Conquaerere

I decided to take a couple of ‘conker’ photographs today, and as I was playing around with the camera I wondered where the name conker originated… Conkers (n.)  “child’s game played with horse chestnuts,” originally with snail shells, 1847, probably a variant of conquer. The goal was to break the other player’s item by hitting it with yours. Conquer (v.)  c.1200, cunquearen, from Old French conquerre “conquer, defeat, vanquish,” from Vulgar Latin *conquaerere (for Latin conquirere) “to search for, procure by effort, win,” from Latin com-, intensive prefix (see com-),…

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Morning Light

I was trying to sketch some ideas this morning, the curtains were open, and I tried to ignore the outside world until I managed to get something onto paper worth looking at. Unfortunately the Sun was breaking through the cloud and illuminating a thin layer of mist in the Eden Valley, so I put down the sketchbook and picked up the camera. Now I should really pick up the sketchbook again and work out what I was thinking of this morning, before I became a little distracted.

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Frustrated

This morning I had an early wander, the Sun had yet to show her face and the Moon wasn’t giving off much light yet there was still enough to see by. By the time I’d wandered through the wood I could see mist starting to rise from the fields and fill the hollows between the small hills. So I took a few photographs, but the light wasn’t there and the photographs looked flat. I wandered on a bit further hoping that there would be enough light to make the mist…

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