Happy #Caturday: Catouflage in action!

Happy caturday! I give you... catouflage (cat camouflage). Photo by Hannah Sterry.

July 20, 2013July 20, 2013 | Hannah Sterry

This is a photo of my cat, Mouse, from back when she was only a year or two old. True to her name, she’s small and timid, but she’s really affectionate and reliably appears at the sound of a cat food tin being opened!

Mouse was the only grey kitten in a litter of mostly black kittens and her mum didn’t seem to like her very much (her mum used to remove Mouse from the litter and dump her in the middle of the floor somewhere else), so we ended up giving her cat milk and weaning her on to food a bit early. She’ll usually come over if you click your fingers because that’s what I used to do just before I gave her kitten biscuits.

Hope the picture made you smile and feel free to link me to pictures/blog posts of your cats doing funny, cute and amusing things in the comments! I might link to some of my favourites in next week’s #caturday blog. 🙂

North Sands Beach, Salcombe

Image | May 19, 2013May 19, 2013 | Hannah Sterry

The other day, while walking back from a friend’s, I decided to take a detour past North Sands Beach and happened to get such a lovely shot of the beach that I thought I’d share it with you (click to see the full image on RedBubble)!

If you’re in Salcombe at any point, it’s worth checking the tide tables before visiting North Sands, because at low tide you can climb round to North Sands Castle and at high tide there’s hardly any beach. There are paths behind the beach that lead to some beautiful woodlands that are full of bluebells at this time of year, so if you can go, it’s really worth a visit. In the meantime, I might post a few more photos of this beautiful area (and possibly some maps for suggested local walks).

Have a great summer!

Hannah Sterry Photography

February 18, 2013October 20, 2015 | Hannah Sterry

Photography is my way of showing my appreciation and love of the beautiful South Devon countryside and the local wildlife. A particular interest in macro photography means I can often be found in awkward crouching positions near flowers, just trying to get the perfect shot of a colourful bee or butterfly.

So far my work has been featured a number of times in the South Hams Gazette and gained multiple awards on Pixoto.com.

You can follow my camera-wielding exploits on RedBubble and Facebook!

Photoblog: Yesterday’s Sunset

Golden Sunset - Clouds with a gold and silver lining at sundown in Salcombe, Devon. The sky is on fire.

July 27, 2012September 12, 2012 | Hannah Sterry

This sunset deserves a post on its own. It doesn’t look real, but I promise it is.

Other prints/cards you may like:

The Sterrys: Tuesday Nights at The Cottage Hotel

July 25, 2012July 25, 2012 | Hannah Sterry

Tuesday Night is Music Night at The Cottage Hotel has been a great succes, and was particularly lovely today, as we [The Sterrys] arrived to the sun shining and played until we saw it setting over the sea. Here are the photos from the evening:

John and Joe setting up in the sun.

Taking turns to improvise.

John suddenly turns in to a giant while Joe and Hannah aren’t looking.

The evening ended with this…

…and we couldn’t be happier.

Back from Spain!

June 16, 2012June 16, 2012 | Hannah Sterry

I’ve been absent from the blog for a while because I’ve been holidaying in the Picos Mountains in Spain.

Anyway, I thought it’d be nice to do a quick photoblog of the time I spent there (Santander’s park might have to get its own post, because I took far too many photos).

We stayed in a wonderful house in Los Llanos, just down the hill from a beautiful old village called Mogrovejo, in a valley surrounded by mountains.

