Category: photography

Happy Birthday to me – 8 April 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Today I added another year to my account.

It was a wild day. Gusty winds and occasional blashes of rain. It didn’t look like a good day for a walk, unless I was walking in the house.

Breakfast in bed and then a lazy morning. For the second day this week I got the Sudoku out without having to resort to checking my mistakes on my Sudoku app. Either things are looking up or the Birthday Fairy is looking out for me.

It was a relaxing day. There was little chance to get out and go for a walk. After lunch I did drive down to the shops to get today’s dinner. Tonight we were having an M&S curry which meant that nobody had to cook. I wasn’t going to walk down in a gale and horizontal rain. That’s what I bought a car for. I did come home via St Mo’s hoping to get a PoD, but there was little of interest with such low light. I came home almost empty handed.

While there was very little light for most of the day, later in the afternoon the sun did shine for a while and it lit up a wee bunch of yellow flowers sitting on the kitchen windowsill. That was just enough to give me a subject and the unnamed little yellow flowers became PoD.

Hazy and Neil D had set up a Zoom chat with us and JIC and Sim for 6pm. We had a long chat and a good laugh with them. Good to get everyone together again, just talking as if we were all in the same room. Just as we were bringing the chat to a halt, JIC and Sim disappeared when the battery on Sim’s laptop gave up the ghost. We said goodnight to Hazy and Neil D and closed the connection. Thank goodness for the folk who invented and run Zoom. It’s a terrific lifeline, even in these days of greater hope.

The curry was hot tonight and I was glad I’d opened one of the bottles of beer Jackie had sent me today. Pudding was another M&S offering, an Apple and Bramble Pie served hot with cream. I may need some of my Gaviscon tonight with a buttery tear & share, a creamy curry and a pie with more cream. It was a great day. Thank you all for your organisation, your good wishes and your prezzies. I enjoyed it tremendously.

Funniest card went to Jackie’s “Let’s face it. Even the bin has more chance of going out on your birthday this year!” Very apt as it arrive just after I’d brought the bin in. Did you know today was bin day as well as my birthday, Jackie?

Tomorrow it’s my dad’s saying “Back tae auld claes and purrich.” Back to normal. It looks like the weather will be calmer, but not better.

Another cold day – 6 April 2021

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What has happened to spring this year? We seem to be back in winter.

Another lovely day … as long as you were in the house with the heating on. Once you stepped out, you found out what the Arctic feels like. Of course, I speak from experience. We both stepped out, but only as far as the car. We drove up to Tesco and while Scamp waited in the queue for the chemist to get her meds, I wandered round Tesco picking up the makings of lunch and dinner. Then it was a drive home through a snowstorm. I kid you not, this weather has only got worse since Donald Trump was chucked out of the White House. Bring back DT, Make Weather Great Again.

After lunch we agreed that we should go out again, but this time we’d be walking. Twice round St Mo’s pond without a photo being taken. Then to lengthen the walk we followed the path down in the general direction of the shops, but turned left before we got there. Walked down to the underpass that would take us to Broadwood Loch, but again turned left and went back up to the house. While Scamp was admiring a Magnolia bush, I was looking at some yellow flowers nearby. I took some photos, but they didn’t make PoD.

After a coffee and while Scamp was reading, I went for a walk in St Mo’s. Yes, it was cold, but not too cold, especially if you were out of the wind and in the sun, which I was for a while taking photos of Larch flowers, the aptly named Larch Pineapples. I named them that, you won’t find that description in Wikipedia. Even they didn’t make the grade for PoD.

I walked across what is usually a swampy mess past a small pond. Today with my new waterproof boots on, it wasn’t really all that wet, but it did give me a chance to test the grip from the Vibram soles, and they did get a bit wet. I felt better. They now looked ‘lived in’. Found my little ladybird still sleeping away the cold weather in its little crevice in the ash tree and grabbed the best photos yet of the insect.

