photography – Page 111 – My Photo Blog

Scraping the car – 18 November 2016

Posted on November 18, 2016November 19, 2016 by Zogman

Yes, it’s that time of year again when you need to scrape the car in the morning. No heated screen or heated seats luxury here JIC!

Scamp was going to the dentist this morning, so I helped her defrost her car while I ran the engine on mine and turned the heater up full speed, full heat and air-con on. Mine was soon defrosting nicely while we scraped away at Scamp’s. That’s where the pic of the frozen leaf came from that. When Scamp left to get her filling done, I headed back in to have porridge for breakfast. First time for ages, and it worked its warm magic again.

With Scamp’s tooth fixed, we all headed off to Loch Leven to have a walk in the cold, fresh air under a clear blue sky. Perfect conditions to test the F707’s infra-red capabilities. Well, the F707 and a furry monkey. The furry monkey which usually sticks to our fridge has magnets in his/her hands and feet. The magnets are fairly strong and are the only ones that have been able to overpower the spring in the solenoid. For that reason, the furry monkey came with us today to Loch Leven. He/she … Let’s fix this ridiculous he/she thing now.

In a book I’m reading (and eking out the pages to make it last) his/her references are solved by making it ‘XYr’. The ‘XY‘ stands for the unknown chromosome balance so ‘XYr’ can be male, female or indeterminate gender. That seems an elegant solution, especially these days with LGBTIQ. Life used to be simpler with just LGBT and it made sense. I think the ‘I’ is for ‘Isnae Sure’. I have no idea what ‘Q’ stands for. It could be ‘Questioning the Magic Donkey’ for all I know. Anyway, thank you Becky Chambers for solving that problem. I hope I got that right Hazy!

Soooo, getting back to the monkey, remember the monkey? XY seemed to enjoy the trip and is now happily back in place in XYr place on the fridge.

The selection at the top came from the 70 odd photos from the day, plus the one from the frozen car. The IR images took a fair bit of post-processing to get the effect I was looking for and although the quality isn’t great, the effect is. I’m not sure if I prefer the false colour version or the monochrome. Mono looks cleaner, but the false colour is more interesting and alien. Further experimentation is required if the furry monkey is up for it.

Lunch was excellent as usual in Loch Leven’s Larder although the shop seems to get posher and more twee every time we go there, which is a pity, but I suppose is inevitable. After that we drove back home via the Forth Road Bridge to get an updated view of the new cable-stay bridge. Dinner was a carry-out from Bombay Dreams.

A good day, most enjoyable. Cold tonight. Temperature just touching zero. Hoping for another sunny day tomorrow.

A Full House – 17 November 2016

Posted on November 17, 2016November 18, 2016 by Zogman

Tonight we would have a busier house as JIC and Sim were coming up for a flying visit.

Scamp was out this morning meeting one of her in-laws for coffee and I was charged with clearing up the painting room ready for JIC and Sim. Of course, I didn’t do that, there were more interesting things to do like format one of the borked drives and test copy files to it to make sure it was working properly. It was. I also worked out how to get my Sony F707 camera working in IR mode again, more of which later. Eventually I did get round to clearing up the room at least so that it looked like a room again.

When Scamp came back I drove in to Glasgow to see if Staples had a decent price for the 3TB backup drive I’d picked on the net. They didn’t, but it looked like Argos in Cumbernauld of all places did have it, so it was back in the car then back to Cumbersheugh in the driving rain, only to find that the drive I’d earmarked had been sold. Blast – well, I did actually say a different word which also started with ‘B’ but finished with a ‘D’ and had the letters ‘A,S,T,A,R’ and ‘D’ in the middle. You’ve probably heard it, and maybe even used it before. Not you Scamp, not you. Anyway, I settled for the slightly cheaper 2TB version and payment made, new toy collected, headed back to the car through the rain. That’s when I saw today’s PoD. Cumbersheugh isn’t a pretty town, but it does a really good gloomy. I instantly liked the shot with the little silhouette of an out of focus ‘wee wummin’ (remember ‘wee wummin’ from a couple of weeks ago?) in the middle distance. It looked good in colour, but I guessed it would look even better in mono.

