May 23 2013

Wilkie’s Photo Gallery

Thought it was time to share this blog with you. The owner is a club member who as well as having bonsai and started getting quite serious about photography. I offered to help get him up and running on a photo blog to help showcase his work.

As well as seeing the odd bonsai portrait of one of his trees, you will see some great action, landscape and wildlife images. Give him a wee hello to encourage him to share and make sure you check out some of his work on the page tabs at the top.

As usual, just click on the photo below to visit, one of my favourite photos from him.

Jan 19 2013

Noelanders Trophy 2013 Photos Part 7

And finally Part 7, the last batch from Harry. It’s a bumper batch too with a few extra 🙂

A big thank you to Harry on behalf of all the folk who have been hitting the like button and sending private messages. For those of us not lucky enough to be there, this is as good as it gets. If anyone here’s about the other winners, let me know and I’ll post the trees here for all to admire.

I and I have also added a link To Jerry’s FlickR Set with quite a few photos from the Trade area for those interested. As others add their photos on the net I’ll add links here too. Save you all hunting about ❗

Nov 26 2012

Worth a Look

These two are worth a look.

First up are some great photos from the www.ofbonsai.org website showing bonsai displayed at 32st Nippon Bonsai Taikan-Ten (2012)

Second is a video from Merlin showing some tasty trees.

Jul 22 2012

Rose Show

I had the pleasure of judging the bonsai entries at the Rose Show in Belfast yesterday. I small local flower show held as part of the bigger Rose Week event at Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park.

The bonsai aspect was small, our club supports the Rose Society by always getting a few entries in to fill the space and add interest for the public. As far as bonsai go, it’s not what we aspire too in our own displays with the usual low tables and cramped space. For that reason and the poor photos that resulted from inside a marquee, I’ll not bombard you with poor quality photos. I will however share some photos taken from within the park itself showing both the roses and some nice trees.

First, photos from inside the flower show marquee during judging. The rest from within the park Rose Gardens and Japanese Garden. When I show the Rose name it’s because is a highly perfumes variety that my wife is determined to add to our garden.

Feb 29 2012

Further Inspiration

My go to guy for good photos is Hugh from the club. Recently converted to bonsai, Hugh has been scouring his back catalogue of photos looking for inspiration. He came across these two from a trip to America a few years back. I think he said they were taken at the Grand Canyon, I may be wrong!

Feb 1 2012

Interesting Article

Someone shared a link to this article on Linkedin and I thought it was worth sharing it here. Some beautiful photographs of trees, unfortunately accompanied by a sad story.

Just click on the image below to view the gallery of photos, and click HERE to read the story.

Jan 21 2012

Show Time

It feels like all the good shows are all happening now, and I’m missing it all 😦 I’m watching the Noelanders Trophy photos starting to drift onto the net and then I spotted this post on Tyler Sherrod’s Blog about preparation for Kokufu. I thought this photo of the truck loaded for transportation to the venue was brilliant. Click on the photo to see the trees on Tyler’s blog. Keep us posted Tyler 🙂

Jan 12 2012

BSA 6th Annual Exhibit

As I sit here waiting for my trees to waken up in the Spring I can’t help but look forward to the forth coming British Shohin Association Exhibition. I plan to make the trip over to this in March and maybe even get a tree exhibited.

I have made many new friends through this blog and this will be an opportunity for me to actually meet a few face to face. To get in the mood I’m going to share a few photos from past Exhibitions.

Duncan Hield and Peter Snart putting a composition together ready for photographing

Duncan Hield' J.chinensis'itoigawa' and A.buergeranum composition

Roger Oldham with his winning Pinus thunbergii

Stuart Norris in front of his winning composition with show judge Marco Invernizzi

Stuart Norris with his awards in front of his composition.

Caroline Scott's winning U.parvifolia in the Deciduous or broadleaved chuhin class

This is a short View clip of the show display area.

Dec 23 2011

Eejits on Tour Part 2

Some more shots from our tour of the North.

This was a rather strange one! A tree surrounded by a large stone wall. I assume that the wall was there first, some sort of hill fort or burial cairn. The tree probably self seeded in there and it now looks like this.

The whole area is covered with long abandoned crofts which add to the look of the place.

Some of the terrain that we find collectable Hawthorn on.

A rather unusual hawthorn hedge. Up, down and up again!

Nice in the Summer but bleak in the Winter!

Spotted some very interesting fungi along the way. I don’t know why I’m so fascinated by them! There must be some sort of support group out there for me 🙂

I loved this little fella growing in a hollow on a tree. Tree had an entish look to it 🙂

Yet more to follow!!

Dec 18 2011

Ice Ice Baby

Only the mad and insane walked today!! The footpaths and roads in my home town of Ards were pure sheets of ice. Rainfall during the night froze quickly and the police had actually closed the road on which we normally park for our walk up to Scrabo Tower. Wise people were turning around and going home.

Anyway, us four eejits just carried on. 😀 If we could make it to the gravel paths, we would be fine. Two cars side swiped the kerb and others had been abandoned. After watching the dogs running then sliding for 30 feet at a time, and watching my brother fall on his hoop, we managed to make it to the gravel surface.

Here are a few photos of the walk once it was safe to bring the camera out! Gravel paths a must 🙂

Tarmac paths to be avoided!!

Scrabo Tower was our first target.

Some nice views from the tower. Only from the bottom as the Tower is closed over the Winter months. Below is Belfast in the distance and the snow covered hills behind.