A Matter Of Life And Death

We met up with some fellow Flickr photographers this morning at the Rock Cemetery in the centre of Nottingham.

The Rock is one of Nottingham's oldest cemeteries and full of very interesting headstones, mausoleums and statues, or 'Weeping Angels' as they are now known, thanks to Doctor Who. Blink and you're dead!

It was cold, but lovely and sunny, with hardly a cloud in the sky. Although we've past the graveyard many times, neither Gail or myself had ever been in to have a look around. Some of our Flickr friends have been before, but it was all new to us. We spent around two hours walking about and photographing the graves.

Although the sky was very blue, I quite like this sepia effect that was produced in-camera, as I took my little Olympus with me. I think the lack of colour and shadows of the figures adds a sense of menace.

We snapped a different sor of angel this afternoon, as we met up with Jurgan, a photographer friend of ours and his model Bryony up at Wollaton Park. We actually met them by accident in the cafe, as we were both hungry and thirsty after our walk in the morning.

On entering the cafe, a tapped Gail and pointed, as I could see Jurgan sitting at one of the tables near the entrance. He's a big lad, so he was easy to spot! We ordered a Devonshire style scone and a hot chocolate and then sat with them and chatted for a while.

Jurgan said that he wanted to shoot Bryony down by the lake. So we all got up and started on the long trek downhill to the very large lake. There's no boating on it, but there are lots of ducks etc. Loads of people were there too, throwing bread to them. Although I have had read somewhere that you shouldn't feed birds bread, as it expands in their stomachs, and so isn't very good for them.

So we went to a more quieter part of the lake, and Bryony stood, sat, crouched and laid in a variety of poses. The temperature had really dropped and the poor girl was freezing.  But she kept with it, not really complaining at all. Jurgan used an off camera flash for his pictures. I took this one with no extra light at all, even though the sun had completely disappeared by then.