that I posted earlier today!

This is a post for Skywatch Friday.

This photo was used in another entry on my blog, but I’m going to write a little bit more about it — and, also, you might want to just look at pretty photos, rather than trawl through a whole blog entry. Though, there’s a podcast, if you want to listen to a Brit rambling on about not much in particular, and another pretty photo of Venice.

Anyway, the photo, taken in October 2008 from the banks of the river Arno in Florence. I think I’m standing on Ponte Vecchio, unique in its age and incredibly good condition. Famously, Hitler spared the bridge, when all other bridges were destroyed. Possibly because it’s so beautiful, and so full of charm, lined almost exclusively today with jewellery shops.

It’s 900 years old, in its current form, and there’s been a bridge there in some form for over a thousand years.

Enjoy the photo; it’s a rather remarkable sky, suitable for Skywatch Friday!

This is a photo that was actually taken about 15 minutes before my last Skywatch Friday entry (spot the roof of the building below in the other photo!) This is one of the few times that a photo has actually captured both the beauty and the gentle illumination of the clouds accurately. Normally what you see in person, while striking, doesn’t actually look like the photos you take — photos of sunsets are usually overexposed or burned out, swamped in yellow light. It might not be unpleasant to look at, but it probably doesn’t look a whole lot like the sunset you actually experienced!

This one though… this sunset is perfect. Every time I look at it I want to be back in Florence, standing on the Ponte Vecchio bridge — at over 1000 years old, by far the oldest structure I’ve ever stood on. I want to walk through the old, dilapidated, rustic streets. I want to kick back in one of the lovely pizza parlours with some olives and a bottle of Chianti — and of course, some crusty bread, oil and balsamic vinegar.

I look forward to sharing a few more photos from my trip to Italy with you all, my fellow sky-watchers!

This weekend was certainly an education when it came to insects and plants. Who would’ve thought that taking a photo of a moth would’ve doubled or tripled my knowledge of the animal kingdom?

Hot on the back of the HAWK MOTH, I now have some photos of peacocks. Originally, I thought I had some peahens too, but as it turned out: it was just an albino peacock. How about that. Where did I find peacocks? Roaming around the garden of one of our local ‘little cottages that sells cake and tea’ — is there a better name for such places? It really is a little cottage in the middle of no where (2 or 3 miles from any neighbours) that looks down over Ashdown Forest (the ‘Hundred Acre Wood‘, if you’re a Winnie-the-Pooh fan) with fantastic gardens and, seemingly, lots of peacocks.

So without further ado, a series of photos entitled ‘Cocks at Sunset.