Category: Macro

An improving picture – 6 February 2021

Posted on by Zogman

It was actually dry when we woke today.

We’ve had so much rain recently, it was quite a surprise to look out of a window without raindrops on it. Even when Scamp announced she was going to walk down to the shops to get tonight’s dinner, it was still dry. I wasn’t going. I was staying to work on tonight’s sketch which involved people, or at least a person and I really need the practise in people drawing. When she returned, she reported that there was a bit of rain in the wind, but nothing like the last few days.

After lunch I went for a walk round St Mo’s. ‘Round the Policies’ as Colin would say. Just checking out the usual photo spots to see if there was anything worthwhile. I did see a crocodile, actually a log lying low in the water with two branch stubs that looked like eyes. Well, it looked like that to me. I thought it might make PoD, but a bit of chimping dispelled that thought. No, PoD went to some green blobs. Fruiting bodies of moss. I can’t remember when I first saw the ‘Green Blobs’, but it was many years ago and they were growing on a low tree branch. They are the most remarkable things and only really visible when you look carefully and it helps to be looking through a macro lens. With a potential PoD and a crocodile, it was time to head home.

Dinner tonight turned out to be, not the chicken that Scamp had lugged up from the shops, but a veg curry made from a Spice Tailor kit. It tasted brilliant, really superb. Scamp made it, that’s why.

With that done and the PoD sorted, I started making more detailed preparatory drawings for “Dance”. Finally got one I liked and laid on a few washes. It started to come together and that’s what went on display around the world on Facebook tonight. I know it’s not perfect, but it gives the feeling of movement, I think. That’s what I was aiming for.

Well, it stayed dry almost all day today but it’s to be much colder tomorrow if the weather fairies are to be believed. We’ll wait and wonder.

More dancing – 24 January 2021

Posted on by Zogman

A lesson this time, not a dance.

Yet another cold morning. It was -4ºc when Scamp was making the breakfast.

Of course we weren’t getting up at that time. Never on a Sunday! However, once we’d had breakfast showered and were ready to face the day I did take a walk to examine the frost on the car and managed to get a couple of photos of the little ice crystals. One was posted on Flickr, but it didn’t achieve PoD.

It wasn’t until well after midday that we steeled ourselves and went for a walk around St Mo’s pond. I took a few more frosty photos there and it was one of them that produced the tiny frozen trees that made PoD. It was a close run thing with my other favourite photo, a leaf covered with hoar frost.

It was just above freezing when we arrived back at the house. Dinner tonight was Bacon and Borlotti Beans. Now becoming a firm favourite. Then we had to move all the furniture around for tonight’s dance class. First off was a reprise of last week’s Mambo Marina followed by our ongoing stumbles through Rumba and finished off with the Midnight Jive. We weren’t too bad at that. It was me stumbling round the rumba that was the low point. Even with Stewart and Jane’s encouragement, we are finding it hard. Not insurmountable, just difficult. It doesn’t help that we are dancing on a carpet and they are demonstrating on a polished wooden floor. However, the hour passed fairly quickly and with a bit of practise over the next few days we’ll get there, I’m sure. If not, we’ll have invented an new dance, The Stumble Rumba. It does have a certain ring to it!

Spoke to JIC at night and were surprised to hear that they had had a full day of snow and we had none. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. You never know what we’ll wake up to tomorrow!

Tomorrow morning I’m supposed to be doing a rubbish uplift for Shona. Hope the skips have been emptied over the weekend to make room for it all.

 

 

Fishing, Pizzas and Ironing – 15 January 2021

Posted on by Zogman

I should make it clear that I didn’t do all of these things, but I was a participant.

Pizza for lunch. Hand made dough while Scamp ironed things. Too many things in my opinion, but at times she’s a perfectionist and demands her own standards. The pizza dough looked great. IMO the finished pizza wasn’t quite as great, however, Scamp disagreed as was her right. Too long in the oven or the oven too high, I’m not sure. My excuse is that it’s been a long time since I’ve made a pizza. Must try harder.

