Category: photography

Hobbiton – 14 August 2016

Posted on by Zogman

14 AugAccording to the weather fairies last week, today was to be a beautiful day.  Yesterday they said that Sunday was to be a bit cloudy but with sunny intervals and Monday was to be a beautiful day.  Today was less than beautiful and there was a distinct lack of sunny intervals, and now the predictions are that Tuesday, not Monday will be a beautiful day.  It’s like “cake tomorrow, but never cake today.”  However, we struggle on with grey skies and the eternal prospect of good weather some day.

It was dry, not very windy and quite warm, so we went out for a walk.  Today’s choice of walk was around one of the paths at Chatelherault near Hamilton.  It’s a huge area with forest, grassland and interesting architecture.  The main building on the site is the former Hunting Lodge and Summer House for the Dukes of Hamilton and looks out over an avenue of trees which originally led down to Hamilton Palace which has now been demolished.  Behind Chatelherault is a large forested area of gigantic redwoods, pines and also some natural hardwoods.  The Avon Water runs through the estate and it was looking very fishable today with tea coloured water just running off a spate.

We left the car in the car park and headed for one of the shorter routes.  Shorter, but still quite demanding, especially to two walkers who will happily admit they are out of condition.  I think we need to visit the gym more than once a week to get back to a reasonable degree of physical fitness.  That said, it was an interesting walk.  Lots of ups and downs, muddy paths and demanding stairs to climb.  Perhaps it was because we were watching “The Hobbit” last night, but  the whole place had the feeling of the set for that film with thinning of the pines allowing the light to penetrate and made it much less gloomy than commercial woodland.  Unfortunately we didn’t see any hobbits.

There wasn’t much to photograph today, but it has potential if there is a bit more directional sunlight to play with.  I did manage to fake a shot of the frontage of Chatelherault with a bit of levels adjustment in Lightroom, then I pasted in a more interesting sky from one of yesterday’s shots.  The peas are two of the potentially five pods from our single pea plant.  I think I planted the other peas upside down and they are growing down the way.

Hoping against hope for cake tomorrow.

The Lodge – 13 August 2016

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13 AugToday was to be dry, and so it dawned. Dry with a little sprinkling of sun – even better. The weather fairies had been telling the truth for once. That said, we took ourselves off to the wild highlands or at least the Trossachs which is a sort of tame wild highlands. We were pointing the car at David Marshall Lodge or DML for short. Instead of our usual route through Thornhill to Aberfoyle and up the Duke’s Pass to DML, we rebels took the alternative way through blue-rinse Callander and over the other side of the Duke’s Pass to DML. Callander is usually a bottleneck on this drive and so it was today, but the bottleneck was caused by two of the boys in blue (with yellow hi-vis jackets and a speed gun) checking the speed of anyone wishing to venture in to the town from the general direction of Stirling. Not that we had much chance of raising our speed above jogging pace because some numpty at the front had forgotten to bring the red flag with him to indicate that a motor vehicle was approaching. That’s the way it seemed anyway. We passed the polis quietly, sedately and well under the speed limit. The drive up the Duke’s Pass was uneventful and terminally boring. It’s strange that when driving some roads, the scenery is much better in one direction than in the other. I hadn’t noticed how little of interest passed the car as we travelled along this road until today. We arrived at DML only to find that, Shock! Horror! they’ve changed the name to “The Lodge”. Now to someone born and brought up in Larkhall, The Lodge is synonymous with either Lambeg drums, Orange sashes and flute bands or groups of men congregating in a hall with a builder’s square and a pair of dividers over the door. I’d never been involved in any way with either group but that is what The Lodge means to me. Orange or Masonic, these are the only Lodges I’ve known about and this was neither. No sashes of any hue, no aprons and no rolled up trouser legs – do they really do that? What happened to David Marshall? Was he ex-communicated? Did he retire? Was he sacked? Maybe they found out that he didn’t belong to either Lodge, and he had to go. We’ll never know, I guess. However, like the Clyde Arc will always be the Squinty Bridge and the Tradeston Bridge will always be called the Squiggly Bridge, so The Lodge at Aberfoyle will alway be DML to us.

