Yuka visiting!

My friend Yuka came to visit me from Japan. Yuka and me first met 15 years ago in Hokkaido through a friend of ours. Now, this is the fourth time we meet. It's been 10 years since the last time we were together, and we've spent about 60 days together so far. Confused? See, the third time ever that we met, Yuka came to stay with me in England for two moths or so. We hardly knew each other, really, but I felt that I knew her well enough to know that it wouldn't be a problem to share my tiny one bedroom flat with her for a couple of months. And I was right. We had a great time during those two months. And so we did this time, too.

Anyhow, today we went to see the white cliffs of the south coast of England. First we went to Birling Gap.



But it was reeeeally windy...



...so we ran back to the car and drove to the next spot... where Yuka took a photo or two, despite the gale force wind...



...and after that we ventured all the way to Beachy Head for a 20 minute walk to see this:



So anyway, after that, we decided to swiftly head for inland, and Arundel, to get away from the seriously strong sea breeze. We had lunch at The George. No Michelin stars, but a recommendation by Michelin, anyway. We almost died after the desserts, though.

I took this photo just to demonstrate to Yuka why I was taking three shots at the time. I was bracketing, of course, with three differently exposed images of the same frame, in order to later combine the three and created one single high dynamic range image from them.



In the late afternoon we went for a walk in Friston Forest, and saw these inquisitive cows on the way.

Yeah. Moo!

Seaford Head

...also known as Wake up and smell the flowers! Part II

This morning we went for a walk on the cliffs from Seaford Head towards Seven Sisters, and back. It was such a beautiful day that we found ourselves sighing out of delight every few minutes, and without noticing, ended up walking so far that we had to hurry back in order to get into London (to meet up with a friend) on time.












Canon IXUS 850 is a great little camera to carry in the pocket and snap away with, but it does have its limits when it comes to image quality. Apart from having a rather grainy pixel quality compared to larger sensored SLRs, in the above photo you can see vignetting (=darker corners) and barrel distortion that causes the horizon to bend. But not so much that it disturbs the "untrained eye"; I doubt any non-photographer even noticed it before I mentioned anything.



Yesterday we drove to Beachy Head.


(click on the image to see the bigger picture)

It was a very windy day.



So windy that in places Zebedee had to brace himself against the wind even when just standing in one place.