We’ve been on holiday in the North, and inbetween some lovely little canal walks and long cycle rides, I’ve been watching the wildlife in the garden. There’s a couple of feeders by the kitchen window, and while here we’ve seen:

• Jays
• Greenfinches
• Sparrows
• Pheasants
• Collared doves
• Blue tits
• Great tits
• Blackbirds
• A woodpecker…

I’ve not been abroad properly for a holiday for a long time – when I went to Tallinn two years ago and saw this amazing sunset, it was for a debating competition! – but when I got the chance to spend a week with family in Duras, I couldn’t turn it down.

We travelled around quite a bit, visiting Bordeaux, the immensely impressive Dune du Pilat, and various small towns along the way. The mirror-like water feature on the riverfront in Bordeaux gave some stunning shots, the largest dune in Europe was difficult to shoot in a way that really showed just how big it is (I’m still not happy with this shot), and the markets offered plenty of cheese, meat and veg, although a little later in the year would probably be more colourful.

This being the first big excursion with the 5D Mark II, I wanted to make as good use of it as possible. This shot of the chateaux in Duras is at 17mm, and you can really tell on a full-frame sensor, where my 17-40mm f/4L is coming into its own.

Being used to the grey misery of London, I did find it quite difficult shooting in the bright sunshine of southern France – often at f/8 or f/16, the glare on the LCD screen often made me unsure whether I was getting a good exposure or not, since the bright sunshine/dark shadows made me wonder if contrast was going to be an issue that even Lightroom couldn’t handle.

You can find more shots from the holiday here on Flickr.

A little festive cheer for today, it being Christmas Eve.

The decorations went up yesterday, and apparently so did my ability to operate the manual focus control, so I leave you with this out-of-focus and yet somehow “artistic” photo of our tree. (Mainly to avoid the embarassment of admitting we have an artificial one, but there we go.)

For those of you who don’t celebrate Christmas, well, to be honest neither do I  – at least not the religious aspect. Yes, another lapsed CofE Christian. But Christmas is still fun, and worth it even just for seeing the family.

Since family circumstances dictate that we’re not actually celebrating anything until Boxing Day, I won’t have any gorgeous photos of food (last time…this year) up until at least the 27th. I might try and resist, and save my depleting memory space for photos of the dogs down the beach on the traditional post-lunch walk. They’re gorgeous dogs, and the coast is pretty nice round here.