Devon

Having spent a week in Devon, I thought it'd be remiss not to post up a few snaps.  No particular theme, other than the pictures were all taken in South Devon and most were taken in the village of East Prawle.

I also took a couple of pictures with a third party telephoto lens (remember, all of my pictures are taken on a smartphone - in this case a Sony Xperia Z2) which attaches via a phone case with a threaded ring over the camera sensor aperture.  Unfortunately, it looks like the threaded ring causes some unwelcome lens flares in bright sunlight, so I'll have to remember to remove it in future.

Horizons Veranda

This was the house we were staying in for the week.  It's a large bungalow with absolutely stunning, almost completely unobstructed views of the sea, although the beach is about a two and a half mile cross-country walk.  Which is rather nice!

Inner Horizons

And then, here's a picture of the interior.  The house consisted of a mainly open-plan living area with huge swathes of glass on the sea-facing sides.  The bedrooms & bathrooms were in the part of the house without such a beautiful outlook.

Gateway to the sea

And in typical Devon fashion, the village was only accessible via half a dozen country miles of high-sided single track roads.  When they open out to a view like the one here on the left, you realise that all the paint scratches and emergency stops for a tractor coming the other way really were worthwhile!

Seaview Road

And below that, another view of the same road.  This time from slightly higher up and towards the centre of the village.

We walked up this road every day to visit the village shop for our daily provisions and a paper.  Oh, and to visit the village pub of course.  But that's a story for a completely different blog post!

Zoomified Cliff

Next up, we've got a couple of pictures taken through the telephoto lens I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post.

This first one is a picture of the cliffs as seen from the veranda of the house we were staying in.

Tilt-Shift Cliff

The second zoom experiment is also from the veranda, but aimed at the more level ground towards the beach.  It's actually a snap of the cliff-top coastal footpath, but there are some people on the rocks down below, so I added a bit of tilt-shift effect to make them the more obvious subject.  The 'miniaturisation' effect doesn't really work when there's already a blur, but it still looks okay.

Bellevue Breakfast

I See No Ships!

The lens is rated at 12x, which seems about right to me, but the optics are obviously very cheap (the whole kit was only a tenner from eBay!) and the result is some pretty severe loss of focus around the periphery of the image.  On the extreme edge, there's also significant darkening.  If you're a serious photographer, you'd probably be really disappointed with the results from this lens, but I actually really like the effect.  I tend to add some blur and vignetting to my pictures anyway - digitally - but this lense does it the old fashioned way.

The next image (above) is another shot of the house & veranda from the perspective of the gardens.  There was actually a permanent barbecue stand right next to me, but we didn't get a chance to make use of it.  That's my father enjoying breakfast & coffee in the fresh morning sea air.

Clifftop Clarity

Second star to the right, and on 'til morning

After breakfast, and after we'd taken our morning walk to the shop, Dad, brother and I decided to take a picnic down to the beach.  On the way, I stopped to snap the above photo of Dad & bro admiring something in the distance.  My old man seems to have peculiarly excellent long distance eyesight, as he was often pointing things out to both of us which we couldn't see until we were much closer.

And the next photo is of the same cliffs I photographed from the house with the zoom lens, but this time from a normal perspective.  It just goes to show how much better the optics in the phone are than those in the cheap accessory!

Basking Case

See the photo above for further comparison.  The subject (a small sailing boat, snapped with the zoom lens from the veranda) is in reasonable focus, but the rest of the image is very poor quality.  A great effect though!

Speaking of the veranda, it was a lovely place to do a spot of sun worship.  This was the sight which greeted us on Thursday lunchtime.  Mother, Aunt, Grandmother, Great Aunt and Uncle basking in the midday sun.  It must be gin o'clock!

More pointing

Off for another walk, then.  This is another picture of Dad & Bro when we went for one of our walks.  The rutted farm track which formed part of one of the public footpaths around the village.

Fields of Gold

And on that walk, I took the picture below of a corn field overlooking the sea.  The contrast was too good to pass up.  The golden yellow corn swaying in the wind in great swirls & waves, contrasted against the seemingly tranquil aquamarine sea and deep blue sky...

In fact, I like this one so much, it's my new desktop wallpaper.  Hopefully it will serve as a reasonable reminder of the last days of Summer as we seem to be rolling relentlessly into another Autumn.

And the last picture for this blog post represents what we went to Devon for in the first place: a trip to the seaside.  The beach may not have been on our doorstep, it may have been a bit of a trek to get down there and it may not have been one of the golden sandy variety, but there's just something about lolling about on a deserted beach with nothing but the sound of the crashing waves to keep you company.  Relaxation at its very best.

The Sounds of the Sea