We paid our £3 for a day’s parking and headed off to get some foties and to walk the paths. Set up my tripod below the waterfall and waited until the lighting was right. Took a couple of test shots to get the shutter speed and the exposure right before starting the long exposure shots to get the water looking fluid. Then some prick, sorry if you’re offended by the description, but that’s what he was, walks right in front of me just as I’m taking the first exposure. Photobombed by a moron. Really, they walk among us. I wasn’t for moving, despite the midgies which were clouding round me. He proceeded to clamber up and over some rocks. Maybe he thought he was a rock climber. Nah, you need to have a brain for that. I was waiting for him to fall in, that would have made a good shot. I took a few shots with him in different positions to make sure I could easily edit him out later. When I was happy with what I’d got I walked back to Scamp who was standing near his keeper (who was quite apologetic) and said to her, “Don’t worry, the monkey won’t be in the final shot.” Some folk shouldn’t be allowed out, even with their keeper.

After that, we had to cut our walk short as I was getting eaten alive by midgies. We had a quick lunch at the cafe. Scones are good and coffee is brown(ish) water. Don’t risk it if you like your coffee to taste of coffee. If you normally have your caffeine hit in Starbucks, you probably won’t notice any difference. After that we drove down the other side of the Duke’s Pass and on to the Loch Ard road which is a dead end road after about 20 miles or so. We didn’t venture that far. We stopped in a parking place and Scamp opted to stay in the car while I went looking for more photo opportunities without idiot photobombers. Met a group of mallard ducks that seemed quite happy to pose for me until it became obvious that I had nothing worth eating with me, then they went off in search of better feeders. Photographed some wee sailing dinghies on the loch, passed an outdoor wedding reception in full swing (hope they had lots of DEET spray) and drove back home. Bypassed Callandar just in case the polis hadn’t filled their quota of speed merchants.

Dinner was yesterday’s curries reheated and served with rice and home made flatbreads. I think they tasted even better than yesterday. Maybe it was just that we’d been out in the fresh air. Looking for similar weather tomorrow. That would be nice.

Blinded by the light – 9 August 2016

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9 Aug bOff to Larky today to visit the optician. I had to have the inevitable drops in my eyes. I don’t think they serve any purpose other than to make my eyes supersensitive to light and also prevent me from focusing properly. After making me look (even more) like a psycho serial killer wearing those scary looking optician’s glasses, he decided that I didn’t need new glasses. That was before he saw the ones I was wearing. Both lenses scratched and scraped. £30 for two new lenses. A bargain at twice the price. Now I’ll be able to see again. Well, after Thursday I’ll be able to see again. Until then I’ll have to wear my groovy green ‘spare pair’ that I bought for £4 in Tiger in Glasgow. A complete bargain. Admired by all who see them!

After a cup of coffee and a scone in The Coalyard in Larky, I could see almost perfectly and drove home. It was nice to be back in Larky for a while, but although much of it is the same, a lot of it has changed a great deal. On the road down to the motorway one of the farmer’s fields was being perforated with about seven or eight machines taking test bores and a sign announced the imminent arrival of yet more new houses. I remember walking with my mum and dad along the right-of-way beside the railway past what my mum called “Daisy Cottage”. I don’t think I ever saw the cottage itself, but there were always a lot of Marguerites beside the path which I presume gave the cottage its name. I really should take my bike over to Larky some day and cycle again those paths before they are dug up and lost forever.

I went out to the Luggie path today to get some photos. The weather tried to keep me in, but I wasn’t having any of it. I keep a nylon rain jacket in the car for such an eventuality. I’m glad I did, because when the rain stopped, the sun came out for a few minutes and I grabbed some shots. The silhouette shot is a composite of an enormous green leaf, quite like a rhubarb leaf, sandwiched with an almost monochrome low viewpoint shot of cowparsley. The other one is genuine.

May go to Perth tomorrow. It depends on the weather.

Flooers, Painting and Salsa – 1 August 2016

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1 AugYesterday you were subjected to a lengthy story about my problems with computer technology. Today I tackled another lengthy computer technology problem, but before you switch off, I’m just mentioning it for my record, because you will remember that this blog is as much for me as it is for you. With that in mind, all I’m going to say is that making a bootable USB drive is a minefield and I’m going to leave it at that. I may leave the USB drive at that too.

It was another lovely day and, I wasted some of it staying inside when I should have been out walking or cycling. I did get a painting started and it’s beginning to look ok. Maybe better than ok. I’ll know better when I finish it.

I got some more beastie pictures at St Mo’s. I also got some flower shots. I like what the ‘cooncil’ have done with the wild flower area. Maybe they will think about looking after it this time and not allowing it go to thistles and grass like they did with the other areas in the past few years. They’ve also pulled out the plug with an exceptional effort at producing an adventure playground that weans actually want to play in. It looks brilliant NLC. Pity you couldn’t have made a better job of grassing the hilly parts.

Salsa tonight was difficult. Two weeks off and I’d forgotten every move I’ve learned this year. The old moves, I can remember, the new ones are still ‘new’ every week. It’s the Goldfish Syndrome. I really must make a commitment to learning a new move every second week at least.

I was thinking about yesterday’s landscape shot. It was the way the lighting illuminated the textures and the way the highlights and shadows created a three dimensional feel of the hills that I liked. I saw it again tonight as I was driving home from Glasgow. The glancing rays from the setting sun created that 3D feel again. I didn’t have a camera, but I knew it wouldn’t last long enough for me to get off the motorway and grab a shot even if I’d had a camera. It was good enough just to see it.

Painting and cycling are on the agenda for tomorrow with a bit of luck.

Looking for the Capitan – 31 July 2016

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31 July

<Technospeak>
The Capitan in question was operating system OSX 10.11 for the Mac. Apparently, it will be the last Mac operating system named OSX. The next one will be ‘macOS’. For me it lacks a little something. I presume it will be operating system eleven and OSXI didn’t look as good as OSX. Even worse, the next operating system, codename Sierra will not work in my 2009 Mac Book Pro. My old HP netbook of 2004 vintage will (un)happily run Windows 10, the latest Mickysoft offering. It works on it, very slowly granted, but it does work. Apple are far too sneaky to allow that on their ‘puters and phones. I’m not sure whether it’s a good idea or not. Certainly it exemplifies all that’s bad in Built-In Obsolescence, but what’s the point of installing an OS that will be up to date, but will make your computer run like a slug. Also, at least Apple allow you to download and install each new OS free of charge until you reach the limit of your hardware, something that Mickysoft has only just cottoned on to.

Sooo, last week I downloaded the latest OS for my 2009 MBP, El Capitan. For those without an interest in geography, El Capitan is a mountain in Yosemite National Park. Yosemite was also a recent Mac OS. Sierra, the next OS probably refers to the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Are we sensing the thread of a theme here? The names may sound tacky, but don’t they sound much more interesting than Windows 8.1 (codename “Lemon”) or Windows 10 (codename “A slight improvement”). But I digress.
Like I said earlier, last week I downloaded my installer for OSX10.11 and today after struggling with bootable USB drives, re-partitioned external hard drives and a whole lot of other jargon, about four hours later, I had a working, easily removable installation of the eponymous El Capitan. It was OK. That’s about it. No great flaws, no great improvements over the OSX10.8 I’ve been running for the last couple of years. I’ve tried it now. If the time comes when I have to run it, I’ll not be too fussed about installing it properly, but for now 10.8 does everything I need, and more. The best thing about it is that I know a lot of tweaks and ‘John Wayne Dance Steps‘ to quote Tom Paxton. I have no need to upgrade to the latest and greatest. Thanks for the free upgrade Apple, but not for me at the present time.
</Technospeak>

Didn’t do much else today, well, four hours of the day had gone and I hadn’t even been past the door. I did go for a walk round St Mo’s to get some beastie photos – that may sound rude and a bit dodgy, but basically they are photos of insects, macros, close-ups. Like the wasp in the mosaic above (click it to link to the photos in Flickr). While I was walking I was watching the light glancing off the Campsie Fells. That little spot of light really lit up the hills that can look great one minute and quite foreboding the next.

Dinner for me tonight was a home made burger, made from scratch. Minced the beef myself and made the burger from that. It wasn’t the best. It needs some tweaking. More chillies and more egg to bind it. A pinch more salt and maybe, just maybe, a drop or two of Trinny Pepper Sauce. That will give it a bite. It’s a work in progress, but the basics are there.

No plans for tomorrow. If it’s sunny I’ll maybe cycle. If it’s not, I’ll maybe paint.

Dug wi’ a burst ba’ – 24 July 2016

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAIt 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.

Kes – 23 July 2016

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23 July bOur visitors arrived much later last night than we expected, just before 11pm, in fact.  Drink was taken, tales were told, jokes were laughed at and much later than normal, we got to bed.

