Category: photography

Waiting for Barbara – 22 December 2016

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Yesterday we got a Christmas card from my cousin, Barbara.  I haven’t seen Barbara in years.  Tomorrow we’re going to meet another Barbara – the second storm of the year.  Definitely a different Barbara.  Today we got a taste of Barbara – the storm.

We drove to Currys at Bishopbriggs because they had the printer cartridges for my Canon printer.  I did think about buying a new printer because the Canon, whilst it still works, is getting old, but I’m still not settled on a make or model.  I really only use the printer at Christmas to print my annual calendar.  The rest of the time I just steal a couple of prints from Scamp’s printer.  Once I’ve got the calendar printed and out of the way, I’ll decide on the long term future of the IP4500.

After we came back and had some lunch, I went out in the torrential rain to get some photos.  One great benefit of the 365 is it forces me out to get some photos.  Some days I admit that I use the flowers or weemen to get something to post, but I personally see them as stopgaps at best and failures at worst.  Today I waited until the rain had passed and headed up to the Antonine Wall to get some atmospheric shots of the landscape after the rain.  Unfortunately, because of the gale force winds, the next blash (another Scottish word that describes a sudden downpour perfectly) of rain came battering down as I was setting the camera and tripod down.  However, the lighting was good and the clouds were exactly where I wanted them, so I carried on and got the shots.  There wasn’t much colour in the scene and what was there didn’t add anything, so I reduced both shots to monochrome in Lightroom.  Now I’ve got the camera and lens drying out in the warm living room hoping that there is no moisture in the innards of the lens.

We’d intended to go to Barca tonight, but the weather was against us, so we left it for another, drier day.

Tomorrow?  Let’s see what Barbara brings to the party.

Walking through the Gloaming – 15 December 2016

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I’ve started a bad habit of allowing the blog to get away from me.  These last couple of days have seen me in the morning playing catch-up to get the blog posted, yesterday’s blog that is.  Today I’m finishing today’s blog today.

Not a lot of work done this morning.  Scamp was hard at work buying Tesco again and cooking all day for the Witches Christmas Party while I farted about.  There, that’s the honest truth, well, almost the truth.  I did get my 2017 calendar sorted out, so that’s one thing done.

I went for more ‘messages’ – you remember what messages are, don’t you – after lunch and took Scamp’s advice to carry ONE camera with me.  I chose the E-M5 with a short zoom lens and no EVF (Electronic View Finder).  Very pocketable.   I walked the short walk round the railway walk, across the tree plantation and back along the canal while the light changed from blue to a glorious orange gloaming.  Some beautiful lighting on the hills, but the short lens was struggling to make anything of it.  By comparison, the short focal length lens made the skies look good.

Since Tesco was now closed for restocking, after Scamp had bought everything it had, I went to Kilsyth to Lidl to get some odds and ends there and in B&M (my new favourite shop).  Bought far more than I intended to, so Scamp’s enthusiasm must be catching.  When I got home and after dinner, I started on my part of tomorrows banquet.  Now, at 10.30pm I’ve done my bit too.  The pudding is setting in the fridge and the bread is proving in the kitchen.  Some more work to be done tomorrow, but less frantic I hope.

I’m intending giving the WCP a body swerve tomorrow.  I’m booked for coffee and a chat with Fred and Val tomorrow midday and after that, well as Del Boy said, “The world’s my lobster”.

A day of nothing done – 14 December 2016

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Today was a lazy day.  Scamp’s meeting with Nancy was called off as the trains from Larky were also off.  Jackie left to head back up to Skye and texted us when she was on the bus to say that Mairi had passed her driving test first time!  Congrats to her.  I don’t know if she’d dare to ask her dad if she could borrow the car tonight!  We drove to Bishopbriggs to get some essential stuff.

Made the decision to donate my Tamron 18-200mm lens to Val.  His need is greater than mine and it might just brighten his day.

Salsa at night was great, although as an aftermath of the Salsa Ball on Sunday, the classes were small.  Had great fun.  JamieG was looking for Christmas songs – salsa style for the extravaganza of parties next week.  Good luck with that.

I don’t suppose it was a day of nothing done, really.  Oh and today’s photo is Fairy Nuff who lives in my cabinet most of the year and spreads her own kind of magic from her place on the tree at Christmas.  That’s Christmas with a ‘C’.

A dull day in the Toon

Posted on by Zogman

9 Dec

Took up Scamp’s kind offer of a lift to the station to catch the train to Glasgow. Much more comfortable than the bus and much less expensive than the car.

