Category: photography

People in glasshouses shouldn’t …! – 19 April 2017

Posted on by Zogman

One of the ideas we brought back from JIC’s was his little plastic covered greenhouse.  Something else we couldn’t bring back from Astwick on the plane, but it wouldn’t be too difficult to find one up here in our own myriad of garden centres and DIY stores, would it?

We started out looking in B&Q, but the Cumbersheugh branch is only a small warehouse and they didn’t have plastic greenhouses, or any greenhouses actually. Dobbies in Stirling was next, not the *most popular* centre at Milngavie, because we might be looking for lunch and that’s not an option in Milngavie.  There were a host of different sized and shaped mini greenhouses, but none of them were exactly what we were looking for.  Lunch was very good.  Roast turkey, roast potatoes and veg.  Scamp went for her usual baked potato.

Back along the M80 to Robroyston to see what Homebase had to offer which wasn’t much.  Far less than Dobbies, but still not what we were looking for.  Eventually we agreed to come home and check what Amazon had to offer and that’s where we finally found our ideal mini greenhouse.  Well, we hope it is, because we don’t get it until Thursday at the earliest.

Went over to St Mo’s later to see what had changed.  The answer was very little actually, but I got a couple of photos.  I wanted the white of the blossom to stand out against the dark background, so I used spot metering on the Nikon to meter off the white of the petals and that gave me exactly what I was looking for.  I liked the isolation of the coot on its nest among the mare’s tails.  This is one of the occasions where my mosaic maker isn’t quite producing the best quality.  Much better to click on the image and see it on Flickr.

Intending to build the decking prototype tomorrow, once the gas man’s been to do the maintenance on the boiler.

No Partridge – 17 April 2017

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Today it was decided that we’d go to the garden centre we had hoped to visit yesterday.  JIC had checked and it would definitely be open.

Before we got there, JIC wanted to visit another *garden centre* which was certainly not allied to any national or regional garden centre chain.  What it was, was a very busy plant sale with prices that were almost as good as those in Poundland, but for much healthier plants.  I felt sorry for Scamp, wandering around the racks of greenery like a wean in a sweetie shop without a penny in her pocket.  Only it wasn’t money she was without, it was transportation.  You see, we were FLYING home later in the afternoon and you can’t carry plants in a plane, at least not the quantity and size of plants she had here eye on.  Also, those glazed pots were really cheap, but can you imagine the damage the luggage handlers would inflict even if you did pay the £15 overhead for putting them in the hold.  Eventually we had to drag her away as we packed the car.  Three of us in the back, Scamp, me and a pear tree.  No partridge.

I got two photos at the plant sale.

  • On 14th April I took 71 shots
  • On 15th April I took71 shots
  • On 16th April I took 28 shots
  • On 17th April I took 4 shots

You can tell when we were going home.  But it’s not quantity, it’s quality that counts and I liked the quality of the above shot which is of a Queen’s Cushion flower.  That said, I find the background almost as interesting as the foreground with its mix of Oof (Out Of Focus) colours.

With the car fully loaded we arrived at the garden centre (a horticultural version of coals to Newcastle) for lunch.  I picked the poorest option which was Chicken wrapped in pastry with potatoes and as much veg as they could cram on.  The veg was great, the potatoes were awful and the chicken was dry.  I envied Scamp and Sim their salmon and JIC his roast lamb.  Oh well, maybe next time I’ll make the sensible choice.  After lunch we drove home and unloaded the car.

To quote Tom Paxton “… All too soon it was time to go …” (Talking Vietnam Potluck Blues), and it was time to go.  We said a sad farewell to Sim and Vixen (the Devil Dog) and JIC drove us to the airport.  For once the plane took off on time and we had a fairly pleasant flight given that the plane seemed to be three quarters full of noisy BBs and their minders.  I don’t suppose you can really call them BBs any more, but Persons Brigaders just doesn’t make sense.  I did laugh at the big cheer that burst from them when we landed in Glasgow.  The view from the plane as it cruised over the city was tremendous with the sun shining through rain clouds.  It reminded me of the cover of the Raintown album.

From the airport we did the cheapo transport to home.  We got the (free) bus from the airport to Queen Street station, then just managed to catch the Croy train after paying the Pensioners price.  At Croy we just caught the (free) bus to Craiglinn and walked home from there.  Last of the big spenders, it cost us £4.10 total to get from the airport to home.

Tomorrow will be a lazy day.