<Technospeak>
Back home I squirted all the photos into Lightroom and decided the ladybird and the larch pineapple were the best of the bunch, so I used a new processing app on the iMac to do an auto adjust of the two shots. The results were interesting. The larch pineapple was worse after its dunking in the auto adjust bath. Highlights blown out colour just not right. The ladybird looked a lot better after its magic processing. I can’t explain it. It must be something to do with the basic colours of the subject and the browns and oranges of the ladybird pic work well with the algorithm for tuning the adjustments. Finally decided that the ladybird got PoD and used the new Capture One processing, but processed the larch pineapple with Lightroom.
</Technospeak>

Watched a BBC 2 programme we’d recorded last week about a Scottish painter James Morrison who painted wonderful landscapes from the North East of Scotland. Beautiful enormous watercolours and oils. If you have the time and inclination, watch “Eye of the Storm” on iPlayer. Quite stunning work and a great old man who died soon after the film was made, aged 88 I think. I have to thank Fred for telling me about it.

Tomorrow, Scamp is hoping to go for a walk with Veronica and I’m hoping to bake something interesting for her to come back to.

New Boots & Panties – 2 April 2021

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I said I’d do it and I did.

Out fairly early and drove in to Glasgow. Parked at Tiso and found the boot shop in this open plan shop. There was a family already being served. A noisy family. Actually, the family weren’t all noisy. The ‘son’, I presume it was their son, but he could have been their grandson, was the one who was buying the boots and he said very little. The mother/gran had the most cutting and loud voice I’ve heard in a long time. The father/grandfather was the ‘comic’. He kept on making sarcastic comments about the boy while he was trying to lace up the boots. I felt really sorry for the boy and almost left, but thankfully they gave up with the snide remarks after a while and they all left to pay for the boots. Some people shouldn’t be allowed to take children out without a certificate of competence.
With the annoying couple out of the way, I got a sensible bloke who fixed me up with a pair of leather boots with decent soles and comfortable too. I could have said “comfortable to boot”, but that would have been a step too far!! He even stretched them slightly to improve the fit. I’ve never seen that done before and apparently it only works on leather boots. Leather, Goretex upper and Vibram sole. Happy (Easter) bunny. So happy in fact that I also bought a pair of lined walking trousers.

Just to make the most of the visit I took a look upstairs at the bikes. I saw a lot of shiny coloured biked, but nothing that I’d like to part with cash for and nothing I’d like to part with my Dewdrop for. I’d initially been looking at E-bikes and foldable, but there wasn’t a big range of E-bikes and no folding bikes. I was a bit concerned at the weight of the E-bikes. Maybe in a year or two … DV.

Stopped on the way home, hoping to get some stew at the butchers in Moorhead, but then realised the queue went all the way down the street. At least ten people in the queue. Well, I might get some stew, but not today.

Drove home by the back road and saw the potential for a panorama picture. Lovely light on the hills and hardly a cloud in the sky. A beautiful spring day. Hard to believe that snow, even to low levels is forecast for Sunday.

After showing off my new purchases and having giant fish fingers with an egg for lunch, we went for a walk in St Mo’s to see if the Fairy Garden was still there. Contrary to my fears, it was and I’m almost sure some additions had been made. A better view of the fairy washing line made today’s PoD.

Thanks to Ian Dury and The Blockheads for the title of today’s blog.  New boots and not quite panties, but trousers covers the same area.  I suppose I could have called it Baggy Trousers by Madness!!

We almost had enough warmth today to sit outside for a while. Almost, but not quite. Tomorrow looks set to be even better. We may go for a walk, somewhere local. Well, I’ve got walking boots now. I need to use them. By the way, the annoying couple in Tiso were english. Just saying!

 

Such a dull day – 28 March 2021

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We went out to the shops and that was the extent of the outside ventures today.

