Rugby Cement Works

Rugby Cement Works (Lewis Craik/Lewis Craik Photography)These cement works dominate the skyline of Rugby and over the four years I’ve lived here I’ve grown to like them, when returning from a long journey, seeing them on the horizon is a sign I’m nearly home.

I can see the cement works from my kitchen window and had been wanting to take a long exposure photo of them lit up at night for quite some time, but as it is so near to home I was waiting for the perfect sky, (slightly lighter and less cloudy than in this image) but sometimes you just have to go for it! I’m glad I did as I am pleased with the result and will certainly have a print of it on my wall when I move away from Rugby!

Costa Rica: Tamarindo Sunset

Tamarindo Sunset

I’m still working through images from my trip to Costa Rica (renovating a house, is taking up most of my free time at the moment), but I’m getting there! This sunset was captured in Tamarindo, the last place we stayed and there’s just something I really like about it, so I thought it was worth blogging. The photo isn’t technically perfect, in fact it was taken on my Canon Powershot S90 compact camera, but I really like the colours of the sea and the sky (I did accentuate them a bit when processing the raw file) and it just makes me want to be back in Costa Rica on the beach at sunset.

Costa Rica: Cloud Forest Abstract

I am working my through the images I took in Costa Rica over the last few weeks, and this one has jumped out as probably my favourite.

We were on the “Hanging Bridges” walk in the Selvatura Park, which is in the Santa Elena Cloud Forest Reserve and I saw these trees and knew I could do something with the symmetrical lines. However, on their own I wasn’t happy with that shot, it was too messy, so I added in a bit of movement and as soon as I saw the preview on the back of my camera, I knew I’d be really pleased with the final result.

Wheat Field

Wheat Field in the evening sunshine, Flecknoe, Warwickshire. June 2011 (Lewis Craik)

Wheat Field in the evening sunshine, Flecknoe, Warwickshire. June 2011

This image is from an evening walk near the village of Flecknoe in Warwickshire, as it was such a lovely evening it would have been rude not to go out with the camera. I really liked how the green of the young wheat and blue sky were so vivid in the evening light.

Arbroath Signal Tower

When I’m visiting family in Perth, Scotland I usually take a trip over to the harbour town of Arbroath in Angus, mainly to get Arbroath Smokies (a very tasty local speciality of smoked haddock) but also because its really photogenic, it’s a small harbour surrounded by brightly coloured buildings, there are sea defences being battered by the waves and the subject of this shot – the signal tower museum, although this image is black and white the building is white with red details, which always seems to go down well in photographic competitions.

Arbroath signal tower, now a museum. Arbroath, Scotland

For more images of the harbour, signal tower and sea defences have a look at my Arbroath gallery:

 

Arbroath

I’m back up in Scotland, which means, more landscape photography.

This morning we decided to head to Forfar to get some bridies for lunch and seeing as it was such a nice morning we decided to continue over to Arbroath to get some smokies for dinner.

Arbroath Harbour:

Dad at Arbroath Harbour:

The only downside to the trip was that it was perfect sports car weather, driving on perfect sports car roads, but both the sports cars are back down in the shire. Now it’s time to eat the smokies…

Perth by night

I’m now back in Rugby, after a nightmare journey down from Perth, featuring a closed airport and lack of customer service from the airline, luckily for my next trip I will be driving.

I hadn’t actually planned to shoot anything on Wednesday, I’d been snowboarding up at Glenshee, without the camera gear, it was another perfect blue sky day of Scottish snowboarding. After getting back into town, we went to the Shake Bar for a Scottish tablet milkshake, which everyone should experience in their life. We enjoyed the milkshakes overlooking the Tay as the sun was setting and for some reason, the Tay was flat clam making the reflections of lights from the bridges really vivid. So we rushed back to grab the cameras and these are the resulting images:

The rest of the images can be seen on the Perth by night gallery

Kinnoull Hill

After a couple of days with rubbish light, we were able to get out with the cameras again, we decided to keep it fairly local and walked to Kinnoull Hill on the outskirts of Perth. I’d remembered about a pond, that was used for the sport of curling in the olden days, from a previous trip, so we took a detour to find it again. The pond was frozen and the ice was pretty thick, certainly enough to take my weight. (Don’t play around on frozen lakes etc, it isn’t big or clever)

The real reason for choosing Kinnoull Hill, was Kinnoull Tower, a derelict tower perched on the edge of a cliff, probably a look out post to spot people coming up the Tay from the North Sea/Dundee. Its well positioned to catch the evening sun and with the Tay weaving away in the background. This afternoon the Tay was fairly full, with hardly a ripple and I really like the way this image has come out.

Also in Kinnoull Woods there are a series of wooden sculptures by Pete Bowsher (aka Chainsaw Pete), this bird of prey (looks like an eagle, but buzzard sized) was up near Kinnoull Tower.