Very dramatic, and yes, amusing.

Those blue flowerers are very intense. We have them too in the Apennines. Looks like a nice hike.

I love these ancient sites. The third shot really has an air of mystery.

This looks like something out of a theatrical shoot. The timing is perfect. It needs to be seen big though.

It is a depressing building!

Mining seriously damages the environment, so it is good to see some effort to restore it .

I like this, no idea what's going on in it, but I like it.

I really like this, that winding path has more emphasis and gives the eye somewhere to rest.

Sounds and looks like my kind of country and yet another part of the UK that I didn't know existed (Brodgar, not Orkney). Nice shots, these would be my favourites, but I feel the first three above could do with just a bit of nudge on the shadow and/or black sliders if there's any extra detail to be had in those shadows. The fourth one above works well as a silhouette though.

You hike in some superb locations and you've captured them well here. The blue flowers in the last one look stunning and somewhat alien compared to most of what I generally see in the English countryside (it's all green, brown, yellow and occasionally pink/red if you're lucky). Even our Bluebells tend not to be as vibrant as those.

I was going to comment on the light too, it really makes the images.

Probably for the best, that's a menacing looking building if ever there were one.

These first images seem almost menancing from weather...

This first shot with prey could have been winner with better quality (=faster shutter speed) and bit closer...

Nicely used light/shadows. Only the hand position is bit unfortunate, connecting to background light.

I like the huts in shots, gives impression of scale, which otherwise would be lost.
Are these colour strips on last shot markings for trekking paths? Here we don't have mountains, instead trees are painted with stripes to designate trekking paths.

Lovely shots, I like first shot most. I'm not a fan of dressed up dogs, I guess. On third and fourth shot I'd preferred bit higher angle, to see eyes better, now all I see is big mouth and sharp teeth, not inviting :P

Now a Wildlife Photographer?

No, not really, but I went out on Saturday afternoon to the nearby Yarrow Valley Park, or Birkacre as it used to be known in th'olden days before it became a local tourist spot and the only thing it was known for was a large drained, swampy lodge and a run down buildings where my dad used to buy TV spares from (this was back in the days proper recycling when people used to fix things rather than throw them away).

Birkacre actually has its place in history as the mill there was one of the first places Richard Arkwright installed his Water Spinning Frame. It was subsequently destroyed in 1779 when rioters opposed to the growth in automation descended on the mill, smashed the machinery and burned it down.

Anyway, in recent years (and by recent, I mean since the 1980's when Chorley Council obtained a grant to renovate the area) the area was cleared, the lodge refurbished and restocked, transforming it into Yarrow Valley Park, making it a popular location with townsfolk.

As I prefer quieter and more remote locations, it's not an area I've really explored since its refurbishment, but it has a reputation for rare birds often nesting in amongst the vegetation around the smaller lodges, so I had a wander down there during the afternoon with the Z8 to do a bit of practicing and playing around with settings for bird photography.

Ironically, I didn't manage to get anything rare or really decent in the bird department. I did experiment with higher speeds (1/2000th) and different tracking settings, but I'm still not getting consistent tracking or accurate focusing on moving birds. Often it just completely refused to lock onto single flying birds that were quite large in the frame and distinctly coloured against the background, which is a bit odd as I know people are getting great results with this camera. More experimentation required I think.

Anyway, as I left the lodges and headed into the quieter woods at the South Eastern edge of the park, I spotted a squirrel enjoying some nuts and cereal that had been set out for the birds and I managed to get quite close to it.

Tracking doesn't seem to work at all on squirrels, so these were all shot AF-S with a small manually placed focus point. All handheld with the Z8 and 100-400 f/4.5-5.6S.

After that brief bit of excitement, it was off into the woods to photograph less dynamically challenging (i.e. not moving) subjects, although here the challenge was composition and lighting. All subsequent images taken handheld with the Z8 and 24-70 f/2.8S, a polariser was involved in many of them.

Dancing Tree

This tree looks like it's doing a lively jig, albeit very, very, slowly, with each step taking decades.

Down By The River

The lodges at Birkacre capture water from the river Yarrow, which meanders its way down and around the Southern edge of Chorley from the moors above Anglezarke having already been rudely interrupted by the Rivington reservoir chain. The route I was following through the woods followed the Yarrow upstream.

Clinging On

Exposed roots fascinate me and these were particularly good examples.

You Call This A Path?

The path that follows the river is, er, interesting. It's a nice bit of woods though, so I'm not complaining.

Mushy Peas

I'm not entirely sure how I ended up with this chip shop mushy peas palette for this image, but I think it suits it, even if it's not entirely 100% authentic.

Framing

Ah, back to a more normal looking woodland colour palette. I quite liked the way the foreground tree frames the background one here.

On The Banks of The Yarrow

This imposing Beech tree dominates the opposite bank of the Yarrow as it switches back on itself here. Unfortunately, it's nigh on impossible to get a clear shot of it without standing in 2 feet of water and I wasn't wearing waders. Even getting this shot required scrambling down to a precarious spot.

Flakey Birch

A rather worse for wear looking Birch tree, it might actually be dead but hasn't realised it yet.