With deep brown coloured shells "I don’t just love Clarence Court eggs, I positively luxuriate in them. Their Burford Browns are an essential regular on my weekly Ocado – their brown shells make me feel as if I’m living a rural idyll with my own beautiful brood of chickens – though all of them are fantastic, and I definitely have a soft spot, too, for the poetically coloured Legbar Blues. But all the varieties, with their gorgeous, deep-toned golden yolks, have a depth of flavour that turns the simplest everyday meal into a banquet. The only problem about them is that they’ve utterly ruined me for all other eggs: once you’ve had these poached, soft-boiled or scrambled on toast, you’ll see what I mean!" - Nigella Lawson
Sasha Pivovarova by Paolo Roversi, Vogue India October 2007
The Kai Gracen Series: Book Three Stalker Kai Gracen knew his human upbringing would eventually clash with his elfin heritage, but not so soon. Between Ryder, a pain-in-his-neck sidhe lord coaxing him to join San Diego's Southern Rise Court, and picking up bounties for SoCalGov, he has more than enough to deal with. With his loyalties divided between the humans who raised him and the sidhe lord he's befriended and sworn to protect, Kai finds himself standing at a crossroads. When a friend begs Kai to rescue a small group of elfin refugees fleeing the Dusk Court, he's pulled into a dangerous mission with Ryder through San Diego's understreets and the wilderness beyond. Things go from bad to downright treacherous when Kerrick, Ryder's cousin, insists on joining them, staking a claim on Southern Rise and Kai. Burdened by his painful past, Kai must stand with Ryder against Kerrick while facing down the very court he fears and loathes. Dying while on a run is expected for a Stalker, but Kai wonders if embracing his elfin blood also means losing his heart, soul, and humanity along the way.
Dusk shots of Dublin's Four Courts - Supreme, High, Circuit and formerly Central Criminal - are popular. This shot on the River Liffey quays was taken on a “Walk With Me” Offshoot outing – teams of four get prints done of their best image and compete with other teams within the club. Our team was led by Kevin and the other members were Rory and Gwen. Our goal was capture the “blue hour” around the end of civil twilight, which on the night was at 5.22pm (for anyone checking the exif , my camera clock was still on summer time!). For about 20 minutes around this time, its dark enough to get the full effects of the lighting from the streets, buildings and vehicles but the sky is dark blue rather than black. The series posted by Gwen ranges from her first shot taken at 5.06pm (her camera was still on summer time also) when the sky was still grey to the last one at 5.45pm with an almost black sky. This shot was taken at 5.24 pm with an exposure of 8 seconds, at f11 and ISO 200. Obviously, with an exposure of this length, a tripod or other firm support is essential – I used my Manfrotto 055CX3. This model brings the camera to my eye height without use of the centre leg, which is good because a camera mounted on an extended central leg is more vulnerable to shake. In calm conditions, however, I raised the camera well above head height to the full extent of the central extension to reduce the converging verticals or falling back effect. Of course this meant that I had to compose and focus using liveview but I do this anyway for my tripod-mounted landscape shots – I like the larger view of the scene with 100% coverage – compared to the smaller view with 95% coverage in the viewfinder. Two other liveview advantages are the 5x and 10x magnification options for precise manual focusing on the desired spot and being able to engage with both the scene and the frame as the light changes. I used f11 to get good depth of field - softness due to diffraction can start at apertures smaller than f11 on APS-C sensors. Use of smaller apertures also increases the “sunstar effect” around the street lights – these tend to be more dramatic at f22 and below – so it you want this, some diffraction is unavoidable. ISO 200 is convenient to remain well short of 30 second exposures, after which slightly more inconvenient manually timed bulb exposures are needed. Finally, I chose this simple composition from my visit because it had a good combination of sky and artificial light, it had only a few raindrop blurs to clone out and because it was different from the images posted by the other team members. Additional processing in Lightroom consisted of a slight crop, adjustment of the exposure to darken the dark areas, increasing blue saturation in the sky and sharpening.
On Monday, the Supreme Court punted on a key transgender rights case, leaving the issue of trans bathroom access in federally funded schools unsettled...
Carving a COURT OF QUIETUDE in a Bustling Cityscape by Mudbricks Architects
Charming Semi with Private Court Garden House with 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms.