Favourite places that I visited:

Potes is the town closest to Los Llanos and on Mondays it has a really good market that sells lots of local cheeses, freshly baked bread (and some food not dissimilar to a pasty) and sweets. Most of the shops seem to sell the standard non-useful tourist gifts (as well as a selection of locally made alcoholic drinks and sweets), but the ferreterias (hardware/ironmongers shop) seemed to have some quite interesting and useful things in them (including massive tea mugs and really cheap tools).
Mirador del Oso, San Glorio, Collado de Llesba (Cantabria). You get some brilliant views of the mountains from this spot and it makes a great place to have a picnic.
The Monastery of Santo Toribio de Liébana is really pretty and worth a quick look. The highlight of that place for me is, perhaps oddly, finding a live baby owl in one of the bins and watching as someone told some passing nuns (who also seemed a little surprised by the the owl).
Fuente Dé is stunningly beautiful. A few minutes in a cable car (or “teleferico”) gets you right up in to the mountains and from there, you’re free to explore the paths as you wish. About 20 minutes walk gets you to the refuge, where there’s a small cafe (often surrounded by a few opportunistic horses).
Peninsula de la Magdalena, Santander. This is the best park I have ever been to and it’s all free. There’s a great play area, a beach (which you can choose to access via slide), woodland, castles, pirate ships and even a mini-zoo with seals, sea lions and penguins. Unfortunately it was a bit overcast on the day we were there, but we still had a great time.

Photoblog: Music Photography

May 6, 2012September 26, 2012 | Hannah Sterry

This week has been a wonderfully musical one. My to-do list has looked roughly like this:

URGENT: DRAW MORE CARTOONS!
Learn the flute part of Benjamin Godard’s “Suite De Trois Morceaux”.
Take some promotional photos for a friend’s band.
Teach myself clarinet and saxophone (ongoing).
Add a few more pieces to the harp repertoire.
Go over recordings and stop faffing about on the internet.

Obviously, I have spent some time faffing on the internet and the cartoons are still in sketch form, but I’m reasonably happy with some of the photographs I’ve taken this week and think I might start a big music photography project where I’ll try to photograph and review everyone I ever play music with under the tag #SouthHamsMusic. We’ll see how that goes!

Anyway, here are some of the music-related pictures that I’ve taken recently:

Ben Carr & The Hot Rats — Benny Guitar Carr & The Hot Rats: Aly Day, Joe Sterry and Tom Carr.

These were from The Hot Rats gig at Kingsbridge’s Hideaway Speakeasy on May the 4th. It was a fairly quiet evening in Kingsbridge, so The Hot Rats livened the place up with an energetic bluesy set and wild improvisations.

On Wednesday there was another blues night at The Royal Oak. The highlight for me was a completely unexpected cover of Gay Pirates by Rob and Laura Williams. It’s a great tune, written by Cosmo Jarvis, with a brilliant video (good enough to be tweeted to thousands of followers by Stephen Fry) and here it is:

After that short round of musical insanity, here are few pictures from my ongoing “Fading Notes” photography series:

Hope to catch you at a gig in the South Hams at some point – I think I’m the only person around here who plays jazz flute!

Feel free to follow my twitter account and facebook page and I’ll try to keep you updated!

Hamer & Isaacs at The Millbrook Inn

April 23, 2012April 25, 2012 | Hannah Sterry

Hamer & Isaacs played a really energetic set at the Millbrook Inn earlier on Sunday afternoon. They play gypsy jazz with a sound reminiscent of Django Reinhardt and Hot Club of France and were kind enough to let me stand in as guest flautist on one or two tunes! When I wasn’t playing I found the time to take a few photos and videos. Here’s how they turned out:

The gig was brilliant!

Everyone had a lot of fun and there was smiling…

Singing…

Laughter…

And even some dancing (I’m attempting to upload the video now, but Devonian internet is a little bit temperamental).

The whole afternoon was a lot of fun and the atmosphere was really relaxed and welcoming. I thoroughly enjoyed playing and listening to the music and hope I have plenty of chances to see the band again!

Sunsets and Silhouettes [Photoblog]

March 24, 2012May 16, 2012 | Hannah Sterry

There’s nothing much better than an evening walk with good company and a perfect sunset – except maybe an amazing pudding – but, as you cannot eat pudding on this website, here are three of my favourite attempts at sunset photography: