News and views about photography, cameras, social media, as well as pointers to Dave Bradley’s photographic output. You can also find me on Imaging Storm, Instagram and Flickr as “sciencebase”
In the wake of controversy regarding Samsung’s purported manipulation and “enhancements” of user moonshots taken on Android phones, I asked MidJourney to “Generate a photorealistic image of the full moon that might have been augmented by controversial mobile phone camera enhancing technology.” Is this better than the faked moonshots users have been reporting? I think so…especially that one bottom-left which looks like a gravitational lensing image superimposted on a mobile phone!
Faked moonshots
If you want to see some real moonshots I’ve taken occasionally with a dSLR and a 600mm zoom, sometimes with a phone attached to my telescope, then follow me on the Sciencebase Instagram for the latest.
Meanwhile, I asked ChatGPT about this controversy using the following prompt:
You are to act as an expert in Android phones and in particular Samsung phones. There has recently been some controversy about the camera technology and how it can “process” a photograph of the moon and enhance it beyond reality. The processing was called out as fake when people were taking photos of low-resolution printouts of a photo of the moon and getting near-perfect higher-resolution output. Please tell me more about this and why it is simply wrong for a company to fake its users’ photos like this.
This is what it had to say:
In recent years, Samsung and other smartphone manufacturers have been adding advanced camera technologies to their devices, including features that can enhance the quality of photographs taken with the device. One such feature is called “Space Zoom,” which is designed to allow users to take photos of faraway objects, such as the moon.
However, there has been controversy surrounding Samsung’s camera technology and its ability to enhance photographs of the moon beyond what is possible with the naked eye. In particular, some users have claimed that Samsung’s camera technology is “faking” the details of the moon by artificially enhancing the image.
It is important to note that any form of photo manipulation or enhancement that misrepresents the reality of the scene being photographed is ethically wrong. It is the responsibility of manufacturers to be transparent with their users about the capabilities and limitations of their camera technology and to ensure that their users are not misled or deceived by the features they offer.
In addition, it is important for users to understand that the quality of a photograph depends on a variety of factors, including lighting conditions, camera settings, and the skill of the photographer. While advanced camera technologies can certainly enhance the quality of a photograph, they cannot create details that do not exist in the original scene being photographed.
TL:DR – The Brecon Beacons are a delightful place to visit any time of year, but a winter visit is magical when the sun shines on snowy caps.
Just back from a lovely trip to the Brecon Beacons in Cymru to stay with friends. Didn’t do as much walking as we normally would because I have an obstinate ankle injury. It was a bit awkward getting into stable positions to photograph wildlife or indeed anything else, but I had a go, as you do.
Snow-capped views of Pen y Fan and Corn Du as seen from our friends’ back garden – what a view!European Dipper, Cinclus cinclus, perched on a mossy stump. The Dipper is so-called because of its bobbing action when perched like this or on a rock, although it also dips its head under water to hunt invertebrates, fish, and amphibia for food, diving in and swimming with its wings underwater.Grey Wagtail, Motacilla cinerea, perched a branch overhanging the River Usk between Trallong and Penpont, South WalesFlyfisher on the River Usk between Trallong and Penpont, South Wales
If you’re ever in the area and unable to scale the peaks and you’re into beer and music, then it’s definitely worth visiting the Antur microbrewery in Three Cocks, Haystacks Music and the Wye Fret guitar shop in Hay-on-Wye. The Gwernyfed Walled Garden (also in Three Cocks) and Hay Castle, obviously also in Hay, are worth a visit too.
I asked ChatGPT to tell me more about the Brecon Beacons, here’s what it had to say, lightly edited:
The Brecon Beacons is a mountainous region in South Wales that offers a unique blend of rugged natural beauty and fascinating history. This stunning area is located in the southern part of the country and is a popular destination for outdoor enthusiasts and history buffs alike.
