When the sun begins to sink in the sky...

Hi there! Can you see me? No?

That's because I'm trying my hand behind the camera today. With a little bit of aid from my human, I'm learning photography.

The problem is, I keep on missing the subject, and taking photos of everything around it for miles - just not what I'm shooting!

So my human suggested that I try and photograph the sky.

'You can't possibly miss that', she said, with a slight note of exasperation (we had, after all, been practicing for the whole day).

Cue a whole ream of photos of the ground.

(I kept dropping the camera.)

And finally, as the sun was beginning to set (and my human was rather unsubtle in punctuating the conversation with yawns), I took this photo.

I know I have lots to learn about taking photos (and keeping a hold on the camera), but even my cackhanded approach creates a pretty picture!

I think it's because the cloudiness of London skies means that when the sun is setting, there's a lovely glow to them.

You can't yawn at that.

Best,

Elf Dryadalis

The skies over London: an ever-changing cloudscape

It's well known that if you're going out in London, it's best to take an umbrella. London's also famous for having constantly changing weather - almost guaranteeing that if you do take out an umbrella (since the TV weather humans have said that it'll rain), the day will stay dry!

This is one of those days. Look at those beautiful wispy clouds behind me - it's one of those cloudscapes where I could watch the clouds go by for hours!

Visiting between late June and late August generally means that you'll see some sun, with temperatures in the low twenties (Celsius).

But naturally, the weather in London isn't quite so obedient as to stick to those guidelines! If you see these looming grey skies above your head,

1) Get out your umbrella.....
2).......which you probably forgot if the sky's looking like this
3) Take in the washing - there's going to be a crazy downpour!

The rain is both hard to predict, yet almost certain. How? Well, it's bound to rain. Probably just when a family barbecue's been arranged, or the picnic's been set, or the weather forecast tells everyone to break out the suncream because there's going to be a heatwave.

Once it rained when I was at the beach. I would have been drier if I'd jumped in the sea.

Yet what's hard to predict is how long the rain will go on for - clouds like this can either mean it'll rain all day, or for just a 5 minute burst, just enough to get everyone soaked!

Oh, and this photo was taken just a few seconds after the grey-skies one above, just of the skies on the other side of the road. It looks like the sky's trying to disguise itself as a Constable painting - all the blending of colours and lights.

If you're wondering whether this means that it rains on one side of the road, but stays dry on the other, yes! This does happen - sometimes it's even more dramatic, for example when on one side the sun's out with blue skies like in the first photo, and on the other, there's heavy rain with leaden skies.

Well, I'm not going to take any more chances today - I'll just nip inside!

Best,

Elf Dryadalis