Right, this Sony F707 IR thing needs a bit of explanation. If you look here, you’ll understand what it’s all about, maybe. I’d forgotten all about it and the magnet trick, but today, again in the seridipity of the Internet, I chanced upon a more up to date post about exactly the same thing. That got me started again, sticking an Infra-red filter on the F707. A 720nm filter is virtually black to the naked eye, but allows a narrow band of Infra-red light through and virtually none of the visible spectrum. The Sony just pretended it wasn’t there, except for making everything have a red tint. I think I prefer the results from the crossed pola filters. There’s a bit better range of colour to them. I’m intending to try it out tomorrow with some hoped for sunshine.

Popped in to the airport to pick up the travellers and then back past CITRAC signs warning of ice tomorrow. Ice in Scotland in November? Surely not.

Hoping for sun tomorrow. Always!

The Wild West – 28 October 2016

Posted on October 28, 2016October 28, 2016 by Zogman

Today we drove in to Glasgow.

We couldn’t get parked and it was such a great day, we drove out of Glasgow again and headed west along the M8. We just kept heading west until we reached Gourock. Along the way I took a wrong turning and that’s how we reached Largs. (Confused yet? You should be)

Largs is the gateway to Millport across the wild ocean, well, across the Clyde estuary, but that’s not where we parked. We parked in Largs and wandered around this metropolis. It didn’t take long. Largs has a great butchers, a great fishmongers and a couple of good restaurants. Not that we’re foodies or anything! It also is the gateway to Millport, but I’ve covered that. We had lunch at the restaurant we went to last time Bean & Leaf. Neither of us could remember what we had last time, but we agreed that it had been excellent. This time Scamp had a Cajun Chicken Burger. Served with hand cut chips. I had a burger with everything. Everything in this context was a Handmade Scotch meat burger with Barwhey’s cheddar, crispy Ayrshire bacon, fried onion, pickled gherkins & salsa. Served with hand cut chips. Now that’s a mouthful and no mistake. The food took a while to come, but I remember being told on one of the Royal Caribbean ships that it takes 20mins to cook a real burger properly. Tell that to Micky D’s.

After lunch Scamp went to investigate a couple of shops and I started my sketch which was to be Nardini’s Cafe. Nardini’s is one of the places you must go to when you’re in Largs. The other is the ferry to Millport, but I think I mentioned that earlier. We didn’t go to Nardini’s this time, but we have been there a few times. The frontage is pure Art Deco. All rectangular columns with rebates in a colour scheme of black on white. Very stylish and any changes that have been made to it over the years have been in that same Art Deco vein. An icon.
I think I did it justice in the sketch and was quite pleased with it. I’m beginning to like drawing with the Derwent Graphik 0.1mm pen. I’m thinking about buying a 0.05mm pen too – SuperFine.

The rest of the day’s pictures were taken around the front at Largs.

The Ice Cream shop sign was a phone-grab.
The car was a superb Lotus, tweaked with a custom curve in Lightroom, then dunked in Photoshop to block out the numberplate.
The Hotel was another grab shot, this time with the camera. This run-down building was on the front, and looked as if it was ready for the bulldozers. The woman hurrying by was a lucky.
The sailingboat and the windmill was another custom curve in Lightroom.

Then we went to pay for our parking. Put in the ticket and Scamp plopped in two 50p coins and a pound coin, but the pound coin didn’t register. Pressed the cancel button and the card came back, but no refund. Foolishly we put the card in again and loaded some more coins in with the same result. A bloke came along while I was phoning the help number and he tried the same thing, but with the same result. Now there were six people waiting for the engineer to come and sort the problem. Luckily he wasn’t long and solved the problem. It looks like a couple of Scamp’s home made 50p coins had jammed in the machine borking it. She really must be more careful with her quality control. Anyway, problem solved and we were on our way.