Had a look at iMacs in John Lewis, well actually iMac, singular as they only had one on show and a dusty example of the breed it was too. They have the best offer on iMacs, with a three year warranty, but it looks as if they are pushing the portable versions of the Apple computers. Maybe desktops are dying out. From there I went to the Apple store in Buchanan Street, but I’ve almost totally lost faith in this particular outlet, so it was a cursory glance at these sparkling devices I can’t really afford.

Next on the list … Actually, that, like yesterday’s blog must also remain redacted.  Let’s just say I did some shopping.  The town was simply mad today with folk running here and there pushing prams, dragging screaming weans and lugging jolly Xmas coloured bags with them.  Note ‘Xmas’ not ‘Christmas’ as there is nothing remotely religious about this festival or the lead up to it for most people.  So after some deeply unsatisfying shopping, I walked up Buchanan Street and grabbed my PoD which was the bloke sitting in the window.  The sparkles are a reflection of lights across the street.  Now don’t get the idea that this is in anyway an Amsterdam window.  This was one storey up and well away from the gaze of the shoppers.  I think that’s the thing about photography and especially solo photography, you tend to look around you rather than straight ahead if you are simply shopping.  Headphones and a music player full of good tunes helps too to remove the mundane, everyday things and allow you to enjoy the parts others don’t see.  Try it sometime.  You don’t need the camera, but you do if you want to record your visuals, but the headphones filled with music are essential.  From Bucky Street to Hot Mulled Bucky.  A bit of a culture shock, but I can see how this strong, sweet tonic wine would work as a mulled wine … kind of.  Only in Glasgow, or Coatbridge, or indeed the West of Scotland.  It’s a cultural thing Winking smile.  Seen in the Christmas market in George Square.

Just as I was taking my phone out of my pocket to ask if Scamp’s Taxi Service was back in business, a text came in from her confirming that it was.  Now that’s synchronicity!  Got to the station with 2 minutes to spare before the train left.  It was the Alloa train and is of ancient rolling stock.  Only last year they put roofs on the carriages and although we had an elderly diesel unit pulling ours, some are still pulled by by a late model of Stephenson’s Rocket.  Eight of us crammed into the crossways corridor between the doors.  Thankfully most of the crowd left at Bishopbriggs and that lightened the load considerably, much to the relief of the driver who thought he’d have to ask us to push the train up one of the inclines.  Abellio, what are you thinking about?  Extending platforms to take longer trains.  What you need is 20th century rolling stock.  21st century would be better, but let’s face it, it’s a pipe dream.  Scamp was waiting for me at the station and we made our way home without eventuality. 

Scamp’s out tonight so I’ve agreed to write out my Christmas cards, or is it Xmas cards?  Anyway, without further ado, I’ll draw a line under today’s wanderings and get this posted so I can get on with the work.  Battery is still working quite well on the Mac but I’m still doing ‘conditioning cycles’ on it.  You’ll understand that I’m sure, Hazy.  Curtails my Apple experience, but at least I get to use the quite excellent Window’s Live Writer.  The blog writer Apple should have written.

Tomorrow?  Maybe Embra, postponed from last week.

Boots – 6 December 2016

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When we got home last night Scamp discovered that she’d left her boots in the STUC building.  One frantic Facebook message later ensured that the boots had been found and stored ready for pickup today.  That was my task for the morning.

The drive in to the STUC in the West End of Glasgow was a delight this morning.  Very light traffic and even got parked just outside the building.  Boots collected, I made tracks for home because it was a dreary, dull, dreich day – that was a four word alliteration in case you hadn’t noticed.

Firefox has been avoiding loading Flickr recently, ever since version 50.0.2 installed itself automatically.  This is the first time I’ve had a problem with Firefox, but I’ve had loads of problems with Flickr, so initially I blamed the website not the browser.  However after a bit of research today I discovered the problems with v50.0.2 are widespread and not just with the Mac version, but with PCs too.  Not everybody is affected and even my problem is not always repeatable.  For instance, today it started off with baulking at loading Flickr around 4pm, but tonight after no changes to the installation, it’s loading fine.  It’s not bandwidth, because first thing this morning loading was fine.  It’s a conundrum.  In the past few days I’ve tried deleting the caches, switching off all the extensions, rebooting the Mac.  Nothing seems to give long-term success.  What I have done now is switch off ‘auto update’.  That way I have a baseline to start from.  Maybe Mozilla will fix the problem, but maybe pigs will fly too.

Today’s photo is a start at a still life from tiny wee 00 size  (1:75 scale) figures.  I know it looks fairly simple, but this took me over an hour to set up and photograph.

Tomorrow I’ve got a meeting timetabled with Fred and Val.  The Scottish education system has been highlighted as the worst in Europe and the Scottish Government have tasked us with fixing it.  We can probably do that over a cup of coffee and also find time to discuss Celtic’s exit from the European Cup and the new Stones album.

