Welcome!!

...to a Christmas Service in Salisbury Cathedral...

Internet and email down all down yesterday. After 5 hours phoned Virgin Media and after much coaxing found out from the nice man in India that I would get it back 'as soon as its back working'. "When?" was my automatic reply. '3rd January.' Somewhat perplexed, a little angry and very frustrated I muttered something about keeping a record of how many days it was unavailable so I could get a refund.

It's up now, for how long and how reliable it's going to be is another matter, so -

This was taken in readiness for the 8a.m. service Sunday morning. As I'm down my Dad's later today and so won't be in Salisbury for the Christmas services at the Cathedral. Without the 'net, I couldn't get the latest forecast, the one on TV said cloudy all day so with the pre-dawn drabness the glowing lights would glow even more. I anticipated hoards and queues of worshippers, as in a Victorian greetings card, but only dribs and drabs - I could count them on one hand.

One elderly gent, using a zimmerframe used me and my tripod as a short excuse to stop. He said that he used to use an old twin-lens reflex Rollei and always used it on a tripod. He then said that his wife stopped him using it. Thinking of something remotely witty to add, I could only muster "didn't she have enough legs, herself, then?", to which the gent roared with laughter and proceeded on his merry way, albeit very slowly...

I didn't crop the left side as I wanted the fork in the tree branches, as it helps frame the pic. I lassoeod the building to lighten it and added red all over, which actually somehow turned the basic white tree lights a little multicoloured. I then reduced the colour saturation of the interior lights. Taken with the Nikkor D 17-35mm f2.8 on the DX D7000.

I then took quite a few looking through the out of focus lights through to various parts of the Cathedral with the other lens I had, my 70-200mm f2.8. These were often surprisingly effective and definitely for my Blip but somehow this early shot was more Christmassy. Frankly, the tree, that had no star atop, looked more and straggly and spindly as daylight progressed.