Swan on a lake with green algae
England,  The Changing Seasons

Gallery: an August selection

When summer opens, I see how fast it matures and fear it will be short; but after the heats of July and August, I am reconciled, like one who has had his swing, to the cool of autumn.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Although August has been hot, mostly sunny and very dry, I can already sense that summer is closer to its end than its beginning. The lights are going on earlier each evening. The warmth of the sun is tempered by a cooling breeze. And a few showers, and one day of steady rain, have started to re-green the weary grass in our parks.

August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time.

Sylvia Plath

Our August

We’ve had an up-and-down sort of month. While July was bookended by happy gatherings of family and friends, August has been similarly bookended with funerals. Both the relatives who died were well into their eighties and in poor health, so neither came as a shock. But it meant two last-minute unplanned trips up to Newcastle. Although it was good to see the family, these occasions are naturally always tinged with sadness.

Between those we spent a few nights in Ripon, as we did last August, in order to keep a regular ‘appointment’. It’s our tradition to meet up for a pub lunch in Grinton in Swaledale each August with the daughters of the family with whom my father-in-law was evacuated. His ashes were scattered on his beloved Grinton Moor. So this annual get-together is a sort of memorial to him as well as a reason to visit this beautiful part of the country. There was time for some sightseeing in the area, visiting Knaresborough and beautiful Fountains Abbey. And on the way back we spent a night in Derbyshire so we could visit Eyam and the Radical Horizons sculptures at Chatsworth. I’ve already posted about most of those places but I’ve included a few as-yet unshared images from them in this month’s slideshow.

And of course there were the usual local pleasures and trips up to London. We had a walk one Sunday morning in my favourite park, St James’s. I met Virtual Tourist friends for a delightful evening in a Vauxhall pub. And on the Bank Holiday Monday at the end of the month we headed to Soho to visit the Photographers Gallery and enjoy an open-air lunch. There won’t be many more of those this year I guess!

Technical notes

I’ve spent some time this month getting used to my new Panasonic Lumix FZ330, so quite a few of these shots were taken on that. But for others I continued to appreciate the convenience of my compact point and shoot Lumix, and a handful were taken on my phone. See if you can work out which!

I’ve done less editing/fiddling than usual. But most shots have been tweaked with Photoshop Elements or Nik Color Efex, and in the case of the rhino, a Silver Efex conversion to monochrome. And as always I am linking my photography highlights to Ju-Lyn and Brian’s Changing Seasons challenge.

  • Close up of a yellow moon
  • Giant fly on a sculpted ice cream cone
  • Adult black duck with fluffy duckling
  • Large grey bird by water
  • Wide river sparkling in sunlight
  • Blue framed window and door
  • Purple daisy
  • Two black birds on a wooden ledge
  • Green fields in a valley between heather covered hills
  • Yellow rose with small insect
  • Black and white cat on grass in front of building with broken windows
  • Tree silhouetted against a pale orange sky with dramatic cloud
  • Landscape with trees, rock escarpment and blue sky
  • Yellow stone bridge over a river
  • Large grey bird in a river
  • Black and white photo of a sculpture of a rhino
  • Relief carving of a grasshopper covered in gold and surrounded by a wreath

33 Comments

Do share your thoughts, I'd love to hear from you! And please include your name in case WP marks you 'anonymous' - thank you