On a day spent entirely at home, marking — at least there’s always the view over the town to provide some photographic inspiration. Of course, it didn’t really look this gloomy at 3pm on this December Monday. Or did it?
With mare’s-tails spread all over the sky and a circumzenithal arc showing off the ice crystals in the upper atmosphere… I think the recent warm weather might be coming to an end. Still, that’s an English June for you.
Sat in a room all day listening to people talk, so not the most exciting day photographically. But the cathedral in Zagreb is an imposing presence so gave me something more interesting to point my camera at. Rebuilt in the late 19th century after the old one was damaged in an earthquake.
…or at ten-to-four on a Friday afternoon, anyway. But not “shepherds’ delight” because an hour or so after this it started snowing. Unphotographed, but the first of the winter, round here.
And so, the journey home — deliberately done away from motorways, and rest stops, and all that crap. It took a couple of hours longer than it did on Thursday, but it was infinitely more relaxing, and hey, here is the English countryside, in all its rape-flower-coloured spring plumage. Taken just outside the village of Heckington, somewhere in the wilds of Lincolnshire.
And as I said I would do 11 different places in 11 days, here they were: Manchester, Wolverhampton, Lancaster, Morecambe, the Solway Firth, Haworth, Hebden Bridge, Markham Moor, Cambridge, King’s Lynn, Heckington. These things keep me happy.
Taken on campus; there is almost no green space there, but if you point your camera up at a high enough angle, you can occasionally get shots of trees with no buildings behind…
A lovely day in many ways, until being exposed to the news. Anyway… this reservoir supplies the village where the rest of my immediate family live. Presumably if there are fish in there, the filtration system stops them getting into the pipes.
A night out last night, stayed over in a motel (because you shouldn’t drink and drive — so given the choice I don’t drive). This was the scene outside our room this morning.
I’ve only ever seen this a couple of times before — a rainbow, or at least a spectrum, high in the air, nowhere near the ground and with no rain in sight. I guess it must be caused by light refracting through ice crystals in the upper atmosphere. Bad weather on the way perhaps. Let’s hope not: I intend to spend next weekend walking in Norway.
POSTSCRIPT: Have discovered this is something called a ‘circumzenithal arc’. They are not rare as such, but apparently only appear when the sun is at exactly the right angle to ice crystals in high-level clouds, and thus can be seen only in very restricted locations on the ground. So if you do see one, feel privileged – it may well only be visible in a space a few metres around you.
I am in the final stages of writing the first draft of my book and literally did not leave the house all day. With rain most of the day and flat light, opportunities were very slim. But in the end, the atmosphere obliged with a cloudscape.