That’s Ironing and Pizza covered. The ‘Fishing’ is a bit of a red herring :-). What it really means is we “went for the messages”. We drove to M&S because we had a fairly long list of stuff to get and Scamp was coming down with the cold, but still wanted to get out the house for a while. Driving to M&S was the right solution today. The main items on the list by far was fish. Fish in its many varieties and colours. Fish on a Friday is traditional in some places, so it made sense. We got a few bits of veg too. Just a general shop really. We’ve got a Tesco delivery booked for Monday but sometimes you like to see what you’re buying, especially fruit and veg which Tesco are a bit hit and miss with. I think they throw some of the fruit into the basket from the other side of the shop.

So, Fishing, Pizzas and Ironing covered and explained. Another load of washing went into the new machine and came out drier than they did from the old one. I went for a walk in St Mo’s to get some more of the moss photos using a macro lens on my ancient Oly E-PL5. Solid and chunky. Hardly any plastic went into its construction, just glass and metal really. For such a tiny wee camera it weighs a ton. PoD was the little water drop jewel on a moss fruiting body. If you look on Flickr you’ll see its neighbour, the ‘Periscopes’.

Hazy: I finished Tales from the Folly, the short story collection we talked about. I’d managed to spin it out to one story a day, well, sometimes two a day. Mostly very good with the inevitable one or two duff ones. Good recommendation, thanks.
Now waiting for the price of “What Abigail Did …” to come down to a reasonable price, once it appears, that is. Now starting the last in the Slow Horses series. Another one I’ve been keeping on the back burner for a long time.

No plans for tomorrow. Weather looks cold and wet. I might paint something.

Back in business – 14 January 2021

Posted on by Zogman

No more using the washboard in the sink and then pressing the water out of the clothes with the wringer.  If none of the foregoing made any sense to you, then don’t worry. You’re just too young to understand.

Snow, and lots of it was forecast for today. At least 10cm (4” in old money) would have fallen by 8am. I woke at about 630am and yes, there was a covering, but only that. Some footprints probably from Wullie, who lives at the corner, and Hamish the dog were visible, but it looked decidedly wet underneath. By 9am another scraping of snow had fallen, but already it was sleet that was falling. It looked like the weather fairies were crying Wolf! again. One day they’ll get it right and we’ll be caught out.

I got a text later in the morning to say that the washing machine would be delivered between 2.45 and 6.45pm. That gave me enough time for lunch and a quick walk round St Mo’s before they arrived. So after lunch I grabbed a couple of cameras and headed off to the snowy wastes of St Mo’s. Land of adventure and snow. Found a few worthwhile things to photograph. Dropped in at my old pal, the white spotted ladybird which was still dozing away dreaming of eating aphids. PoD was going to be either a slow shutter shot of some snowmelt running in a newly formed burn by the side of the path or a low viewpoint shot of some moss fruits poking their heads above the snow. After St Mo’s, I walked over to Condorrat to get bread and milk. On my way there I got the call from the Currys workies to say they’d be 20 – 25mins. Just enough time to do the shopping. They passed me on the way home. But the time I got to the house they had disconnected the old machine and were wheeling the new one in. It took them about 15mins total from start to finish.

One of the blokes had checked that it was taking water in and pumping it out and that the spin and wash were working. Then he set it up for an initial wash cycle of 30 mins to clean all the piping and the drum I expect. When they had left, Scamp read and reread the instruction book and so did I, but we were none the wiser. First attempt was a failure. Second one worked perfectly. I was surprised at how quiet it was on the wash cycle, but a bit noisier in the spin which admittedly was faster than the old machine. It did do a bit of a wobble dance at full speed. It’s early days yet, but it seems to do everything we need and none of the things that would only confuse us.

Dinner was to be Muttar Paneer (Peas and Indian Cheese) and since my writing was on the instruction book I got to make it. Many moons ago I went on a one day cookery course and they taught us about Mise En Place. It means “everything in its place”. Scamp always encourages me to do it and I did it today. It makes a great reduction to the stress levels when you have all your ingredients and utensils just there where you need them. I’d like to say everything went like clockwork, but it wasn’t quite as smooth as that. The curry was a bit hot, but very tasty. Scamp never even mentioned that the paneer was squeaky. One of her pet hates.