The Brecon Beacons is a range of mountains that is part of the larger Brecon Beacons National Park. The park covers an area of over 500 square miles and is home to some of the most breathtaking scenery in the United Kingdom. The highest peak in the Brecon Beacons is Pen y Fan [picture above], which stands at 2,907 feet and offers stunning views of the surrounding landscape.
The geological history of the Brecon Beacons is as fascinating as its natural beauty. The mountains were formed during the Carboniferous period, around 350 million years ago, when the region was covered by a shallow sea. Over time, the sea receded, leaving behind layers of sediment that were eventually compressed into the rock formations we see today.
The Brecon Beacons are also home to a variety of wildlife, including Red Kites, otters, and badgers. The area is also home to several rare plant species, such as the purple saxifrage and the lady’s slipper orchid (successfully reintroduced after it was lost to the area).
For those interested in history, the Brecon Beacons has a rich and fascinating past. The area was once home to numerous Iron Age hillforts, including the impressive fort at Pen y Crug. The region also played an important role in the Roman occupation of Britain, with several forts and roads still visible today.
One of the most impressive historical sites in the Brecon Beacons is the ruined castle at Carreg Cennen. The castle was built in the 13th century and was once a stronghold for the Welsh princes. Today, visitors can explore the castle ruins and enjoy the spectacular views of the surrounding countryside.
In addition to its natural beauty and historical sites, the Brecon Beacons is also a popular destination for outdoor activities such as hiking, rock climbing, and mountain biking. The area is crisscrossed with numerous hiking trails, ranging from easy walks to challenging multi-day hikes.
For those interested in exploring the area on two wheels, there are several mountain biking trails that offer a thrilling ride through the mountains. Rock climbers will also find plenty of challenges in the Brecon Beacons, with several world-class climbing spots located throughout the area.
If you have your sights on the stars, it’s worth noting that the Brecon Beacons has a Dark Sky Reserve status, making it an ideal destination for stargazing enthusiasts and amateur astronomers.
In conclusion, the Brecon Beacons is a stunning mountainous region that offers something for everyone. Whether you’re interested in exploring its natural beauty, delving into its rich history, or seeking outdoor adventure, the Brecon Beacons is a destination that should not be missed. So pack your bags and come discover this mountainous gem.
TL:DR – Tips on choosing which photo to process how to denoise and sharpen software, adjust levels, and crop.
Recently, I wrote about the beautiful Short-eared Owls that turned up on our patch over-winter in the slightly warmer climes of the Cambridgeshire Fens. I got photos of three hunting in the hour before dusk. The photos were okay, but I knew I could make them better with a few simple tools.
UPDATE: The SEOs are back. At least six of them on the fen. I got a few more shots late November 2023 including this one of a grumpy-looking Shortie that had just missed catching a vole.
Short-eared Owl hunting (unsuccessfully at this point) over the fen
The problem is always hand-holding a big lens when the light’s fading. There’s camera shake and a short shutter speed is also needed to freeze the action. This adds up to the camera switching up the sensitivity, the ISO, and that makes for more photographic noise.
So, what can you do to improve a noisy photo that might also have a bit of motion blur. First off, you must make sure you’re shooting in RAW mode. RAW mode lets you download what is essentially an unprocessed digital negative of the photo you took.
I’ll run you through what I do with the RAW files out of my camera. First, I select from the photos the one I think is the most dramatic or has the most character, the best light, the sharpest. I also try to pick one that doesn’t have distractions like foreground twigs or foliage or a cluttered background. Often your choices are limited with bird flight photography as the birds appear on their own terms and where you happen to be standing at the time determines a lot of that. A slight movement left or right might help sometimes in terms of foreground and background.
So, I’d picked this photo as the best of one of the owls flying in front of me. It was fairly close. Background isn’t too bad. The blurred building in the background almost adds to the composition although might have been more appropriate if it were a Barn Owl. That stem in the bottom left is a distraction and could do with being removed. We’ll see.
The original photo was shot at 600mm zoom, 1/3200s shutter speed, f/6.3 aperture and ISO 6400. That ISO number is way too high and I might’ve got a similar result if I’d used a slower shutter speed to get the ISO down a few stops.
