Category: photography

Temptation – 1 October 2020

Posted on by Zogman

I warned you yesterday that I was going to do it and today I did.

I swithered, that’s a good Scots word, isn’t it? It means I couldn’t decide quite what to do about the camera. Eventually I settled for leaving it until at least the afternoon before choosing whether to go in to Glasgow or not. Last night as I was going to bed, ‘Not’ was winning. Today I swithered. I laid my case before that preeminent judge, Scamp and she listened impartially without giving any decision, because she knew I’d make my own mind up when the time came.

After lunch I made the decision to go in to JL and hold the camera if they still had it. That’s always been my way to assess the usefulness of a camera. You can read as many reviews as you want. Balance the Pros and the Cons, but if it doesn’t feel comfortable in your hot little hands, you’re not going to use it. Many, many years ago I picked up a camera, a Sony strangely enough, and knew it was worth having. That was a Sony F707 which I still have (Scamp will tell you I still have all of them and that’s nearly true) and it still feels ‘right’ in my hands. It’s just got a few problems now that aren’t repairable, but I still don’t want to part with it.

So now I have a Sony A7 full frame camera with a 28 – 70mm lens sitting on the table in front of me. It’s second hand.  It’s been used and taken back to the shop. There are a couple of scratches on it, but nothing serious. Tomorrow I’ll take it out for a walk in St Mo’s along with the Oly E-M1 which knows St Mo’s fairly well and we’ll see what they can come up with. Little and Large.

The new camera’s battery was charging this afternoon, so I took the Oly out to get some photos in the sunshine. There wasn’t much doing, but it was good to walk about without a raincoat or a fleece on. Cool in the shade, but plenty warm in the sun. I just found out about fifteen minutes ago that I picked up a tick on my travels. First one I’ve had in ages. Must be less blasé about them. I know our minds are on Covid just now, but there are other nasties out there, waiting for the unwary.

While I was out, Scamp was making mince ’n’ tatties with cabbage and carrots. She, of course, denied herself the pleasure of the mince and had the veggie version. Dessert was stewed apples and rhubarb with custard. Our own apples and rhubarb. All the apples have now been picked and the rhubarb too is finished until next year.

Today being the first of October is the start of Inktober. Today’s sketch is of one of the fish statues we saw in Corralejo back in 2016.  It will do to cover today’s topic of ‘Fish’. PoD was a bramble leaf from St Mo’s.

Tomorrow we have no plans, but the weather looks reasonable, so we may go for a walk somewhere interesting.

Another bright sunny day – 26 September 2020

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It looks like the end of September is a bit of an Indian summer. Certainly better than this year’s Scottish Summer.

It was too good a day to waste, so we got ourselves kitted out with boots and wet weather gear, just in case, and drove over to Chatelherault (I managed to spell it this time without resorting to Google! Am I not clever!?). There’s a fairly big carpark there and it was already full when we arrived, but I didn’t want to park there anyway. The potholes are decidedly deep an I didn’t want to damage Blue’s delicate substructure. Instead, I chose one of the little carparks and found there were only about five cars parked there. People are so blinkered. They see the main carpark and think it must be better because it’s so busy. It’s not.

Boots and jackets on and with a walking pole each, we strode off towards the Cadzow Oaks. John had introduced me to them a couple of weeks ago and although the biggest one was cordoned off while they do some health checks on it and decide how best to support it, the slightly smaller ones were still magnificent enough to demand I took their photos. Because they are so large and so close to you, it’s difficult to get them all in without using an ultra-wide lens and I hadn’t brought one, choosing instead to travel light. Instead I took about 20 shots and knew I could produce a decent patch together later in the computer. For some reason the camera was over exposing everything and I couldn’t work out why, but, again, I could deal with that later too.

We walked on past the oaks and found a path that was climbing steadily along the side of the ravine that sloped down to the Avon Water. Nobody we spoke too could definitely say where the path led and how long it would take to get back to the visitor centre if we followed it. We decided to go back the way we’d come. Rather than just returning to the centre and inevitably going home, we extended our walk to take in The Duke’s Monument. I’d been there before and found it a forbidding and eerie place. Even today on a sunny afternoon it felt cold and unwelcoming. Coupled with the overexposure of the camera, the shots I took weren’t what I’d intended. I sat down and puzzled it out. On the E-M1 there’s a little lever, near the eyepiece that allows you to meddle with far more settings than are good for you. It was sitting in the ‘Meddle’ position and I’d been twiddling the wheels that should be marked ‘Screw up your settings here’. It was the work of mere minutes to repair the damage, but that didn’t fix the thirty odd photos I’d taken. I set myself a reminder to switch the bloody thing off when I got home, and after we walked the mile or so back to the car and after driving home, that’s what I did. I took great care to turn off that switch. I think that’s what I like about the E-M1. It’s so easy to screw things up, but there’s usually a way to put them right again if you know where to look in the massive menu.

Back home, sitting in the warm living room with the sun shining through the blinds, I had a Guinness and Scamp had a Pimms to quench our thirst after a long walk. Not as long as the walk two Saturdays ago, but with almost as many hills.

PoD was one of the Cadzow Oaks, reputed to be over 800 years old. They were growing when the Crusaders set off on the Fourth Crusade and when Genghis Khan invaded China. If they could speak, what stories they could tell.

Tomorrow we’re hoping for another good sunny day. We may go for another walk.

Foodies again – 24 September 2020

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Second day of eating out this week.

Eating out in Glasgow this time. Two Fat Ladies in Blythswood Street. Quite compact and bijou. Specialises in seafood which isn’t too good for me, but usually there’s a meat dish or a chicken dish. Not so today. Scamp’s selection from the menu was: Mussels, followed by Channa Dal with a Vegetable Masala, finishing off with Sticky Toffee Pudding and Custard. I had Mushroom Rarebit, then the same Channa Dal with a Vegetable Masala and decided to learn from yesterday and just have a Cappuccino. I shouldn’t say ‘just a Cappuccino’, this must have been the best Cap’ I’ve ever had! Nero and Costa, you have a lot to learn from Two Fat Ladies as far as coffee is concerned. The menu today restricted me a bit. Of the three mains on offer, the only one I could have was the dal. Not that I’m regretting it, because this was up to Delia’s standard, well not quite, but almost. I must say that Neil’s mum makes the best Channa Dal I’ve ever eaten. This one was hotter than her’s and almost as tasty. Although I said the restaurant was ‘compact and bijou’, you really want to see the size of the kitchen. I passed it on the way to the ‘little boys room’. It wasn’t so much a kitchen as a galley from a small boat, like a rowing boat. The poor guy who works there must be skinny as a rake to fit in!

After lunch we wandered down SausageRoll Street and drove home via Calders Garden Centre to get some Geum plants to keep Scamp’s Allium bulbs company. We bought the bulbs in Kirkby Stephen last week and she planted them during the week.

I’d had a look at a discounted camera in JL and thought it might be interesting. It’s a Sony A7 at a very reasonable price. Unfortunately the prices of the lenses it takes are not at all reasonable. Most of them are the same price as the camera, which makes me wonder what quality the piece of glass in the front of the camera is. I think I’ll leave that one to someone less critical than me.

PoD is a shot looking up at the Premier Inn on SausageRoll Street. It looks like it’s getting its second refurb in as many years.

I think we’ve done our fair bit of eating out for this week. Tomorrow may be a stay at home dinner.

Not driving today – 19 September 2020

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Just a walk or two, but no alpacas, viaducts nor waterfalls.

We walked down round the Broadwood outdoor gym trail then back past the BMX track where I got told off for photographing the kids who were competing, without permission. Quite right too, but I’d never thought about it before. I’d always been covered by school permissions when I was photographing anyone in school. I should have known better and should probably have deleted the shots I took. None of them got past the first cull anyway.

Walked back past the shops and bought two curries for dinner tonight. As it turned out, they weren’t all that good. Maybe it was just going to be that kind of day.

Walked round St Mo’s later to try to get some photos and found a patient dragonfly that sat for me. There was very little else, although it was a lovely day.

Tomorrow we may go further afield.

Pizza! – 10 September 2020

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Today we were heading for Glasgow.

A bit of window shopping in JL but nothing even barely whetted my appetite, so we went for a walk down Bucky Street and then I suggested we see if we could get a table in Paesano. We got there just after it opened, so we could get a table. We had our details taken and our temperature checked and were deemed fit and healthy enough to eat a pizza. We had our favourites. Scamp had her own design No1: (Tomato sugo, oregano, olive oil, no garlic, no cheese, extra rocket.)
I had a No 3: (Tomato sugo, capers, olives, anchovies, mozzarella and olive oil)
They arrive about three minutes after we ordered them. Even after we had finished and paid and were on our way out, the place wasn’t nearly as busy as it used to be. Surely this new-normal can’t stay this way. Things must change.

I had a wander round CassArt and got the Posca white acrylic paint brush I was looking for, a sketchbook of kraft paper and a white marker. Rather a frugal amount. I was being careful. Just a few things I can’t get anywhere else.

Had a coffee in Nero but it felt watery and tasteless, partly because it was filling the entire cardboard cup which must have been a ‘large’ size and the server probably thought that a ‘regular’ in that big cup looked a bit mean. Next time I’ll ask for a ‘regular’ size in a half cup. Maybe I’m spoilt now by my own version of coffee from the De’Longhi, but before Covid, Nero made good coffee. This stuff tasted like Costa. Not impressed.

Grabbed a couple of street shots outside the GOMA in Queen Street, but wasn’t all that impressed with the result. Also tried to get some reflections from the frontage of the new Queen Street Station, but there was too much rubbish lying around, destroying the effect. Once it get’s cleaned up, possibly by the end of the century it might be possible to get better shots. As it was, a digitally altered shot of the GOMA got PoD.

Had the second batch of our potatoes for dinner tonight. Mine with bacon and mixed beans, Scamp chose not to have the bacon and stuck to Potatoes and Beans. Both were very nice, but then again, these were Artisan Potatoes!

That’s about it for today. Tomorrow there is rain forecast and lots of it too. Lovely!

The Teacher and the Teacher – 9 September 2020

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Out after a quick coffee this morning to meet John.

Drove to Chatelherault to meet John. We were going for a walk in the Chatelherault Estate to talk about cameras, apertures, shutter speeds and the mysteries of ISOs. Things I’ve been using for years and years, but never really had the chance to explain to anyone. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve talked about them to lots of folk, but very few of them listened. Even fewer understood a word I said. Someone said of photogs, that they could conduct an entire conversation using just letters and numbers. I’m not sure that’s entirely correct, but there is a semblance of truth in it.

We started off going over the Duke’s Bridge and on past Cadzow Castle which is pretty much a ruin now. It would appear that the restoration has hit a roadblock, judging by the fact that nature has more or less covered the scaffolding that was erected about ten years ago. John took us up to the Cadzow Oaks which are much more impressive than the ruined castle. They are reckoned to be over 800 years old and as someone commented, they look like how you’d imagine Ents to look in The Hobbit. They surround an area of earthworks that may have been the groundwork for a castle that would predate Cadzow Castle and may have been Roman in origin.

Ah, but we weren’t out to do historical stuff, we were there to take photos. The weather was mixed. While we were sitting talking beside the oaks the light was constantly changing, making it difficult to get any decent shots. That’s my excuse anyway. I tried to explain the basics of exposure, using the triangle of Aperture, Shutter speed and ISO. I don’t know if I covered it all that well and I’m sure I didn’t explain it as lucidly as I’d have liked, but it was a decent day, and we were out for a walk. While we were photographing leaves and moss on an old (not oak) log a woman stopped to comment on the shapes the lichen was making. She had a dog with her. A white dog with a face like a lamb. When I got home that’s how I described it to Mr Google and he informed me it was a Bedlington Terrier. We, John and I went for coffee and a cake before we parted company. He was determined to walk home, I was driving.

Got a bit of a fright on the M73 passing a Land Rover which was tootling along doing about 50mph while I was in the outside land doing a neat 70mph. Then the Land Rover started sliding across into my lane. Whoever was driving must have seen me at the last minute and swerved back into their lane as I took evasive action. In my rear view mirror I saw them indicate and fishtail onto the hard shoulder. Glad of the dash cam which caught the incident nicely! The clip is now downloaded just in case.

Dinner tonight was chicken stir fry made by Scamp of course. I don’t do stir fry. I won’t say can’t I can, just not as good as Scamp. After that we watched the final episode of Series 3 of Line Of Duty. Irritatingly, halfway through it I remembered how it ended. It didn’t detract from the build up though.

PoD was of ivy growing on the Juke’s Bridge at Chatelherault.

Tomorrow we may go to Glasgow, just for the run and the dash cam will be on!

Drumpellier – 7 September 2020

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Driving to Drumpellier for a walk in the rain.

