Claremont Gardens

It was such a gorgeous day yesterday that it was far too nice to stay indoors, so after a lovely long coffee and chat with our children at a local garden centre, to celebrate my OH's birthday (on Thursday), we headed off for Claremont Gardens near Easher in Surrey. This is a National Trust property, which has a large lake and some beautiful walks amid huge specimen trees.



It was such a lovely sunny day that I think most people thought of it as little haven , so close to London, but being quite large and spread out with walks all over the place it absorbs large numbers of people quite well.

I took the opportunity to have another test run with the Nikon D200, and I'm pleased to say it didn't disappoint me. I had tried to take these huge carbunkle lumps on some of the trees once before, with moderate success. This time I paid more attention to my camera settings, thanks to a very patient OH, and with the camera on a tripod managed to get it nearly right this time.



Im afraid I don't know the history of the gardens that well, but there are one or two lovely sculptures dotted about the place, so I thought I'd have a practice at getting the texture of this bear, as he was so well weathered.



Further on round the corner I discovered this lovely peacock with all these beautiful textures and patterns, what a great starting point this could be for a design! He was in deep shade , so I had to use flash, especially as I was hand holding the camera at this point and it has a large heavy battery pack on the bottom at the moment. I don't know if I'll keep this attached but apparently the camera is battery hungry!



On our way out I decided to take this shot of the amphitheatre, just to see how it would come out , hand held. I had to have a couple of goes at it as there were a lot of bright areas for the camera to cope with , but with al little help from my OH I figured out how to do it.



So it was another good session with the camera and , so long as it helps me out when I come to take the pics of my work I think we'll become the best of friends!!