Conkers...

I'm captivated by the contents of this morning's broadcast of Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4. The usual mixed bag of topics were covered - vegetarianism; stargazing; the turning of the New Testament into Jamaican (by Courtney Stewart), and even an interview with Jeni Evennett and Sylvia Hillier, who as teenagers were aboard the bus for the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour in 1967 - but it is the mention of conkers that stirs me to get out of the house for a morning walk with my camera.

A 'conker' (for the uninitiated) is the seed of the horse-chesnut tree, and has long been used by children and adults alike to play the game of conkers. The autumnal activity entails threading the large brown seed onto a shoelace (traditionally) and striking it against your opponents until one breaks and an outright victor is determined.

I find none. Plenty of sweet-chesnut abound - none of which have the durability for the aforementioned game - so I press on to the seafront and the beach. I'm carrying a super-telephoto lens, but a wide-angle optic would have been a better choice, it seems, purely for the wonderful cloud patterns over Poole Bay. Not to worry, as there is a good amount of cloud covering the horizon and beyond.

Although the conditions look somewhat foreboding in today's photograph, there is in fact clear blue sky above me, highlighting anything that is not beyond the horizon. All that dark cloud is over France, some 80 miles (129km) distant, and since the sunlight is directly illuminating the sails of the boat I am able to underexpose one f/stop below the suggested meter reading, to give the cloud more weight, tone wise.


300mm f/4D AF-S Nikkor. 1/3200 second at f/8.  -1 stop EV compensation. ISO 250