I resized the photo to fit the website, but other than that with this first view it’s not cropped nor processed or edited other than a basic RAW to JPG conversion to make it displayable and to add my logo. The website loads the image as 1024 pixels wide with a JPEG compression of about 90%. It’s quite noisy, not as sharp as it could be, the levels (contrast, brightness, saturation etc are not optimised). And, in terms of composition, it’s not how I’d want the final photo to look.
TOP TIP: Push the sliders on whatever adjustment you’re making to the point where it is immediately obvious that you’ve made an adjustment and then claw them back ever so slightly. This way you will hopefully avoid making the photo too painterly. If you’re having to push anything beyond about 12% of the way up, then it might be worth abandoning the photo, unless you’re after a painterly effect.
So, stepping back I first feed the RAW file to DxO PureRaw. This removes a lot of the noise from any photograph really well. It also applies basic corrections that are known to be needed for the specific camera and lens setup used. I’ve zoomed in on the program in action so you can see, on the left just how noisy the photo was originally, and in the right of the frame, how well the noise reduction works.
The frame below is that same image saved in DxO PureRaw. Hopefully, you can already see some improvement from the original RAW capture above and displayed at the same composition. PureRaw lets you export as a DNG file, which is like a generic RAW format so you can do the subsequent processing as if the file were fresh from your camera.
At this point, I generally make an important choice. I can either simply open the denoised image from DxO in my photo-editor (PaintShop Pro) or add another step and open it in Topaz Sharpen AI. This software does denoising too but it can also sharpen and remove motion blur. Either way, at this point, I would first crop the image to give me the composition I would like in the final image and perhaps mirror the image so that the subject is facing in a more pleasing direction (flying left to right is better to my eye than having the bird fly off to the left.
The following photo is cropped and reversed to give me the composition I am after. I’d usually do a square crop for Instagram.
I am quite happy that this image is fairly sharp and so I won’t apply Topaz in this instance. Instead, I will use PSP to adjust various parameters: Overall brightness (raised 14%), shadows (up 10%), and highlights (no change). Saturation up 8%, Focus/sharpening up 66%. I’ve left the white balance as it was. I then brought in the blacks by 6% and the whites by 4%.
I then raised the vibrancy, which is an adjustment related to saturation but slightly subtler, I gave that a 12% boost, which I think gives the photo even more of a “golden hour” glow. Also added a few percent of “fill highlight” and boosting “clarity” by about 10%.
That grass stem sticking up from the bottom right is a bit of a distraction, so I removed it using what PSP calls the Scratch Remover tool. PSP also has a tool called Magic Fill which can do a much better job of removing objects from a photo if they’re not simple, thin lines.
Once all that’s done, the final couple of steps are always to apply a moderate “unsharp mask” to make the final image even crisper and then to add my dB/ logo.
So that’s probably as far as I’d take it. To my eye, it looks fine. At the very least, it looks a whole lot better than the RAW original, but that’s to be expected, you don’t expect to look at negatives instead of prints of photos. All photographs have to be developed, they always have been, in the digital age, we have more sophisticated tools to do the job for better or worse.
When looking close up at the originals (pixel peeking), I can see marked improvements with each stage of the above processing and would be confident that cropped closer it would still print nicely in a print magazine, screening at 300 dpi, at up to 6 inches width, but perhaps no bigger in this case.
Just for completeness, I did do a Topaz process on the DxO output and it does reduce the speckles of noise still further. However, there was also a bit more of a loss of detail. The image below was DxO then Topaz and then the same PSP processing as before. I cropped it a bit tighter for what I might use as a photo to accompany an article about this species, or owls in general, showing a bit less of the fenland background.