We headed north and passed through Gourock (see, we did go there) and crossed the Erskine bridge to avoid the inevitable queues on the M8, into the biggest traffic jam I’ve seen in a long time. Drove at an average of 20mph all the way home. All in all, a lovely day. The weather was simply superb. Not wall to wall sunshine, but lots of sun and some blue sky. There was a great sunset forming behind us as we were heading home, but I knew the traffic would only get worse if we lingered to see it and to be honest, we’d had the best of the day. Only one thing was missing. We didn’t go to Millport. Maybe next time.

Just a Wednesday – 26 October 2016

Posted on October 26, 2016October 26, 2016 by Zogman

Some days are interesting, some days are not. Today was not. We had a few loose end to tie up today and we got them done. Scamp was feeling better, or she said she was feeling better. Photography was covered with a walk in the wind and the rain along the Luggie and I got a fairly decent shot of the wee falls upstream from where I usually go. I had to take the shots in between chasing two dogs who wanted to be in the photo. It’s an ok shot, but nothing spectacular.

We drove in to Glasgow tonight and did manage to catch the last 20 minutes or so of the beginners class, a minor miracle in itself as when we entered the motorway the CITRAC signs were telling us that it would take 51 minutes to reach the airport. On a good day it takes 17 minutes. Apparently Rangers were playing at Ibrox and the road was full of mad Gers fans. After a few ‘long roads for shortcuts’ we did manage to reach the STUC building in just under an hour. That was forty minutes more than our journey back home, an hour and a half later, after half a beginners class and our own Wednesday class. I think they should ban football during the week, or on Salsa days anyway. We weren’t the worst by far. Poor Roy S took 2 and a half hours to get there from Alloa. Having said that, Alloa is on the outer reaches of the galaxy.

Today’s Inktober is a sliced up apple. The knife is an old bone handled one that, I think came from Scamp’s mum. The handle recently broke and rather than throw it out, I glued it with Epoxy resin. Old traditional bone handle repaired with modern adhesive. I like that. We’ve both found that we’re using the old bone handled knives more than their plastic or stainless steel handled modern counterparts. The old knives have a much better feel to them and a lot more character.

Maybe going to Glasgow tomorrow, but we’re driving in. I think the bus journeys with all the sneezers and coughers is what’s given Scamp the cold. I don’t want it, and I want her to get over her dose as well. I might even get some architectural drawing done into the bargain. Who knows? (Question mark or not??)

Write and Post the same day – 20 October 2016

Posted on October 20, 2016October 20, 2016 by Zogman

That is today’s target.

Yesterday, or to be more exact, early this morning I was still writing the blog just before 1am. That’s what happens when you try to cram in 1 hour’s driving 2 hours of Salsa, a pen sketch, photo processing, posting to the now despicable Flickr and blog writing into six hours. It just doesn’t work. I must try to clean up my workflow on Mondays and Wednesdays. Thursdays? They’re not so bad. Still bad, just not so bad as Mon and Wed.

Today we went to the leisure centre in the early afternoon. Me to gym and swim, Scamp to swim. It was very pleasant. Gym wasn’t busy and neither was the pool. That’s because we are in the middle of half-term week, so loads of families are off grabbing some last minute foreign sun. I’m not complaining, just explaining. After a late lunch I went to find some photos and if possible find something to sketch. “Nights are fair drawing in now” as Billy Connolly said and it’s true. The sun is setting sooner these evenings, so although it provided me with some lovely sunset shots, it also cancelled out any opportunity for sketching in the wild.

Earlier in my driving around I spotted some strange looking clouds. I thought it was the end of the world, such strange shapes. It turned out to be Cumulonimbus incus. Google it. It’s a classic anvil shaped thundercloud. Luckily they sidled off westward before they could drop their thunderbolts and the inevitable rain. The sunset really was lovely. I don’t usually shoot sunsets because you get suckered in by the colour contrasts and just shoot wildly, but this time I planned the shot with the old tree and fencepost in the middle distance to hold the viewer’s eye while allowing them to appreciate the colours in the sunset.