We wouldn’t even have gone out if we hadn’t needed milk and some fruit. That’s how bad a day it was. It started raining as we were coming home and then, just as we got in, the rain came down in torrents. It stayed almost all afternoon, only getting lighter later in the day. By then the light was failing anyway, which made a walk pointless. Instead I resorted to a flower picture. Just to make it more interesting, I did a macro of one of the fading Alstroemeria in Scamp’s vase. They actually looked better earlier in the week, but I didn’t have time to photograph them properly. Today I did have that time to be more careful with exposure and focus. I also chose to keep some colour in the background, using some carnations that were sitting on the window sill. All in all, quite happy with the result.

Dancing tonight was difficult. I think we’re fairly competent with the Rumba, but I wasn’t looking forward to the Telemark Turn in Tango. I thought it was something to do with skiing and actually it did look like I was skiing when I was dancing it. After the class was over and I had a chance to look at the video tutorial for the tango, I found where I was going wrong and I think we now look as if we are dancing, not skiing!

Spoke to JIC as we cooled down after that hot tango and got an update on life in the south with the prospect of a heat wave while we struggle to get up into the low teens.

Watched the first F1 GP of 2021 and watched the ‘delusional’ Vettel drive into Esteban Ocon’s car. Not my words, but David Coulthard’s. It looks like Vettel’s going to continue the Wacky Races style of F1 driving he started last year.

Tonight, high winds and rain made a wild and wet end to a dull day. Hopefully tomorrow will be calmer if not drier.

Deep breath and here we go – 22 March 2021

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Today I left Sierra behind and found Mojave.

I’ve been running Sierra on the iMac since I bought it about four years ago. It’s been getting slower and slower all that time. Finally, today, after making another backup and filing away some important passwords, I ran the Mojave installer and went to have my lunch. I fidgeted and paced the floor like a dafty on and off for about half an hour after that. Actually, the time scale the installer gave was almost correct and after an hour I had a new, responsive operating system. I’m quite impressed with it and have learned a lot in the process. The main thing I’ve learned is to let the computer and the code I’m injecting get on with things and don’t poke about in it. I’ll try to remember that when things go wrong as they did about half an hour ago when my memory usage was red-lining and one app was taking up twice as much physical memory as I have installed. Don’t ask me how that’s possible, I don’t know, but it just is.

It was a dull day, so I suppose it was the perfect day to do this kind of messing around. It didn’t actually rain, but it looked like it wanted to. Scamp was busy doing housework while I was pacing the floor and swearing at anything that got in my way. Eventually, I closed the computer down, grabbed my camera and went for a walk in St Mo’s. For the last week the weather has been really like spring, but today it was as if we’d returned to winter. Cold wind, grey sky and not a lot of light. However I was out. I did two circuits of the pond and then came home with a few photos, two of which got red spots, which means they were good enough to post on Flickr. PoD went to the photo of the red flower with the zig-zag stem. I also took a few shots of desiccated weeds. The structure of weeds is really interesting. As someone who used to make a living drawing structural steelwork, these featherlight vertical structures are amazing. They can sway in the breeze and not break. They have evolved to cope with wind, rain, snow, sun and ice. If you study them, they are incredibly strong for their light weight. Anyway, as I photographed some weeds a line from a George Gerdes song popped into my head, “Seeds that I’ve sown were all a bunch of weeds”. When I got back home I searched for George Gerdes and found that he had died of a brain aneurysm on January 1st this year. He was 72. We heard him sing at a Loudon Wainwright concert in Glasgow away back around 1974. RIP George. I loved the humour of your songs.

We had a quick attempt at the figure we learned yesterday, The Five Step, but after Scamp trod on my toe and I trod on hers, both by accident, we decided to call it a day and try agin tomorrow.

There will be some worried faces in the SNP party tonight since Nicola Sturgeon was cleared of ‘breaching the ministerial code’, which is legalese for ”She didnae dae it!” That means all those who had their daggers drawn ready to take her down will be keeping a low profile for some time to come. I’m not saying she’s vindictive, oh no, I didn’t say that. I’ve always said she was the best leader we’ve ever had. Ahem, I think I got away with that.

