Category: photography

A new year, a new curry shop – 2 January 2016

Posted on by Zogman

combo bAnother late rise today.  This is becoming a habit.  I’d say we were missing the best part of the day, but that wouldn’t be correct.  The light level this morning when we woke was a definite ISO 10000 and that would have been with f1.8 @ 1/30th (that means really, really dull to non-photogs).  Tonight’s big film was The Dark Knight.  We can beat that.  We have The Dark Day … every day.  Enough of this repartee.

Just to get out of the house, we decided on a trip to Stirling … for a curry.  Rather than go to what had been out favourite curry shop, Mr Singh’s, I thought it would be a good idea to try out a new one, well, new to us.  I didn’t know what it was called, but I knew where it was.  It turned out to be the ‘Spice Garden’ and it was good, very good.  The only let down was that their Irn Bru came from a bar nozzle with not nearly enough gas.  I can forgive that if the food is good, and it was.  We’ll be back.

On the way back, I wanted to get a POD.  I intended it to be Stirling Castle, but from the standard tourist viewpoint, the view was not as commanding as I hoped it would be.  Well, what do you expect from the Council created parking place.  I turned 180º and liked the view up the carse.  A ‘carse’, which my spellchecker thinks is a the plural of ‘car’ is “low-lying land beside a river” and the Carse of Stirling can be beautiful on a good day.  Today wasn’t beautiful, but the carse was doing it’s level best, so I took its photo.  Then I grabbed my tripod and walked across to see if Stirling Castle looked any better from the other side of the road.  It didn’t, but the mound at the old cemetery did look good and there were lots of people happily standing on it to make it look quite dramatic.  I imagine they thought they looked dramatic too.  I took a few shots just to make them think they were dramatic and important.

When I got home, the carse photo was easy to process.  The dramatic rock took a little longer.  Because the shots were taken with the same focal length, aperture and shutter settings, it was easy to sandwich two of them in Potatoshop with the empty rock on top and the dramatic person beneath.  Then all I did was change the opacity of the top shot to allow the ‘ghost’ underneath to show through.  Simple!  I’ll do the Stirling Castle shot another day.  I’ve just remembered where to take it from and it’s’ not the Council approved tourist place either.  Well, it wouldn’t be, would it?

Rain – 30 December 2015

Posted on by Zogman

combo bUp at 6.00am to see Jic and Sim on their way back down south through the wind and rain that was with us all night last night. After they left, we went back to bed for another snooze for an hour or three before heading off to Falkirk to fight our way through the supermarket to get enough food to see us through the next two days.

On the drive home I stopped at Underwood Lock on the Forth and Clyde Canal to get some photos. Thankfully the rain had eased a bit and I got two of the shots I had planned. Then I saw a couple walking their dog and grabbed that shot too. I imagine there are a lot of possible shots in the old burned out restaurant, but as the roof has fallen in and the entire site is enclosed behind heavy duty fencing. The fencing doesn’t really bother me, but the thought of the roof falling in on me does, so I think I’ll take more shots, but from the outside only.

That was it for the day. The light had gone, and so had we. We went home.

Christmas Eve Eve – 23 December 2015

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAToday we went to try out the new gym.  We were both impressed with the new setup.  Lots of new machines, some of them a bit more video game than serious training devices.  All very shiny and nice to see screens that could display a tv picture without it looking as if it was being viewed through a snow storm.  Time will tell how well they last.  Swimming was out because the pool was slightly oversubscribed, but the sauna, the steam room and the jacuzzi were very welcome.

Went for lunch at Milano.  By the look of the carpark, I thought we wouldn’t have a hope of getting a table, but we did.  Maybe because we only needed a table for two.  It was quite busy with lots of Christmas parties.

After we left, we went to Muirhead hoping to get a steak for my Christmas dinner, but the queue outside the butcher’s meant it would be a long wait just to get inside and then another queue inside the shop.  No, there are limits to what I’ll put up with for my dinner.  I’d rather have a veggie Christmas dinner than wait in a chilly queue for some meat.  As it was, we went to Tesco and I have a nice bit of steak for my Christmas dinner.  It may not be as good as the butcher’s steaks, but then again I didn’t have to queue either.

I wrote a couple of cards for Ivan and for Peter H when we came home and walked over to Condorrat and just managed to catch the post.  Got a few photos of cars on the M80 some time exposures and some with as fast a shutter speed as I could manage with the light level available.  Blended them in Potatoshop and that will have to do as POD for today.