PoD turned out to be the moss picture. There just wasn’t enough water coming down that burn to give the impression I was trying to get and the 1/5second shutter speed meant there was a bit too much softness. Tripod next time and more water.

Tomorrow we have no plans. I got milk and bread today so there is no need for us to venture into crowded shops.

The world is warming up – 10 January 2021

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And it’s raining.

I liked the snow. I even liked the ice, but like an old friend who overstays his welcome, it was good to see it go. Today it was on its way to another place that needed snow and ice.

We decided to go for a walk in the morning because it was dry and the temperature was above zero. Almost as soon as we closed the door, the rain started. We intended walking round St Mo’s, but without grippers, that was going to be a tough trek, so instead we walked round along the pavement beside the road and just took our time to go the longest road we could to get back to the house. Not the most scenic of routes and the camera stayed safely in the bag the whole time. I intended going out myself for a walk later, but that didn’t happen.

Instead we had lunch and then I started to make some soup. I remember my mum pouring boiling water from a kettle on the leeks in the garden and me digging them up to make soup. That’s what I did today. My last three leeks were meant to make the soup on New Year’s Day, but we never got round to it. Today we came out of the big freeze and although the ice and snow were leaving us, they still held the raised bed in their grasp, so I had to resort to my mum’s trick with the kettle. It worked and the leeks came out. Well, two of them did, the third one broke getting it out, but I did manage to get both halves eventually and they were going to be cut up anyway.

With the soup on the go, I started doing the prep for the veggie chilli we were having for dinner. We’d decided that we’d use what we had in the fridge for the chilli. Peppers, onions, carrots and butternut squash all went in to the pot along with a tin of tomatoes and a litre of stock. It was a bit monotone, more yellow than I’d intended, but I chopped up two of my small jalapeños that I’ve kept in the freezer, thinking they would provide some heat if not any colour. The didn’t do much of anything for the chilli. After thinking about it, I remembered that Sim, and expert on chillies and said she’d put the whole chilli into a curry seeds included. I’d been too careful, removing all the seeds. Next time I’ll use the whole chopped up pepper. Probably that will make it too hot! The soup was a bit thin, but ok. The chilli was a bit bland in colour and taste, but both together filled a space.

We were supposed to be taking part in a Zoom dance class tonight. Scamp was really looking forward to it, but I wasn’t. I always feel so uncoordinated in a dance class, a ballroom class anyway, but I was willing to put up with it for Scamp. She had the booking confirmed by the teacher and we were ready to go at 7pm. That slot came and went, so most of the Zoom dances start at 7.30pm, so that was probably the start time for a lesson too. 7.30pm came and went with no message to give us the starting link. We eventually gave up at 8.30pm. Scamp is going to text the teacher tomorrow to see what the problem was.

Spoke to JIC afterwards and were amazed by his revelation that work in many of the labs in the UK is having to be shelved because many of the consumable tools are not being replaced because Covid research and vaccine development is being prioritised. It’s not until you hear from someone at the ‘coalface’ that you realise the different problems this pandemic is creating for everyone. These things don’t make it to the evening news!

PoD was a macro of raindrops on a kale leaf. The leaf is now in today’s soup. Some of the raindrops will be too!

Tomorrow we may attempt a walk somewhere and to be honest, the cars need a run to keep them healthy too. So maybe a drive to somewhere for our daily exercise walk.

Another year over

Posted on by Zogman

… and a new one just begun.

It started cold and dry. Not a bad first morning for 2021. It shows promise.

Scamp was feeling the after effects of yesterday’s nascent cold. A couple of paracetamol had helped her get a good night’s sleep, but morning came too soon. For me, morning also came too soon, but my medication had been liquid and with Famous Grouse on the bottle. Self inflicted injury I call it.

