Oh, a dream shot. Excellent and so are the others. Great tour.

Sleeping Beauty's Castle

On Open House weekend I visited 2 buildings, first was presented in previous week's post, now I'll present Sleeping Beauty's Castle. This name was given during soviet time, when it was used by various soviet military authorities and it was hidden behind tall fence, covered with vines and making it invisible to general public.

Building is constructed in the end of 19th century by English merchant Thomas Greenfield. It's interesting building, located in both sides of medieval city wall, so to create access from one side to another they had to make passes through city wall. Here is part which is within old city walls, the red building and city wall up to tower partly visible on right side all belong to it:

Part outside of old city is what gives it a name of castle. Here entrance and part of it can be seen.

Here is rest of it as can be seen from street:

Currently school and various children art hobby classes are located In this building. Here is dining room, in red jacket is our guide.

Restorated ceiling, part of it is left in original condition:

Concert room:

Some rooms are restored and look ok, but thanks to soviet army heritage the building was in bad shape and there is lot of work to be done to restore it fully. Here is passage, which still has this soviet feeling.

Palm room:

Some works of students:

Teachers room:

Like a character from Fellini movie. Brilliant.

Those are palamut but I guess it’s a larger kind of mackerel. I really enjoy its lakerda.

Turkish coffee is my favourite. Freshly ground and made, it tastes better than any coffee I tasted.

Yes, that clay colour is very captivating.

Great history lesson. Even Mr. Bean was popular...

Nice autumnal tones and I like the sharp foreground against the blurred background.

Not as attractive as last week's building and quite austere inside. Interesting to see though.

I believe palamut is similar to bonito, a kind of small tuna. So similar to lakerda. Delicious 😋
I'm only an occasional coffee drinker - an after dinner espresso, so I don't have an opinion on the coffee. My husband likes turkish coffee though 👍

Defiitely half full 😁

A Week of Woodland Wanders*

* well, technically three days of woodland wanders, but who's counting?

The clocks go back this weekend here in the UK, so I've been making the most of my evening walks this last week, because after Sunday it'll be six months when it's too dark to wander off into the countryside after work, well, at least if you want a good chance of seeing anything and not wandering blindly into a bog.

All of these images were taken in (or around) the woods surrounding Anglezarke reservoir, which is part of the Rivington reservoir chain just South of Chorley. The woods are pretty extensive and nicely decked out in their autumnal finery at the moment. They were looking a lot better about a week ago, but then a storm blew through and decimated most of the foliage on the trees around the perimeter. But venturing deeper into the woods reveals a good number of trees still clinging onto their yellowing leaves.

All images taken with the GFX100S mounted on a tripod and equipped with either 20-35 f/4 or 45-100 f/4 and a CPL. I'm really enjoying this combination for the range it covers and not really noticing the 35-45 gap.

Processed from individual raw files in Capture One Pro 23.

Monday Evening

When I visited the Anglezarke woods on Saturday I effectively ran out of time just as I reached what looked to be the most interesting area, so on this evening, knowing I only had about 90 minutes after work until sunset I hastily rushed along the trail to the spot I'd reached a couple of days before and started to look around.

I very quickly found this impressive and somewhat angry looking tree basking in direct sunlight from the setting sun. This looks like the kind of thing you'd find in an H.P. Lovecraft book if he'd turned his hand to writing about enchanted forests instead of interdimensional tentacle monsters. I suspect it writhes around disturbingly when no one is looking.

After the Lovecraftian tree, I decided to try and catch sunset from an elevated spot overlooking the reservoir. This did not work out well at all, as I ended up following a very steep tree lined path up a hill, looking for a viable spot to shoot from. Having crested the hill with no look, I headed down towards the shore of the reservoir, arriving there after the sun had set! So I retraced my steps and went back over the hill, intending head back to the car via the same route I'd taken out. On my way back over the hill, I shot this, it was getting pretty dark at this point, but the twilight had a nice look to it.

I must have missed a branch in the path, because very soon I found myself in a part of the woods that was wholly unfamiliar, confirmed by me ending up at a 2nd reservoir that I'd definitely not passed on the way in. Also it was now completely dark, but fortunately I'd brought my head torch. I couldn't face retracing my steps and instead decided to follow the path I was on and see where it came out. It came out at the top of a very steep and muddy hill, leaving me a good mile or so of road walking back downhill to the car. Still, this did give me a nice view out towards Harrock Hill and the dark and creepy woods did look like it held some potentially interesting photographic locations, at least in daylight it might.