To the Manor Born – 14 April 2017

Posted on by Zogman

Actually Wimpole is an estate, not a manor, but ’estate’ didn’t make such a good title I thought.

JIC drove us all there in the morning, and this being Good Friday, there were already hundreds, if not thousands of people there.  Most seemed to have brought their 2.5 children with then.  I did hope there were an even number of families, otherwise it might become messy with that poor 0.5 of a child wandering around.  Got parked and Sim set off in search of the ticket office and managed, somehow, to get to the front of the queue.  Tickets purchased we went in search of the formal gardens.  Most of the other families with their 2.5 children in tow were taking part in the ’Easter’ Egg Hunt which had been cunningly renamed to Cadbury’s Egg Hunt so as not to offend any non-Christians while they searched for eggs.  I thought it was a petty and childish piece of semantics and, as my mum used to say, “That’s how wars start.”

It being early spring, there weren’t a great variety of different flowers in bloom, but the colours of the daffodils and tulips made up for that.  You can see a couple of shots of them above.  As well as flowering plants, there were also veg and fruit plots and it was good to see that many of the plants had been labelled.  I learned on our visit to Kew a few years ago to photograph the label as well as the plant.

The estate farm was quite interesting, but there were too many weans squealing around the place, so I was quite glad when we left.  Even more squealing and grunting was coming from the enormous pigs in the piggery.  It’s not until you see these providers of our bacon that you realise just how big they are. Just as we were leaving the farm, which thankfully is a real farm and not just a petting zoo, an old plane flew over, a biplane.  I thought it was a Tiger Moth, and when I got home and checked the reg, I found I was right for once.  So strange looking at it through the EVF (Electronic View Finder) because it looked as if the propellor was stationary.  Must be due to the refresh rate of the EVF.

I took some photos of the Wimpole Hall itself. It was very grand and enormous.  Such a terrible waste of accommodation.  How the other half live.  Even more astounding was the view down the tree lined avenue which appears to be about a mile and a half long.  Another demonstration of one family’s wealth.

Having said all that, it was a great day out.  A bit cold, especially when you weren’t sheltered from the wind.

Back home, Sim made Trinni Stewed Chicken while Scamp watched and made mental notes.  Chicken was lovely.  Much better than anything we saw the contestants making on Masterchef later.  However I did have a nice bottle of IPA to take the edge off the bald bloke’s “Oh Mate!” exclamations.

Vixen still doesn’t seem to take too kindly to male bearded strangers, especially if they are standing.  Maybe tomorrow.

Tomorrow we may be going to Hitchin for a walk round the shops in a quiet wee town.

Ten hours in a … car – 5 April 2017

Posted on by Zogman

Driving to Skye always makes me think of the John Mayall track, Vacation.  Not quite ten hours, but more than seven hours pounding the asphalt, travelling north-west.  Average speed, just over 42mph, but that’s because we are driving on ‘A’ roads for the most part.  In the seven hours we travelled, we could have flown to Italy, Malta or Cyprus, but we drove to Skye.  Weather – worse, scenery- no contest!!

Arrived just after 5pm after starting on time at 10am.  Just missed seeing Harry Styles for One Direction getting out of a helicopter at the Old Man of Storr.  Such a pity, even if I don’t know who Harry Styles or One Direction is!

Went for a walk to Staffin shore to relieve the aches in my legs and succeeded in doing just that.  Got some photos from the shore to bolster the pics from Loch Mealt that I took earlier.  Wish I’d brought my full size Manfrotto tripod, but the mini version worked well.

Chicken Curry for dinner tonight with a strong whisky and  a beer to finish with.

Hoping for a lazy start tomorrow and not too much driving.

So, that was March – 31 March 2017

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Fred requested a coffee meeting today.  Scamp and I had already planned to go out for lunch, but she convinced me to go and meet Fred instead, too readily for my liking.  She then declared that she was going shopping for some clothes and that was why she was foregoing lunch, we could always do lunch tomorrow.

While she was out I layered on some washes on a sketch I’d done last night.  It looked reasonable and I managed, what for me was a decent graduated sky.  It seemed no time until she was back and it was time for me to go meet Fred.

His real reason for meeting was because I had offered him a loan of a book on perspective, his new pet project.  Not easy perspective either, but the awkward Curvilinear Perspective as loved by M. C. Escher, although my own efforts are much more grounded in mundane reality than his were.  We sat and talked a while although he seemed a lot more politically motivated than usual.  He did however give me a quick tutorial on drawing noses. He’s really good at sketching faces, especially good at quick sketches and getting a decent likeness too.  I’ve just finished putting his ideas into practice and they seem to work.

