Down by the river

Christchurch has two rivers running through it (though to my mind the Heathcote and Avon Rivers are mostly stream-sized). The upper reaches of the Avon River runs through the grounds of the university.

I took a walk at lunch time (I'm not a natural office dweller, even with my new 7th floor view ;-). It was mostly grey (again, sigh) but the sun was trying to remind us it was there.

I spotted these fern fronds on the edge of the Avon and rather liked them. Trouble was the light was flat and dark-ish and though the stream background with banks of ferns, over hanging trees etc was tranquil and beautiful, it was rather busy.

What I like about this is that I thought about what the view finder would see. This next bit probably occurs to many of you but I suddenly realised I could try focusing on the fern bits and let the background stream etc blur enough to make things less busy but not so abstract that the viewer couldn't tell what the background is.

To top it off the sun sort of broke through and I managed to blip while lovely lighting filtered through.

I look at this and am amazed it's taken in the middle of a busy campus in the city.

Blipping restored my sanity at a point where I thought I might just take myself and the testing programme I'm running in a couple of weeks, all a bit too seriously. :-)

Lesson for today: always get out of the office for a break, and go for a run after work even if you don't feel like it. If the body and head isn't responding turn around and go home. But it might just be like today, where I felt all smiley, coordinated and 'flowing' (we're talking relative here ;-) I was totally in the here and now with my senses engaged. Pure joy (and the world needs more joy).

Thanks for looking and thanks for your comments over the last few days.