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. ;-)

Coffee with a Friend

There's not much better in life than coffee with a friend. Or lunch as the case may be. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend in Stroud, today it was coffee with another friend. Well I had coffee, he had a Pepsi. 

Neither occasion was planed more than a few minutes in advance. It's great to have friends like this, I'm very lucky indeed. Both friends are photographers as well and of course we talked about photography. I was the only one who brought a camera along though, neither friend being surprised, I'm rarely seen without my camera. I don't always take photos, I just like having it around. I feel awkwardly naked without it. We talked about more than photography of course, I'm not that obsessed with photography...much.

Top of discussions lately have been what are we going to do with this year. I've made a few resolutions that so far I'm keeping up with. I'm not usually one for resolutions but this year I really want to make a few changes and figured why not start on the 1st. So far so good! Now if I can just stick with it. 

What are these resolutions? All the usual one's I'm afraid. Loose weight, get fit, organize my life. I look back over the past few years and wonder why I didn't do more or better than I did. I'm a bit ashamed really, especially as there is no excuse. I have the time and the resources and I'm not exactly stupid. I can be a bit of a blonde at times, I'll admit to that. And I'm turning into a bit of a grumpy old woman, which I think is funny. 

Let me tell you a little story that happened yesterday while I was waiting for my friend to get to town so that we could go have lunch. I had about an hour to kill so I walked around town and visited all of the charity shops. I'd had enough shopping so I decided to sit on a bench outside Oxfam and dare one of the 'Chuggers' to come speak to me. (For those who don't know, 'Chuggers' are those people who hang about town usually with clipboards trying to talk to everyone about what ever charity they are working for that day. Short for Charity Muggers.) They didn't get a chance to because before long here come my friend around the corner. She asked me what I was doing sitting there. I replied "Practicing to be an old lady". We both laughed, but, I was serious. 

Lunch was at The Lord John in Stroud and was on me. There must have been a lunch special on as our bill only came to just under £10, and yes that included a drink each. Food was great, company was great, we had a lovely time. Then we went shopping! We went to check out the sale at Pure on King Street. I think it was a closing down sale. They've got a lot of cool stuff in there, including some boots that I just loved. I only looked at them though, I didn't buy them. I don't often find shoes that I really like, so today I went back and got them! See image below:

My new boots!

I love my new boots! They were a great price too! :-D

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Image information: Both images were taken today with a Canon 5D II and 85mm 1.8 prime lens. Yes the first image is crooked, I like it that way. The second image I used a remote control to fire the camera. As I was using such a shallow DOF I manually set the focus in advance. 

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A Christmas Lunch with Cyclist

Yesterday, Saturday, we went to visit a friend to collect a couple of free standing book shelves. We wound up staying the afternoon and Peter built three free standing book shelves for her then we collected the two we came to collect. We also came away with a small bedside lamp and a keyboard with stand. We are going to pay her for the keyboard even though she tried to give it to us for all the help with the book shelves. Peter didn't want payment for building the shelves, what else are friends for? :-)

Today was the joint Christmas Lunch with the Stonehouse Wheelers and the Stroud Valleys Cycling Club. I got up a bit late and had so much to do that I missed the start of the ride, so I stayed behind and finished up what I was doing then drove to the Pub for lunch with the clubs. Was best anyway as I had so much to carry. Lots of people were expecting me to show up with the Club Calendars for them to buy. We had a lovely meal and a lovely time. Sadly I didn't take my camera so I have no photos to show. I should have taken it though, there were several others there with cameras, two even had DSLRs. Oh well, next time. :-p

Tomorrow Peter will be off working in London again. I'm so tempted to try and tag along. I'd like a day Christmas shopping in London, but it would cost around £50 for a train ticket for me. Why does everything have to be so expensive?!! Never mind, we will be traveling up to London on Saturday so we can be at the airport early Sunday morning to pick up my daughter Sarah. YaY!!! I can't wait to see her. My baby is 16 now, so hard to believe!

Here is a photo of my two beautiful daughters from last Christmas: