Category: photography

A day at the seaside – 16 September 2016

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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

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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!

Wallflower – 14 September 2016

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Sitting it out at Salsa because there are too many men in the second class which is an unusual state of affairs. It’s not a problem really as the sweat is running off me as we’ve just completed our second advanced class of the week. I did think of joining Colin’s class, but I’m never sure what it is he’s teaching. Sometimes it’s definitely salsa, sometimes it’s more like bachata, sometimes it’s almost certainly quickstep or tango or something else ballroom and there are times when it’s something entirely different. It’s difficult to see where they blend together. I did do his warm-up which is always a challenge, just keeping up. Tonight was no exception. That probably explains why I’ve reached melting point.

We had intended going to Kirkcaldy on the bus, but lethargy got in the way.  It’s been postponed until another day, a sunny day, because sunny it was not today. After we had dithered around for a while, we decided to go for lunch instead and then went for garden stuff at B&Q.

I had a go at a couple of  small watercolours and finished off an acrylic that’s been languishing against the wall for too long. I may frame it up and see if I’m happy with it. I’ve decided that even for sketching and wash, it’s far, far better to use watercolour paper, even cheap stuff.

I did manage a quick visit to St Mo’s later in the afternoon and was thinking that with the warm, damp weather we should be getting to the season for toadstools and mushrooms when I chanced upon a neat little creamy white umbrella, right in front of me. To get the shot, I wanted a low point of view (POV). That meant I couldn’t check focus through the viewfinder, but one of the Oly designers had considered this eventuality and made the back screen articulate so you can turn it horizontal. Even better, you can set the touch screen to activate the shutter. So clever.

As I mentioned, it was a dull, damp day. I’m hoping tomorrow will be better.

Too much time on my hands – 13 September 2016

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combo-cameras2It was a wet morning and it didn’t clear up until about 5pm, for an hour, then the dry spell was over and the rain came back. That’s my excuse for making it an indoor day today.

For a long time I’ve been following the exploits of one of my Flickr contacts, Jiffy Cat, presumably not their real name. For years now, Jiffy Cat has been experimenting with pinhole camera photography, and has recently been producing some interesting images. I believe the method JC uses is analog, ie. film, paper, developer and fixer with all the smelly mess that accompanies this process. I’ve had my time doing developing and fixing and I don’t want to go back to the mess or the stained fingers which made me look like a 20-a-day smoker. No, technology has moved on. I decided to make use of one of my older M43 cameras and make a real body cap lens for it. I cannibalised an equally old body cap, drilled an 1/8” hole in the centre, covered the hole with thick aluminium foil and punched a hole in it with a needle. That was it as far as the construction went. The only difficulty was estimating an exposure. It was all trial and error, but at least I could see immediately how successful or otherwise each shot had been and make corrections accordingly. The best shot I got was with ISO 100 and ‘shutter speed’ of 60 seconds. The top one took the bottom picture and vice versa.

While this was going on, I made a live backup of El Cap on to an external HDD using the excellent Carbon Copier. It took a little over 4 hours to complete the copy which is a long time, but that was both of the internal HDDs and the hidden recovery sectors too. Hopefully this will allow me to boot from the external HDD and reinstall El Cap if the need arises. I’ve used this method before when I added the SSD to the Mac and it was faultless, so I’m fairly confident about using it again. Sorry JIC, that was just gobbledegook to you, wasn’t it? 😉

Dull, but drier day forecast for tomorrow. Don’t know if it will be worthwhile going anywhere, but we live in hope.

Sunny Sunday – 11 September 2016

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11-septWe went to Glasgow today. Since the buses run to their own timetable on Sundays, we drove in. It was a lovely morning and Scamp thought we might manage to have a coffee outside, but by the time we’d finished shopping, the wind was becoming a bit gusty and we settled for a coffee inside.

Dinner for me was a repeat of yesterday’s, Lamb, Chorizo and Puy Lentil Casserole, but this time made at home. It turned out as good as the Loch Leven Larder’s, if not better. Who am I kidding? Of course it was better! Slow cooked for six hours, it was great. Plenty left over for tomorrow’s dinner and maybe some for lunch later in the week.

I went for a walk to St Mo’s in the late afternoon and got a few shots, but the light was poor by that time and that resulted in a lot of digital noise which you can remove quite easily with Lightroom, but the price you pay is a loss of definition, so it’s a double edged sword. I did see a strange pink blossom at completely the wrong time of year. There were thorns on the stems and on the back of the leaves which look like bramble leaves. The plant seemed to be behaving like a bramble by climbing round other tree branches. Couldn’t believe this was flowering in September in Scotland!

No plans for tomorrow, because like most Mondays it’s eaten up with Gems in the afternoon and salsa at night. Might get some painting done. If not on canvas, then at least on the outside window ledges.

The Accidental Selfie – 7 September 2016

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7-septSorry JIC, but we went to Helensburgh today. I thought it was only fair since we went to your sister’s least favourite place last week, we should go to your LFP this week.

It’s not my favourite place to drive to because it always seems such a dreary journey. Nothing much to see until you get past Dumbarton. As an aside, this is another Scottish anomaly. The town of Dumbarton is the county town of Dunbartonshire. That’s not a typo, Dunbartonshire with an ‘n’ and Dumbarton with an ‘m’. Why? Because that’s the way it is. Back to the story. Once you get past Dumbarton the scenery gets a bit more interesting with great views across the Clyde estuary to Greenock and Port Glasgow. Before then, it’s just motorway. Helensburgh is a very run-down looking version of its former self. Too many shops closed or in the process of closing on the main street to impress any passing tourists and although the front has undergone a bit of tidying up, it’s not the place it used to be. We walked along the front and I took some photos because the light is usually good there with the estuary and the hills in the background. After we walked back, we had chips and a pizza. Even the pizza wasn’t as good as it used to be. A sad state of affairs.

When we had stopped at the carpark there was a bus parked there with its engine chug, chugging away. It’s driver reading the paper Three hours later when we left, it was still chug, chugging away and he was still reading the paper. He must have been a very slow reader. Wasn’t there a law passed recently that banned drivers from having the engine running while the vehicle was stationary. Probably doesn’t apply to bus drivers. Either that or he hadn’t managed to finish reading that whole memo.

Helensburgh pier used to be a great place for sea fishing. I’ve fished there myself a few times. Like the town itself, the pier is looking a bit worse for wear now with more bits cordoned off or barricaded off than are actually useable. There were very few fishermen on it today, it seemed to be attracting more jakies than fishers.

The titular photo was indeed an accident. I was in the process of taking off the 9mm fisheye and had the 12-32mm zoom ready to go on when I inadvertently pressed the shutter. I like the finished article. It would be useful for keeping the weans away from the fire, if we had any weans or a fire, that is.

Went to Salsa at night. One class of sort-of advanced and one beginners. Great exercise. Bummer of a drive home. Motorway closed right through Glasgow. No warnings. No diversions. Just find your own way out, we’re not helping you. It took almost an hour to find our way home. A journey that should take 15 minutes.

Rain forecast for tomorrow. Don’t mind because today the weather was lovely, if a bit too warm for September.

Bike Porn – 4 September 2016

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Today, for the first time ever, or at least for a number of years, the Tour of Britain cycle race started from Glasgow.

We drove in early to be sure of getting a good place and spent an hour or so wandering around the pits, with me marvelling at the equipment on display.  All of it shiny and clean.  Something you can’t say about my own bike.  There were bikes everywhere.  On the team cars there were wheels, frames, complete bikes.  Enough to cover every eventuality.  As well as equipment, there were also the mobile homes for the teams.  Scamp was wondering why someone called Wiggins needed two mobile homes, and if he was actually in one of them.  The enormous crowd round them seemed to think he was.  I did actually grab a shot of him later in one of the race pics.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t actually focusing on him, but rather on the rider behind him as he was wearing a white top that helped the camera achieve focus better than on the superstar in front.

Bike Porn 4 SeptAfter our *’pit walk’* we walked over to the corner of George Street and Montrose street to get a good view of them coming along the straight.  After the usual preliminaries of motorcycles, polis and team cars, the juniors came through, followed a few minutes later by the professionals.  That’s when I noticed the error on the card – not writing!  Flicked the card out and wrote to the other card.  One big benefit of the D7000 is its two card slots.  I got a few shots there, but they were only cruising at this time, just the warm-up for the real race.  After the warm-up we had a few minutes to choose a different viewpoint and I moved round the corner a bit to get some shots of the riders coming round that tight bend before climbing up the fairly steep hill towards Cathedral Street.  Scamp stayed almost where she was to act as a spotter!  We had a bit of entertainment when a guy on the First Aid bike bravely pedaled up Montrose Street to a massive cheer from the crowds.

Scamp tipped me the wink that the peloton was coming and I got ready.  Hammered off about ten shots as they rounded the bend and hoped for the best, then the camera jammed.  Don’t know yet what it was.  Yes, the buffer was full and emptying itself, but the lens wouldn’t focus.  Swore for a bit, but I’d got most of the photos I wanted.  Then as mysteriously the problem went away and I got some shots of the cavalcade of team cars driving up Montrose Street.

Cycling 4 sepI thought they had another lap to do round the city centre circuit, so we wandered down to Ingram Street, but they had gone past on Clyde Street and over the bridge heading for Castle Douglas and we were heading home.  Before we went I got a photo of a bloke standing across the road.  We’re both sure it’s Scamp’s cousin, an ex-polis who took early-early-retirement and went to live in Spain.  Home on holiday or another Brexit Exit?  We’ll never know because she wasn’t absolutely certain it was him.

Had lunch and watched another *’exciting’* F1 GP, at least that’s what the over-enthusiastic Ben Edwards told us.  I think he must have been watching a different race, or maybe you just had to be there.

Sunday Social in the early evening was good, except there seemed to be two salsa tracks to one bachata which became boring after a while.  One or two bachata dances a night are good enough for me.  Tonight was overkill.  We think someone wanted extra practise time.  Spoke to Carol and Ailsa whom we haven’t seen for ages.  Sti.

Rain forecast for tomorrow, but it had been a lovely sunny day today.  Just right for a nice bike ride.

The Galleries and the Airies – 2 September 2016

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2 SeptScamp was out this morning having coffee with her niece.  This gave me time to sit and swear at both WordPress and Galleria.  WordPress provided the bad plugin I wrote about yesterday and Galleria is a gallery making piece of software I’ve use for a few years now.  Galleria works well.  WordPress works well. The problem is that they don’t work well together.  This morning I made them both shake hands and play nice together.  It took a lot of swearing and a fair bit of trial and error, but they did eventually produce a decent photo gallery in my WordPress blog.  Like my pal Val says, it was “a wee challenge”.  Now that I’ve managed to do it more than once, I’m quite happy to let it go and revert to the simple gallery I made last night.  Time wasted?  Yes, but a couple of lessons learned.  You should learn something new every day.

In the afternoon, I started cutting down a rogue tree growing out of the wall at the corner of the back garden.  Once I’d dumped the cuttings in the council dump, I went for a walk along the Luggie Water to find some photos.  I had thought to go to the free day at the Scottish Airshow at Ayr, but it was the thought of standing in the rain watching for the ‘airies’ descending through the clouds and then disappearing again into them, wishing that it was a lovely sunny day with the ‘airies’ shining against a blue sky.  It had rained on and off all day and there was no sign of a letup.  With that said, we decided not to go.  We should have, because at 4pm, the sky started to clear and the sun came out.  Unfortunately the show was due to start at 5pm and it was too late for us to get ready and drive down to Ayr to see the ‘airies’.  Oh well, a walk along the Luggie would have to do.  I liked the light on the ‘Bucky’ bottle under the road bridge and with a bit of post processing the gigantic ‘rhubarb leaves’ looked quite impressive.

Don’t know what we’re doing tomorrow, because it looks like wall to wall rain.

Fungi, Physio and That Friday Feeling – 26 August 2016

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26 AugWhen I was making breakfast this morning I saw a coal tit having its breakfast of peanuts in the garden.  Grabbed the Oly and got a dozen shots.  Two of them were fairly sharp and showed a bit of detail in the bird.

Physio later in the morning and it looks like there is quite an improvement in my shoulder, but I’ve to keep doing the exercises and continue being a pincushion.  I was amazed when the physio (David Brogan) showed me his cycling shoes, made from carbon fibre with dial-in adjusters to tighten them.  I didn’t dare ask him how much they cost.  It looks, JIC, as if his whole bike is carbon fibre.  It’s a Wilier.  A Beautiful machine, designed for racing and that’s what he does with it, I think.

After lunch I took the bike out.  Poor wee thing had been languishing in the hall for so long, its computer had gone to sleep.  Anyway, despite a fairly strong west wind, I headed out for a bit of exercise.  Nothing too strenuous.  Half an hour of cycling and then an hour or two searching out some interesting things to photograph.  The Three Amigos were an easy candidate, but getting a decent viewpoint was a bit more demanding.  I finally settled on leaning on the fence by the railway to get a usable shot without the intrusion of the overhead lines for the electrification of the line to Embra.  Big push to get all the gantries and cables in place and then for some reason it’s going to take another seven or eight months before they will be used.  That’s British efficiency for you.  In my wanderings I found hundreds, perhaps thousands of tiny little toadstools on a rotting tree stump.  I got a few shots of them, because fungi in general grow, seed and die in a very short time span.  Better to get the shots when I can and hopefully get some more later when I’ve got the proper equipment (tripod) with me.

We had dinner booked at Cotton House for 6pm, so I took the shots I could get and headed home hoping for a tailwind and with thoughts of Chow Mein in my head.  I got both.  See, even when you’re retired, you can still have That Friday Feeling!

Colin’s flower show tomorrow.

I didn’t know you could do that – 19 August 2016

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19 augI’ve had the Nikon D7000 for over three years now.  In that time I’ve settled on it as my ‘good’ camera.  The one to use when quality is paramount.  I use it in manual mode most of the time and allow the camera to decide the best ISO setting to use within the limits I set.  I also use it in AF-S mode.  Single servo focus because I mainly photograph still objects, landscapes don’t move much and flowers, although they do move, don’t wander far from their stems.  Maybe too it’s that I’m a control freak and like to know exactly what my camera is doing and can predict how it will react in any given situation.  Today I started using AF-C for probably the first time since the early days just after I acquired the camera.  AF-C is Continuous servo focus.  The camera continually focuses and if the manual is to be believed, “if subject moves, camera will engage predictive focus tracking to predict final distance to subject and adjust focus as necessary.”  I am so glad that was cleared up, I thought it was going to be complicated!  What I do know is that it works and it keeps things in focus while they are moving, and even if I am moving.  That’s what I found today.  It never ceases to surprise me what this camera is capable of and I’m sure there are even more surprises hidden deep in the manual waiting to be discovered.

I went to the physio this morning and felt a lot better once he had stretched, manipulated and massaged my shoulder and neck once again.  Maybe it’s just that feeling when you stop hitting your head against a wall.  It’s so nice when you stop.  Went swimming in the afternoon.

I’m becoming absolutely pig-sick of the Olympics on TV.  Events over-running and programme schedules being changed with no notice.  News when it arrives an hour late crammed with results and interviews with athletes before we get to the nitty gritty of what’s happening in the rest of the world.  Only two more days to go and it’s finished, because it doesn’t look as if the Paralympics will be covered in the same way as the able bodied version.  Don’t you feel so sorry for the athletes in the Paralympics who have trained for years, only to find that in the eyes of those running these games, they are second best.

Weather today at home, as predicted, was wet from about 12midday and it stayed that way until early evening when it dried up.