A Flickr day out

Turvey… a village nestling right on the border of Bedfordshire, some miles west and slightly north of Bedford town itself.
One of the several villages I’d earmarked to visit for a little photo session yet never seemed to have quite got around to.

Well, yesterday it happened!

Email pops into my mailbox Sunday from one of my Flickr friends, proposing a visit to my part of the world. Wonderful idea, so arrangements rapidly made then, almost at the last moment, I’m seized with the inspiration to rope in another mate as well. Also on Flickr of course.

So that’s what happened. And a thoroughly enjoyable day was had by all. Well I had a thoroughly enjoyable day at least.

Would have uploaded the pics from the shoot last night, but then was suddenly confronted with a slight snag. Two, actually.
Somehow or other certain photography-related tasks have managed to sort of not quite get done recently and, about to offload the Turvey pics to the jolly old computer I find there’s whole batches of pics from heaven knows how many shoots all waiting there to be archived.
Oh well, had to be done sometime I s’pose. Must remember in future the good old mantra “Workflow, workflow, workflow”!

Then I hit the second snag… er… I sort of fell asleep over the keyboard. Rousing myself and finding I’d curiously acquired a bloody stiff neck and a few other aches (mainly in the head department) thought it probably best to delay processing the pics and hit the sack instead.

Fresh start this morning then (at some ridiculously early hour) and I can’t say I was feeling very optimistic. Cos when I’d been checking the pics on camera the previous evening none of them looked particularly promising (you’d think I would’ve learned by now, wouldn’t you? The LCD simply can’t be relied upon).
And that’s to say nothing of the ones that were messed up by that bastard Nordic oaf’s constant attempts to sabotage all my shots! Jogging my arm at the critical moment, crossing in front of the lens, refusing to get out of frame… all the usual old stunts of his. Bastard! (One of these days…)

Plus, I have to confess, I was plagued by the sky causing me a few exposure issues as well. It was one of those fairly manky grey overcast days when you think its quite dull but in fact there’s patches of the sky that are actually a lot brighter than they look. Dammit!
But of course, what’s to be expected in sunny June with us rapidly approaching the height of Summer?

Consequently, as I say, I wasn’t feeling terribly optimistic. But as it turned out, with just a minor bit of tweaking, I’ve ended up with a batch of pics that I find reasonably satisfying. All things considered.
A day well spent then. Rewarding in terms of production. And made that much more enjoyable by having finally met a Flickr friend “in the flesh” so to speak. Yep. A good day.

The real bugger of it was though, we were a little bit constrained for time and Turvey just happens to be a really picturesque village. Thus alas we had to leave much of it completely unexplored. Great shame. But certainly potential for another visit or two sometime.

And as Bob (the visiting Flickr friend) remarked, the village looks just as though it could have been lifted straight out of an episode of “The Avengers”. Odd. I’d never noticed it before but he’s absolutely spot on!
Think its as much to do with the atmosphere of the place as the actual physical scenery. But then, I think there’s something a bit strange about the whole of Bedfordshire (and if anyone comments “Well, there would be, wouldn’t there. After all, you live there” I’ll… I’ll… well, just don’t, that’s all!).

Meanwhile, you can see the whole set on Flickr here. (And don’t forget to check out the pics shot by the scurvy knaves that accompanied me! The bastard Nordic oaf’s are here and I’m still waiting to see whether the third of our merry trio creates a set of his or not.)