Actually managed to get myself out of bed for an early morning outing with my camera. Clear skies and cold night so hoping for some atmospheric effects. A pair of nice oak trees in a field near Sowton Bridge so I headed across the field only to find it full of 50 frisky steers who dribbled on my lenses and resolutely parked themselves between me and my trees as the light came up. Took a few photos of them for good measure then headed up the hill to see lots of nice mist forming in the valley.

Lots of the pictures troubled with blotchy marks and I’m not sure at this stage whether the dirt is on the sensor or somewhere in the lens. Need to get it sorted anyhow.  Don’t show up so much in a cropped low res picture but here they are …

Think this was my best picture of the morning. Needed quite a lot of work with the patch tool (thank God for Photoshop!) but plenty of others were not realistically recoverable. I like the artefact of the shaft of sunlight burst across the picture. First attempt to print up hasn’t come up quite as well as it does on screen. Need to lighten/brighten a little more maybe.

The second time in the day I got very cold with a camera was on the touchline of the rugby pitch. Unfortunately my favourite pictures don’t actually include the young man I was there to support. Set camera on sport mode which I hadn’t used before, and handholding the 70-300mm zoom with image stabiliser on. Sharpness pretty in impressive on some and disappointing on others. Frankly I admire the bravery of the boys – horrible, brutal game!