Other September images.

Some other images taken in September

A rather gloomy afternoon and a very low tide at Portelet

A lovely afternoon and an exceptionally low tide at the fish quay in St Peter Port

A glorious evening on Portioner beach, a family makes the most of the weather playing cricket.

On our way to a restaurant one evening this looked promising so used the iPhone to get an image.

Milan, last day, 19th September 2015

Our last day and just one photo of the hotel reception area.

Milan, City Centre and Cathedral. 18th September 2015

We spent the day looking around the centre of the city, including a quick visit to the Cathedral.

 Milan had a large canal system, built to enable goods to reach the city. Leonardo da Vinci invented the "mitre" lock gate, still used all over the world today, to make opening the gates much easier. These gates In Milan were his.

 The company Eataly has a large number of very good food supermarkets and restaurants all over Italy. This is their branch in the centre of Milan. They had some sort of promotion with Fiat which included dressing up a Fiat 500 with fruit & vegetables.

The bread section is full of the most delicious looking bread. 

The Porta Nuova district of Milan is the business district and has some stunning new buildings. 

We had lunch in the cafe at Trussardi which is just round the corner from La Scala but hardly a tourist in sight. The food was excellent & I couldn't resist a shot of our plates - Gill had a risotto with saffron & I had a gaspacio.

The floor in the Cathedral - quite magnificent.

An HDR view of the inside of the cathedral. It is from just two frames, with extreme differences in the lighting, I am hugely impressed with the resulting HDR image I obtained from Lightroom.

A walk around the roof is not to be missed, the views of the city are excellent as is the close up you see of the cathedral itself.

The view of part of the skyline from the roof.

The old trams have a real old world charm with their wooden seats & floors and the glass lamp shades.

One of the shop windows in Via Spiga, one of the two very upmarket shopping streets.

Before returning to our hotel, we looked to see if the bowling green was being used, and luckily it was. We could just see a small part of it from our room. It is a bowling green with artificial grass and is part of a cafe/restaurant - you can see customers watching while having a drink.
The bowls are very different to any I have seen before in that you bowl diagonally across the green - with two ridges the balls have to cross on their way!

Milan, 17th September 2015

A (slightly) more relaxing day. We went into the city to do some shopping and after lunch went back tom the hotel and the walked around the area to see more of the businesses and some of the canals we had not explored.

 Inside one of the metro trains. No corridors or carriage ends - you can see from one end of the train to the other.

 Another of the old trams passing La Scala opera house.

This is a very clever piece of art. The side of the steps up to a bridge over the canal has been painted and all I had to do was wait for someone to walk down the steps and catch them at the right moment so their position coincided with the painted trousers.

Milan Expo, 16th September 2015

We visited the Expo that opened on the 1st May and finishes on the 31st October. There are over 150 countries exhibiting and the theme is their food, it's production & sustainability. It is a huge site - to give you an idea of it's size, the maximum number of visitors allowed on any one day is 230,000!
The architecture of the pavilions is also fascinating with some excellent designs.
In the evening we returned to the canal area for a meal.
All these images are taken with the X-Pro1.

 Some of the smaller countries producing cocoa and chocolate exhibited in the "Cocoa and Chocolate Cluster". This part also had an exhibition by Martin Parr. It consisted of a number of images, some specially commissioned, ranging through cocoa production to people eating the finished product.

There was a "Coffee Cluster", similar to the cocoa one, but this had an exhibition by Sebastien Salgado about coffee and the people involved in it's production. This snap does not do justice to the actual image which was typical of his monochrome images.

 The British pavilion, representing a beehive.

 This was a fascinating pavilion, staged by the Co-Op, depicting the supermarket of the future. It showed how packaging is changing and how we will be able to have very detailed information on the products we buy displayed on the screens just above the products. There is information on the exact place of production, the farmer, the particular type of the product, its production, sustainability of production, price - to list just a few of the pieces of information that we will have access to.

 You can get an idea of the scale of the pavilions from this picture and the people entering.

 The Russian pavilion, with it's mirrored ceiling over the entrance.

 Inside the French pavilion, with all manner of produce and utensils displayed in the ceiling.

 A copy of the statue that sits on the very top of the cathedral in Milan.

 In the evening we returned to the canal area for a meal. After we took a stroll along the canal passing this very busy kitchen of a Michelin starred restaurant. I love the dog bowl outside!

We also came across this wine shop cum tapas bar. These tanks contained wines, all fully labeled with information on the grape variety, area of production etc., and the price - which ranged between €3 and €6 per litre!!

Milan, 15th September 2015

Our second day in Milan, we decided to walk into the city centre to get a feel for the city.
Most of the day I used the X-Pro1 with the 18mm lens, it is a perfect combination for this sort of work, light, discreet and high quality images.

We had to cross this bridge over the railway lines each time we went to & from the hotel. It is well known in the city for its posters and graffiti.

The old canals, hence the name of the area Navigli, are not used for goods any longer, but the area surrounding the canals has become a main area for restaurants, cafes and artisan goods.

In the centre of the city, this is very popular with people having their lunch, sitting in the sun.

One of the high speed "FrecciaBianca" trains in Milan's Centrale Station

Milan, 14th September 2015

After our arrival in Milan, we checked into our hotel, the Magna Pars and had a look around the area after dinner. Only a few pictures taken, both these with the X-T1 which I am getting used to very quickly and it is much more of a development of my X-Pro1 than I had imagined.
We based ourselves in the Via Tortona area, in the Navigli district. This is the "Shoreditch" of Milan, with plenty of regeneration and the creative centre of the city.

 The lounge area of our suite. This is where I realised I need a lens wider than the 14mm!

We had a sortie of the area, Porta Genova, after our meal and found this old tram, of which there is a large number still in service, at it's terminus outside the railway station.

Spectrum Day in Sark with Ian Wilson ARPS- Saturday 5th September 2015

Saturday may have been cloudy with showers, but those club members who ventured across the water to Sark had a very rewarding day's photography.

 The eight of us on the ferry - from left to right, Paul, Izzy, Ian, Jan, Kevin, Carol, Julie and the camera bag represents me!