A Delightful day – 21 December 2015

Posted on by Zogman

combo bWell, at times it was delightful.  It started well, with blue skies and early morning sun.  I had planned to go in to Glasgow to get my Christmas shopping finalised.  Well, sort of finalised.  Final is such a, well, final word that I very rarely use it.  Let’s say that “Today would see my Christmas shopping nearly finalised.”  That’s a better way to put it, it leaves a bit of wiggle-room.  “Wiggle-room” is a hyphenated word that will no doubt make it into the OED next year if it isn’t already there.  Scamp kindly offered me a lift to the station so I could travel in comfort rather than sit on a cold bus for 45mins.  The kind man at the station gave me £7 change with my tickets which was a bit of a surprise as I’d only given him a fiver!  I gave him the fiver back.  He smiled and looked relieved that I’d been honest.  After all, ’tis the season and all that crap.

By the time I got to Glasgow the rain was pelting down, so I cut to the chase edited out my window shopping and concentrated on the real stuff instead.  Got everything I wanted and headed home on the first available train.  I’d phoned Scamp and she was just driving in to the station as I was walking out.  Perfect timing.

After a swift lunch, we both went to the gym, separately.  She to have a ‘facial’ me to investigate the new whizzo machines in the gym and to have a swim.  Gym looks much better laid out now.  More stuff in it and it looks like there’s more space.  A sort of ‘Tardis’ conversion then.  I’m hoping to try out the machines later in the week.

Dropped in at Tesco to spend a Tesco voucher I got when I retired, that’s almost 18 months ago!  I bought myself a bottle of Glenrothes whisky with it (Whisky was what I was told to spend it on 18 months ago).  Glenrothes appears to have nothing to do with the New Town of that name.  I don’t think I’ve ever been to Glenrothes, but the name ‘New Town’ damns it anyway.  On the way to Tesco, the sky had cleared after dumping tons of rain on us from about 11.00am and it looked like being a great sunset and the statue of Arria was catching some great light, so I took the opportunity to combine the two and take some shots of it.  You get someone to build a gigantic statue of a Roman emperor’s mother (Why?).  You put it in a prominent place overlooking a busy motorway, but you don’t tell anyone how to get to it.  That’s Scotland for you.  Shoots itself in the foot every time.  Actually it’s quite easy to find if you know where, but isn’t that a universal truth.  You have to drive through Eastfield Cemetery, park at the end and find the overgrown path to the statue.   Simple!  Such a shame as it’s a stunning piece of work, but I’ve no idea why she has four arms.  There’s probably a good punchline waiting to be heard there.

So, for once it was a delightful day.  Started well, crap in the middle and finished well.  Sort of like a crap sandwich.  Now there’s a delightful thought to end with.

The Magnificent Seven

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAAnother dull, dark, wet day.  An ideal day to go for a swim in the warm waters of the leisure centre with no need to feel guilty about not exercising first, as the gym is being refurbished this week.  So off we went, both of us, because Scamp can now go when she wants – the freedom of retirement.

After that we headed in to Glasgow because, remember yesterday’s boots trip?  Well, this morning I decided that the boots were just a wee bit too wee for complete comfort.  Parked at Cowcaddens and took the underground to St Enoch’s.  Yes, I know it’s real name is St Enoch, without the apostrophe ‘s’, but it’s alway referred to as St Enoch‘ss, so that’s what it is here.  Got the boots exchanged for a green pair.  Scamp says it’s really my colour.  Don’t tell anyone in Larky that or they won’t let me in again.  This pair are a half size bigger, so that should be fine and dandy.

Technospeak Alert
On the way back to the car, I stopped to get a shot of the underpass at Cowcaddens.  I like this underpass with its interesting graphics and great lighting.  I wanted a bit of human interest and I thought I had the idea subjects when a group of guys wandered through.  There was my shot.  It even had a title “The Magnificent Seven” because there were seven of them.  When I got home and downloaded the shot I was disappointed to see that there were in fact, only six of them.  However, as always I’d taken another couple of shots from different angles.  One of them had a woman walking towards the camera at about the same distance as the six guys.  It was a simple matter to use Potatoshop to clip her out of one frame and insert her into the other one.  There, now it was the Magnificent Seven (Now referred to as the MS).  Isn’t that what they invented Potatoshop for?  The lighting was a bit more difficult to fix.  I tried low key, high key and HDR.  None of them worked for me.  I eventually used a preset I’ve been making good use of this week.  It’s a low key, high contrast monochrome.  The only problem was that the MS were lost against the background.  However, help was at hand with Lightroom’s new radial filter which allowed me to lighten the back wall and make the MS stand out in silhouette.  Just what I wanted.  There, that’s the full story, not the sanitised version that goes into Flickr.  I don’t know what it is with underpasses, bridges and tunnels this week.

Stopped at the Costa at Robroyston with the intention of going to Asda for essential shopping later.  When we came out, we couldn’t be bothered, so we decided to go home instead.  That’s what we did.  Scamp is out tonight at the choir carol service.  I offered to go with her, but she quite rightly said that I’d hate it, so she went on her own.  May start a painting later, or maybe I’ll just heat a pizza because it’s Friday.

Boots – 10 December 2015

Posted on by Zogman

combo bI went in to Glasgow today to get some paint – one tube of paint to be exact. Scamp was singing in the afternoon, so this got me out of the house too. I’d been looking for a new pair of boots. My old well worn Goretex walking boots were beginning to let in water. After five years of solid use that’s not surprising. For months now I’ve been looking for a replacement pair without much success. Today I chanced by Clarks in Argyle Street and there was the exact boots I was looking for. I’m not saying how much they cost, but the cost was proportionate to the cost of the old pair they are replacing. When I walked out of the shop I passed a camera crew recording interviews with passers by. On the local TV news tonight, there I was in the background. Hey, I was on the telly.

I went for the bus home, but when I got to the bus station a fire alarm started. Everyone just ignored it to start with. It’s Scotland. We find it hard to get excited about fire alarms, burglar alarms. If WW3 started we’d probably just stand and watch the bombs dropping thinking “where are the hidden cameras then?”. Eventually, when the fire wardens in their red Hi-Vis jackets appeared, people grudgingly exited the buildings. It was cold, the wind was gusting and there was a threat of rain (maybe it would put the fire out) so I decided to use my time constructively and went to John Lewis to have a cup of coffee and a scone. When I came out, the emergency was over and everything was running normally (i.e. there were no buses for Cumbernauld for about 30 mins). When I got home Scamp was gone to her gig(!) and the sun was out, so I went to take some photos. Walked along the Luggie again and used the 9mm lens a lot. I also used a Lightroom preset I’d made up to process the decent shots.

Last night the Mac crashed. Black screen, no sign of anything happening. Not a sound. Not a flicker. I eventually powered it down. Not the way you’re meant to do it, but by holding down the power button. You’re not meant to do that because it can cause problems. It caused problems. Every time I opened Finder (Windows Explorer to the MicroSofties) it would take about a minute to produce the goods. I eventually found out that it was a corrupted .plist. If that means nothing to you, don’t worry. I don’t understand either. All I know is that the repair I found on the net was convoluted, but it worked. I think. I’ll know better tomorrow when I try a reset. I can’t be bothered to do it tonight. It’s been a long day, but I’ve got a new pair of boots!

Oh yes, here’s the repair code:

In Terminal type

cd /Users/User/Library/Preferences/  <Where User is your user name>

rm -fr com.apple.sidebarlists.plist

rm -fr com.apple.finder.plist

Logout

Then Logout from the apple menu

 

Twenty wee Chinese men – 9 October 2015

Posted on by Zogman

combo“Twenty wee Chinese men coming out of a Vauxhall with forty cameras“. That was Murd’s description of Portree, or to be more precise, the SYHA hostel in Portree in the summer. So you can guess, we went to Portree today … In the rain.

We drove through the rain to Uig. The ferry port to the Outer Hebrides.  You see people getting out of their cars and looking around thinking “I must have missed the town and driven straight to the port.”  Nope, this is it.  A few scattered houses, an unwelcoming petrol station, a small (but not micro or nano) brewery and shop, a cafe and that’s about it.  Not exactly the thriving hub of a community.  However, it does its job.  It ferries people, their cars and lorries across the Minch.  We didn’t stop.  We’ve seen it before.  I don’t think it’s changed all that much.  What has changed is the police station.  It’s now a backpackers bunkhouse.  I expect you have to pay extra to sleep in the cells!

From Uig we travelled down the west side of the island to Portree.  Went to Jan’s Vans which is a big warehouse building on the outskirts of the town, selling everything.  I saw needles and I’m sure they had anchors tucked away at the back behind the rainmates.  I’d wanted to get another pair of boot laces for my walking boots.  I wasn’t sure now if I’d need them with my dodgy ankle, but was getting them just in case. In Portree proper, we went for coffee and a scone at the bakery.  Worst coffee I’ve had in a long time.  We did, however, get to see the tourists piling off a bus (with their two cameras each, as predicted by the Staffin Seer) for their hour in Portree.

Had lunch in Cafe Arriba in Portree in the presence of a star!  Donnie McLeod, formerly with Runrig was in the cafe.  We felt honoured.

From there we drove back up to Staffin and sat for an hour or so at the slip, watching the waves and a lone seal swimming around.  That’s the relaxing effect of Skye.  Just sitting for an hour staring at nothing in particular isn’t odd here, it’s what you do.  For me it’s the silence.  For Scamp it’s the space.

As usual, larger versions of the photos are available for viewing in Flickr by clicking on the mosaic at the top of the page.  Usual rules apply.  All photos are digitally watermarked, copyright remains with D. Campbell, that’s me.

