Night-time Flooding on the Watermeadows...

Flooding on the Salisbury (Harnham) watermeadows happens every year - it is a big sponge that literally stops both the Cathedral and the city centre from flooding, so scenes like this are not uncommon in winter.

You can see that this taken some time after midnight, as the Cathedral Spire is not floodlit. The online weather forecast had it dry, clear even until about 4 or 5 a.m. I clomped the mile there in Wellington boots as I had no idea how bad it was actually going to be. It actually wasn't that bad on the Town Path, from where I set up the tripod.

As I had Pink Floyd's 'Echoes' double best of album on the Ipod, it started to spit and spot rain. Three pictures in and it was uncomfortably heavy. I feared for the camera - the D7000 is not a professional camera and hasn't got tons of weatherproofing. If I'd known it was going to rain, I would have taken the older, but pro D700 which is rather more water resistant.

So, just five pics and I marched (clomped) back the mile home. I would have loved to have taken loads more as it looked quite photogenic, with the city lights bouncing off the floodwater. I took some during the sunny daytime November 2012 - I'm sure we all recall similar weather then to what we're having now.

Frankly, I was not that happy with any of the images. All had been exposed for the bright, street-light lit foreground and much work had to be done on all of them. I edited them all until I did this one last. It is probably the most acceptable of them all. There are some nice details in LARGE

Lens is Nikkor 10-24mm

About 11pm I went and photographed a band called Trapped on Amber, for publication in this freebie music paper that I've been asked to contribute to. They wanted me to do a review as well, but I only knew the lead singer, none of their songs and so I declined. I don't do reviews, just the pictures.

All this means is that I'm not only way behind with editing the New Year's Eve band pics, I'm also rather behind with commenting on some of your lovely Journals. I'll get there...

I've also had a nice new lot of subscribers - all, if I recall, brand new to Blip, starting their journeys on this incredible site of ours. I welcome them and thank them and hope that you find my images interesting.

Charlie

I had purposefully said little about the subject of my portrait of the day before yesterday's Blip. I gave some background info but nothing much about him.

I popped round his parent's house yesterday afternoon and he was studying for his MA. Tea was served and talk about the Blip ensued, him getting it on his laptop and looking at it for the first time. He liked it.

There's obvious (friendly??) rivalry between him and his siblings.... he was most put out that he had "only" got to no 3 in the Spotlights, where both Kate and Luke had hot-footed it to the top. He was doing this moaning with humour of course - I couldn't say things like that perhaps that he was less attractive, or that the photo was worse. I did say that getting to the top is actually very rare and hard to achieve!

I then went for the killer: he should have prayed harder, then. If he hadn't prayed, then he shouldn't be surprised and if he had prayed, it obviously hadn't worked!!

This, of course, was highly amusing for us both. I wouldn't be a friend of his if he couldn't take a joke about such and he wouldn't be mine if I didn't make such jokes...whether one thinks the vocation of priesthood is valid or not, I think Charlie would be a humane and refreshing addition to the clergy - as long as I didn't have to attend any of his services, that is!