The only solution was to get up and make breakfast for both of us. A look outside while opening the blinds downstairs confirmed my suspicions that nobody was intending going anywhere this morning. I think it was a case of “If I don’t need to, then I’m not going to.” Can’t say I blame them, that’s been my maxim for the past six years.

After breakfast and a shower, I think we both felt better. Time to face the day … after a cup of coffee, of course. I had a fair bit of computer work to do today. Every first of the month means changes need to be made to the photo catalog and storage. Every first of the year means a lot of backing up, a completely new catalog and storage. Everything has to be done in order or chaos will reign. Today everything seemed to work. Still does seem to have worked which makes me suspicious.

To keep my mind off the rest of the computer stuff I started my 2021 sudoku calendar. Just the same model as last year’s, the Times Sudoku, I was just getting stuck when I was reminded that I promised to make a loaf. That took my mind off numbers for a while. In preparation for making the first of JIC’s breads, I hand kneaded the dough for my half white, half brown bread. The kneading helped me tick off one of my ‘8 active hours’. With the dough doing its first prove, I tackled Friday’s sudoku, because, today was Friday. Like I said before, it’s hard to keep track of the days at this time of year.

After a lunch of scrambled egg and smoked trout which was an eye opener, maybe even more delicious than smoked salmon, I considered going out for a walk, but a foray into the wilds of the front garden didn’t encourage me. However, eventually I did coax myself into getting boots on and going out. I even wore my Yaktrax™ which I bought for about a tenner some years ago and are now costing about twice that. Basically a stretchy rubber overshoe that is covered with metal coils on the bottom. I’m so glad Scamp convinced me to wear them. I could walk where others feared to tread. The best bit was the lovely crunch they made biting into the ice. People just started at me walking on the ice paths while they tippy toed around looking for purchase. Got a PoD which turned out to be my favourite plant of all year. The Cow Parsley. Flowers in the summer enticing in the insects. Seedheads in the autumn and winter to feed the birds. Such graphical shapes the seedheads make. A photogs delight. I was using my old Oly E-M1 for a change. A near miss for the PoD was a shot of broken part-melted and refrozen ice on St Mo’s pond. Nearly but not quite. That one was taken with the old Teazer (TZ70) great camera. Battered and bruised but still working.

Back home baked the bread and threw a hissy fit when it stuck to the cake tin I was baking it in. Finally got it out and it tasted great. I won’t make that mistake again. Dinner for me was sirloin steak done in the new pan. Scamp had oven cooked trout done in tinfoil, not smoked this time. Pudding was a surprise she’d concocted while I was out and it was a mixture of flavours which I had to deconstruct in my head. Nearly got it right too!

Well, that was the first day of the year done. Photos are posted, changes are made to catalogs and photo storage. Bread was baked and it worked. Little bits of code rewritten to take account of the changes from leap year to ‘normal’ year. All pigs fed and ready to fly!

Tomorrow if the weather is good, we’re hoping to go for a walk wearing Yaktrax™ to astound the baffled.

Just another Sunday – 15 November 2020

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It rained, it was dry, it rained, it was dry, … repeat.

We waited until after lunch before we committed ourselves to a walk. The sky was lightening, the clouds seemed a bit higher and it looked as if there was a decent chance of just a passing shower to spoil our walk. As it happened, our walk round Broadwood Loch was a dry one, by which I mean it didn’t rain. There was plenty of standing water to splash in if you were interested in that aspect of the walk, but Scamp doesn’t like to get her walking boots wet, or dirty. I, on the other hand was wearing my Clarks Super Slide-a-lot boots that keep your feet almost dry, but have virtually no grip. Stylish, but Pointless would be their marketing logo.