Tomorrow looks reasonable weather wise, but we may get some of the wet stuff.

 

 

Off to the Capital City – 15 March 2021

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Today we were off to the capital city of North Lanarkshire. Motherwell.

Another bright morning encouraged us to get up and go. This time we were going to see where the ‘Supercentre’ for vaccination in North Lanarkshire was and how long it would take to get there. I used to work near where this giant sports centre is now. Then it was a massive steelworks, the biggest steel mill in Europe. On cold mornings in winter, in a cold bus and latterly on my motorbike travelling up Newarthill Road I could look over to ‘The Craig” and see the wagons tipping red hot slag into the slag heaps. It looked like lava coming from a volcano and actually lit up the sky. I wish I’d taken the time to grab some photos of that, but never did. Now it’s been razed to the ground and houses are being built on it. I wonder if the house owners know what chemicals lie under their new homes. This is where NHS Lanarkshire have sited their ‘Supercentre’. It is the strangest looking building. From outside it looks exactly like a stack of partly tumbled dominoes. We just drove past today, but lots of people were there and the car park looked pretty full. We just turned at the end of the road and drove home. Fifty minute round trip with sourdough toast and beans as lunch when we got home.

I was expecting a delivery from Amazon on Wednesday, but after lunch that little spoiler, Alexa reported that a delivery was arriving today. No idea when. Also we had a Tesco delivery scheduled for today, but no notification from them about a delivery time. Unusual for Tesco – par for the course with Amazon. To give me something to do, I used my blower brush to remove the last little bit of dust from the camera’s sensor. Yes, I know it won’t be the last, but I felt better for getting rid of it.

The postman dropped a blue box through the letterbox. My latest Baking Club kit. This one is for Cheese & Garlic Tear and Share. Sounds good and a bit less complicated than the last one. Thanks again JIC & Sim.

The Tesco delivery arrived about halfway through their promised delivery window, immediately followed by the Amazon man. He was delivering patches to repair my Goretex jackets, both of which have a few rips now. Looks simple enough to fix, but we’ll see how long they last. That left just enough sunlight to get half an hour in St Mo’s for some photos before it got too dark.

Today’s PoD came from that visit to St Mo’s. A little spider with his dinner wrapped up neatly, ready for the larder. I had gone looking for Larch Pineapples which are actually called Larch Roses. I thought I’d seen some yesterday, but what I’d seen were the male flowers, the Pollen Cones. Must go back next week to see if any of the female flowers, which will hopefully turn into pine cones, have appeared.

Watched another in the series of Drawers Off. For some reason they have at least four artists who know which end of the paintbrush to use. Not like the last lot. They were only interested in getting their faces seen on the telly. This is only the first of the week, there’s plenty of time for them to screw up.

Felt sorry for Strathclyde Uni just not quite good enough to get through to the semifinals of University Challenge. Maybe next year.

Tomorrow looks like a decent day, so we may go for a longer walk somewhere.

Sunshine in small doses – 9 March 2021

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Sunshine in more ways than one.  Then wind and rain later. Typical Scottish weather.

The day was calm for most of the time, but this evening there’s a wind howling around the house. But there was a little sunshine in the afternoon, when Her Majesty the Nicola made her proclamation that groups of four people two households may meet in the open from Friday. Why do we have to wait until Friday? Because Nicola says so, of course!

We didn’t have much to do today and although it was fairly dry there was just the hint that drizzly rain would catch you if you went out. I went out in the afternoon to go for a circuit or two of St Mo’s and then extend the walk in the direction of the shops to get some veg for tonight’s dinner.