Before we get into the driving and the walking and the rain, we had a bunch of apples sitting on work surface in the kitchen and by the watery light they looked very photogenic, so I took a few photos and then a few more at different settings, some hand held and some using a tripod. Knowing I had some shots in the bag I settled down to solve today’s sudoku, an easy Monday one. Scamp was getting itchy feet and wanted to go out driving, that’s what we did.

Scamp was driving today and she wouldn’t tell me where we were going, but it soon became apparent we were heading for Drumpellier out near Coatbridge. In the park it was a lot more relaxed than the last couple of times we’d been there. Loads of spaces in the carpark and very few people out walking. Today was a weekday and it was raining, softly, but it was raining. We walked round the pond, but let’s face it, Coatbridge in the rain isn’t the most photogenic of places. The apples were winning. I didn’t even take the camera out of the bag, that’s how dull and uninteresting it was.

Scamp drove us back home again and even managed to reverse park. She now rates the Micra much better than the Juke but not as good as her own red Micra. I totally understand and am pleased that she feels she could drive the new Blue Micra without getting stressed.

After lunch I checked the photos of the apples and discovered the highlights were blown out. Nothing I did with Lightroom made them any better. I just had to re-shoot.

Finally I started making the dinner and shooting the apples again in what was left of the daylight. I think the finished article has better exposure than the ones from the morning, but the composition of them was better. Not to worry, it’s done and posted.

Scamp gave me a tutorial today on making apple crumble (with our apples) from scratch, using a mix of 3oz plain flour to 2oz butter to 1oz porridge oats plus a dessert spoon of brown sugar. I peeled and chopped the apples and added some frozen red berries and topped it off with my crumble mix. Baked at gas 6 for thirty minutes(ish!). It worked! I was amazed.

Tomorrow no real plans although it looks like the weather will be much like today.

Going Solo – 5 September 2020

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No co-pilot, no radio operator. Flying solo.

Scamp suggested I go out for a walk along the Luggie today while she went to Tesco. It was her turn to cook and we’d discussed her short list. It seemed like a plan.

Before we went our separate ways in separate cars, we emptied our ‘Tattie Bag’ which we’d planted with three carefully selected Jersey Royals or something that looked like them away back in early May. Not seed potatoes, just some ordinary potatoes that had been chitting on the window ledge in the toilet. We actually got better results than we’ve had with ‘real’ seed potatoes. A nice big bowl full of them. Only one scabby one. I’d consider that a success.

Scamp drove off and I followed suit a few minutes later. Found out a few more things about Blue, like where to find the ‘destinations’ I’d programmed into the satnav. Took a dozen or so photos of the railway bridge over the Luggie from one side and 42 photos of it from the other side. I was intending to create two panoramas from them in an old piece of software I’d found the other day. Surprisingly it handled both sets of images well, although it struggled with the larger of the two. Not surprisingly the finished article weighed in at just under 2GB. That’s a lot of GB. The larger one became PoD.

Scamp’s dinner was Tuna Pasta with Beans (and chilli flakes). Possibly a touch too much chilli flakes, but it tasted very good indeed. I think we were both thankful for the half price trifle she’d bought for dessert!

Apparently NLC in their wisdom have granted permission for an outdoor funfair in Cumbersheugh in these Covid-19 times. What else would you do when Lanarkshire is about to have sanctions imposed to control an increase in infections than encourage crowds of people to attend a funfair? I suppose the council will have been paid royally by the promoters.

Tomorrow we may go for a socially responsible walk down Glasgow Green.

The end of August – 31 August 2020

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Autumn is just around the corner.

There, that’s cheered you up hasn’t it!

First things I noticed this morning were the bumps on the Habanero peppers I’ve been growing on the window ledges in the house. This looks as if it’s the first successful pollination of the habanero. I’ve tried everything to get them to fruit.
First I tried dumping them in the garden and hoping the bees would do the job for me (and sometimes forgetting to bring the plants in again at night). That didn’t seem to work
Next I tried shaking the plants vigorously to encourage to the pollen to drop from the stamen on to the stigma. Either I shook too hard and all the pollen got knocked off the flower completely or I shook too softly and the pollen stayed where it was. For whatever reason, it didn’t work.
I tried tickling the inside of the flower with a very fine paintbrush (that’s what Colin C told me to do) and although it made the flower giggle, it didn’t produce fruit.
My last attempt was to brush my finger across the ‘naughty parts’ of the flower to force fertilisation and that may finally have done the business.
It looks like the Habaneros, both of them have succeeded in producing fruit. I’d love to know which of the tricks worked its magic. Maybe it’s a combination.
So now I have two Cayennes peppers, two Jalapeños and two Habaneros. Let’s hope there’s more on the way.