<Warning boring photography stuff inside>
There were loads of people out for a Sunday stroll in the fresh air and avoiding the rain showers that had dogged the morning. I got a few shots, but forgot that the Samyang 18mm has a mind of its own as far as focusing goes. I need to remember to check that it is actually locked on to focus before I press the button. Although the sky was lighter than the morning there were almost no clouds to give any texture. A milky white Scottish sky. Luckily I’d been experimenting with the old Sigma 105mm macro on the Sony earlier in the day and today’s PoD was already in the bag, a Jenny Long Legs or Crane Fly to give it a more general name. I hadn’t noticed the possibilities of the man feeding the birds until Scamp put me wise to it about half an hour ago. Maybe some of my technospeak is rubbing off on her.
<Photography stuff is gone now>

With constant tuition from Scamp I may one day be able to cook a decent stew. Today I tried a new method and it worked, still with tweaks from the chef. However I could never reach the heady heights of her apple crumble which was a pure delight! Bramley apples and cinnamon were the secrets, she said. My contribution was a loaf which looks quite good, but tomorrow will be the real test.

We practised a bit of Jive tonight, just to keep our hand in and our feet from tripping each other up.  Spoke to JIC later and he sounds better than he did last week. Discussed lockdown looking for hints and tips as it seems we may be heading that way by the end of the week. Lanarkshire, the pariahs of Scotland.

Hoping we’ll manage lunch tomorrow with C&N at The Cotton House.

A dull day in the morning – 5 November 2020

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Blue sky looking out the front window but really black at the back.

We decided to wait it out and see if the blue sky or the black clouds would win. Eventually the blues did win the day, but it was lunchtime by then and we stopped our cloudgazing to have a Bruschetta each for lunch. Sounds very posh, but the bread was going stale but would make good toast and the wee tomatoes were just past their sell-by date. A good way to use them up. Full marks to Scamp.

After lunch Scamp decided to make a chicken curry for dinner in the slow cooker and headed off to the shops to get a couple of chicken legs. I gathered my camera gear together and took a walk over to St Mo’s. Today I was mixing my cameras. I had my Oly with a macro lens and the Sony with the kit lens. I was fairly sure the Sony would produce the best landscape shot, and I wasn’t wrong. But I was equally sure the Oly would produce the best macro and again I backed the right horse. In fact, the Oly won the day with PoD going to a conifer trunk with a pattern looking like the flatworms from MC Escher’s lithographs. Google “Escher Flatworms” to see what I mean. I think the tree was a Larch because it was starting to shed its needles.

Back home the chicken curry was beginning to scent the air in the living room, because the great thing about slow cookers is they’re portable. You can plug them in anywhere there’s a power socket and they’ll do their job as well as sitting on the kitchen counter.

For a while we watched the antics of a couple of 70-somethings arguing about who won and I thought: Would I really want either of them to run my country? Boris is a bumbler, but these two are zoomers.

Tonight was Guy Fawkes Night, but since he was a bit of a terrorist and it’s not the done thing to glorify terrorists, the celebration has been renamed Bonfire Night.  That’s what we used to call it anyway, so it’s obviously the right name.  Although we didn’t have an official fireworks display this year, or maybe because we didn’t, there were loads of rockets flying through the air and explosions all around us.  Certainly one of the noisiest Bonfire Nights for many years.

Tomorrow we go out for lunch, but still stay within the boundaries of North Lanarkshire.

The Chicken Curry? Of course it was beautiful. Tasted as good as it smelled!

The end of August – 31 August 2020

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Autumn is just around the corner.

There, that’s cheered you up hasn’t it!

First things I noticed this morning were the bumps on the Habanero peppers I’ve been growing on the window ledges in the house. This looks as if it’s the first successful pollination of the habanero. I’ve tried everything to get them to fruit.
First I tried dumping them in the garden and hoping the bees would do the job for me (and sometimes forgetting to bring the plants in again at night). That didn’t seem to work
Next I tried shaking the plants vigorously to encourage to the pollen to drop from the stamen on to the stigma. Either I shook too hard and all the pollen got knocked off the flower completely or I shook too softly and the pollen stayed where it was. For whatever reason, it didn’t work.
I tried tickling the inside of the flower with a very fine paintbrush (that’s what Colin C told me to do) and although it made the flower giggle, it didn’t produce fruit.
My last attempt was to brush my finger across the ‘naughty parts’ of the flower to force fertilisation and that may finally have done the business.
It looks like the Habaneros, both of them have succeeded in producing fruit. I’d love to know which of the tricks worked its magic. Maybe it’s a combination.
So now I have two Cayennes peppers, two Jalapeños and two Habaneros. Let’s hope there’s more on the way.

