Shadows of the ficus tree
Our living room faces north, our library faces south and our artificial ficus tree (ahem…every home should have one) is halfway between the two. If we’re doing anything in the library, e.g., solving jigsaw puzzles or catching spiders, we have to draw the curtains around mid-morning to avoid being blinded by the sun. On the upside, though, we do get to see some rather attractive shadows on the wall. (Check our Flickr gallery to appreciate the shadows in full glorious technicolor bigness.*)
* I know what I mean.
Professional photographers take pride in how well they compose their pictures. Time was when they all used film and did their own developing in (get this!) dark rooms. Nowadays though, with an ordinary digital camera and a bit of computer trickery, keen shutterbugs can get great results regardless of their level of experience. Shana and I fall somewhere in between the two extremes. We do enjoy the ease of digital photography but we don’t like to over-tweak an image after we’ve taken it. This morning was a gift though: once we saw how foggy it was, we just had to take a pic of our plants. And, thanks to the weather conditions, we didn’t have to spend half an hour finding the right settings for opaque backgrounds. It was simply a case of point ‘n’ shoot and ‘job done’. I mean, really, why waste time learning the software when you can just wait five minutes for the weather?
Passing the TCM Evangelical Baptist Church on Lincoln High Street this morning, we noticed that something didn’t seem quite right on the front of the building. A simple case of the ‘t’ coming unstuck was all it was of course, but it did look awfully like an inverted cross for a moment. Too much exposure to Hammer Horror fillums years ago would no doubt explain my thinking that. A quick look at the church’s website soon put my mind at rest though: definitely none of those pagan goings-on there, I’m pleased to report, and, by the look of things, a decent number of regular punters too. Hit the big picture below with that mousey thing if you fancy taking a look at their site.
The best moment though, in fact something of a classic, came as we were leaving. We were not far from St Helen’s church. “Look!” I said. “Squirrels!” There were easily half a dozen squirrels under the fir trees and probably a dozen more hiding close by, ready to bombard us with half-chewed nuts. Shana managed to get this shot of a squirrel eating a nut. On the one hand, she was trying to hurry, wanting to get the camera out before the squirrel scarpered, but at the same time we were both trying to stay as still as possible so as not to scare him off. We needn’t have worried though: the Boultham Park squirrels seem quite happy to pose for the tourists. On any other day we could have waited hours for a picture like this. Seems like today our luck was in, doesn’t it?
