A Late Lunch by the Canal

The Lock Keeper's Café in Stroud

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Photography information: Above: Canon 5D II, with a Canon 85mm 1.8 prime lens, hand held. 1/1600 of a second exposure at f/1.8. ISO 100. AV (Aperture Priority) mode. 

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Wow! What a week! I've had several jobs back to back and it's not over yet! I have another lovely job tomorrow and my eldest baby girl is coming for a visit! I feel a shopping and baking frenzy coming on! :-D 

This week I finished up a big family shoot and have been working all week on a commercial job in which I had to hire several models for. I've been working all day every day from early morning until the wee hours of the night. It's a good thing I love my job! 

As a reward to myself for all the hard work I've been doing this week, I walked down into town for lunch. It was a late lunch as I was working hard to get some images out for the commercial job mentioned above. Where did I go? The Lock Keeper's Café of course! I love this place, and it's right at the bottom of the hill from where we live. People are always asking me where it is so I'll tell you. From town it's the other side of the train station over by the Wallbridge Lock/canal. That's the Hill Paul building behind it in the photo above. Just in front of it is the Cotswold Canal Trust Visitor Centre in the old Bell Hotel. 

The Lock Keeper's Café at Wallbridge Lock

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Photography information: Above: Canon 5D II with a Canon 50mm 1.4 prime lens. 1/1600 of a second exposure at f/1.4. ISO 100. Hand held.  AV (Aperture Priority) mode.  

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There's no parking so you'll have to make the short walk from town to it. It's well worth the walk though! And soon the foot path along the canal will be open again. I'm so looking forward to that as I love walking along the canal. 

Usually on Fridays you'll find the Friday Forum crew here at the Lock Keeper's. This Friday everyone had something else to do, so it was just me, and I was late. But not too late! They did serve me some lunch. I usually have a ham, cheese and tomato panini with a cappuccino coffee. But today I thought I'd treat myself to something different, so I had one of their specials for the day which today was a Tuna Noodle Casserole. Yummy!

Tuna Noodle Casserole

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Photography information: Above: Canon 5D II with a Canon 50mm 1.4 prime lens. 1/125 of a second exposure at f/2. ISO 400. Hand held. AV (Aperture Priority) mode.

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Today I had lunch alone all by my lonesome. I don't usually like eating alone and avoid it at all cost. But today down at the Lock Keepers it was quite nice. I did't feel all alone. I'm in there so often that the owner and crew know me quite well now. Also several people I knew were in and out and they stopped to say hi which was quite nice. 

I give the Lock Keeper's Café 5 out of 5 Stars! I highly recommend them for lunch or for just a coffee break with a friend. The staff are always friendly, the place is super clean, the food and coffee are fantastic, an over all lovely atmosphere. Oh and there's free WiFi and papers on hand to read. What more could you ask for? 

While I was there this little girl came for a visit. I couldn't resist asking for permission to take her photograph as she was just too cute! I had a talk with her father the other day and he said he'd be booking a family photo shoot with me soon. I'm looking forward to it. :-)

The low afternoon sunshine coming in through the large window on the right made for some lovely lighting and I waited until she was in this light to take her portrait. The two catch lights in her eyes really bring her eyes to life. The main light source being the large window I just mentioned above and the second catch light being made by the window in the door behind me. 

It's a shame about the window directly behind her head as this bright area in the photo is quite distracting. I burned it down some so that it wasn't so bright. I did notice this while I was taking the photo but there wasn't an immediate solution to the problem, not without loosing the lovely light on her face. 

Two year old Blue Eyed Beauty

The above photograph has had some extra post processing done to it. I did not exactly invent this look all by myself but the technique I used I developed myself. What I do is after normal processing I create a black and white adjustment layer. I really push the contrast of the B/W image then I lower the opacity of the B/W layer by 50% letting some of the colour of the original image come though. You wind up with a lovely desaturated image. Well I think it's lovely, my husband prefers the original full colour image which is below. 

Two year old blue eyed beauty (original)

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Photography information: Above: Canon 5D II with a Canon 50mm 1.4 prime lens. 1/800th of a second exposure at f/1.4. ISO 400. Hand held. AV (Aperture Priority) mode.

