Today turned out to be another beautiful sunny day after a chilly start.
A dozen of us assembled at about 11.30am and set off into the gardens at Highdown. We were met almost immediately by some very colourful tulips in all their glory, and the few of us with tripods!, set them up and the shoot began.
It always takes me a while to get into photographic swing, and I found myself trying to capture images of some lovely blossom against a suitable background, which took forever, particularly as the wind was blowing. So, I had not really achieved a great deal by 12.30 when we had agreed to meet for lunch.
This took place in the hotel restaurant in the adjoining hotel where Chairman Chris had booked a table. We had met our friends Cliff Carter and his wife Virginia (of Henfield CC) in the gardens and as we could not all fit round the table booked, they joined us on an adjacent table. The Carvery Lunch was excellent and very reasonably priced and enjoyed by all.
After Lunch, some of our number had to leave us, but other stalwarts set off once again into the gardens, which by now was getting much busier with more people. The lunch seemed to agree with me and I found myself really getting 'the bit between my teeth’ and finding lots of new subjects. I will always remember being in Monet’s Garden in Giverny when the tulips were in full bloom and they had tens of different varieties. It was in the days of slide film and I was never happier, taking loads of images, prints of which reside in my bathroom.
By about 3pm I had had enough excitement and there were no other members of SCC around and so I went home. There, I started 'D and D’ (downloading and deleting) and then had a glorious time using Lightroom to process my images. I have been told forever that all good photographers use Lightroom and I have recently started to explore it. I have always used ‘iPhoto' on my Mac and finished off images in Photoshop CC. But Apple have withdrawn ‘iPhoto’ now and replaced it with ‘Photos” which Cliff tells me is even better. I will of course explore that as well; but today I found lightroom to be really excellent, but it took longer than usual, and it was 7pm before I had finished, tired but happy.
I hope that Martin will start a gallery on Flickr as he has done before so that we can all show some of our images (I think I am right in saying that Martin has to invite each of us to download our pictures?), which I am sure he will do.
Lastly, I would suggest that we have a repeat visit to the gardens at a different time of year. I have been here a couple of times before and it is a lovely place for a visit with your camera.