A Blast from the Past – 17 September 2015

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comboYou know how it is when you’re browsing the ‘net’. Sometimes you just follow your nose to see where the journey takes you. Sometimes you start out looking for a particular item or a solution to a problem and get sidetracked. Either way, the serendipitous nature of this vast storehouse of knowledge means that sometimes you solve a problem you didn’t know you had and sometimes you find a solution to a problem you forgot you had. Hopefully you also solve your original problem too, but that’s not so likely. So where am I going with this? I’ll tell you.

Many, many years ago, I bought myself a marvellous camera. It was a Sony F707. I bought it for a king’s ransom in Jessops in Dundee. It looked like a tin of soup with a box at the back. The ‘tin’ was a high quality zoom lens. A Carl Zeiss lens to be exact and that’s a name that should raise the eyebrows of any photographer. When I bought it, away back in the early days of this century, it was revolutionary. The ‘box’ at the back rotated vertically through nearly 180º and contained not only a viewing screen, but also an electronic viewfinder. One of the really revolutionary things about the 707 was the fact that it could take photos in total darkness using two infra-red transmitters and Night Shot mode. Unfortunately, Sony discovered that this mode could, under some conditions, take what the tabloids called ‘x-ray photos that could see through clothing’. It didn’t really, it just allowed the infra-red from the body to partly record a heat image. X-rays, Infra-red. Very similar to those wishing to be scandalised. In this litigious society, Sony decided to emasculate the IR capability of the 707 and forced Night Shot mode to only work with f2.8 @ 1/30th sec, making it all but useless for taking shots in daylight. I just wanted to take IR landscape photos, not some dodgy shot of bloated bodies in lycra. I tried various methods, some more successful than others, to circumvent the restrictions. The most successful was to use two opposed polariser filters to cut out 90% of the visible light. That worked. Using an infra-re filter didn’t as, although it was nearly black, it allowed the IR light to pass through. So no IR landscape with the 707. Until last night.

When I was following my nose around Flickr, I came upon a link to a page purporting to show that the infra-red blocking filter could be locked off in the 707 without a complete strip down of the camera. All it involved was placing a strong magnet near the USB slot in the camera. This apparently disables the solenoid that holds the filter in place. I tried it today and lo and behold it works. Now I just have to work out how to focus the camera as IR light focuses at a different distance from visible light. More work needed tomorrow. The leaves picture at the top of the page shows a mono near-IR shot, just to prove it does work.

As to the rest of the day. Met Fred for a coffee in Costa. Just our usual occasional meeting to discuss retirement, painting, life, the universe and everything. Sat for an enjoyable hour and a half setting the world to rights. I’m sure it was much better after we had sorted out its problems.

Didn’t do much else except make a rather excellent veggie curry.

A day of two halves – 8 September 2015

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comboA very different day from yesterday. This morning it is much cooler,cloudier and breezier. I’m standing by the pond at St Mo’s and there’s no sign of yesterday’s mist. Managed to startle two deer about 200 yards (metres) from home. Camera was still switched off in the bag. One day I’ll learn. Dull morning walk with nothing to recommend it. Stood watching a dragonfly checking me out, doing flypasts. It never landed once in the time I watched it. Got one shot of a snail and a spider on a dry cow parsley stem, but had to reduce it to mono as the ISO was 25600! An incredible number, unthinkable a few years ago. I liked the colours combinations (red/green) in a shot of rowan berries and leaves. The colour contrasts seemed to brighten the scene.

In the afternoon I got another chance to cycle a known route and was impressed that I was using much higher gears than normal into a headwind on the way home. Maybe the gym is increasing my cycling stamina. It will take a few more tests before I’m sure if I’m becoming fitter or not. It can’t be doing me any harm. Couldn’t see anything that inspired me to get the camera out of the bag. The light just wasn’t good and it’s all about the light of course. I did want to capture the corn bales before they were carted off to the farm. They look so much better before they are wrapped up in black poly, no matter how useful it is to the farmers.

Walking to Twechar – 11 August 2015

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Today I burned Ecto.  It is no more.  Spent almost an hour writing up this blog and when I published it, all that was published was the title.  Back in Ecto, the page was also totally blank.  Ecto is shite.  Last updated 5 years ago, the author isn’t interested in progressing it, just interested in making money.  I can’t believe I actually spent money on it.  I would not recommend it to anyone.  I’m now looking for another blog writer that actually works.  The best one I’ve found is made by Microsoft and won’t work on the Mac.  Such a pity.

DSC_3267- blog--223The day started well.  Not the brightest, but at least I got a painting done.  OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAWent for a walk to Twechar along the railway and got some photos of a common blue butterfly.  Not much else worth photographing.  Came home and had a look at the Strawberry Vodka.  It will probably be ready to drink tomorrow.  This is the synopsis of the day which was going well until now.

Tomorrow is another day.