Blue into Red

 Well the unseasonably fine weather held out again today, which meant that a scheduled road trip for a relatives birthday went rather well. We took a drive into the Lake District, in Cumbria and spent the day near Windermere, the largest of the 16 eponymous lakes and not far fro Coniston Water, where Donald Campbell broke the water speed record before losing his life in the tragic crash of the Bluebird K7.

The Lake District is tremendously popular with tourists and walkers due to its dramatic and picturesque scenery, with mountainous terrain and huge expanses of water. We didn’t attempt anything especially radical today, but pottering about town and the area gave me a chance to indulge myself with a little photography - specifically with my modified digital camera. I had a camera body modified some time ago, to be sensitised to full spectrum light, so that it can record infra red imagery. Infra red light is especially prevalent in sunny conditions and the radiation absorbed by foliage means that it will appear to glow almost white and blues such as water and sky will naturally darken, so the Lake District seemed the ideal venue. To get the best from IR photography, an additional glass filter should be used over the lens to restrict the wavelengths hitting the sensor, but for convenience I just used the camera as is and made a few corrections in Adobe Lightroom when I got home.

Here are a few shots of the day, including a couple of iPhone snaps of an haunted pub and a shot of the iconic Pennine Tower near Lancaster, looking like a holdover from Thunderbirds! https://motorwayservices.uk/The_Pennine_Tower