I had read some suggestions for the Tamron long zoom’s problems. It appears the drive motor in the camera may be failing, which would account for the squeal that comes from it when I switch on. I’m not sure if that’s the reason or not. I’m thinking it might be more a fault in the adapter. It was a real cheapo one and not very well quoted. However, another old lens I have, a Sigma works quite happily with the adapter. Also, and probably the most telling, is the number of repair tutorials on YouTube for that lens. My plan now is to visit Val and get him to try it on the old Nikon D70 he has. If the lens works on that, it’s the adapter that’s at fault and I can happily sell it. If it doesn’t work on the D70 it’s probably the lens that’s at fault and I might as well bin it. It’s costing me nothing just now, so I’ll leave it be for a while.

So, off I went to visit the frogs again today armed with the new Sigma macro which worked quite well yesterday, but as backup I carried my old Oly M1 with a 200mm lens. I got a few shots of the cavorting frogs with both cameras. In the end it was a picture of some Cladonia lichen that got PoD, but because you are such patient and devoted readers, here’s my favourite frog pic of the day. I called it “The Voyeurs.”

Dinner tonight was a stir fry and I enjoyed it, but it had egg noodles in it and Scamp doesn’t like noodles, preferring rice. My fault. I bought the noodles.

We watched another excruciating episode of Drawers Off tonight. I may have to give up on this week’s episodes. None of the participants have the faintest idea how structure a painting. I realise it’s ‘edutainment’, but it should have at least one foot in reality.

Tomorrow we have an early(ish) rise because we’re off, illegally crossing county boundaries so I can hopefully get the horn on my car fixed at the Nissan garage, with the possibility of a little drop-in at Waitrose on the way home, because we’re almost there anyway.

A minimalist day – 7 March 2021

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Not a lot done, but there was definitely the feeling of spring in the air.

We did some work in the garden in the morning, although I must admit that most of my ‘work’ was photographic. Scamp did the heavy lifting. Repotting the chives that came from my mum, easily thirty years ago and probably a lot more. Every couple of years they outgrow their pot and need split up and repotted. I swear that if one single tuber was planted in a 300mm (12”) pot, within two years its roots would be using all the available space. Still the taste of new potatoes with butter and chives is a delight and makes it worth keeping these plants in a garden. Between us we chopped up two plants and replanted them. I hope they are happy in their new home and don’t go crazy right away.

In between bouts of ’helping’ with the repotting, I was taking photos, mainly of the crocuses. The blue/purple ones are my favourites, I think. That’s how today’s PoD came about. It’s just a low level view of one of Scamp’s long narrow pots, a rectangular one that sits on the kitchen step for a couple of weeks in the spring before it goes back into its shady position near the fence. It seems to thrive in that cool damp place but looks spectacular sitting on the step in the evening sun. It’s another plant that really should be split every few years, but I don’t have the heart to do it and I don’t think Scamp has either.

After lunch and after listening to a spirited baiting of Gavin Williamson the Secretary of State for Education by Andrew Marr, we went out for a walk in St Mo’s. No photos taken although I did take the Sony with the kit lens (light camera bag today). Not a lot of humans out, but a tribe of teenagers trying to start a fire in the woods. Also letting off bangers, either because Rangers had won some cup or other or maybe because they’d discovered matches. Who knows. Anyway we walked round the pond a couple of times and declared that we had achieved our stated purpose of getting some fresh air.

Dinner tonight was yesterday’s curry reheated, which sounds a bit sordid, but actually it was delicious, but apparently the paneer was still squeaky. My Chicken Rogan Josh was even hotter than yesterday.

Dance lesson tonight was a re-run of last week’s with a few pointers about presentation and general tidying up of the rough edges. Next week we move from rumba and waltz on to Tango. Ooh, must remember the rose between the teeth!

It stayed dry nearly all day, but it’s been raining tonight and we’re due for more of the wet stuff tomorrow. No real plans.

Under a milky white sky – 2 March 2021

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Yes, it was a milky white sky this morning. Although the weather fairies told us that the sun would come out of hiding, they forgot to mention that it wouldn’t happen until about 4pm.