Instagram-ready version below
DxO and Topaz are the leaders in terms of denoising at the moment, I’d say. I prefer what DxO does though, but Topaz has the sharpening options that DxO PureRaw lacks. I trained on Photoshop but have stuck with PaintShop Pro for editing for many years, PSP has almost all of the same tools as Photoshop for the basic processing I do. Lightroom has advantages and there are, of course, many alternatives out there to all these programs. I must confess that I usually use SnapSeed for photos on my phone and sometimes for a landscapes, architecture, flowers, moths etc. I might do use the above workflow but then open the file on my phone in SnapSeed to bump what that app calls “Ambience” and “Structure” and adjust saturation a little more.
TL:DR – A quick summary of how I set up for bird photography.
I get asked a lot about what camera (and lens) I use to take my bird photos. It comes with a simple answer. Most of the time, I use a Canon 7D Mark ii (a model first launched in 2014). I bought the 7Dii during the first COVID-19 lockdown (March 2020). It was cutting edge when it was launched and was a leader for the top-end pro-sumer wildlife photographer for many years because of its focusing abilities and burst mode rates. It’s very susceptible to noise, more so than the Canon 6D I used for a few years before buying that camera.
I have various lenses, but the one I use while birding (or strictly speaking togging) is the Sigma Contemporary 150-600mm F5-6.3 DG OS HSM. This lens was launched in the same year as the camera, I bought mine in January 2017. It is a relatively slow lens in terms of aperture and that combines detrimentally with the noisiness of the camera. But, the total cost of my kit was far less than if I’d gone full professional Canon for the camera and a big aperture zoom, four or five times cheaper in fact.
I have to admit, I am rarely 100% happy with the photos I get with this equipment but I shoot RAW and software can counter the kit’s limitations to a degree. I’ve mostly used PaintShopPro (PSP) in recent years although I did some Photoshop training many years ago and used that for several years. I recently turned to RawTherapee for converting the camera RAW file into an editable format that I could then tweak with PSP, but I moved over to the Topaz AI software for a time. The Denoise AI is very good at removing motion blur, as I reported here some time ago. I’ve looked at Adobe Lightroom once or twice, but never stuck with it, see also the open source alternative to Photoshop known as GIMP, GNU Image Manipulation Program.
However, I discovered DxO’s PureRaw, which does denoising rather better than anything I’ve tried before. I would say applying it to a fairly noisy photo is equivalent to having been able to stop down three stops (akin to going from ISO 3200 to 400 but without the loss of sensitivity) of ISO with the same aperture and shutterspeed. That makes a big difference with my Canon 7Dii and the Sigma lens, it has to be said.
My developing process usually follows a sequence whereby I use the denoising in DxO Photolab (which is the same as in the standalone PureRaw software) to remove noise as best it can and to apply some basic levels and sharpening adjustments. The software also makes standard adjustments for known aberrations in the camera-lens combination. I then export the resulting file and then open that in PSP to do final levels tweaks to adjust brightness, contrast, pull in the blacks, bring out the whites, lift the shadows and vibrancy, do an unsharp mask and then add my dB/ logo and add it to my online galleries, social media, or use it to illustrate an article or blog post or whatever. Sometimes, I just show the result to Mrs Sciencebase and then archive the image.
A few people have expressed surprise at the quality of a particular photo given the vintage of my camera and the type of lens I’m using. I think I could do better with a professional digital SLR, but they’re expensive and it’s not three years since I replaced my 6D with the 7Dii and I don’t feel like I can justify an upgrade. As to lenses, I’d love to be able to splash the cash on a big prime telephoto or maybe just a fast zoom with a big focal length, but again…cost.
As to mirrorless, I’ve handled one or two, I really don’t like looking at a screen to take a photo, maybe that’s old school, but I want to feel like I’m looking at my subject through glass rather than pixels, at least for now. Moreover, I’ve not seen any results with mirrorless cameras that better the top-end professional shots taken with dSLR.
Give it a year or two and things will have improved and my viewfinder stance might have changed, I suspect I will get myself some better kit for my 60th birthday, but then there’s always the urge to get a new electric guitar too…
TL:DR – I compiled a sampler for a newbie birding book with ten chapters, but I am yet to write the remaining 90.
