Hill Close Gardens in snowdrop season

Hill Close Gardens, in Warwick, as described by the Trust now responsible for the site:

"a rare survival of the Victorian gardens, once used by townsfolk living above their business to escape from the crowded town. The now restored gardens offer the opportunity to visit sixteen hedged Victorian pleasure gardens which capture the planting and personalities of their original owners. The plots are very varied and individual, as would have been the case more than a hundred years ago. The gardens were used for both pleasure and production. There would be tiny ornamental beds and small lawns, as well as fruit and vegetables. Some even had a garden pond. Most of them had a summer house from which to admire gardening efforts. Here, a little fireplace or stove kept the chill of the evening at bay, and boiled a kettle or heated a meal. There was gas on the site too, so a light could be used to extend the visit until after dark."  

views of restored summerhouses

vintage artefacts displayed at summerhouses, captured in black and white to evoke the era

 

Packwood House

Packwood House is a nearby National Trust property, which became my 'country club' during the Covid pandemic - a place to meet friends for a walk, lunch or tea, and conversation. Yesterday, a foggy morning gave way to clear, bright, piercing winter sunshine. I hadn't planned on photography while out with friends, so I had only my phone with me.

A walk through the churchyard in black and white

In the previous post I showed sepia 'antique' experiments with some earlier photos. Here are black and white versions of some of those images:

A walk through the churchyard - sepia experiments

 In a recent post, I included at the end this sepia 'antique' transformation of a photo of some stonework:

I have now experimented with same technique on some of the other images from that post:

Sunset in a mackerel sky

A clear, bright, sunny day was giving way to evening as cloud cover started, creating a striking mackerel sky and an impressive sunset. When it started, I was on the wrong side of the house to see it, so by the time I became aware of the sky, I knew I had maybe two minutes remaining before it all faded. I grabbed the nearest camera, found the keys for the back door, and went out in my slippers, not losing time by changing my shoes. 

Then I did something completely new for me: because time was so short, I turned the camera controls to the 'sunset' option in 'Scenes'. On the camera I was using (Sony Rxiii) that automatically switched me from RAW to JPEG output, with the camera's compression algorithm coming into play.

When I came to process the images in Lightroom, I really noticed the difference - definitely less control over the results. So, it was an experiment prompted by the circumstances, that I won't seek to repeat.

Sunday afternoon in the park

 

A walk through the churchyard

 

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Greenway walk at Imbolc

The Kenilworth to Berkswell Greenway (along the route of a disused former railway line) is the second of my regular walk routes from the my front door (the other is the Abbey Fields circuit - see previous post).

Imbolc - one of the cross quarter days - is on 1-2 February, half way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. It is also known as Candlemass or St Brigid's Day. Very often (though who knows what climate change will do) there is a brief harbinger of spring, a sense of the seasons changing - even if further cold weather is to come later in February and March.

And so it was this time - it was sunny, milder, the air felt slightly 'softer'. Early bulbs were opening their flowers in the sun, birds are courting and searching for nesting sites. And the added interest was a daytime moon.