After putting the Tories and Labour firmly in their place and decrying the traitors among the Greens we went our separate ways.  Him to Tesco for shopping, me to Lidl for shopping (and beer).  On the way back, I stopped at The Boathouse at Auchinstarry to go for a walk along the south bank of the canal out in the direction of Falkirk.  The path didn’t go anywhere near Falkirk, but turned off after a hundred yards and headed up towards Croy to an area called Nethercroy, through some old tall trees swaying in a strong wind.  I followed the path until I came to a gate where the notice warned that cattle would be grazing on the hill from the beginning of April.  I didn’t fancy meeting early arrivals and anyway, I wasn’t really dressed for hillwalking, so I turned round and went in search of interesting photos.

I’d already taken some pics as information for preparatory sketches with the aim of developing a larger piece.  It might work, it might not.  Saw some moss growing on some old stonework and got a few shots of that and caught some nice light with the 20mm lens on the M5 too.

When I looked at the photos back home in Lightroom, the moss shots were all disappointing.  Very unsharp and blurry.  The common factor in them all was an aperture of f7.1 which is pretty wide at the long end <Ignore this, everyone, it’s for my own benefit, so I don’t do it again!> I usually set f9 minimum for the 45-200 lens and that would have sharpened up the images so much better than f7.  Moral of the story, check your settings BEFORE taking the shot.  The M5 shots were fine.  Prime 20mm lens at f10 can’t fail!

Came home and found that Scamp had been very busy preparing an Un-Birthday dinner.  Portobello mushrooms with spinach and cheese topped with Parma ham, roasted under the grill.  Gammon steak with potatoes, cauliflower, cabbage and roast parsnips.  Same for Scamp, but without the gammon steak (obviously).  Pineapple snow with chilli sauce for pudding!  Absolutely perfect.  Now I know why she was so happy for me to go and meet Fred.

Tomorrow we may go and have the lunch we missed today.

The end of summer – 28 March 2017

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Like they say, “What a difference a day makes”.  Gone were the blue skies, gone was the sun, and with it the warmth.  At least it was dry, but the forecast for tomorrow is for wall to wall rain.  That being so, I rest my case m’lud.  The end of summer.

Up and out early to take the Megane to the garage for new front brake disks and pads and a new trackrod .  Spoken like someone who knows exactly what they are.  I know what brake disks are and what the pads do.  I’ve also got a basic knowledge of what a trackrod does and the fact that it’s got an end, probably a beginning too.  What I can say for certain is that, combined, they cost pennies short of £300 which was duly paid around lunchtime when I went to collect the car.  A car that will now stop when you tell it to, and one that will go round corners properly.

Earlier, partly to take my mind off the fact that the Megane was under the knife, and partly because we needed ‘messages’, Scamp drove me to Asda at Robroyston with the inevitable coffee at Costa afterwards.  It was there we saw a *STAR*.  ’Shellsuit Bob’ from River City, no less!  Looking much the same as he does on TV.  Our lives will not be the same from now on, knowing that ’Shellsuit Bob’ is a real person.  We watched River City tonight knowing that we had been sitting within feet of a *STAR*.

After lunch and having picked up the car, the sky lightened a bit and I went out to see what I could see (and photograph) over in St Mo’s.  Took my new favourite lens with me, hoping for some macro shots.  It’s amazing what you see when you’re looking for close-ups.  Most of todays pics were taken with the D7000 and Sigma 105mm combo.  Obviously the deer shot was taken with the 300mm end of the Tamron, and it looked quite good.

Hopefully off for beer and pizza with the Auld Guys tomorrow … in the rain.

Deepan’ Crispan’ Deevan’ – 21 March 2017

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It’s snow, of course and that’s what we woke to today.  Not that deep and not that crisp as the temperature was three above zero and very uneven.  In fact it was just a scraping of show, but then, as I was making the breakfast, the snow returned, blown along by Windy Willie’s wild westerly wind.  Now, that’s what you call alliteration!

Once we realised that we wouldn’t be snowed in any time soon, we decided to go to Falkirk to retrieve a ring, a substitute wedding ring, that Scamp had handed in last week for repair.  Not long after I retired we went to Ayr and Scamp tripped and damaged her hand.  I thought her finger was broken, but it was just badly staved.  So badly staved that the wedding ring had to be cut off because it was restricting the blood supply to her finger.  That was almost three years ago.  It took a long time to get the ring repaired, but today we picked it up from the jeweller looking as good as new.  Driving home was a challenge with torrential rain, hail and sleet driving straight towards us.

