When I saw the McCullin exhibition at the Imperial War Museum a few years ago, the most interesting thing about his landscapes was how rural Somerset seen through his eyes could have the bleakness of a battleground. Never seen Somerset that way before (although some of it can be pretty bleak in bad weather!). The Penguin webpage for his book The Landscape notes that "The imagery of his home county, ravaged by storms, inevitably projects the associations of a battlefield, or, at least, the views of one intimate with scenes of war.". There's more than one way of seeing this green and pleasant land.

Steve

The lens that came with my first DSLR was the Pentax DA 16-45mm. A nice lens but a bit odd: 16mm FL at greatest physical extension, 45mm FL at shortest. Couldn't understand why it should be that way round, but just got on with using the lens and forgot about it. Subsequent acquisitions were all the 'normal' way round: longest FL at greatest extension, shortest FL at shortest extension. Until getting the Q-02 5-15mm recently. That is like the 16-45mm: shortest FL at greatest extension and vice versa. Which got me wondering again. So do any of you clever people have any idea:
- How backwards zooming works optically.
- Why Pentax (or other designer) would use a backwards design for a zoom lenses.
- Whether there any other fairly common zoom lenses that are backwards.
- Whether the DA 16-45mm and Q-02 are related optically.

Steve

I once asked a Dutch colleague why the Dutch were so good at speaking English. "Well," he replied, "nobody is going to learn to speak Dutch".

25 years ago I coordinated an international group that was writing a big technical report. 10 authors from 8 countries, including UK, USA, France, Germany, Japan, can't remember the others. If we were struggling to get the right English words or phrase, we turned to the German. He always got it right. His wife (a German) was a teacher who taught English and they often spoke English at home to help their children learn it.

As for Americans, they don't speak English, just various variants of American. 'Pavement' has an important change of meaning when you cross the Atlantic.

Steve

Posting these today is a thoroughly wicked thing to do. I'd be on the west coast of Scotland today and on the ferry to the Outer Hebrides (Uists) tomorrow if my wife hadn't had an operation that went wrong a few months ago, so this year's Hebs trip had to be cancelled. Not thinking about what we'd be missing was going OK until these came along. That's a huge compliment!

For me, they are so brilliantly evocative of the feelings and impressions of the place, even more so than the first Luskentyre set. There are artists who have moved to the Hebs to be able to produce works like this with paint and brush. To be able to see the potential and do it with a camera is incredible. No favourites, it's the connection with place and memories that matters for me.

Steve

There's even a Dry Stone Walling Association https://www.dswa.org.uk/about-us/ . Lots of events in May, might even be one or two on your itinerary so you could see/photograph one being built.

"...what an array of beautiful earth tone." - Thanks for the reminder of what's under out noses. When you live here, you can take so much for granted. However, seeing earth covered in white always gets the pulse racing.

Keep enjoying yourself, there's a lot more loveliness to come!

Steve

Midge repellent? Might be a bit early for them, but is it worth taking the risk?

Earplugs (if you don't like bagpipes)?

Steve

All good. But the last one for me, please. It's an action shot - the beast is trying to do something, rather than looking like it's just standing around waiting for a person with a camera to turn up. And the full res view of the 'fleshy' bit above the middle leg is stunning in a yukky sort of way.

Now here's a thought - how about a fly at the end of a blade of grass with both the eyes of the fly and the tip of the grass in focus and no specular highlights (Steve dives for cover...) ???

Steve

Beautiful flower, nice light.

Just a thought - how about cropping a bit off the left to remove the distracting highlight on the leaf, then a bit off the right to balance, then darken the background in the top right. It should hopefully make the flower even more striking, without having done anything to the flower itself.

Steve

That's impressive, particularly with a new camera. They are what I used to imagine woods in Tolkein's Middle Earth looked like (before the Lord of the Rings films meant the end of imagination). Looking forward to seeing some more from your travels. It's always interesting to find out how a non-native views the UK, those of us who live here take so much for granted.

Steve

So you did rise to the ultimate focus challenge! It's a great picture. Did it take 2 spare batteries and several memory cards to finally get a shot with focus on the tip of wind-blown grass? Or was it a carefully crafted indoor shot with the blade glued rigid???

The ferrofluid is genius. What's the height of those spikes?

Steve