Rapeseed Oil

I love this time of year with all the wonderful colours around the English countryside, and at the moment the oil rape seeds are in full bloom providing brilliant yellow flowers. Working on a farm estate means I get to see the crop every day. I am fortunate to enjoy wonderful views at work.

I spent some time playing with my camera trying to get some decent close up shots. I played with the manual focus, macro focus and the aperture settings on the camera and came up with some nice shots, although I still need to master this aspect of photography.

I even managed to capture an insect inside one of flowering buds, which I wasn't expecting at this time of the year.

The heavy rain overnight meant there were opportunities to capture the rain drops on the leaves too.

I love this photography lark! :)

A Working Lunch

I have tended to just sit and have my lunch at work in recent times and then carry on working. At times this is a bit silly, because a couple minutes walk takes me right into the hear of the countryside.

I recently discovered the Hambleden / Medmenham circular walk and although work does not permit me to do the complete 5.5 miles of it, I was able to spend a minutes exploring it.

The woodland scenes were lovely and as the countryside comes into life in Spring it was a beautiful peaceful scene.

 It was actually quite a physical climb, but well worth it and peeping through the trees my work estate can just about be seen...

Richmond

If there is one place along the very long and tedious Reading to Waterloo line that is worth making the trip for it is beautiful Richmond-on-Thames. I spent a very enjoyable Saturday night there and before making my way to the evening's entertainment I spent a few minutes on the towpath as the sun was setting and it was a pretty stunning scene.

On of the best drinking houses in Richmond in terms of location is The White Cross, and although unfortunately on this visit I didn't have time to stop for a drink it is usually my first port of call.

The scene on the river as the sun was setting was beautiful and gave me ample opportunity to snap away and hard not to get lovely pictures of such a great setting. As for the evening itself well that is story that could unfold either way...

The Return of the Lumix!

Today I was finally reunited with my Lumix FZ45 camera, it having been away for what seems like ages for repairs. There is absolutely no reasoning behind the picture, except I just took my camera outside at work and clicked away. The sky's the limit? Maybe but today is all about being reunited with an old friend. How sad am I? :)