Croeso i Caerdydd

Added: April 06, 2008

Tags: beach castle cathedral museum photos ruins stonehenge

Greetings from wet and windy Cardiff! This is my postcard 1.0 (or better 0.5 :-) ). Finally, I was able to get to some sight-seeing here at March 7th-9th. Pictures follow, some also with explanation. The original idea to keep it like postcard with 3-5 pictures failed due to incorrect scope estimation :-(

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Friday
Saturday
Sunday

Sunday

Our destinations lie easward from Cardiff this time. We even will come to England.

Caldicot Castle

Nice (and closed ;-) ) castle in south eastern Wales. Weather looks much better than yesterday, I am putting polarizing filter on again.

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Chepstow Castle

I have been in Chepstow 6 months ago, but there are not enough photo shooting possibilities around it and still be reachable by others (yes, other bank of river promises nice panorama, but how to get there... not to mention shooting against sun. OK, I will pay 3.50.

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What's wrong with me if I associate landscape pictures with a food?
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Just quick shot during our retreat to car parked in far away (I will not mention that supermarket chain again)
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Tintern Abbey

Ruins of abbey close enough and really nice to grant next stop in our busy itinerary. Clouds are starting to thick a bit, maybe they will form nice backdrop for my pictures and if not, our next stop might need them more (stay tuned!)

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I have to think about some punishment for not taking tripod with me. This place screams for HDR images!!! OK, terrible pictures punished me enough :-)
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Stonehenge

Leaving Tintern Abbey we decided to change order of next stops, because we realized that we might not be able to make it in time. Heavy clouds are visible on the east, by getting closer it starts to rain. GPS picked some terrible road, even worse that those narrow ones in Wales.

Yes, we've made it! It's 15:30, open to 16:00! We came on time... well, if we came 10 minutes sooner, this rainbow would be around something else than "toilets".... (not shown here) :-( Some people must take real keeper here BTW, I have never seen so small and close rainbow - nearly in reach distance. I did not take any panorama, because I tried to get composition right while fighting rain concurrently - still some data race occured (sorry for geek speak, I cannot help myself being near those timeless patterns ;-) ).
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Oh, well, no decent picture will happen here with so many meddlers around :-(
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Now I understand importance of fence around Rocks. My companion complains, but I am happy that it is possible to take decent picture that is not "infested" by people ;-)
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I call this adequate quality based on conditions: rain, wind, no tripod, stress. Even burned out sky is not visible much. "Next time" (like that's ever gonna happen :-) ) I will make more space on the left. I attribute it to previously mentioned stress
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Salisbury Cathedral

the first picture (but unreadable at this size) is banner telling Salisbry Cathedral has 750 years now. And we did not bring any present :-( So at least I will try to walk lightly on this nice lawn during shooting. BTW compare sky here and in Stonehenge - it is only 17.5km! Coincidence? I think not! ;-)

18mm is not wide enough. I definitelly need to buy 10 or 12 mm lens...
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Bath

Only short stop during our return home. Originally we wanted to see Roman Bath, but Stonehenge "has been granted with higher priority", thus we came here well after opening hours... It is dark so we cannot appreciate yellow color of all buildings in this town. Finally, no excuse to pull out tripod from trunk and the results are great.

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