Local Artist, Ralph Boyer

Ralph Boyer, Artist

Today I met a local Stroud artist who currently has an exhibition in The Lockkeeper's Café Bar in Stroud. His name is Ralph Boyer and he paints fantasy type pictures with oil on canvas. His work will be up in the café for the whole month of January 2013 and is well worth a look. I love his work and he kindly agreed to pose by my favourite painting for me today. A lot of his work reminds me of King Arthur and Merlin of which I'm a big fan.

By following the link which I made with his name above you can see a bit more of his work. He told me that next week he will be swapping a few of the images around and bringing in some new ones so I'll be making a few trips down to admire his work. While I'm there I'll probably stop for lunch as well as The Lockkeeper's is one of my favourite lunch stops. I can't recommend them enough. :-)

The 365 Project

The 365 Project in some form or other has been going on for a few years now. The object is to take and post a photograph every day for a whole year. Some people have themes, some people just share their everyday life, some people give themselves challenges and some people join groups like 365project.org. I've done the latter....they've got themes which I might join in on now and then, but I'll mostly be challenging myself.

This was my first photo for my 365 project which I posted yesterday:

My new best friend

This photo was taken with a Canon EOS 5D MII DSLR with a Canon 16-35mm f2.8 lens at 16mm and f11. The ISO was 100 as it was a beautiful sunny day! The shutter speed was 1/80th of a second. Hand held and quite close! Love this lens. :-)

And this is my second photo for my 365 project which I posted today:

Mike

This photo was taken with a Canon 5D m2 and my nifty fifty! That's a Canon 50mm f1.4 lens. Well a nifty fifty is any 50mm lens. Camera settings were ISO 640, f1.4 at 1/30th of a second hand held but resting on table. Setting was a dark room on a black wooden table with a black art case propped in the background. Light source was a small torch that is in the form of a flood light on a tripod. Light was set off to the right, just behind and aiming towards the subject.

OK, so no theme going here, two totally different photographs. My only theme will probably be to try and be creative. Actually, I've done good to make two post in a row! I'm not very good at sticking with things like this as I can get quite busy and I'm easily side tracked. :-) I am going to see how long I can keep this up though....wonder if I'll make it through to the end. Watch this space. :-D

I won't make a blog post about this every day, I'll save them up and post several at a time, unless I'm really excited about a photo, then it might get it's own separate blog post. ;-)

You can find my 365project.org page by following this link.

If you are also doing a 365 project of your own let me know and I'll check it out and include a link in my next 365 blog post.

Happy snapping!

New Year's Day Walk with Llamas

Jo with Llamas

Today was New Year's Day 2013 and we were invited to go on a Llama walk with Mark and Jo and friends. What a lovely day it was too, for a walk around the country side! Been a while since we've seen a bright sunny day. It was still a very wet and muddy walk though as the land is so water logged.

Peter with Latte

The last time +Peter and I went walking with the Llamas it rained the whole walk, so this was a very nice walk for us, though I did miss having my daughter +Alyssa with us this time. Next time my daughter +Sarah  comes for a visit we will definitely be going on another Llama walk. I highly recommend this for a family day out with older children. My daughters are both in their 20's now. :-)

Simon with Peanut, Howard with Spud, and Mark

The lanes were mostly quiet and the views across the valley were lovely. People did take notice of the Llamas and came out to take photos of us walking them. The Llama's were very well behaved and were only spooked a couple of times but never really gave us any worry. I think they quite liked their walk as they haven't been out in a while with all this rain and flooding we've been having. They do have quite a large field to roam around in though, so over all they are quite spoiled.

A War Horse (Dray?)

It wasn't all about Llamas on this walk though, we ran into several groups of horses along the way who came to the edges of their fields to say hi to us. There was a lovely gentleman on the walk with us who told me all about the horse above, but as I have a memory like a sieve I can't remember exactly what he told me. I do remember that he said this was a war horse, the type that a Knight would ride, a very strong horse. I think he said the horse was a Dray, or in the Dray family. What ever he was he sure was beautiful. He's also my new best friend. :-D

Howard with Spud... or ... A Man and his Llama

This was a most enjoyable day, spent with friends walking along the beautiful English country side in Horsley, Gloucestershire. A great start to the new year. :-)

Short video from the walk taken by my husband Peter with his mobile phone: