green – Page 6 – My Photo Blog

Coffee (and tea) – 26 April 2017

Posted on April 26, 2017 by Zogman

Lazed around this morning and watched another episode of Lucifer. Not quite as funny as the first, but still amazed that americans can actually get this amount of satire, sarcasm and deadpan humour. Series 1 is shaping up nicely. I know it’s on to Series 3 now, but I’m a late convert to the show.

After that, it was up to Costa to meet up with Fred and Val. After the normal exchange of music merchandise we proceeded to lay out in detail the Auld Guys Rules for Brexit, the proof that Maggie Thatcher has been reincarnated as Theresa May and why Jeremy Corbyn is a diddy. Britain sorted over two cortados and a pot of tea.

Next on today’s agenda was booking the Scampmobile in for MOT, followed by a long chat with the garage owner who just wanted an excuse to get away from the paperwork, I realise that. Also I don’t blame him, I used to do that too.

Before dinner, I had time for a walk over to St Mo’s to see what was doing. The answer was very little. Not a lot of decent light, but the ‘big dog’ did a good job with what was left. The result you see above.

Went in to STUC early tonight, not to see Jeremy the Diddy, but to help out with Jamie Gal’s beginners salsa class. Had a great time in both that class and the advanced class, succeeding in boosting today’s step count to almost 10,000. This new Fitbit is much more comfortable and also much neater than the Goji Go. Ok, it costs a lot more, but it was certainly worth it. You get what you pay for.

Tomorrow? A bit of gentle painting in the morning and if I’m awake early enough, I may even go out and get some photos in the early morning light.

Macros – 19 March 2017

Posted on March 19, 2017March 19, 2017 by Zogman

Now, before I get started on macros and stuff, I have to make one thing clear. My skin is old, I’m comfortable in it, and most of all it is, like me, quite thick. So the the ‘Tramp’ comment by Scamp yesterday was like water aff a juck’s back. If you don’t understand that, then sorry, life is too short for me to teach everyone the meaning of everything I say. I accepted that the ‘Tramp’ comment was made in jest and although it might have appeared that I took offence, that wasn’t the case. Ok. Can we move on now?

The photos above were the best I got today. If I’d realised that the weather would stay clear and sunny all day, I might have been encouraged to travel further afield to make more of the conditions, but the weather men and women assured us that it was going to be torrential rain all day. Give them their due, it did rain heavily during the night, but hardly a drop fell all day and for that I give thanks. I went for a walk along the Luggie which was a raging brown torrent after the overnight rain. It was treacherous underfoot. Very slippy and slimy with mud moving about under my sole pair of boots. Unfortunately, the old boots had developed a hole in the upper, just where it met (or in this case, didn’t meet) the sole, so after six years of exceptional service they had to go in the bin. The new ones, just over a year old now are great for waterproofing, but not so good on grip. My bargain walking trainers are great for grip and waterproofing, but are only trainers. They don’t give support or keep you ankles dry. I expect they’ll be fine in the summer when that day comes. I liked the detail in the green blobs (moss fruiting bodies) and the desiccated rose hip. Both were taken with the Sigma 105mm Macro. Such a good lens. Never lets you down, always bitingly sharp. Slow to focus, but I can put up with that. Doesn’t have anti-shake, but doesn’t seem to need it either. Comes into its own when focusing closer than about 150mm from the front element. Truly a gem.

The sketch is an edited view of the bathroom window ledge. I’ve removed half the junk and obviously a bathroom window wouldn’t have clear glass, but artistic license is a wonderful thing. It’s not the best sketch I’ve done for my one-a-week, but it’s done and on time (must be done by Sunday). We were both a bit clumsy to start with, but by the end we were getting much slicker. Must go and practise our moves for tomorrow’s class.

Is this your minky? – 11 February 2017

Posted on February 11, 2017February 13, 2017 by Zogman

Today we set off after breakfast for Chaguaramas to walk into the Bamboo Cathedral.

I don’t know what I expected, but I wasn’t ready for the sign warning us to

Walk in groups
Don’t display cell phones or jewellery
Stay in well lit areas

I thought we were going for a leisurely walk. I forgot to pack the AK47 and stab proof vest. Bummer. However, once we walked past the entrance gate, I forgot all about that. This was jungle! Well, jungle with a wide tarmac road through it. The trees round us were enormous and there was some bamboo too, but nothing ‘cathedral-like’. Then we turned a corner and there was the bamboo. Not one or two clumps, but hundreds – everywhere. Now I could see the ‘cathedral’ reference. The bamboo arched over our heads from both sides and met in the middle making it look and feel as if we were walking through a green tunnel. We walked the length of the bamboo tunnel and then started climbing the hill at the end. As far as we could see, the bamboo was finished. We turned to go back and Madeleine stopped to ‘rescue’ a piece of vine from the depredations of some weeds. Jaime managed to wrap some banana leaf round it and tie it off with a bit of creeper to keep the roots damp until we got it home and could replant it. It was a rescue vine. We walked back through the Bamboo Cathedral and just before we got to the high trees, Madeleine notices movement in the bushes at the side of the road. I started mentally ticking off the warnings on that sign, then we all saw the monkeys.

Madeleine said they were Capuchin monkeys. I was too busy trying to get a decent shot of them in the low light that filtered through the canopy. Eventually, I gave up, switched on fast continuous shooting and fired off seven or eight shots at a time, gave the camera time to deal with them then fired off another seven or eight. I tried a video, but the Oly 10 isn’t really up to that kind of task, and when I checked later, there was nothing useable on either video. Everyone had a great time looking for new groups who seemed to appear from nowhere, climb high into the branches above our heads and jump the gap across to the other side Adult and babies all made the journey without injury although some were better at jumping than they were at catching the branches on the other side and there were a few almost tumbles. Once they were all over, they started feeding and it was time for us to move on. Great fun for all. All the time we were watching the monkeys, people were passing by, all saying “Good Morning” and none really batting an eyelid at the monkey gymnastics. I’m guessing this is a normal occurrence here.

When we got back to the car, we drove on to Macqueripe Bay where we descended the stairs, under the screaming people on the Zip Wire above us, down to the beach. Lovely little beach with what might have been a harbour at one end and a sort of short promenade above the sand. The water looked lovely and clear and I wished I’d brought swimming stuff. The whole place had a strange 1950s look to it and reminded me of the Lido at Bothwell Bridge near Hamilton. Lots of folk swimming and just enjoying the sun, but then it was Saturday after all. I got photos of some crabs before they dived down their holes. They were well back from the sea and I wondered if they sneaked down the steps onto the beach at night. From the promenade you could look out past an island to just see Venezuela in the distance.

After the short visit to the beach, we walked back up to the car and Madeleine drove us home via the supermarket which seemed to stock a lot of Waitrose goods. Which made me wonder if it’s an offshoot of that business. We saw all the usual supermarket stuff and then some things you don’t get back home, like Chicken’s Feet again. Scamp even took a photo of the aforementioned delicacy to show to the disbelieving ones back home. On that subject, I did spot a cafe on the road advertising Cow Heel Soup. Apparently it’s a local delicacy and the soup is really good. I just hope they wash the cow’s heels well before making the soup, having seen the stuff that cows walk through!

Lunch was stewed chicken with fried plantain and salad, followed by coconut ice cream. Maybe a notch down from the ice cream we got in Karawak, but still better than anything we get at home.

Today’s sketch is of the house across the street with a bit of M&J’s house added in to set the scene. Actually, after I was finished, I preferred the lightness of M&J’s house to the lumpy looking other house. The perspective is much more pronounced with the viewpoint closer to the small house. Worth another go, I think. Maybe tomorrow.

Geese – 15 January 2017

Posted on January 15, 2017 by Zogman

Half past one in the afternoon and I’m standing in the middle of an old coup that was previously a spoil tip for a coal mine. Now it’s just wilderness and I’m watching and listening to skein after skein of geese flying overhead heading north. What do they know that we don’t?

That was written much earlier in the day. I’d cycled to the tip and by the time I was heading for home, an hour and a half later, the skeins were flying west, south and occasionally north, but not east. By that time the light was failing and I imagine that these birds had been flying since first light some eight hours earlier and are now looking for somewhere to roost for the night. There are quite a few fields around Cumbersheugh where geese feed and then roost. That would explain the apparently contradictory flight paths. It was great listening to the skeins as they ‘talked’ to each other. Some will say that’s not true, that they don’t communicate, but if you listen, it does sound like they are sharing information with each other.

While I was walking around the tip, I got a few shots of folk on top of the Kirkie Volcano. It’s really a pit bing (spoil heap), but from this angle it looks just like a volcano. One day I’m going to walk up it and take some photos from the top. East Dunbarton Council should really make it into a visitor attraction with a wee coffee shop at the top. It would make a fortune. I may suggest it to them.

It was a lovely day today with a few showers of rain, but the temperature was decent, very decent for the time of year with highs of just over 10ºc. Not quite shorts and tee shirts weather, but not far off it. I did wander around in my shorts for a while, but it was too cool to cycle in them. I saw the moss fruiting bodies (Green Blobs) when I was putting my cycling ‘longs’ (the opposite of shorts) back on and was quite impressed with the colour the camera caught.

Tomorrow is back to Gems in the afternoon, so I need somewhere to go. Not sure where yet. 😉

Green – 17 August 2016

Posted on August 17, 2016August 17, 2016 by Zogman

I’d read on a blog somewhere about taking shots of part of an object or even parts of an object and allowing them to define the whole and another about taking more time to study a shot before taking it. They must have struck a chord with me because that’s what I found myself doing today. First when we went to Strathaven this morning after we’d picked up our new reading glasses in Larky. We were sitting having lunch in a wee cafe. The local secondary school was coming out for lunch too and for a time we were surrounded by school weans. I felt quite nostalgic for a while. Aye Right! (that mean’s “No I DId Not” in Scotland). Anyway, we were sitting next to a wall and over the wall was the Powmillon Burn and a beautiful fern lit by contré jour light (backlight). It looked good, and it still does after Lightroom has had a go at it. I took another wide angle shot from the same position, but it did not come out of Lightroom very well. In other words, it was rubbish.

That sort of set the tone for today’s photos. Also,most of them were green, like the fern, but one that bucked the trend was a shot of a Yellow Wagtail which wasn’t a plant and wasn’t green, but it WAS only a part of the frame, because I couldn’t get closer and I only got one shot. Remember, it’s better to have one shot in the bag and then try to improve on it rather than fart about trying different compositions but then miss the shot entirely and end up with nothing. The other one that wasn’t green was the blue blobs shot which was taken with the intention of having only one flower of the three in focus.

After Strathaven, we came straight back home as I wanted to get the ingredients for tonight’s dinner and Scamp wanted to cut the grass in the back garden. Grass is also green, or am I stretching this too thin now?

With the dinner half made and having solved today’s Sudoku puzzle while sitting in the garden, I went for a walk to St Mo’s to see if there were any other parts of things I could isolate and that’s where the leaf and the two grasses came from. Back home I finished making today’s dinner – Thai Green Curry. Total coincidence!

Possibly one more glorious day tomorrow before the rains come.

Dug wi’ a burst ba’ – 24 July 2016

Posted on July 24, 2016July 25, 2016 by Zogman

It was raining when we got up and it never stopped. Last week it was too much sun, this week it’s too little.

We sat and watched a boring Hungarian F1 GP. Most of the race was yawn-friendly, only becoming interesting in the closing stages. Best part was the after-race comment by Jenson Button about his team being ‘unfriendly’ towards him. I can’t blame him for this throw away comment after the ridiculous rule change that prevents the teams telling drivers about safety issues. F1 is becoming more regulated than the EU. Maybe Britain should opt out of it too.

I spent the rest of the afternoon ‘fiddling’ with a neat little program called Elementary OS. As the name implies, it’s not so much a program, more an Operating System. It’s based on Linux and like most Linux programs it’s free. Unlike most Linux operating systems it looks very neat an clean and almost Mac-like. After a few unsuccessful attempts to install it on my ancient HP netbook, I found that the laptop wouldn’t boot back into Windows. After dinner, I spent the rest of the evening trying to coax it back into life, unsuccessfully. It seemed like the hard disk was empty!! Oh dear.

Eventually I gave up and went out to get a PoD of raindrops on the nasturtiums at the front of the house. I did a bit of focus stacking to get the front and the back beads in focus and with the aid of Photoshop, it all came together as a whole.

After we went to bed, I couldn’t sleep. My mind was still worrying away at the netbook problem, like a “dug wi’ a burst ba’” (That’s a Scottish way of saying “a dog with a bone“). After another hour’s work using the excellent, free and dubiously sourced Hiren’s Boot Disk 15, I managed to get it going again with no loss of data. Now I could go back to sleep.

Looking for some dry weather (sun would be nice, but dry would do) tomorrow.

Noilly Prat – 7 May 2016

Posted on May 7, 2016 by Zogman

Noilly Prat is a brand of vermouth from France. “White” Noilly Prat is the archetype of dry, straw-coloured French vermouth. It’s also the words I woke up to today. I don’t know why. Maybe it was precognition or just a word that I saw somewhere and got trapped in my cerebral cortex. It happens a lot to me.

Woke later than normal and felt as if I hadn’t rested at all. Only myself to blame. That’s what happens when you get home at 2am after a long day, coupled with a late night the day before. Dragged myself out of bed, then a shower and a cup of strong coffee helped put the world back on its axis.

Today we were driving down to Kilmarnock to visit Dorothy B. We spent a good hour there with her and Colin. Enjoyed the company and I’m sure she did too. Got her up to date with what’s been going on in our life and our prospective plans for the next few months.

It was a dull kind of day with very little direct sun, so although I took my cameras as usual, nothing inspired me enough to haul one of them out of the bag. We drove back up the M77 and dropped in at Waitrose for ‘the messages’ and a light lunch. While Scamp was deciding on a bottle of wine for tonight, I turned around and what caught my eye? Why a bottle of Noilly Prat! Just coincidence.

When we got home, and after finishing yesterday’s (extremely) Hard Sudoku with a little help from my tablet, I went for a walk to St Mo’s. Again, nothing was tempting me to get my camera out, then I saw the moss fruiting bodies. Difficult to see with the naked eye, but amazing detail shows up when you use a couple of extension tubes on the Oly with the Panasonic 45-200 zoom. The green larch needles were taken contre-jour (against the light) and I just liked the little pink flower. Three shots survived out of 37 taken. Not bad really.

TV was crap as usual on a Saturday night so we watched a recorded episode of Rick Stein. He was in Berlin, and what wine was he celebrating? Why Noilly Prat! Once is coincidence, twice gets scary, especially since if you’d asked me yesterday what Noilly Prat was, I couldn’t have told you.

Earlier in the week we were promised 24ºc for Sunday (tomorrow), but the weatherman’s revised estimate tonight is nearer 18ºc. Oh dear, let’s hope it doesn’t go any lower.

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Zogman

Today we had to drop Scamp’s car off at the garage by 8.30am. This meant a much earlier rise than normal, but we managed it and got the car dropped off in time. Even then, almost all the parking spaces were taken, mainly because of poor parking skills by the garage’s clients. Some people are so impressed that they have reverse parked, they don’t seem to notice that they are not actually in a bay or maybe they think that white line is a target and you’re supposed to get a wheel either side of it. The parking was so bad that a couple of the mechanics were gainfully employed parking the cars neatly and so releasing a couple more spaces. Scamp parked very neatly, showing all these dobbers how it should be done. Don’t understand ‘dobbers’? No, it’s not an Australian word, much ruder than that. Google it.

