Antiques - the photos

As promised.

First off, the WWII buttons...



The albert chain, yes, the clip functions, the spring still springs inside it.



As you can see, the bear has suffered some damage. I suspect the eyes once had little glass jewels in them. Poor bear.



I got too excited and failed to set it to manual focus so it would use the depth of field correctly.



The back of the football medallion.



The inkwell... bit too much camera shake and I failed to set up the lights and utilise them for this. Perhaps it would have made it easier. Oh well, you get the idea. The brass body is wrapped in soft, thin black leather with gold stamp.



The bottom of the inkwell with attached paper label.



Gently press the button on the front of the body and it pops open to reveal this:



Gently press aside the righthand clip and you can see inside.



With the little glass bottle removed so you can see it as well as the inkwell. The inner lid has a spring to help keep the ink inside the bottle and yes, the spring still works. It's a clever little object and the leafy scroll engraving in the brass is very nice.

New camera and some photography

Jessops was having a package deal on Canon cameras and I decided to gift myself a new dSLR. So I now have a Canon EOS 450D and two nice lenses.

Late last year, I poked and prodded around the back yard, replanting or redoing some of the surviving bulbs in the pots that haven't bloomed in previous years. I'm discovering that if you plant bulbs of anything EXCEPT daffodils, you need to disturb the ground they're in or they don't come up again... or perhaps I just need to pull more weeds so they don't deprive the bulbs of sunlight >.>

Anyway, because I messed about with the pots last year, I now have tulips this year! I love the colour swirl in this one. I also wanted to get used to using the new camera, two enjoyable things in one go.



Today, the sun was out so I decided to go out with the camera and get cracking with images of local sights and sites that interest me that don't often show up in the tour books. This part of Essex got well hammered by the Germans during WWII so there's not a lot left that's 'old and ancient' in the area.

Behold: Hadleigh Castle (pronounce 'had-lee'), built in the 1230s on unstable clay and chalk the castle pretty much had a short life of under 100yrs use and within 40 years of its initial building had to have major refurbishment. The kings and lords that came afterward basically gave up on it and in the 1500s large parts of it that hadn't already tumbled down into ruin were dismantled for building materials, the stone and lead got recycled.

This is some of what remains. You can see the Thames River Estuary in the background.



Part of my reason for returning here is I'm also scouting for potential locations for 'onsite' portrait photography. I'm building a photographic project of 'book covers for stories that never were' and places that I can use as backgrounds for costumed models is desirable. The more I can do in camera, the less I have to deal with on the pc!



On my drive around for photographic locations, I decided to find a near-to-the-road bunker as several of these remain in and around the countryside near the Thames River Estuary. I also was seeking some antique shops and got two for one. This one is within 100 metres of the roadside of a Rettendon furniture antiques shop.



From what I can conclude, many of the bunkers are on private land, so finding one near the road is useful.

What were the bunkers for? The handful I've seen are similar but different and could have been used as observation posts ('to spot the German invasion') or as gun placements to shoot at said German invaders.

Most appear as this one does, constructed of brick and concrete with a patina of lichen and greenery. Most of them are in farmer's fields.