From the canal towpath

Hatton Locks on the Grand Union Canal - starting off as a bright, clear, sunny afternoon. There's something a bit Constable-esque about some of the canal views.

A few of the images are a bit grainy as they're distant views cropped out of the centres of photos - again, I was working with the Sony compact, which has limited zoom. I must come back to this place with the other camera and the long lens.

And then, rather like Beethoven's sixth symphony, the storm came very quickly:

A few moments after this photo, I was wading through a thick carpet of hailstones, and ten minutes later it had all blown over.

And this last one, back at home later on - the moon and the evening star:

It's spring in the garden!

Another try-out with the new Sony compact - bright, clear day, sun low in the sky reflecting glare off glossy petals . . . really difficult conditions to get a decent image.

I decided also to try these in black and white - only two of them work, I think:

Unexpected sunny day

The last forecast I saw for today was for dark, grey, overcast skies . . . but the wind changed, the weather front moved, and we had the most gloriously perfect February day: clear blue skies, bright sunshine . . . and chilly; much of the lake was still frozen over and you'll see some ducks-on-ice below!

Last week I bought a new camera, upgrading my previous digital compact. The more I've used my main camera, the more my current little compact was frustrating me - it's a previous generation of technology and was designed for the 'point and shoot' market. But I don't always want to carry the big camera with me, and for my next trip, in a few months, I know I don't want the bulk of it. So, in order to be really fluent with a new camera well before I go away with it, now was a good time to get a new one. For those of you interested in the gear, I bought a Sony RX100M3 - it's a very nice, small but well-featured compact, with all the manual controls to take charge of the photographic process.

So, I took advantage of today's unexpectedly good weather to go out and put it through its paces - and me through mine with a new bit of kit. I'm pretty happy with both it and my use of it. The only downside was that I saw some extraordinary mating display behaviour between a pair of swans . . . I so wished I had the big camera and the long lens with me. When you get down to the swan images, you'll find they're a bit grainy, because each is actually a tiny thumbnail cropped out of a much bigger photo . . .