Because we were out early, we had intended having breakfast out, but with the exception of Tesco and Asda, there was nowhere in Cumbersheugh where we could have breakfast. Buckfast, yes, Breakfast, no. And there was no way I was having breakfast in either of the supermarkets with school doggers (Don’t Google it!!) sitting at the next table. So we came back home for a normal breakfast.

Later in the morning the gas salesman phoned to say he was running ahead of schedule and could he come early. No problem, that left us more time in the afternoon. Yesterday we had a sales lady. Today we got a gas engineer. Someone who could answer our questions without spin or waffle. Of course there was still spin, there always will be when people are trying to sell something, but not as much as there could have been. No quote yet, but it should be posted to us tomorrow. We thought that was the end of the quotes, but I bumped into Fred P this morning and he’s going to give me the number for the guy who installed his boiler and a personal recommendation is always the best way to get a good workman. The road goes ever on.

Since we didn’t manage to get breakfast out this morning, we did lunch out instead. We went to Milano and I had a tuna pizza which wasn’t all that great. First failure for Milano. Scamp had a gigantic Chicken Burger. Absolutely enormous. She finished it!

Went for a walk to St Mo’s later in the afternoon and despite an unspoken embargo on ‘Flooers’ as a subject today, the first shots I took were flooers. But you see, they aren’t flooers, they’re blossom, so that’s ok! My photo, my rules. The wireless shutter release on the ’10 is so good for taking ground level shots. No more lying on the ground, picking up mud, twigs and the occasional sheep tick. Jut remember to charge your iPhone and remember to take it with you! That’s how the monochrome shot was taken. The green blobs are fruiting bodies of mosses. I’m not sure what species of moss it is, but it was the safest shot to take today because mosses don’t have flooers. Just fruiting bodies called ‘capsules’. There, you and I have learned something new today!

Coffee with Fred P and Val tomorrow. Three auld guys putting the world to rights.

So that was Saturday and that was April. – 30 April 2016

Posted on April 30, 2016 by Zogman

Didn’t do a lot today. The furthest we got was Robroyston for coffee and a quick jaunt to Asda. Later I went for a walk to St Mo’s, but by then the light was getting low so there wasn’t much to see.

Nothing to see here. Just move along.

And that was April.

At least it was dry today, it’s forecast for rain tomorrow.

Must be the shortest blog post ever!

A drive along Clydeside – 27 January 2016

Posted on January 27, 2016 by Zogman

Although it was raining very heavily when we woke up, the weather improved all through the morning, so we decided to go for a drive in the sunlight, rather than go to the pool today. I fancied going to Culross (sorry Hazy) and Scamp wanted to go the Clydeside. We settled on Clydeside.

Rather than go straight down the motorway and waste hours going through the miles of roadworks from the M8 flyover to Hamilton I went through Airdrie, Newmains and Waterloo. Don’t worry if you haven’t got the foggiest idea of where I am, it’s not motorway, that’s all you need to know. Weather hadn’t been brilliant, but when we got to Waterloo we had a view across the Clyde Valley to Stonehouse and Strathaven bathed in bright sunshine making the grass glow! So that’s what sunshine is like.

Drove along Clydeside to Dobbies, or Sandyholm as we used to know it and got the above photo there, looking across to the sunny side of the river. Had a pleasant enough lunch, but inside of the garden centre was a shambles as they were getting rid of the Christmas tat and preparing for Easter which as we all know is when garden centres make the most money. “Buy your plants at Easter to plant them in your garden. Buy the plants that will actually grow in May.” I was told that by a gardener years ago and it’s very true.

On the way home we stopped at Mauldslie to try to get some photos, but the sun had gone for the day and we were back to ISO 10000 again. Time to go home. Still, I walked in the sunshine today again. Things may be looking up.

Oh yes, and it took just over 10 minutes to get through the roadworks on the motorway. But if I’d gone that way to start with I wouldn’t have seen Stonehouse bathed in sunshine.