Walkin’ on Sunshine – 1 December 2016

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1-decWhat a difference a little bit of sun makes and we had a fair bit of the big white ball in the sky today.  The grey had gone for a wee while at least.

We made the most of the sun by getting the bus in to Glasgow.  Actually, we took two buses in to Glasgow.  Scamp went in early and I fitted the new wipers to my car.  Surprisingly, it only took me a few minutes.  Sometimes it pays to buy the posh, Bosch wipers because they are so much easier to fit than the cheapo alternatives.  After fitting the wipers, I just managed to catch the bus, a different bus, in to Glasgow.  On the bus I discovered that I’d left my Kindle at home.  Worse than that, I’d left my headphones in my other jacket, also at home.  With nothing to distract me, I sat in the front of the bus and soaked up some of that sun.

I went to Millers art shop to get a couple of pens.  Before that I got myself an emergency pair of earbuds from HMV.  Skullcandy were always the cheap end of the market as far as I was concerned until I had the same problem I had today and had to buy a cheap pair of earbuds and succumbed to Skullcandy.  They were brilliant.  They are much better than my Sennheiser pair which are way to harsh and tinny sounding.  After this spending spree, I met up with Scamp and we went to lunch at The Italian Kitchen in Albion Street.  It was outside TIK that the reflections on the Herald building attracted my photographic attention.  After lunch we went our own merry way again.  Anyone watching would be wondering if we had fallen out, but that wasn’t the case, it was just about giving each other space.

I wandered around the city centre to get some more photos and even got a sketch of sorts done from the GOMA, then I wanted a look at a 21” iMac in the Apple shop.  The newly designed Apple shop, where there are no sales counters.  The Apple shop where a sales person was hogging the 21” iMac I was wanting to look at while she sold an iPhone.  Now I realise that the purchase of an iPhone is important, but wouldn’t it be a much better idea to have a sales desk where this transaction could take place.  It’s a bit of a barn of a place and it gives you an idea of the way Apple want things to go.

  • No Genius Bar
  • No sales desk, as I’ve mentioned
  • No Techys desk
  • No place to queue or sit while you wait to speak to a Techy

The other thing I noticed about this newly designed Apple store is the proportions of different machines on display.  Lots of space given to iPads and iPhones acres of deskspace given to Apple watches and entire tables given over to Macbooks of various kinds.  Only five desktop  computers on display, and that space itself being used as a sales point  It looks looks as if Apple don’t want/need to sell desktop computers any more.  Not a comforting thought.

Just managed to sneak on the X3 as it was about to leave and it turned out that Scamp was on the previous one, so we were running along behind each other heading for Cumbersheugh!  How sweet.

Hoping for another sunny day tomorrow, but today was good, so I shouldn’t be greedy.

St Andy’s Day – 30 November 2016

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Gym and Swim in the late morning and guess what?  They were still repairing the sauna and the steam room, but the jacuzzi was working, well, it was working until I got in and was then told by some dick with an ipad (have ipads replaced clipboards now?) that they were just about to drain it.  I complained that the sauna was close, the steam room was closed and now the jacuzzi was being closed.  What was going to be next?  The pool?  He said that the repairs to the sauna and the steam room were now complete and they were just about to open them again.  For once they were as good as their word and the hot rooms were hot.  In the case of the steam room, very hot.  Steaming hot in fact.  Tested all three facilities and they passed muster.

Home to a lunch of three-day-old soup which didn’t taste that bad, but oh dear what a dull day.  Dreich in extremis.  It felt like the sun had forgotten to get out of bed today.  I went to get new wiper blades for the car and some much needed screen wash too.  After that I drove to Auchinstarry and got a few sunset shots, but I was glad I’d kept the new wee tripod in the car, because I really needed it today to support the camera with the slow shutter speed that was necessary to get the ISO down.  It was supposed to be 9.7ºc today, but the wind-chill must have dropped that temperature down by 10º.  It was baltic.  Shots in the bag, I headed for home and a hot cup of tea.  Fish ’n’ Chips for dinner with an egg thrown in for good measure.  That put a smile on my face for a while.  We should have been going to salsa tonight but it looked like Jamie Gal was still in Bristol by mid afternoon, so the likelihood of ’the other teacher’ (Nudge, Nudge – Wink, Wink) taking the class was quite high and also the fact that I wasn’t feeling all that great meant that we stayed home tonight.  I’d rather be there, but the thought of driving through the usual Wednesday football traffic just to find that we were doing “Oo la la” ’styling’ when I’m not feeling at my freshest didn’t appeal.  I might have a hot toddy and head off for an early bed tonight.  Maybe I’ll read another chapter of Ben Aaronovitch’s “The Hanging Tree” (Peter Grant Book 6) and further eke it out.  This is book 2 of my must-read trilogy, the third being the latest of Ian Rankin’s or John Rebus’s books (I’m never sure exactly who it is who writes them or who is real and who is merely a character).  After those three, the first being A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers, I’m in no-man’s land.  Need to go looking!