I was stuck for an Inktober shot tonight and it defaulted to my glasses on the coffee table. That meant I couldn’t wear them and that’s my excuse for poor proportions. That coffee table is almost forty years old, an antique. It was my second year project at college and it’s still standing.

Well, that’s it. I’m hoping to get to bed the same day I woke up. It may happen.

The Sound of Silence – 13 October 2016

Posted on October 13, 2016October 13, 2016 by Zogman

He came! He actually came and within twenty minutes the aerial was down and dismantled. The aerial man gave us back the sound of silence. To paraphrase Stuart MacBride’s heroine Detective Chief Inspector Steel, “Seventy five quid plus VAT? My sharny ¹ arse!” This guy did the job and we thank him very much … we did pay him too.

Earlier in the day, Scamp met her aunt and managed to establish the identity of a great many people in a sixty year old wedding photo. It made me think that in today’s world where so many of our photos, even wedding photos are not printed, how will we perform a similar task in the future. Will we still be able to view those videos on their lovely shiny DVDs engraved with the movie highlights of today’s wedding groups? Will the photos that are printed using ink on ‘archival’ paper last for sixty years? Will the resolution of the full frame CCD be as good as the old fashioned 6×6 TLR? Not a chance. The other thing we need is to record the names and fit them to the faces of the people in those photos. I realised too late, after my father died, that I’d lost touch with all those people whose faces I saw in the old photos. They were also dead, but they had also taken their identities with them. What I urge you to do is to record, preferably in ink and on paper, the names of the faces in your old photos, and if you don’t have physical photos, print them out on the best quality paper you can afford. It’s not for you, it’s for the ones who come after you. They are the ones who will be left scratching their heads after you can’t be relied upon to enlighten them.

Today’s PoD was taken on the east of Fannyside Moor looking towards Slamannan. It’s a great place for Big Skies and this certainly was a big sky. I like it because it’s a place where you can just watch the clouds rolling past without cars constantly zipping past. The only traffic today was a lady on a bike who was riding a tail-wind. I hope she had already cycled the head-wind part of the route and was on her way home.

Today’s Inktober drawing was of the church in Cumbernauld Village and is a building I’ve been meaning to draw for some time. It really is the most awkward shape with bits apparently added on at different times in its history. The windows, especially seem to have been placed wherever the builder found a space for them. Only the tops of the upper windows line up properly and some have lots of small panes of glass while others have fewer, larger panes. In all, I was pleased with the finished sketch, probably even more so because I sketched it in the open air. I’m not French, so why should I call it en plein air. That’s just being a poser, or should that be poseur?

Tomorrow is unplanned as yet, but it will not include listening to the crows landing on that aerial or dreading the screech of it rotating in its rusty bracket. The bracket is gone, the pole that held the aerial has been recycled and the aerial itself is in a skip. I love the sound of silence.

Befouled with dung. Merriam-Webster ↩

Tree Climbing Snails and Rain – 26 September 2016

Posted on September 26, 2016 by Zogman

The plans to go swimming this morning didn’t come to fruition. Perhaps tomorrow. I did go to the physio and he was quite impressed with the improvement in my shoulder. He did however still bend me, shake me and stick the inevitable pins in me to see if he could make me jump.

The day had started out with heavy leaden skies, well, they would be heavy if they were made from lead. However, when I drove down to the leisure centre, the cloud was clearing and there was a touch of blue sky there. It didn’t last. While the physio was pinning me down to the table with his acupuncture needles, I could hear the rain battering on the window. The day was going downhill.