There was no real need to get up and go anywhere in the Central Belt today because it looked like the white sky stretched from west to east and there was no getting away from it. Worse still, my phone was out of charge and my Kindle was too. Just to complete the trilogy, my Fitbit was telling me it was feeling a bit deflated on the power front too. I plugged in the phone and the kindle but forced the Fitbit to work for its dose of energy which it did in a disgruntled way beeping every hour to tell me to move my backside, which I also did in a disgruntled way. I blame the milky white sky for it all.

Eventually after lunch, we got ourselves in gear and went a walk to the shops. Scamp went to get milk and sensible stuff while I went for ice cream and sticky toffee pudding. Just a different kind of sensible. We carried our messages home and then while Scamp went out to comb the front grass, well, actually she was raking it, but when it was done it looked as if someone had combed it badly. While she went to do that, I went for a walk in St Mo’s. It felt a bit cold, so I wore my big Bergy jacket with its fleece, but actually it wasn’t all that bad once you were out and walking. The light was improving, but not enough to create shadows. For that you need directional light and there was none. I went to visit the ladybirds which were still hibernating and that’s when the sun started to shine, about 4pm.

Although the photos of the ladybirds are interesting to me, I realise they have limited appeal to the general public. It was while I was walking home that I tried my old 10-20mm Sigma lens and grabbed a few landscapes. When I looked at them on the computer I thought a monochrome format improved them and that’s what you see here.

Dinner tonight was Scamp’s job. She made Chickpea and Spinach Curry and I thought it was delicious. She thought it was OK, but that there was too much salt in it. She’s a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to seasoning, so I let her be right – just this once. My job was to make the flatbread and it turned out OK, but Scamp thought it was delicious. It’s not that I’m a perfectionist about flatbread …

Interesting text from Hazy this morning which I missed when my phone was filling its boots with electricity. She told me that while they were out for a walk they passed a cafe where I had coffee a few years ago and sat writing a speech for a certain wedding. Now that is nice to know. It has changed its name and probably been through a few iterations since that day, but it’s still there.

Tomorrow we don’t have any plans. The weather looks like it will be the same as today. We might go out somewhere and look for breaks in the clouds.

Sunshine again – 22 February 2021

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Beautiful morning, so up and out in the morning.

We drove down to Auchinstarry and walked along the towpath of the canal out to Twechar and back along the old railway. On the way out we saw two Goosanders with two ducklings. First time I’ve seen baby goosanders. Loads of cyclists out this morning making good use of the springlike weather. We found some snowdrops at the start of the railway path, a great swathe of them. Wonderful views of the hills too. It was good to be standing in the countryside, actually IN the countryside for a change.

The walk back along the railway was a bit of a disappointment. The works that have been ongoing since autumn and now proudly advertised with a big billboard are still only part complete. True, the path through Dumbreck Marshes had been upgraded and a couple of the big holes where the River Kelvin had worn away the side of the paths had been repaired. How long the repairs will last I wouldn’t like to say, but that was it. That’s a good few month’s ‘work’ with very little to show for it. Scamp seemed to just accept it and I ranted about what a waste of money it was. Then I shut up … for a while.

Drove back for lunch and did a bit of painting, catching up on yesterday’s sketches that I’d had a mental block with. Finally got yesterday’s and today’s drawings done. PoD was a gloomy looking landscape shot of sheep in a field near Auchinstarry.

All in all, it was a good day. Still experimenting with and testing the new lens. Trying different subjects. Today’s sheep picture was taken with it and although it’s classed as a short telephoto, it does produce really sharp landscape images. I’ve still not quite worked out how to best use it as the macro it’s supposed to be. To be honest, though, it’s not the best time of year to be photographing macros. In another two or three weeks there might be some more interesting things to photograph.

Tomorrow it is going to rain a lot, by the look of the weather map, so we will be stuck inside I presume because we’ve only one pair of wellies between us!