Ffestiniog Victorian Weekend 2019

Back in October we took one of our last visits to Wales, for the Ffestiniog Railway Victorian Weekend.  Partly because we wanted a holiday, and partly because I (Ben) needed some reference pictures of the England tank locomotives "Prince" and "Palmerston" for a model build/article that's under way.

This is the fifth or sixth of these events we've attended, and we've yet to hit one with decent weather, so everything was tuppaware sky and occasional showers rather than autumnal splendour.

Again, murky lighting at Porthmadog.

All in all a nice weekend on the trains, and I got the reference pics I needed, but hopefully next year will see a bit better weather for it.

Calming pictures of flowers...Bodnant Gardens, 2019

Back to the early Autumn for tonight's blog, and a trip to Bodnant Garden in North Wales.  Well, it felt like we needed something calming on here, and with the rain and the cold outside, and everything looking dead, it seemed an opportune time to look back at some pictures of flowers.

Early Autumn at Bodnant… would be nice to go there just as the leaves are turning.

There's some rather nice water features, so we decided to have a play with some long-exposure, abstract shots.

So that's that.  Just some pretty pictures of a garden and some waterfalls.  We've entered some pics in for another exhibition and had some more railway pictures printed this month, so maybe some info on that in the next post.  Until then, we bid you adieu. 

Blackpool 2019

Sorry for the gap in blogging recently, we've been preparing some bits for open calls and writing some articles.  Anyway, back to earlier in the Autumn, and one of our regular trips to Blackpool for some of Amy's photographs...

The trip was for two projects; to get some pictures of trams for possible publication, and to get a few more abstracts for the "Light Trails" projects.

Happily, the illuminated trams were out in force on the night.

Blackpool Tower wasn't quite fully lit-up for the night... perhaps they're a bit short of brass, or couldn't find a shilling for the meter...

We didn't end up doing as many pictures as Amy had planned, as The Childs were a bit tired and we ended up bailing out at Tower.  Hopefully we'll get another crack at it next year.

This illustrated one of the problems we were up against; the modern LED lights which are appearing aren't as easy to capture, and unless there is a lot of playing with the settings, can easily white-out the exposure.

Still, all said it was nice to be back at Blackpool again, and for Amy to keep her hand in with the "Light Trails" which has picked up a bit of interest again this year.  Hopefully we'll get back there again next year, but there may be another experimental development with the project early next year...