It stayed in that downhill frame of mind for most of the afternoon but by about 4 o’clock I was ready to grab the last little bit of sunshine, because there was some, to get a photo or two. Actually I got four I was pleased with. Clockwise from top right:

It’s those tree climbing snails again. Now the slugs are at it too Are the snails teaching them? I still don’t know why they do it other than the human answer – because they’re there. The best answer I’ve read is that they eat fungus or lichen from the bark of the tree. The stupidest answer is that they want to get away from the heat of the forest floor – Naw! It’s Scotland! We don’t get heat in the forest floor … or anywhere else in late September.
I saw this flower blooming away happily in the midst of nothingness. Not another flowering shrub or weed for miles around and thought it looked a bit lonely, so I took its picture.
Mr Grey looking hunched over and grumpy. Well, you would be too if you were stuck in the rain in the middle of a pond in Cumbersheugh with a manic photographer constantly chasing you. Poor old Mr Grey.
I took this shot because I like cowparsley, not to eat, but to photograph. It wasn’t until I was looking at the pics on the computer and pixel-peeping (viewing the shots at full magnification to see which is sharpest – not to be confused with Chimping which is a completely different affliction) that I noticed the tiny wee snail on the bottom right of the seedhead. I know it’s really hard to see, but click on the composite and it will take you automagically to my Flickr site where you can see the bigger picture.

As you will see from Mr Grey’s picture, it had started raining while I was out. It was inevitable because as I was walking over to St Mo’s I’d just been complimenting myself on grabbing an hour in the sun taking photos. Blue sky and sunshine. I should have known the rain wasn’t far away.

Wild windy, rainy, sunshiny day forecast tomorrow, then Wednesday will be dreadful.

Setting the world to rights and macros – 19 September 2016

Posted on September 19, 2016 by Zogman

Met Fred and Val and sorted the world out again over a couple of coffees. It’s so easy, repairing all the wrongs of the world. If they’d only ask us, we could fix all the problems in no time.

After that went for a drive round the outskirts of our wonderful town looking for something to photograph and found a few things.

A Ladybird.
Some Cladonia lichen
Cow Hair on a barbed wire fence.

They don’t sound interesting, but when it’s a sunny day and you’re just out taking your time and enjoying the scenery, they are interesting things to photograph.

The Ladybird was orange with white spots and apparently it is rare in Scotland, but quite widespread in England and Wales. Also, it feeds on fungus rather than on insects like aphids.

Cladonia lichen or ‘Grey Trumpets’, also known as ‘Golf Tees lichen have fascinated me since I started taking macro photographs. They look so alien.

The Cow Hair needs some explanation. I was wandering around looking for something to photograph when I disturbed a black bodied dragonfly it buzzed round me a couple of times and then flew off, but I could still hear its wings clattering. (They sound like cellophane being crumpled. Strange description, but that’s what it sounds like to me.) The next thing I knew, it landed on my shoulder. Now what I should have done was take a ‘selfie’ with my phone. “Here’s me with my mate, the black dragonfly!”, but what did I do? I swiped at it and it flew away. Numpty. Then I saw it again sitting on a barbed wire fence, just across the road. As I cautiously approached it, it didn’t move, which is quite strange behaviour for inquisitive creatures like dragonflies. You get the feeling they are watching you when you are watching them. It was only when I got closer, I noticed that my ‘dragonfly’ was a tuft of black cow hair caught on one of the barbs. Despite my disappointment, I photographed it and quite liked the finished result from the fisheye lens.

Salsa tonight was energetic and a great deal of fun. I was dreading Scamp wanting to go to the next class which was ’styling’. Not my idea of fun at all. However, I acquiesced to her suggestion that we “give it half an hour”. We did and it was indeed good fun, interesting and taxing with its concentration on footwork. I can see us being hooked on this in the future.

Tomorrow looks as if it’s set fair but cooler which is a decent forecast for the time of year.

