Florentine Sunset

 As I looked out of my window this evening there was a beautiful glow in the sky as the sun was setting out over the Irish Sea. I am so very lucky living on the west coast because I am treated to the most wonderful sunsets and today, after a week of grey cloudy skies it was  great to see the rich colours that I enjoy so much.

As I was thinking about that I recalled the sunset over Florence while I was there with my youngest son in 2018, it was so spectacular viewed from the Piazzale Michelangelo. There are millions of photos of the city from this spot given it is a favourite tourist destination and it is the perfect vantage point to view the city with the famous duomo of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, the Campanile di Giotto and of course the Ponte Vecchio spanning the River Arno. I have even shared some of these, or similar images in 2018 but today I was inspired to review them and edit them to really bring out the colours of the sunset.

I have also included a shot of a hillside with the old city walls enclosed by trees which have grown up as the wall has decayed.

I have wanted to return to the city because although I have been lucky enough to visit on two occasions I have never really spent enough time there to see everything I want to see. It is possible that I will go back in a few weeks as I will be traveling to Venice again and a day trip to Florence by train is definitely doable however nothing is certain at this stage. Wish me luck.

The Dell

 I am sticking with a watery theme for today with this shot looking  upstream towards the waterfall at Bodnant  Gardens. I was stood on the bridge looking down at the falls for the abstract pictures I shared a few days ago. 

I knew as I walked along by the stream that I wanted to get this shot and I had to position my tripod on some stepping stones mid-stream to get it using another long exposure and my variable ND filter. I have also tweaked some of the colours in lightroom to add vibrancy to the overall image and I am very pleased with the results.

Heart of the UK

So today I went for a drive through the Trough of Bowland, a wonderful part of Lancashire that I have never been to before, there was some stunning scenery but unfortunately my camera was playing up and so I only managed a couple of snaps on my phone.
I stopped off briefly at the small village of Dunsop Bridge which claims to be the centre of the United Kingdom. It has a bridge and it's quite pretty.