All lovely, but I'm drawn particularly to 9 and 11. The usual high standard from you Andy across the board.

Regards
David

These are great, probably in style quite similar to the sort of shots I try to take, so they instantly appeal to me.

Three favourites for me:

The old door with peeling grey paint revealing yellow beneath

The pot on the shelf

The rusty tin can

Thanks for posting Bill, as every your shots are inspiring.

Regards
David

Hi John

Hope you are well! You can't fail to get spectacular images in the Lakes, especially if you are able to get high up. The one big bonus in this landscape is the presence of water in the high peaks, i.e. the Tarns, which make for great features in images.

My favourite images in this selection are 5 and 7, both of which feature the tarns. There are a couple of things I could suggest to add impact to images of this landscape:

- If you can get down low with a tripod that has the ability to spread the legs wide, you can often include more dramatic foreground detail

- The images look a little 'cool', I would suggest tweaking the white balance to warm them up a bit. One of the features of the Lakes at this time of the year is the warm colours on the fells, particularly the red of bracken, which doesn't really come out in these images

Thanks for posting John, you've made me get itchy feet to get back up there again.

Regards
David

This has struck a chord with me too, for several reasons. Our twin boys were born in Chesterfield Royal Hospital at just 24 weeks. Sadly, Thomas died at birth, whilst Daniel, who was so small he would fit in the palm of my hand, struggled for life for nearly 4 months and eventually pulled through. He left hospital still on oxygen, which he needed for the next few months of his life. Whilst in hospital he suffered lots of setbacks, including a perforated bowel which almost killed him and detached retinas in both eyes, which could have blinded him. He is now 22 years of age and has a job. He has no brain damage and is a relatively normal adult, although he is different and does still have some sight difficulties. Daniel was the second youngest baby ever to survive at Chesterfield Royal Hospital at that time, so is something of a miracle.

I wish we could have had the foresight and energy to do something like Jason and Tracy, but at the time we were struggling just to function normally. This is inspiring and epic, thank you for posting.

Regards
David

These are very nice John, lovely colour and contrast, I think the first and third are my favourites.

Regards
David

Very well done, all are nice shots, you have clearly got a formula for success!

Regards
David

I think any of the recent Pentax DSLR's would be ideal, obviously the higher the resolution the better within reason. I would probably recommend any of the K-3 variants, or a KP. I am basing this on an assumption that a K-1 would be overkill, I don't think you would need as much resolution as the K-1 provides.

I think what's more important than the camera is the right lens and the right camera support, i.e. tripod. For photographing paintings you will need even, natural light, not flash and I would guess that a tripod will be essential to ensure no camera shake. For lens I would suggest a macro, the Pentax DA 100WR is a good option. This lens has good (fairly neutral) colour rendering and virtually nil distortion. Any good tripod will do the job, I would err on the side of stability over weight as you probably won't be lugging it around everywhere. I have a Redsnapper which is a bit heavy, but very stable and reliable. I would suggest fitting a decent ball head to the tripod.

If you can't stretch to a macro lens, there are already many good recommendations above for standard primes. I will add the plastic fantastic DA50 f1.8 is excellent, but also the Pentax-A 50mm F1.7 would be great too, even though it's not autofocus. Manual focus shouldn't be an issue when taking shots of static subjects.

Hope this is useful.

Regards
David

The skies are just great on these, but what really ticks my box is the use of foreground detail. The foregrounds are superb, every one of them has something that makes the image special.

A tremendous set.

Regards
David

A magnificent shot.

Regards
David

Thanks all for the comments, JAK is right in that the images I've posted as examples could have been taken with a 16-85 as they are at 55mm and 70mm focal lengths. I do have a lot from our hols taken at longer lengths and I tend to feel most comfortable using a lens that covers the longer telephoto range rather than a wider lens when walking about in towns. I'm fond of doing a bit of street photography at a distance and the 55-300 is invaluable for this.

Regards
David