Back in August 2017, I was all hyped about putting together a new book. It come up with a title, Chasing Wild Geese, and the plan was to write a short piece about the hundred birds a novice birder might “tick” first in the UK. Each item would be illustrated with one of my photos of said bird.
Chasing Wild Geese, the gosling feather book cover
I put together a taster, with the first ten written and formatted and even did a spoof bio page in the same style about yours truly.
I gave the cover a silly acronym: FEATHER. This stood for “Food Environment Aural Type Habitat Etymology Resemblance” and was a summary of the contents of each page.
I shared the sampler widely on social media and estimate that between six hundred and a thousand people downloaded the PDF file from my website. It’s still available if you’d like to take a look, here. I spoke to my publisher and ideas were batted back and forth. Ultimately though, the likely costs of producing a full-colour photographic book of this sort we agreed were likely to have been prohibitive at the time, so sadly, I put the Geese on the backburner and turned my attention to other writing, photography, and more songwriting.
In the meantime, there have been several similar books on the market from far more expert birders and better photographers than me, any one of which would easily have outsold the honking Geese. I do now have better photos of all the birds in the sampler, and at least a couple of hundred other birds that might have featured in a follow-up…maybe if I stop chasing it, it will come home to roost. We’ll see…
TL:DR – I used to really enjoy using Spirograph to draw mathematical patterns when I was a child in the 1970s. We didn’t have video games back then.
As a child, I was always really pleased to get a Spirograph as a Christmas present. With its cogs and pens it allowed you to create what you might call mathematical art. You set up the frame and the cogwheels, poked a pen into one of the holes and whirled the pen round and round until it had drawn out a complex-looking spiral on the paper. You used different sized cogs and shapes and different holes to generate different patterns, which you could overlay.
1970s Spirograph set, photo c/o VintageToys.com
I even had one that used paints and tinfoil instead of pen and paper. I remember rattling off dozens of these things, I suppose it fed both my young artistic and scientific brain at the same time. I reckon I had three or four Spirograph sets over the years. And, I was fascinated when I first encountered the Julia Sets and Mandelbrot Sets in my late teens, there were like an infinity of fractal Spirographs.
Moreover, in the parallel world of my love of music, it’s probably why I got into the music of Rush in my early teens with their occasionally highly repetitive, complex and mathematical riffs (Jacob’s Ladder, Cygnus X-1, La Villa Strangiato, for example, not only in odd, mixed keys and compound time signatures, but simultaneously repetitive and minimalist).
Pin and String Diamond by David Bradley ca 1979
At the age of 11 or 12 or so, my mate Phil and I used to ride our Raleigh Grifters up the Coast Road to visit his Dad’s new family on Sundays. We imagined we were on motorbikes, as young lads often do, and even riveted an extension to our rear mudflaps not just to reduce rain spatter from the road on to our Parka jackets, but so they could be bent under to make an engine-like growl against the tires as we rode along.
Phil’s stepmother was very into arts and crafts and used to encourage us and her own bairns to0. She introduced us to what you might see as being the pins and thread version of Spirograph. Rather than cogs and pens, you spent your time tapping in dozens and dozens of nails into a felt-covered wooden board using a paper template. You then followed a mathematical rule to create a pattern or image by winding a thread from nail to nail. Phil and I got very into this mathematical art creation and did several images.
Pin and String Oil Lamp by David Bradley ca 1979*
Amazingly, the main ones I did – the first, an abstract diamond, the second an oil lamp, and the final one a Chinese junk, have survived and have pride of place in my Dad’s garage to this day; they used to be in the house, but were usurped by prints and family photos and such, hahahah. I took some snaps of them the other day and just thought I’d share them with you now. I must admit I don’t think I’ve done anything quite so arts-and-crafty since.
Pin and String Junk by David Bradley ca 1979
*Spot the Twenty-plume Moth on the Oil Lamp picture!
Don’t despair if you get an underexposed and noisy photo of something interesting…there are ways and means to recover…provided you were shooting RAW with your digital camera!