Tuesday Evening

My plan on this evening was to return to the newly discovered bit of the woods from the previous night. The problem being my usual parking spot was on the opposite side of the woods and I knew I'd spend a large part of my limited time reaching it, so I scoped out another parking spot closer to where I'd emerged onto the road the night before, however this appeared to already be occupied and I didn't like the look of the occupants, so I doubled back and headed for my original spot.

By the time I'd reached the original woodland location, the sun was getting pretty low, so it was unlikely I'd make it round to the new spot and instead decided to explore this area a bit more deeply instead.

This part of the woods stands on a steep hillside, that, like most woodland around here, turned out to be quite boggy underfoot. Still, it wasn't long before I'd found the first composition I quite liked, this archway framing a distant tree.

Carefully picking my way across the upper part of the slope I found this pairing that seem to be gesturing to each other across a sea of ferns.

More precarious plodding through the undergrowth led me to this somewhat welcoming looking tree.

And I quite liked the way these three trees seem to be impersonating each other.

Eventually, I made my way back down to the main path, but not without a visit to the Cthulu tree, which seemed a little less angry on this occasion.

By this point, it was getting dark, so I headed back along the path to the car (the correct path this time). Upon leaving the woods, the path runs across an open meadow with a clear view across Anglezarke reservoir. The sun had just set, but there was still some colour in the sky and a few clouds to catch it too, so I took this shot looking West South West. The far treeline rising on the right marks the lower flanks of The Nab, which runs along the West shore of the reservoir for a significant chunk of its length.

Saturday Morning

And so we reach this morning. As I lay in bed with no real intention of getting up this early, I foolishly checked the local forecast. This promised "mist", so I forced myself out of bed, picked up my already packed camera bag and headed out. This time I was determined to explore the far side of the woods, so I headed up to the higher parking spot which at this time in the morning was free, so I parked there and headed down into the woods, but first I had to cross this field of dangerous looking beasties. Don't let the wool fool you, these things are a menace. One once tried to steal my sandwich! True story.

You'll also notice the complete absence of mist. Why do I continue to trust the Met Office?

Having evaded the guardians of the field, I headed down into the woods. Looks promising...

A bit further down the treacherous path and I came across a lovely grouping of trees. I couldn't fit it all in with the wide end of the 45-100, but fortunately I had just the thing in my bag. Well, I thought I had. Where the 20-35 should have been, the 100-200 was sitting smugly, mocking me for not checking the bag before going out. You see, I also spent an evening in the week trying to photograph the comet that's currently all over social media and I'd brought the 100-200 out for a play as it seemed like a useful focal length, although in the end it wasn't.

So, yeah, this pretty much scuppered this morning's walk as 45mm (roughly 35mm in old money) is not wide enough for a lot of tight woodland stuff. So instead I made the best of what I had and just shot at 45mm, which gives a taster of the potential. Technically, I suppose I could have done a pano, but I didn't really want the hassle and Capture One loses some of the processing options that are available with Fuji raws, particularly film sims and strangely working adjustable white balance once its done a bit of photomerging.

Not to worry, I shall return with appropriate lenses, but in the meantime I got this.

The tree on the left here is on the right of the previous picture. While could have moved further back to frame all three together, there are a number of straggly spruce trees that suddenly get in the way, so it's going to need the wider lens to pull this together how I want. At least, I think it is.

I continued down to the bottom of the path and took a few shots, but without the wider lens it seemed a bit pointless, so I made my way back up the treacherous and muddy path that I'd followed in the dark a few nights earlier to the top of the hill. At the top I shot this.

I managed to make it through the field of sheep again without getting savaged and reached the road. On the far side stands Manor House, apparently built in 1604 and surrounded by some rather nice backlit trees. Pity about the car in the drive though.

You've had a busy week! These two are wonderful, especially the first.

I unexpectedly had a sighting of the comet on Saturday night from outside our new residence in Levens (we got keys on Friday), but I don't really have suitable kit, and what I have was still sitting in the Scottish house... With the naked eye it was just a faint smudge, so you probably didn't miss much.

This is stunning.

As ever a good read. The Cthulu tree shot is a lesson in the fact that we never seem to find the same light on a subject.

Certainly a nice outcome, from a a nice idea.

I like the shot of the footbridge, creeping out of the shadows. Looks like one of those nice Autumnal walks.

At first I thought that buildings are without window glasses... Too accustomed to concrete and glass buildings which reflect and glitter, I guess.