Hoping for a better day and a better attitude tomorrow.  May go and do some urban sketching ‘In the Toon.’  Some sunshine would be nice.

Fidgeting – 29 November 2016

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Fidgeting:  To move about restlessly, nervously, or impatiently.
That sort of sums up me today.

After completing yesterday’s Sudoku (easy) followed by today’s puzzle (medium), I was stuck for something to do.  Scamp was going out to lunch with a friend, so I had an hour or so to do as I pleased.  I thought about starting a painting, but couldn’t settle to it.  Sketching?  No, that didn’t work either.  St Mo’s didn’t appeal today.  The final decider was that I’d agreed with Scamp that I’d bring back some messages.  Stuff like milk, bread and onions.  Stuff for dinner, that’s messages in Scotland.  This agreement forced me to go out.

I went to Auchinstarry on the off chance that I’d get another look at the kingfisher.  It wasn’t there, but a grey heron was.  It kept flying off whenever I took the camera out and although I wanted a static shot with the heron’s reflection in the canal, I realised that if I was going to get anything, it would have to be an action shot.  I got it, twice.  My favourite, though, is the landscape with the trees.  I like that view and this time I managed to avoid the power lines that usually deface this shot.  It was the light that made it special and that’s what it’s all about.

After the walk and the photos, I did go for the messages at Lidl.

No plans for tomorrow yet.  It depends, as Scamp would say, on the weather.

Visitors – 26 November 2016

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Out before 10 this morning, just before 10, but not before I’d made some bread to have with today’s dinner.  Drove in to Glasgow to get some early Chrissy Prezzies and for me to return my Perspective book.  Didn’t even have time to drop in for a coffee before we headed back home, because there was more work to be done, preparing for our visitors.  I did manage to get a few shots with my 9mm Body Cap lens.

When we came home, Scamp started back on her part of the preparations and I kept out of the way, drove to Auchinstarry and walked along part of the canal hoping to see the secretive Kingfisher again, but no show.  Crossed over to the railway path and walked a bit further along it before doubling back and heading for the car.  Found a leaf embedded in a slab of ice and managed to balance it on a frosted fence post to get a few shots of it.

Came back to the organised chaos that is the preparation for visitors.  I did help a bit, but as usual, Scamp was fully in charge of the situation.

The night went well, the pudding I’d made (Creme Caramel) was excellent and a good time was had by all.  Now we just have the clearing up to do.  Half of it is in the dishwasher and the rest can wait until morning.

Good Fun, Good Food and Good Friends.

Another day on Planet Ice – 24 November 2016

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Temperature this morning at 8.30 was -4.7ºc.  That’s cold when you’ve come down stairs to the cold kitchen without your slippers.  Frozen tootsies.

I thought that by the time I was going out around 11.30 to meet Val that the car would have thawed a little.  I forgot that where I’d parked it last night would remain in the sun’s shadow all day, so no luck with the auto-defrost.  It was down to manual scraping of the windscreen.  Then by the time I got in the car and turned on the ignition, there was a new film of ice on the glass.  Finally got it defrosted and headed for the town centre.  One great thing about this car is the air-con, which in the winter defrosts the windows PDQ.

Over coffee, our conversation ranged through the usual topics of computers, cameras, more computers and moans about everything else.  Along the way I picked up some useful tips from the computer genius.  Really, that’s not sarcasm.  What Val doesn’t know about computer hardware and low level programming in DOS is not worth knowing.  I learned a lot about his experience of external hard drives and gave him some pointers on camera lenses.  As usual I gained more than I gave back.

After we we had had our caffein hit for the day we parted company.  Him to wander round the shops and me to get some photos.  Today’s walk through the winter wonderland was along the Luggie Water, part of which was frozen white and part was steaming away nicely in the warmth of the sun.  Got a barrel load of photos and reduced them down nine and from those nine, I chose my favourite six.  I’m really trying to reduce the photo overload these days.  It’s all right to take lots of photos, in fact I recommend that you do, but it’s also essential that you store only the ones that are worth storing.  I have to be more brutal or I’ll be filling the house with storage disks, even more than I do already.

By the time I was getting back to the car, the light was fading rapidly and it was time to head for home.  You forget just how short the winter days are, so it’s really important to make the most of the good light.

My maxim for the week is get out early and get the shots in the good light, even if it 4.7 degrees below zero.  Let’s see how long that one lasts!