Lessons with Love

I love photography, I love the technical side to it and I love the artistic and creative side to it too.



I love being out there with my camera and love being in here remembering good days out and looking at photos and, above all, learning from them! Every step I take in this journey is a step that's been thought about and worked on and analysed and crafted. It's also a journey that's fun, exciting and promising to keep on moving and changing and challenging me as I go forward.

That's why I love it so much. I'm still really new to it all, but I am learning so much along the way, and one of the greatest of all pleasures is to be able to share that learning and passion and pleasure with other people!



Helen and Mick have recently purchased their first DSLR and asked to come out with me on some photography tutorials to find out how to use it and how to get images that they will be proud to say are theirs... photos they've actually taken, rather than simply allowing the camera to take the pictures for them!



We've had three afternoons out and about with the camera so far, covering everything from manual exposures to composition and creative exposure.



We have three more afternoons planned before they head off up to the west coast of Scotland for their annual holiday, where they will be ready to take photographs in any light and still be happy with the results!!

The weather has actually been a bit of a problem on these first three sessions, as it has been dull, wet and decidedly unalluring for landscape photography!



We've managed though, and had a bit of fun into the bargain! Which is always good!! Thanks for your hard work and patience so far, here's everything crossed that the sun might actually show for the next three sessions!!!

Rebecca, X

rebecca@rtphotographics.co.uk
www.rtphotographics.co.uk

Dinton Dreams

Since moving back south of the border, I've rediscovered the simple, innocent joys of birding!

It's something that I used to do as a student at the University of Aberdeen, once upon a long time ago and is something that I gave up when I left there... much to my own regret and shame! But now I'm back down south and mistress of my own time again, it's something that I can now start again, proudly and with head held high, instead of hiding it as a guilty pleasure!

I've always been a bit of a geek, but where once that was a problem, now I'm free and proud and will say it clear and loud... I'M GEEKY & I'M REALLY HAPPY WITH THAT!!! So, there we are, I'm back into the birding at very long last!

Dinton Pastures, halfway between Reading and Wokingham, is a good spot for learning the joys of birding again.



It's local, it's lovely, it's diverse and can be really quite exciting at times! The biggest draw for me at the moment is the lure of Bittern. There are 3 reported to be overwintering here and I've never seen one in my life! How much would I love to see one? Oh, I'd love to see one lots!!! I've been along so many times now, at various times, and still I haven't seen one!

I'm really not a very lucky person in any way, shape or form, but even my friends struggle to believe that I can be so blooming unlucky!!! I am, of course, used to it by now, and that's why I keep perservering. Persistence pays, isn't that right? We all get what we deserve in the end don't we? I really, really hope so!!!



So, here we are then, another few hours at Dinton, dreaming and hoping and wishing and praying... and going home disappointed yet again! Still, it's a nice enough place to sit and watch the sun go down. And there's always next winter. Or the winter after that. Ho hum. Again.

Rebecca, x

rebecca@rtphotographics.co.uk
www.rtphotographics.co.uk

By the Light of the Silchester Moon!

When I saw the reports in the press about the possibility of the aurora borealis lighting up the skies last week, my heart skipped a few beats with excitement! My heart is something I try and take a great deal of care over, so it takes something pretty powerful to stir it up... the aurora is one of those things!

My poor old heart has really taken a bit of a battering lately, so it was with some excitement and a huge amount of hope that I set out towards the ruined remains of Rome (erm, well, in Silchester actually!), hoping to see a glorious display of dazzling light and astronomical fury as charged particles from the solar storms whipped and collided across the ionosphere!

So that was a waste of time then.



And my heart sank. Again.

As the clouds roll back into my heart, so the banks of cloud and mist crept over the night sky and obliterated any last remaining hope that something wonderful might actually happen for me. Deeply disappointed. Again.

I knew it was a bit of a ridiculous fancy really. The chances of seeing the aurora down here in the south are so small that it would have been a minor miracle to have seen it. But I've always been an optimist and am ever hopeful that finally, one day, things will happen the way I dream about them!!

It was also a very vain hope given the brightness of the moon that night. Still, faint hearts won't ever be truly happy or fulfilled, so I set my hopes high and my heart afire to see if at least one of my dreams might come true.

Obviously it didn't, but, not to be too down-hearted, I thought I'd make the best of things and try and salvage something from the ruins!



Silchester is a tremendously exciting place to be at midnight... my senses were on fire even if the sky wasn't!!

With owls hooting and foxes crying, the mist rolling in and Orion looking down from the darkness above, the ancient walls were sparkling under the touch of moonbeams... and I could swear that I heard the thunder of centurions feet approaching through the depths of ages past, ready to appear at any moment in my rather nervous future... Amazing how the sound of a train in the distance can sound so much like marching on an old Roman wall when there's nobody else around and the clock strikes twelve!

So, no aurora after all, but at least I managed a few starry shots and a few long exposures of the landscape as seen by the light of the Silchester moon! Hopes and dreams must always live on, I'm not giving up on any of them, not yet. They may need a bit of tweaking and adapting, and maybe even change altogether, but I shall always live in hope that one day, just for once, my dreams might come true!

Rebecca, x

rebecca@rtphotographics.co.uk
www.rtphotographics.co.uk