This heron landed on the garden fence and was peering into the neighbour’s pond. I grabbed a snap through the back window. It was early morning, dull, and I didn’t get the right settings before it flew off.
A bit of software to reduce noise reduction (DxO PureRaw2) worked to get rid of much of the noise/grain in the photo, it’s equivalent to turning the ISO/sensor sensitivity down by 3 stops (akin to 3200 to 400, say), which would naturally reduce noise. Topaz Denoise AI does something similar.
The DxO software lets you export the processed file as a pseudo-RAW (a DNG file) so you can then import it into a RAW editor and “develop” it as you would the RAW file straight from your digital camera.
I imported the processed DNG into PaintShopPro and did the usual curves and levels tweaks to brighten it and so salvaged a half-decent record shot of the heron from an awful snap. On close examination, there is still a degree of noise, but it’s not too bad, probably not print quality, but okay for social media.
Mrs Sciencebase and myself were celebrating a significant wedding anniversary last week and so took a trip to Dorset. I didn’t carry a proper landscape lens with my birding camera, so these are just a load of highly processed phone snaps.
Britain’s most photographed pubView from North Hill, CorfeBankes Arms, Corfe Castle, less photographed, but just as goodView of Corfe from Corfe CastleThrough, the round, square, arched windowCorfe CastleCorfe Castle DragonCorfe CastleCorfe Castle StationSignals at Corfe Castle StationCorfe Castle StationCorfe Castle StationView of Corfe from North HillGolden Hour TreeThatched Cottage, Corfe CastleAnti-tank dragon’s teeth, StudlandDurdle DoorMan O’War BeachDurdle DoorFort Henry, StudlandOld Harry RocksOld Harry RocksPoole HarbourStatue of Robert Baden-Powell, Poole HarbourPub we didn’t visitBarber shop I didn’t useBuddhist shop we didn’t shop inPoole BoatPoole town centreView of Poole Harbour from RSPB ArneCliff carvings, Knoll Beach, StudlandSwanageChippy we didn’t use, SwanageSwanage PierSwanageDiesel locomotive, SwanageLocomotives, SwanageTravel inspiration, StudlandConvenient advice for gents
My very good friend Vicki who is a fellow birder, former moth-er, and archaeology enthusiast, suggested I write about photographing wildlife for my next column in our village newsletter. So, putting proverbial pen to paper while inspiration struck, here’s what I came up with in fifteen minutes…
What’s the one thing you definitely need to get a decent wildlife photograph? There are myriad answers that come to mind – an expensive camera, a big zoom lens, a portable hide and a Ghillie suit, a fancy tripod and a Bluetooth shutter release app? Those things might help and you could always put them on your Christmas wishlist, of course. But, probably the most important thing to have is a good supply of patience.
A chance encounter with Tarka
Now, I am not saying I’ve got plenty of that or even that I take decent wildlife photographs, but certainly you can have the most sophisticated (for which generally read: expensive) photographic equipment but if you don’t have a little patience, then it’ll be down to pure luck that you get the shot you hoped for, the one that might win prizes or find a place in a charity calendar, for instance.
Spoonbills – the bird that brings its own cutlery to tea
Occasionally, you might stumble across a sight for sore eyes, such as a kingfisher, a little egret, and a great white egret all feeding on the same patch of the Cottenham Lode, or a grey heron gulping down a whole water vole*, or an otter grooming itself on the bank of the Great River Ouse. You might spot a rare bird of prey, such as a Montagu’s Harrier quartering farmland or even stumble across a congregation of more than 80 common buzzards drawn to a field near Soham at the end of August when the farmer was moving haybails and disturbing countless tasty rodents. Such is life that to get those decent wildlife shots you need luck more than patience and to be in the right place, at the right time, as they say.
In-flight Kingfisher
So, this worrying concept of patience…is there an app for that? Unfortunately not. Aside from the lucky find, if you’re hoping for a decent or even just a half-decent wildlife photograph, you’re going to have to spend quite a bit of time in the great outdoors. Keeping a keen eye on every tree, every hedgerow, every stream, and always with a weather eye to the sky for the airborne wildlife.
