Lone Sentinel

Friday is one of my swimming mornings and if I can get to the baths before 10.00am I can save myself 60p as the swimming lanes are still up and they charge less rather than more for this service.

After my swim I came back home to look after Leila, our greyhound who has suddenly developed a limp and could not go with Margaret and friend on their usual strenuous walks on oner of the local beaches. I don't know how she developed this muscle spasm as she was fine after yesterday's walk and bounced up for her late afternoon food. However, it is important to get her moving so I took her a small slow walk down to the river. It certainly helped as she was limping less by the time we returned home.

The weather today is a distinct improvement on yesterday's dreich conditions but there heavy rain clouds as well as patches of sun around which make for a brooding sky . This always triggers something in my brain and I think moody monochrome with my favourite subject - winter trees. As I did not have much time I just drove up and down some of the local lanes. Did not find anything too stunning so went for a lone tree against a brooding sky. I must make the effort the chart all the local best tree views. There was a road sign in the picture originally which was too close to the tree to avoid at the capture stage. However, I got rid of it quite quickly by selecting the area to be removed and using 'Fill > Content Aware' in Photoshop. This is a really useful way of losing distractions in a photograph and far better usually than doing the cloning yourself.