Gavin Johnson's photos

A solitary tulip I found on the weekend walk. I was able to get directly above it to look down on the beauty of its symmetry.

HBM! More from the archives - a rather tranquil park in the city of Savannah, Georgia in a 2005 road trip. The trees are draped with Spanish Moss, which is actually an epiphytic plant, and is neither Spanish, nor moss!

Spring has definitely arrived here, so we had a morning walk in the woods. I thought I'd create a collage image of the walk, with Bluebells, Celandines, Periwinkles and Primroses all in bloom (the bluebells are only just showing, but will be a riot of colour in a couple of weeks). Lambs are gamboling in the fields, and there is plenty of birdsong in the air. The screen captures are from the Merlin Bird ID phone app - very useful to identify the birdsong in the vicinity, and completely free! (https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org)

After a charity walk in Cheltenham today we were lucky to get a glimpse inside the usually private school chapel at the town's College. The building was designed to celebrate the college's 50th anniversary, and dedicated in 1896. A group of senior pupils were undertaking a masterclass on the chapel organ, which sounds as magnificent as the building looks.

HFF! This started as a fence to prevent people falling into the lake, but the local gulls have repurposed it into a perch and landing strip!

Wild garlic leaves Lightly toasted almonds Parmesan Extra virgin olive oil Squeeze of lemon juice

Spring is definitely here at last, and we've had our first foraging walk of the year. Near us, the woodland floor is carpeted with wild garlic - excellent in salads or chopped into cooked dishes, and it makes a tasty pesto (in a PiP)! In the UK it's illegal to dig up wild plants (without the landowner's permission) but ok to take leaves, flowers and fruit. Taking one leaf from a wild garlic plant is perfectly sustainable as it continues to grow happily.

The leaves haven't fully grown yet, and in a few weeks the woodland floor will be covered in white flowers and heady with the scent of garlic. The seasons are getting increasingly blurred... here and there amongst the garlic there are already a few bluebell flowers, which would normally be a month away.

HWW - another photo from my rediscovered archive of a US road trip. This was taken in a passageway through the fortifications at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. Constructed on a man-made island atop a sandbar near the entrance to Charleston Harbour, this fort was the site of the first exchange of fire at the commencement of the US Civil War in April 1861. I discovered an interesting US Civil War fact... the last widow of a Civil War veteran died just a few years ago in December 2020. At age 17, in 1936, Helen Viola Jackson married 93 year old James Bolin, who had served in the (Union) 14th Missouri Cavalry. Bolin had offered to marry her so that she could inherit his war pension, as thanks for helping with his chores. When he died three years later, his daughters from a previous marriage threatened to ruin Helen's reputation if she applied for Bolin's pension, so she never did - passing up a small fortune - and never remarried.

Another photo from an old road trip that felt like it would benefit from being in black and white. High above the shoreline on a beach in northern Florida, someone had abandoned a game of horseshoes. The horseshoes were rusted up and gradually getting buried by blown sand.

HBM - I'm not sure if this qualifies, as you can't really see the bench that the lady is sitting on. It's still a favourite lucky shot of mine, caught some years ago when I was taking seascape photos in Georgia, USA.

We hit a small issue on out Friday 13th "Old guys" walk to Stroud - a fallen tree blocking the way. We were able to crawl under it, but if we were in a car, I'm not sure that driving slowly would have helped! Perhaps they'd run out of "Road Closed" signs :-)

Güni's excellent macro photographs have inspired me to take some close up images again, and I'll get to it when the wind and rain ease up outside. I took this one a very long time ago (over 20 years!) but I still rather like it. I got in close the the very centre of a water lily flower. The EXIF tells me I had an aperture of f8, which in hindsight probably wasn't narrow enough, as it could do with a little more depth of field.

HWW! This gate leads from the grounds of Fulham Palace in London to its huge walled garden. Situated alongside the river Thames, the site has been a residence of the Bishops of London since AD 704, when Bishop Waldhere aquired the Manor of Fulham, which was a vast estate covering most of Hammersmith, Fulham, Acton, Ealing and Finchley. The current manor house was built in the mid-13th century, and this wall dates back to the end of the 14th, so it's looking in pretty good shape, all things considered!

A composite image of the same area through time - Cheltenham, England. At the top, a photo taken today, of “Neptune’s Fountain” in front of commercial offices at the end of the block of Municipal Offices in the town centre. In the middle picture from the 1950s, the same fountain, but behind it used to be the Regal Cinema, opened in 1939, renamed as the “ABC Cinema” in 1962, closed in 1981 and demolished in 1986. At the bottom, a restored and colourised photograph originally from around 1880, showing the Imperial Rooms at the same site. The building pictured used to be the Imperial Spa, and was originally located about 250m away from the fountain. The Imperial Spa was demolished in 1837 to make way for the construction of the Queen’s Hotel (which is still in operation) and the building was reconstructed brick by brick at the site shown.

It's breeding season for Black Headed Gulls, and I captured this image at WWT Slimbridge. As the birds themselves are pretty much monochrome, I thought the photo would suit a black and white treatment. I used the NIK tools to tweak the contrast and add a bit of simulated grain. Perhaps I should have given the gulls some privacy... :-)

HBM! (There's a bench overlooking the pond if you look closely!) A shot from a weekend excursion to London; Bishops Park is a small green oasis in Fulham, alongside the Thames just upriver from Putney Bridge. The scene looks tranquil, but the building in the back left of the frame is Craven Cottage, home to Fulham Football Club, which was established in 1879, making it London's oldest professional club. The crowd noise from Sunday's match was ringing around the park at the time of the photo. (Fulham lost, noisily, 1-0).

Down on the south coast of England, the coastline has many fossilised footprints of dinosaurs. Here, we have the fresh traces of dinosaur descendants... Pheasant footprints!