Oh Deer!

At the back of our apartment we have a very steeply upwards sloping garden, dotted with a few apple trees. Behind the thin line of trees at the top there is a meadow, then a stony trail which leads on into the forest. Quite often deers come out of the forest and across the meadow and find their way into our garden. Whether it's for the fallen apples or not I don't know, but there they are.

Well, yesterday was such a day, a young male and a female. They stayed in the garden for most of the day, feeding, sleeping and more feeding. Too good a chance, so I fitted the Nikon 55-200mm lens and took quite a few photographs. As fellow photographers will understand most of these weren't very good, but a few of them were'nt bad. I post a couple here.

This is the female, pausing a moment from her constant feeding. She was also keeping a close eye on the young male, whether she was it's mother or mate I do not know.

This the young male, still with his immature furry antlers. They came really close, only 15 feet or so away and didn't seem unduly timid.

London calling
I also played a game of London with Tina. We both really like this game and I agree with several posters on BGG that the game tends to run to a pattern. Buy boroughs, get cards, lay cards, when you have an almost empty hand run city....repeat. I also tend to focus on cards that produce income in the early game and on cards that reduce poverty in the middle, late game. Neither of us relied on loans a great deal, I only took one and Tina none at all. I find the school invaluable and the hospital very useful as well. The game was fairly close, I ended up on 96 pts and Tina on 78 pts.

Happy Gaming!!

My first venture into DSLR photography

Lucky me, I got a new camera for Christmas.....a Nikon D3000, which is an entry level DSLR . It has plenty of features for me though, my last camera was a digital compact which took good enough photographs but I wanted to have more control and options available to try different things. Luckily I have got a programme so I can play around with the images I produce and either enhance them or, as Tina says, cheat.

Here are a couple of the first images I have taken using the Nikon. The seeds photo was taken using aperture priority. I used the RAW format and post processed them on the computer. There is so much to learn with this programme, luckily there are hundreds of tutorials and tips out there on the internet to help the beginner like myself.

I shall post new photos as the year progresses so you can see if I get better or not.....lol!!

On the gaming front, Tina and I had a game of Khan yesterday. It plays OK as 2 player, but I would think it gets a lot more tactical with more players. The production of the game is first class, I have seen some comments on BGG that the art and names of the rulers etc aren't strictly right for the period...but this is a game right, and how many gamers are fluent in ancient mongolian?

Happy Gaming......and photography!!!