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(Please note: I know who the little girl is in this photo, I just didn't want to say who she was to the world wide web.)


On my walk home I noticed this sign by the canal. It tickled my funny bone so I photographed it.

CAUTION DEEP MUD

It's not every day you see this sign. Actually it's the first time I've ever seen it. If we'd seen a sign like this when we were kids you'd been hard pressed to keep us out of it. :-D In the background you can see the road construction continues up Bath Road in Stroud.

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Photography information: Above: Canon 5D II with a Canon 85mm 1.8 prime lens. 1/640th of a second exposure at f/1.8. ISO 100. Hand held. AV (Aperture Priority) mode.

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I leave you with a few photographs of flowers that I took on the way home today. All taken with the 85mm prime lens. Well and a camera too of course. ;-)

Cloudy Monday Walk to Town

Junction of Rodborough Hill and Bath Road, Stroud

I had an appointment in Stroud today so I walked down into town. It was a bit cloudy and cold but still a nice walk with lots going on. Going to be a lot more going on soon too as there are more road works going to be happening soon. And right at the point where the worst of Stroud's rush hour traffic comes to a stop twice a day during the work/school week. Sometimes over half my travel time to Gloucester from my house is just getting out of Stroud, especially if I go this way. I will be avoiding this way the last half of January. 

The canal in front of the old Stroud and Swindon building in Stroud as seen from Wallbridge

Lots of work still going on down at the canal. Today they were working on removing the little damn they made during some major reconstruction of the canal and road. You can't see the damn anymore as they'd let the water back in, so they were busy removing it from under water. 

Stroud Canal at Wallbridge

Stroud Canal at Wallbridge

This brings out the kid in me, I love watching these guys. As kids we pretended to do just this sort of thing either with toy dump trucks and cranes or with just our hands.....in the sand...in the mud...in streams...at the sea....and in ditches. I can't help but smile thinking about it. :-)

Stroud Canal looking the other direction

As you can see above the new gates are now in and they are busy cleaning out the other side now. I'm quite sure the guy on the left is not doing what it looks like he's doing.

During all of this resurrection of the canal the path is closed. Looking forward to them opening it back up as I like to walk along there. Hope they finish it soon as come spring time there are lots of babies born along this bit of the canal. Would be a shame if they had to find somewhere else this year.

As I sit here thinking about it all, I guess there won't be so many swans and ducks and other wildlife making their homes along here anymore. Not with the canal all being cleared out. Shame that. :-/

The Lock Keeper's Cafe in Stroud

The Lock Keeper's Cafe is a lovely place to have lunch, I know as I've had lunch there several times now.  The last time I had lunch there was with my husband and I was introduced to 'Bubble and Squeak' for the first time! I loved it! Yummy!!

This is also the location of the Friday Forum where a small group of local small business people meet on Fridays for a bit of chatting and a bit of networking and a bit of working. Quite a few bring their laptops and have them open and logged on. I usually just pop by for a quick lunch and a natter. Anyone is welcome to join in, if you're in the area on a Friday drop in and say hello. :-)

Something odd on my walk to and from town today was the number of flowers I saw about. Very odd for January I think. Here are a couple of the flowers that I saw today.

January Daisies

January Roses

After my appointment I had a roam around town and went in a few shops. Mainly the charity shops, those are my favourite in town. I feel like I'm on a treasure hunt of some sort and I never know what I might find. Today I found what I think is a very interesting and I just had to buy it. Here's a photo of it:

Detroit Spinners Smash Hits!

Yes it's a real record! It's a shame it's been melted like this, but I think it's cool. I've seen this sort of thing on the internet before, one of those blog post where they explain how to do this at home. It's got some pretty good songs on it too, shame  I can't play it! Not sure what I'm going to do with it. What can you do with a bowl with a hole in the centre? hhmmm I just stuck it on a nail in the wall above the stereo. Looks pretty cool, think I might leave it there...for now.

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Photograph information: All of the photos in this blog post were taken with a Canon 5D II with a Canon 85mm 1.8 lens. Settings varied. 

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