A day at the seaside – 16 September 2016

Posted on September 16, 2016September 17, 2016 by Zogman

We went to Ayr today on the bus, well, on two buses. We were out just after 9.30 to get the X3 to Glasgow. As usual it stopped at every stop all the way through Moodiesburn and Muirhead and this is called an Express service. The only Express part is where it wheezes on to the motorway for about three miles from Stepps to Glasgow. It’s a disgrace to call this an Express service. The only reason we use it is because it’s the ONLY service. Once in Glasgow we ran round the bus station and just caught the X77 to Ayr. ‘X’ means Express on this service because it enters the M77 motorway in Glasgow and doesn’t leave it until it reaches Prestwick Airport. Do you know, it takes almost exactly the same time to go from Glasgow to Ayr (37miles) as it does from Cumbersheugh to Glasgow (14miles). Arrived in Ayr to sunshine and blue sky.

Walked around the dilapidated town centre of Ayr, had a coffee then went for a walk along the beach. There was a cool breeze from the sea, but it was much warmer than the seasonal average. The tide was in and that’s where we saw the bear in the photo above. Really the only worthwhile shot I got today. It wasn’t until we were back in the town I realised that the lens had been set to maximum aperture. Never a good thing to do unless you have a really expensive bit of glass. I didn’t. It works well when stopped down to about f10 or so, but wide open it’s a bit cloudy and not very sharp. A bit like the way I’ve been feeling for the last day or so.

After lunch at Wetherspoons we headed home on the X77 then just managed to catch the Cumbersheugh bus in Glasgow. An ok day, but the weather was good and so was the company.

Tomorrow looks good on paper. Don’t know where we’re going, but the lens will definitely be stopped down.

It’s a small world – 15 September 2016

Posted on September 15, 2016September 15, 2016 by Zogman

Went in to Glasgow on the bus this morning to get my locks shorn. It was really well overdue. There are only two barbers in the shop I go to, both of whom have different topics of conversation. The young one is the radical who follows the Russian news channel on the Internet and says they tell fewer lies than the BBC. Not that they are more honest, just that they tell fewer lies. There’s a subtle difference in the semantics I think. The older man is more careworn and sarcastic. He’s on his third marriage I think, which probably explains my description of him. He was in charge of remodelling my coiffure today. Topics ranged from the usual Scottish start: The Weather to remembering Strathclyde Loch being created. It was after we talked about how the loch used to be just a fishing pond at the south end of Motherwell that he made the startling announcement “‘course I’m not from Motherwell, I’m from Larkhall.” “You’re kidding!” I said. We exchanged information about areas of Larky, then streets and realised that we lived about half a mile from each other. His father had been Mr Smart the headmaster at my primary school. Well, not exactly mine, more like my brother’s. I had Mr Crombie as my headmaster. We never called them ‘heidies’ then, we were much better brought up in Larky. It was only when I went into teaching that ‘heidies’ became synonymous with authority. We talked about places we both knew and inevitably pubs. A normal topic of discussion in a town with the greatest number of public houses per head of population in Scotland. I’ve been going to this barbers’ shop for more years than I care to recall and had my hair cut by this man for most of them, only to find out today the he too came from ‘The Town Behind the Wall.’ Maybe I’ll explain that sometime. A small world indeed.

Walked out into the sunshine and went down Bucky Street and out into Exchange Square or Royal Exchange Square to give it its full title, although the royal part of the name ceased to have any meaning when Glasgow Council acquired the Royal Bank of Scotland building which dominates it in the late ‘40s. See, you learn stuff on this blog. Now the grand building houses the Gallery of Modern Art (the GoMA) and is home to all human life … and a few indeterminate other forms of almost sentient beings. “Though I never perfected the simian stroll.” could have been written for this area. Good hunting ground for photos too. The central photo in the above mosaic, with judicious cropping gave the photos at the bottom and the middle left. The other two were just a couple of quick grab shots. They took about 5 minutes total to compose and shoot. Given half an hour here on a reasonably sunny day you could fill an SD card easily.

That was it for the photography for the day. Wandered round the centre of town, but didn’t see anything else to tempt me into digging the camera out of my pocket. Got the bus home and found Scamp happily digging plants out, planting others and generally tidying up the garden. To each his and her own.

Looks like the warm weather is gone for the time being and it’s back to more seasonal temperatures for the next day or so. I blame getting the air-con fixed!