Enough of playing with old photos – time for some new ones. Here are two words you see a great deal around Devon – “Tea Gardens” – and they’re always enjoyable places to sit back, relax, and enjoy a cuppa (when the weather’s nice).

This particular Tea Garden is at one of our regular stops – Mad Hatter’s Restaurant in Tiverton. Best coffee in town.

A quick snap of a metal teapot on the rough wooden table at the Tea Gardens, at the Grand Western Canal (now unfortunately closed for the season, to re-open at Easter) gave me another chance to play with monochrome. Reducing with the Channel Mixer, in the usual way, using The GIMP, then warming the tone up to a nice golden brown shade:

I’m really quite pleased with this one. The Nikon 55-200 VR DX lens has some heavy vignetting, but a lot of the time, it gives quite a nice effect, and I like how it’s worked here.