This morning they were up fairly early and we were up soon after although my head felt a bit thick.  That was when our other visitor dropped in.  Scamp said there was a bird sitting outside the front door, not a little bird, she thought it was a pigeon and it wasn’t looking too well.  Murd said two big black birds had ‘had a word with it’ and it perked up a bit after that.  He said he thought they must have been doctors 🙂

When I opened the front door I saw, not a dead pigeon as I expected, but an apparently live but unmoving kestrel.  It was a bit battered and its eyes were closed, so I feared the worst.  Then its head moved, so it was probably just dazed.  Maybe after hitting the bedroom window and falling on to the grass in the front garden.  I put on a pair of Scamp’s gardening gloves because that beak looked sharp, and gently lifted it up.  Some of the feathers on one wing were splayed out, but other than that it looked ok.  I pulled out a bit of dried grass from its wing feathers and smoothed the wing down. That was when it opened its eyes.  Wow!  Such beautiful, bright yellow eyes.  It looked at me, shook itself staggered a bit then flew off across the road and landed in a tree.  I think it must have been a young bird.  Lovely chestnut coloured plumage, and oh, those eyes.  A great start to the day, and my thick head had gone.

Scamp drove us in to Stirling today and we went for a curry in the usual restaurant, we both had our usual starters and mains too.  Creatures of habit.  Afterwards I went to the bookshop and was intrigued by the title of one book:
“The Genius of Birds” by Jennifer Ackerman.
I wonder why that one caught my eye.  Managed to download it when I got home and will add it to my Kindle booklist tonight.  We both wandered round BHS which was closing today, looking for bargains, but there were none, just junk nobody wanted.

After that we went to Waitrose and I got a big lump of ribeye which I cut into five steaks when I got home.  That should keep the carnivore in me occupied for the next few weeks.

Went out this evening to get some photos in the rain at St Mo’s, being careful to stick to the path.  Don’t want any more ticks.  Surprised to see that NLC have created an avenue of trees and reseeded the wild flower areas.  They must have cut out one of the councillors junkets to pay for that.  Light was terrible with ISOs in the thousands.  Last week I was struggling to keep the shutter speeds fast enough not to overexpose at ISO 100.  That’s the difference in being down south and up north.

More rain forecast tomorrow, so I doubt if we’ll be going far.

I can still see those yellow eyes.  Wish I’d thought to take a photo.

Open Heart Surgery – 17 July 2016

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17 JulyThe open-heart-surgery wasn’t on me, it was on my blog.  Or to be more exact, it was on my website architecture, but more of that later.

Not such a lazy start to the day, by which I mean that I was up and having breakfast just after 9am.  That’s early enough for me – on my holidays.  After that, Scamp and I went for a walk through the woodland path near the house.  Much better paths than back in Cumbersheugh.  The managed woodland is wedged between two halves of a golf course and is wild enough to feel as if you are miles from anywhere, but with the knowledge that you are only a mile at most from civilization.  I got a few photos, but on the way back, the battery on my ’10 packed in, so I swapped it out with the one in the ‘5 which is much more frugal with its energy.  When I got back to the house I found I’d lost the battery cover for the ‘5.  It’s the weakest part of the design of this camera and pivots on a flimsy plastic hinge, or doesn’t in this case.  I reckoned it was lying on the path somewhere and as it was black and the path was hard packed black dirt among trees, there was little chance of recovering it.  It was lost for good.  Duct tape would make a reasonable substitute when I got home, until then I need to be careful.

For ages, Hazy has been promising she’d help me organise my website to make it more simple to navigate.  Today we sat down and after backing everything up, we set about the open heart operation.  Actually, the backing up was the hardest part.  Once that was complete, the reorganising was pretty straight forward.  Straight forward, that is if you have someone who knows what they are doing sitting right next to you, not on the other end of a phone line, or worse still, someone who had been sitting in their room in California six months ago writing a blog post telling a numpty like me how to do it.  So, once again, thank you Hazy for not making a drama out of a crisis.  You are a gem, and you know it.

After that scary thing, Scamp and I drove out to Tolworth to get dinner.  This was another scary thing.  Here I was driving in London, well, in the outskirts of London, but driving with the rest of the lunatics.  My God, I thought I was impatient – I am impatient – but I have nothing on these folk that need to be everywhere, like, yesterday!  The only thing to do is to join them and be as mental as them.  Turn a rubber ear to all horns and turn your blind eye to the gesticulations.  Fire a few well chosen Scottish sweary words back at them.  They won’t understand the words, but they’ll get the gist.  I’d hate to drive through this every day going to and coming back from work.  I dare say you get used to it.