When we got home and had lunch, the wet stuff had stopped and the sun had come out again, so it was boots on and out to St Mo’s.  I took the Big Dog with the macro lens and the E-PL5 with a 20mm lens.  A nice combo.  Just waked into the woods and saw two deer grazing down the path.  They were crosswind to me, so didn’t sniff my deodorant I crept down the path walking on the grass, not on the broken twigs, so they didn’t hear me either.  It would have been better to have brought the 300mm Tamron, but the macro gives such good quality results that I wasn’t all that worried.  The landscape is from the 20mm lens, another good quality lens.

Got home and did a bit of messing around painting the hills with snow on them.  Four miniatures in different colour schemes and another four ready for finishing tomorrow.

Tomorrow?  Not got a clue.  According to the weatherman, the snow will be gone and the weather is set fine.  As usual, we’ll see.

Macros – 19 March 2017

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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.

Dull Day – 16 March 2017

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Macros, that’s what saved the day.  Macros.  Macros, technically, are extreme close-ups where the subject is recorded life size or larger on the film.  At least, that was the definition when everyone used film.  Now that so few photogs use film and the ones that don’t, use a recording element that varies from less than the size of your little finger nail to about 65mm by 45mm, the old definition is worthless.  Let’s just say that it’s an ultra-closeup.  That’s what I went out to photograph today with my trusty D7000 and a Sigma 105mm Macro lens.  The results are above and constitute about 45 minutes of shooting. I was quite pleased with them.

Earlier, Scamp was out singing with Gems and, as predicted yesterday, I slipped the leash for a couple of hours to sketch for a while before going in search of ice cream for pudding tonight.  Other than that, it was the dull day of today’s title.

After dinner (paella, since you’ve asked) I started preparing for tomorrow’s main which is venison casserole with roast root vegetables.  Thank you JIC for giving me the method and timings for that.  They’ve been in for an hour now at gas 5 and are beginning to smell nice.  In fact, I’m just going to check ……… Ok, back now and yes they are done.  Nice and tasty, even the celeriac.  I recommend it to you.  And that’s about all I can say about today.  I should have gone to the gym with a swim afterwards, but I didn’t.  I enjoyed the sketching and so the gym can wait for another day.

I imagine we’ll be busy all day tomorrow preparing the feast and it’s unlikely that the blog will be done on time, so Saturday may be catch-up day DV.

No Dough – 20 February 2017

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Scamp was at the physio this morning. I started a wee watercolour of the hills at the back, because the light was wonderful with wee floating cloud shadows drifting across them. It turned out better than I anticipated.

I’d taken a frozen chunk of dough out of the freezer last night and left it to defrost and rise overnight.  It did defrost, but it didn’t rise.  I tried to encourage the yeast to start working again by warming the loaf tin in some warm water, but it resisted my attentions. I eventually turned on the heating and put the embryonic bread on the radiator to warm up.

By then, Scamp had returned with her ankle strapped up and we had lunch before she went out to get Gems.  I was swithering whether to go out on my bike, go to the gym or go for a walk.  I’d a pain in my back and any of these would help.  However, as the sun was still shining, I decided that the gym was out, and as there was a gusty wind, maybe cycling would be a bit difficult.  So, by a process of elimination, a walk was the winner.  I was looking for somewhere that would produce a photo and also a sketch.  I finally settled on the railway again, because it’s near the hills and I quite fancied a photo of those cloud shapes on the land.

I got the photo, but saw nothing that encouraged the sketchbook out of my bag, then I saw the old house that I’d sketched before and that became my SoD (Sketch of the Day).  It’s a strange house, with dormer windows, extensions and an old, old wall round it.  There’s ivy too clinging to the gable end.  The sketch is quite representative, but I think the chimney is a bit out of scale.

Salsa tonight was hard work.  Hard work remembering the moves and hard work keeping going for a full hour after three weeks of lazing around.  Still very enjoyable and although we only stayed for an hour tonight, we may go for two hours on Wednesday, all being well.  Surprisingly, all the moves had names tonight!

No real plans for tomorrow, but we’re probably going food shopping.  Oh what fun.

The bread?  Oh, it rose perfectly, then it stuck to the loaf tin and just wouldn’t come out.  I should have realised it had its own plans for the day when it took so long to rise.