Brighton

We popped down to Brighton last week for a couple of days to see a band, Lake Street Dive, who were playing at the Komedia on Monday night.

Midland Air Museum

Took an hour out to wander around the Midland Air Museum today and took along my favourite pocket camera

London

Had a great day out in London for my birthday; had to take a couple of cameras along of course

Christmas Transport

Yesterday was a lovely day, mild and sunny but today it has been very windy and constantly raining so I decided to spend an hour in our local Coventry Transport Museum.

The museum is a wonderful resource as it is free of charge to enter and full of all sorts of interesting examples of our transport heritage, something that Coventry has been famous for, over the years.

A little bit of Adobe Lightroom helps

This year my eldest daughter turned 30 and to celebrate went on a three week holiday to India with her other half, Doug.

When she asked if I could lend her a camera I was more than happy to hand over my Sony RX100 Mk3 a great camera for its size.

Sony RX1R

I do suffer a little from GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). As evidence of that I recently spent some time reading up on the Sony RX1R which has a full frame sensor in a compact body with a fixed 35mm f2 Zeiss lens specially designed for the body.

Berlin 2015

Seven of us just spent a few days visiting my daughter in Berlin.

Realtively cheap public transport food and drink led to a fun time, visiting places we hadn't been before and soaking up the atmosphere in this very cosmopolitan city.

One such place was Peacock Island, beautiful scenery and uninhabited apart from, yes, Peacocks.

Berlin always has a vibrant street scene full of character and extravagant graffiti on the buildings

Fishing for photos

Last week I took a week off and visited the New Forest with my other half Mandy and her brother Jonny and his wife Lisa.

We stayed in a great chalet complete with hot tub overlooking the woods.

The highlight of the week for Jonny was taking me night fishing to Hordle Lakes, a beautiful spot he had visited a few years before.

Jonny had brought all the fishing gear and I had a two man bivvy and plenty of layers of clothing particularly as the weather forecast didn't look great.

We were all set up next to Bob's Lake by about 1pm on Monday and the girls left to go shopping.

Jonny caught 3 Bream virtually straight away but it was carp that he was really after. He valiantly tried to introduce me to fishing but I was more interested in all the wildlife happening in front of me and taking photos of it. I don't know anything really about fish or birds but was fascinated watching the mallard ducks and black-headed gulls wheeling around the lakes trying to pick up food.

There were several families of very small duckings following their Mothers around and I sadly managed to just catch a photo of a Magpie stealing one of the ducklings without its Mother noticing. However I'm pleased to say that looking at successive photos I took of that bit of action the duckling seemed to have got away!

As the day wore on a big bird flew over and landed by the next lake and we realised that it was a Heron.

We had taken down the phone number of a local Indian takeaway and at 6pm rang them and ordered 2 Madras curries to be delivered to the lake gates. I walked down to pick them up and just as I got back found Jonny fighting something a lot bigger on his line - he had found his first carp of the day.

No sooner had he put that back when he caught another on his second rod. I was beginning to worry that the curry would go cold before we could eat it, but it was fine.

Jonny tried different types of bait during the day and the gulls and ducks were more than happy to collect any bits that were surplus and sitting on the surface.

We finally got to bed at about 12pm not longer after Jonny caught his biggest fish ever, just after the sun went down.

The sun came out just after a rain shower passed by — The sun came out just after a rain shower passed by

I took this on my iPhone when it was quite dark - hence the noise in the photo

I really enjoyed my introduction to night fishing although next time I would go in Summer when the risk of a frosty night is much reduced!

Revisiting Berlin with the Storehouse app

https://www.storehouse.co/stories/r2ejo-berlin-2014

Fargo

Fargo Village in Coventry opened at the weekend and promises to bring a whole new dimension to the city offering niche and unique retailers, artists’ studios, creative workspace, crafts, cafes, markets and entertainment space. Affordable rents will allow new businesses to set up, thrive and survive in an attractive environment, in a community of like minded people.

Fargo is bringing a piece of the London cool scene of Camden and Brick Lane to Coventry. Twenty years ago these were run down areas of London but with investment into the creative industries they have now become major attractions bringing in visitors from all over the world and in turn supporting the local economy. To emulate some of that success here would give Coventry a huge boost in perception and appeal to locals and visitors. Fargo Village will inject energy and fun into Coventry.