So, we reached M&S and got parked too.  Almost as soon as the engine had stopped a bloke came over and offered to wash my car for a fiver.  If I thought he could have removed the dried seagull crap from the back wing without steel wool, I’d have got him to do it!  I saved him the trouble by saying “Thanks, but it’s ok as it is.”  Had coffee after M&S to fire me up for the drive back, which incidentally was much more pleasant than the drive there.  Maybe I have joined the lunatic fringe.

Scamp had already stated her intention to go and sit in the sun in the garden for the remains of the afternoon, but that battery flap was still bugging me, so I set off to see what I could see.  I’d hardly walked for five minutes along the path when there it was!  By luck it had fallen with the chrome inside facing up and glinting in the sun, completely confounding the Centre of Gravity theory that states that bread always falls butter side down.  Too difficult to explain after a stressful day – Google it.  Happy now, my step was a lot lighter as I retraced my steps of this morning and walked the wild woodland again.  Saw a beautiful pale blue dragonfly, but it was too busy looking for another pale blue dragonfly to bother with the likes of me.

Dinner was Sea Bass en Papillote with new potatoes and broccoli.  Followed by Apple Crumble with cream.  Tonight’s film was the mystifying Now You See Me.  Third success from Hazy.

Tomorrow we may be going to Hampton Court … on the bus.  Enough driving excitement for me today.

Getting things done – 11 July 2016

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11julyI had a few things to do today and after I got started, late as usual, I got started on my To Do list and tonight, everything is ticked off.

It was another day of mixed fortunes as far as the weather goes. We had sunshine, rain and wind today in almost equal doses. Most of these climate elements were acted out under cloud cover.

One of the good things today was the delivery of my Grass shower gel from Lush. I had wondered if it would be the solid gel that they seem to have adopted as their base shower soap, but it was true shower gel. Expensive, but so good to have again. I will use it sparingly, I’m not that dirty these days 😉

Among the items on my To Do list today was thinning out my basil seedlings that have been sitting on the kitchen window sill for the last month. Scamp thought they should be left as they were, but I decided they’d grow better after they had been thinned out. We’ll just have to see who was right.

Scamp came to salsa class tonight, but didn’t dance. I think that was a sensible decision as the tempo towards the end of class was becoming quite frantic. Hopefully it won’t be too long before she’s joining in again.

Today’s photos are details from Scamp’s favourite rose. Alec’s Red was a wedding present from my mum, dad and Alex. It’s a beautiful deep red rose with a heavy scent. It’s followed us all around Scotland as we travelled around following the work in the 70s and 80s. It’s been a central point of the front garden here since we moved in in the mid 1980s. I had a bit of concern when I was taking some shots of it in bright sunlight, using extension tubes on the ’10. I noticed considerable evidence of flare appearing on the finished images that I hadn’t seen in the viewfinder. I think it may be due to some light getting in from the extension tubes which have worked really well since I got them, but they are plastic and maybe there is too much wear in the mounts. Some more research is necessary.

May go to Glasgow tomorrow to get some photos of the Homeless Football World Cup if it’s not raining.

Did I say it was meant to rain today? – 10 July 2016

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10 JulyWell it did.  It rained and rained and rained.  Then it rained again, just to make sure.  We watched Lewis Hamilton win the British GP.  We watched Andy Murray win Wimbledon.  We didn’t watch Portugal win Euro 2016.  That would be too much excitement for one day.

I made some bread, I did some sketching, I did some moping around the house.  I was hardly past the door today.  I did manage to get a photo of one of the roses from the back garden and in doing that, I was trying out my new tripod.  It worked perfectly.  Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about Flickr now.  Another night of irritating problems with uploads.  I was attempting to upload two photos.  I managed to upload one, but not the other.  Checked the flickr (lack of ) help page and found I was not alone.  As someone says, these things used to happen at weekends and during the (US) night when nobody was at work on Flickr to fix things.  Now it happens all the time.  Weekends and weekdays, night and day.  You get the feeling that nobody cares any more.  Until I find an alternative, I’m using 500px.  Just click on the photo as usual and it should load for you.

After all the faffing around trying to get time lapse shots to work, I forgot to check that amazing camera, the on in the iPhone.  It’s got a time lapse setting built in.  I also found a couple of apps, one free and one cheap.  Results so far are impressive.  Must post them when I have time.  They definitely won’t be going on Flickr.

Maybe, just maybe the sun will come out tomorrow.