We were just sitting in the living room when I heard a plane engine that sounded faintly familiar, but unusual too.  Checked on Flightradar and it was a Spitfire passing almost directly overhead and heading south.  Dived to the door but realised the trees would be in the way and by the time we got to where we might get a clear view the warplane cruising at around 200knots would be well gone.  An opportunity missed.  The sound was the engine note of a Merlin, the legendary Spitfire power unit.

After lunch we took a walk to the shops just to get the usual essentials (without the gin this time). After we got back I decided it was time to remove the wiring for the dash cam from the Red Juke. It looked so easy, but it was an absolute nightmare getting the cable out intact. Eventually I gave up and cut the cable because I knew I’d need a new one when I was ready to fit the camera in the Micra. When I’d finally removed the last bit of the cable and its “piggy back” fuse connector, I realised that the bit that was blocking the cable’s removal was actually the ferrite choke and if I’d read the instructions on fitting the cable in the first place I’d have noticed that it was possible to unclip it from the cable and then the rest would have been easily removed. Oh well, it’s done now. To contradict the usual Haynes manual statement, in this case “Removal is the reverse of assembly”. You’d be amazed at the amount of razor sharp steel there is hidden behind the facia panels of a modern car. My hands are testament to its cutting ability.

Scamp made an Apple & Bramble pie to be the pudding for tonight’s dinner of Veg Chilli (with Flatbread).  The chilli was better today, but oh, that pie was beautiful.  Our own windfall apples and a handful of brambles.  Superb!

Fairly satisfied with my work, I grabbed my camera which seems to have the 60mm macro lens welded to it these days and went for a walk in St Mo’s. Found a conducive dragonfly and a photogenic seed head, but the PoD went to a photo of two Shield Bugs making babies, or else playing Tug O’ War.

Off to Larky tomorrow with a bit of luck to get Scamp’s new contact lenses.

Bits and pieces – 19 August 2020

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A day of bits.

Lots of bits, all bolted, glued and welded together to form a cohesive day. It all went wrong when I made a list of all the things I wanted to do today. I did actually do all those things, but the idea was that I’d sacrifice the morning to those tasks and that would leave the afternoon free to paint or draw. Burns got it right again “The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley”

First, get my thoughts down in Goodreads about “Flowers for Algernon”. Did you notice the link there? Algernon is a mouse and the Burns quote above was from “To A Mouse.” See, there’s a lot of thought goes into this. Anyway, the write up took minutes and that was a tick in one box. Next on the list was find the big thick graphic stick I needed to add texture and shadows to the sketch I was going to do. I’d looked everywhere last night and hoped I’d just put my hand on it today in the light. Gave up eventually and ordered a new one from Amazon. Five minutes later I found the graphic stick. It was in a box in the bedroom. Don’t you hate when that happens. Next was to solve today’s sudoku. It was impossible. I gave up after half an hour. Went in to the garden to prune my buddleia bush. Then Scamp and I proceeded to chop down the original buddleia bush that had only flowered once or twice and then in the autumn once all the butterflies that it’s supposed to attract had gone. It was a tough bush. It needed the combined efforts of a hacksaw, an axe and finally a full size panel saw, but it did come out of its pot eventually.

I should have been painting after lunch, but instead I took myself, my camera bag and my Benbo tripod off to walk along the Luggie Water. I’d forgotten to add ‘Take a photo’ to my morning list of things to do and it would only take a few minutes. The minutes somehow joined together to make an hour and a half, but I got the photo. The PoD is the railway bridge over the Luggie. Not a flower and not a beastie, but a landscape and an architectural picture for a change.

Back home I had a look a the the resulting photos and after some work, posted two on Flickr and found that it was now dinner time. Scamp made a really interesting veg curry and had baked a cake with chunks of pear in it. Quite heavy and moist, but beautiful cinnamon flavour. She’d also found time to cut the front grass. Makes me look like the lazy person I am. The painting never got done, nor did the sketch. Maybe tomorrow, or maybe I’ll get Scamp to do them. That way they’ll get done.

Tomorrow is to be wild with heavy rain and strong winds, and more of the same on Friday. Well, it is summer and it is Scotland