Batman and Robins

Think Pogues.

It was Christmas Eve, babe, and in a forest, two photographers, took pictures of robins...

Almost. Well, we had a lovely morning shooting today, on Christmas Eve. Squidders popped himself on my doorstep for about 9:10am and after a brief moment admiring each other's new Lowepro bags, we walked the short distance past the Blitz rock, over the bridges, past the pub and the church (in Ireland they're the same thing) and up into the same bit of footpath that Henry and I walked yesterday.

It was blooming freezing. So much so that droplets of water had frozen to a branch. This provided the first oppourtnity for us to whip out the cameras. Joseph [Squidders' real name, for newbies] has the Lowepro Slingshot AW300 which in theory should allow him lightning fast access to his camera. The design is flawed by the fact that his head gets in the way when pulling his bag over his shoulder...

I smugly pulled Kenneth from his new bag, the Lowepro Fastpack 250. We had a bit of an argument about the usual things - white balance, shutter speed and Nikons. I remembered what I learnt from the incident with the robin yesterday and told the camera to always use the centre focus point, not guess at which one I'm trying to use. The Tamron lens is a bit slow and fussy when it comes to focussing, but I nailed a pretty nice shot of the branch...

I win. Anyway, we calibrated the cameras and I dialled in a shutter speed of 1/125 which actually worked out pretty well with some of the later exposures. We caught sight of a couple of birds but it was only until we got to the path up to the hill that I got anything remotely decent...

Epic win, I even danced at Squidders who was a little way off. Silent dancing of course, we wouldn't want to disturb the birdies. We then paced up and down the path, which slopes up to the first stile to the hill from the Croft side. The robins came and went, and after yesterday it was one of them that I really wanted to get and get right. A lot of patience and careful management of the odd-focussing Tamron lens led to a couple of really close shots of some pretty robins...

We eventually got disturbed by a group of runners and then the loudest children in the entire country, so we buggered off further around the base of the hill, eventually putting the cameras away to climb up this really steep, icy, dodgy bit of slope. We sat atop the hill, chatting shit and looking out over lovely hazy Leicestershire that stretched out in every direction...

Our attention was caught by a mountain biker, who had cycled the entire way up Croft Hill. Bloody idiot. Then a jogger ran past, slipping slightly as he ran down the other side of the hill. The cyclist turned and went the other way - straight down the dodgy bit we had just climbed. Brave bloke. We stood there talking about bananas, and Joseph then noticed the cyclist bloke out on the other hill, right round near Huncote! Brave bloke!

Then the jogger went past again, this time falling flat on his arse as he descended the hill. We laughed, naturally...

This was the scene from the top of the hill, looking towards what I believe to be Broughton Road in Croft. Pretty misty, we mused. Then the jogger ran past again, this time choosing to run back down the hill on the slightly grippier edge. We stood and saluted the single most brave man in the county of Leicestershire. Feckin' nutter...

How Batman fits into this I'm not quite sure, but the title looks good. On the way back home, we bumped into a couple of Croftian locals. Joseph thought we were going to get mugged for a moment, before realising it was somebody he actually knew. We then went ice skating with them, and I decided to try and crack the ice. I even tried bunny-hopping through it on a scooter the Croftians had stolen, to no avail. Joseph was getting a bit worried for my safety, especially as large cracks had formed, spider-web style around the epicentre of my jumping.

As we were coming off the ice, a broken bit near the edge showed us that it was a good four or five inches thick...my jumping was a pointless waste of energy, I'd have never gone through that...

It's Christmas tomorrow, lads. Have a good one...Beannachtaí na Nollag xx