"Oh Bails - I'm OUT!!"

With our Antipodean friends all saying that it's almost their Spring - this makes today our last day of summer...

The biggest shock of that is that of opportunities lost, or neglected. Like this cricket match being the very last of the year, at the South Wilts ground, at least.

I managed only one other day there, way back in mid May... where has the summer gone?? With so many Saturdays being rainy and with other events - including London trip and Festival last weekend - taking over, the cricket has been neglected somewhat.

So, to make up for this, I was out again armed with my Sigma 150-500mm, stuck permanently at the long end, giving an equivalent focal length of 750mm in 35mm term. I used manual focus throughout, using my left thumb to fine-tune the focus ring, lens attached to the monopod. Used 'high' drive' which is about 6fps and to counteract these bursts of up to half a dozen shots each time I had in my fastest SD card, Sandisk's 16gb 95mbs. I expect that a slower card would have sufficed but just to make sure, it would have been churlish to not use this card for what it was designed for.

All images were taken in horizontal format, this has been cropped by 50% from the sides and sharpened a bit, correspondingly. Check out the action closer on LARGE

The game itself was south Wiltshire 2nd XI team against Bashley 2nd XI (no, I don't know where that is either!) with the home team opening the batting. The runs came quite thick and fast - a few wickets followed, like this one and then two hours later, I started to feel unwell again and caught the bus home.

Have concluded that I do have a lurgy of some sort, after all but it was great to be out in the warm sunshine (shimmering heat-haze through the long lens) and fresh air, after nearly a week or mostly being confined to the flat. I so wanted to go to other big events this week - maybe I still will, with the Bournemouth Air Festival being on my radar...hopefully tomorrow (its last day), I'll get some close-up plane shots with this same lens.

I need a rest now..., will pick back up on Blip later - Hope you're all having a great a weekend and making the most of this officially last day of summer!