Tag: night photography

September 28th – Terribly grainy, long distance ride cam footage of something nice about darkness commutes: Urban foxes.

Follow this short film and you’ll join me cruising around the bend by Coppice Woods on Green Lane between Walsall Wood and Sheffield. Out of the darkness to the right darts a large, fit male fox, who jumps the ditch into the wood.

Fantastic to see, and his antics will brighten many a dark commute over winter.

It’s not all dark. I just wish the footage was better. You may need to click the full screen button to see it best.

(Source: https://player.vimeo.com/)

September 26th – ne of the rewards of autumn is the abundant crop of interesting fungi. Passing Clayhanger Common in darkness, I noted that some environmental trigger – damp, temperature, never sure what – has called on the glistening ink caps and they are everywhere.

They start as perfect little ridged caps, delicate and speckled with crystals. They age very quickly, and within 48 hours they open and decay into a black goo, hence the name ‘ink cap’ – and another 12 hours, and you’re hard pressed to find any trace they existed.

Fungi are fascinating.

September 17th – By the time I arrived at Shenstone 30 minutes later, the rain and skies had cleared and there was a beautiful violet sunset, which lit my muse of Shenstone Station beautifully in the dusk.

Riding back to Brownhills, I screeched to a half to avoid someone in the road – a full grown, large adult toad, who was healthy and obstinate in the way that gets so many of these unfortunate creatures run over by vehicles.

I pulled out a tissue, and despite his protestations and jet of defensive urine, popped him to safety in the grass verge.

I stop for toads, great sunsets and often for no apparent reason whatsoever…

September 1st – I had to pop out again in the early evening as night fell on an errand, so took in the same loop of the canal I’d done earlier. The moon was high and beautiful, and the sunset again in wonderful lavender purple tones which reflected beautifully off the canal.

Morris Miner, also imperious and more at peace since the road resurfacing finished looked splendid in the gathering night.

I ride far and wide but sometimes the beauty is right there on our doorsteps.

August 15th – I spun up The Parade and over to Burntwood on the errand, then returned via Chasewater and the canal. It was a good sunset – there wasn’t enough cloud to be terribly dramatic – and the place was alive with bugs of every description, but the atmosphere and light was wonderful.

One nice thing about this time of year is the sunsets should improve, and I’ll be in with a better chance of catching them.

July 28th – A terrible, quickly snatched photo on my way home just before midnight, but I met this charming soul in the dark feasting on slugs and snails active in the rain. Attracted by an unusual noise, I was surprised to find two adult hedgehogs seemingly arguing over a particularly densely slug infested stretch of roadside verge.

The larger of the two legged it when it saw me, and once again I was reminded of just how fast these odd creatures can move, but this one hung around for a quick picture.

What a handsome set of spines it has! Great to see not one but two of these sadly rare pest control experts…

June 24th – A terrible, terrible day; bad news locally made social media and managing the main blog fraught with difficulty, and in the evening, I just had to switch off everything and walk away.

I found solace in spannering the bike and taking a ride around a late-night, somnambulant Brownhills to get some shopping from Tesco, which doesn’t close until midnight, and late hours Tesco is always an otherworldly, odd experience.

The TZ90 I’m currently using – having returned the Canon deeply unimpressed – is much better in low light that the TZ80 and I’m much happier with it as a camera than I thought I would be. There’s hope for the Lumix superzoom compacts yet, it would seem.

At points this day, I could quite happily have taken a torch to my entire online existence, as if it never happened; sometimes running the kind of local blog I do gets more serious than one would ever imagine. 

But a run out on the bike and some healthy distance made me feel better, and I started Sunday refreshed.

May 27th – I was busy all day and escaped after nightfall for a spin around Brownhills in the dark; it had been squally all day with a strong wind, and the weather was finally calming. 

It’s new camera time again and I’ve been loaned a new Canon SX730 to try out – for a brand new model 40x zoom compact I’m not terribly impressed. It loves bright sunlight, but as these images show, the night performance on automatic is woeful. There are not many helpful scene modes either like the Panasonics or Nikons I’m used to. For a £400 camera I’m not terrifically impressed, if I’m honest. The user interface is horrific, too.

Build quality is decent, though, it has to be said, but again, I think I find myself leaning to the new Lumix even though it has less zoom.

Cameras, like bicycles, are never quite just what you want.

May 10th – Going stir crazy, I escaped again at sunset, and headed up to Chasewater, just for the hell of it. I was captivated by the colour of a late-spring sunset, by the huge, yellow moon over Sandhills and the mist rising off the surface of the canal due to an inversion.

It’s a long time since I caught a sunset and dusk as lovely as this. After a very trying few days, it was lovely to be out in the dead calm and still, to feel the night chill encroaching and hear the soft sounds of Chasewater at dusk – calling birds, lapping water and the chatter of ducks and geese.

Recovery needs many things, but one thing that really does help is peace and beauty when you least expect them.