But, as we perhaps all learned, time in the great outdoors is a precious commodity, it can’t be replaced with a virtual reality headset, you simply don’t get the sun on your face, the mud on your boots, nor the wind in your hair [present company excepted, Ed.] Regardless of what kit you’re carrying whether high-end smart phone, a professional digital SLR with all the trimmings, or a more cheap and cheerful device, take some time, look around, and get a bit snap happy with the wildlife that’s out there.
*Incidentally, I saw the heron eating the vole but I was nowhere near quick enough to get my camera pointed at the bird and its lunch before the unfortunate mammal was gone.
The annual Cambridge Folk Festival was on hiatus thanks to the pandemic and so a lot of people had missed out on their musical fix at Cherry Hinton Hall for three years…us?
Full Fest wrist band
Mrs Sciencebase and myself had not been back since 1991 having attended three years on the trot from 1989 when I first went up to Cambridge (working, not as a student, haha). Mrs Sciencebase wasn’t Mrs at the time, and Sciencebase itself was still a few years away yet.
Suzanne Vega had hardly changed in 31 years, as bright a star as ever9
We were excited to see all the new bands and performers and checked the lineup: Clannad and Suzanne Vega among others…interesting…they were on last time we attended too! Both gave ripping performances this time around.
The brilliant Young’uns on the main stage at Cambridge Folk Festival 2022
As did (in no particular order): The Young’uns, Spiers and Boden, Show of Hands, The Spooky Men’s Chorale, St Paul and the Broken Bones, Magpie Arc, Billy Bragg, The Gipsy Kings, Seasick Steve, Findlay, Passenger, Afro Celt Sound System, O’Hooley and Tidow, Chico Trujillo, Brooks Williams, Davina and The Vagabonds, N’Famady Kouyate, The Copper Family, VRï, Beans on Toast, Black Fen Folk Club, the “Irish pub”, Orchestra Baobab, Janice Burns & Jon Duran, Tapestri, Mishra…I may have missed a few of the acts we saw, will fill the gaps as and when. So many acts we missed…always the way with festivals.
David Eagle from The Young’uns
There were lots of highlights: meeting The Young’uns and Jon Boden, taking part in two singing workshops (with Nancy Kerr from Magpie Arc and The Spooky Men, as well as observing a melody workshop with John Spiers). Trying out some lovely (expensive) guitars, having a cajon jam with Adam from C5 the band, lots of surprise meet-ups with friends, and eating and drinking some lovely food and drink with Mrs Sciencebase and great weather (it poured and was cold last time). We camped from the Thursday night onwards, but had to decamp late Sunday evening. It was a relief to get home to have a shower, but I’d love to be back at another festival next week, and I’d take a guitar next time to sit in on some of the jams.
Spiers & Boden, the incredibly talented founders of BellowheadThe amazing Gipsy KingsBilly BraggMoya out of off of the legendary ClannadA bassy bit of The Spooky Men’s ChoraleMichael David Rosenberg aka PassengerMichael David Rosenberg aka PassengerThe boys of summer, Show of HandsO’Hooley and TidowAfro Celt Sound System, eclectic and energeticJanice Burns of Janice and JonJon Duran of Janice and JonFord Collier from Mishra, mixing English folk and Indian styleKate Griffin from MishraEssex boy Beans on Toast from Braintree, innit?Clannad, legends
The unbelievably energetic Chico TrujilloThe Young’unsSeasick SteveShow of HandsThe Spooky Men’s Chorale singing workshopYours truly with fanned-fret guitar worth about three grandFestival Dusk and Bowler HatFestival fiddling foxFestival TwilightMrs and Mr Sciencebase – #CamFolkFest22 Survivors
I took most of the photos on pocket Lumix camera (a DMC-TZ35). Those with no logo or with an angled dB/ logo I snapped with my phone camera and processed in SnapSeed. The photo of yours truly taken by Mrs Sciencebase with her phone.