We were just sitting in the living room when I heard a plane engine that sounded faintly familiar, but unusual too.  Checked on Flightradar and it was a Spitfire passing almost directly overhead and heading south.  Dived to the door but realised the trees would be in the way and by the time we got to where we might get a clear view the warplane cruising at around 200knots would be well gone.  An opportunity missed.  The sound was the engine note of a Merlin, the legendary Spitfire power unit.

After lunch we took a walk to the shops just to get the usual essentials (without the gin this time). After we got back I decided it was time to remove the wiring for the dash cam from the Red Juke. It looked so easy, but it was an absolute nightmare getting the cable out intact. Eventually I gave up and cut the cable because I knew I’d need a new one when I was ready to fit the camera in the Micra. When I’d finally removed the last bit of the cable and its “piggy back” fuse connector, I realised that the bit that was blocking the cable’s removal was actually the ferrite choke and if I’d read the instructions on fitting the cable in the first place I’d have noticed that it was possible to unclip it from the cable and then the rest would have been easily removed. Oh well, it’s done now. To contradict the usual Haynes manual statement, in this case “Removal is the reverse of assembly”. You’d be amazed at the amount of razor sharp steel there is hidden behind the facia panels of a modern car. My hands are testament to its cutting ability.

Scamp made an Apple & Bramble pie to be the pudding for tonight’s dinner of Veg Chilli (with Flatbread).  The chilli was better today, but oh, that pie was beautiful.  Our own windfall apples and a handful of brambles.  Superb!

Fairly satisfied with my work, I grabbed my camera which seems to have the 60mm macro lens welded to it these days and went for a walk in St Mo’s. Found a conducive dragonfly and a photogenic seed head, but the PoD went to a photo of two Shield Bugs making babies, or else playing Tug O’ War.

Off to Larky tomorrow with a bit of luck to get Scamp’s new contact lenses.

A Sunny Spell – 24 August 2020

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Neither of us expected such a sunny day today, but we took it gladly.

Scamp was out this morning for coffee with her sister and her cousin. While they were out I completed my thumbnail sketch for my architectural painting and then worked on the light pencil sketch. None of the chunky sketch work of the Palomino Blackwing pencil, this was all done with a 0.7mm mechanical pencil. The groundwork is now almost finished, I just have to convince myself that the perspective at the front of the building is true. Once that’s done I can go on to the ink work. Phoned John and had a chat with him about the joys of retirement. Managed to finalise a date for them to come over for dinner. The last date was rather spoiled by a lockdown some time in March.

When Scamp returned with two plants from Isobel, we had lunch. After that we did a bit of gardening. Heavy duty pruning for me, using the loppers to get stuck into the big climbing rose at the back door. It’s now chopped down to head height and a bit straggly in places, but we’ll leave that until later in the year before we do the final tidying up, all being well. Scamp was finding places for the new plants to go.

Later in the warm afternoon we went for a walk round St Mo’s pond. Found two relaxed dragonflies and got a few shots. It turned out they were Common Darters, one male and one female. Just for future references, the male is smaller and red, the female is yellow ochre with red stripes down her back. They didn’t get PoD though. That went to a Harvestman which is not a spider although it looks like one. It’s in the order Opiliones and joins the spiders in the Arachnid group. It’s amazing what you learn. If you look closely you’ll notice that it only has seven legs. It appears it sacrificed one, probably to save its life.

Dinner was chicken curry made from a Holy Cow mix and half the left over chicken from last night. It was hot, but tasty. Excellent flatbread, even if I say so myself with the additional secret ingredient of two dollops of coconut yogurt.

Tomorrow I’m intending meeting Val for coffee. Tried to phone Colin but it went to voicemail and Val hasn’t managed to get a reply from Fred.