September already 6

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The rural life.

Only a puritanical pedant would decry the elderly occupants the privacy of a leaded glass, bathroom window. Oh, and a picture window dormer to the upstairs bedroom in the barn conversion. This picture is best seen full screen to capture the wonderful softness of the enveloping thatch and the sense of open space. I love the totally honest, front garden, clothes line. This truly is the good life. If only there was a shop within 5 miles! Village shops cannot compete with the lure of the supermarkets. (for those with motorised transport) Pull the ladder up, Jack! I'm alright.

 25th September 50-60F, 10-16C, sunny, light winds. A perfect morning! Still and bright with a light mist. The only problem was the low, bright sun affecting my photography. The camera just can't capture what I see. I can avoid flare but when I expect a gentle softening from the mist the picture just looks out of focus! :-)

After yesterday's fun at t'mill, I deliberately set off to  capture as many thatched houses as possible in a particular area. I returned with 159 new pictures! <blush>

Naturally I can't just make one blog post with so many pictures. So I'll just have to ration them out over a period of time. It takes time just to run them all through PhotoFiltre. To downsize them, adjust contrast and gamma and perhaps to straighten them slightly. 

The barn is as pretty as a picture on this immaculate, former farmhouse.

The main problem with weekends is all the cars parked in front of the prettiest homes. This ruled out quite a few which would otherwise have been photographed. Unless one is very lucky it may be impossible to find an angle to hide the vehicles from view. Once in a while it is possible to blot them out using a cloning tool in PhotoFiltre: As in this example below where I cloned the background over a parked car in the back garden:

Or here (below) where I was able to partially hide the car with a shrub and clone out some junk on the drive. This amazing house on a raised plinth has been defying me a good shot for a year or more. A car always seems to be present. The sunlight was behind the house which reduced the contrast and hides the framing trees. The village church is immediately behind the house. It has a large and noisy bell. As do most Danish village churches.The priest was standing in his Elizabethan collar and robes in the yard behind his house. Off to the right, as the bell was rung briefly at 9am. The congregation could probably have been counted on the fingers of one hand.

 Sometimes the contrast is too great and I have to adjust it downwards:

 

For  the image above I toned the contrast down but also had to stand on somebody's lawn to get far enough away despite the wide angle lens on the TZ7. It is the opposite neighbour's front hedge in the foreground! :-)

With this one I had to make do with photographing the barn. Because the lovely old house had a car obscuring most of the frontage!

This one was so extremely long I had to make use of every inch of the very wide yard to get it all in. It is still an active farm. 

Here I was forced to capture the rough ground of a smallholding.
Realistic, but not the prettiest foreground imaginable.

1860 is the youngest part of this 4 lengths, village centre farm dating back to 1606! This section was the later horse stables. It was rebuilt in brick to extend the original timber-framed barn. The original "bindingsværk"  (timber framing) construction and stalls are still visible inside.

 The roadside façade. With a view into the central yard to the opposite wing.
This part of the building was once the living quarters before it was moved to the adjoining building.

Another gable end on the back of the farm. The central yard and surrounding area are cobbled with field stones. In front of the "stuhuset" the cobbles are arranged in broad strips. With larger stones demarking the borders between them. This is an early sign of a well-to-do farm. Most cobbled yards are just randomly laid. Note how thatch has no gutters. It drips for ages after rain or even a heavy dew! 

This is the original 1606 section. The date is inscribed inside. Now the living rooms part of the enclosing farm buildings. The Danes refer to this as "stuehuset". The house with the living rooms. Again I was lucky enough to see the owner pottering in his yard and he invited me to have a tour round. The house has been on the market for some years and badly needs a new thatched roof. The blue ropes are retaining tarpaulins on the ridges.The tiny window over the door is to provide a little light inside the roof. Sometimes the roof would be used for storage. Or (presumably) bedrooms for the many farm hands.

An old dormer window with the waviest glass I have ever seen in my entire life! This was part of the oldest wing. Nothing else destroys the character of an old building like modern, dead flat, float glass. It has absolutely no character (at all!). Not even if used with a proper number of glazing bars. (Sprosser in Danish)  Note the slender glazing bars in this wonderful old window. These narrow glazing bars blocked the least light and allowed the best possible view. All but disappearing when one looked out of the window.

Yet another view of this charming old farm.
The owner didn't say how long it had been disused for agricultural purposes. (nedlagt landbrug) 

Four hours to do 25.5 miles. Including shopping at two supermarkets (for at least 10 kilos of shopping) and taking 159 photographs. The punctured tyre is "bumping" at speed. Odd, considering the small size of the patch I applied.

This post may stretch slightly but I usually try to limit the number of images. Just to ensure pages open reasonably quickly for all visitors. If everybody was on fast broadband I could stuff each page with lots of very large images. With the very limited, rural, online experience in many countries, this would be rather selfish.

I see the Google gallery idea has vanished again.

In Cav we trust. :-)

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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