Category: photography

We asked for rain – 27 April 2021

Posted on by Zogman

Today that rain was delivered.

The delivery took all day to complete, well at least I hope it’s complete although there could still be some of the smaller parcels of rain waiting to be dropped off in the next few days.

Scamp was off walking with Veronica again today. This time it was an anti-clockwise walk around Broadwood Loch. It was a bit wet, but that didn’t put off these hardy adventurers. While they were out I listened to a bloke telling me even more about catalogs in Capture One and then I cleared up some of the rats maze of cables that lie on the dining table to trap the unwary. They are now sorted into Micro USB, Mini USB and the catch-all, Assorted cables.

When Scamp returned we had lunch and afterwards she did the ironing and it was my turn to get wet. I took the Sony for a walk in the rain. Once round St Mo’s was enough today. By that time I had five photos and was wet through. Although, I did have my new leather boots on and my feet were dry for the first time this year on a rainy day.

I was thinking of retiring my old MacBook Pro. It’s twelve years old and beginning to fail. The card reader stopped working years ago, but plug in replacements are cheap to buy. It can’t be upgraded (legally) past OSX 11. The iMac is currently running MacOS 14 and there are another two levels available above that for newer machines like the iMac. I could do an illegal upgrade, and may yet do that, but you never know what little nasties you’re squirting into your system as a result. Finally, the touch pad is now beginning to fail and the second replacement battery is losing its power rapidly. I had a look to see what was available and was surprised to find there’s nothing anywhere in the Apple range that uses the tried and tested Intel chipset. Apple are only producing machines with their own M1 chipset. I read a few reviews from sensible sources and they were not at all complementary. Biggest problem seems to be that the machines run well with Apple apps, but less well, or not at all with the majority of commercial, non-Apple apps like Lightroom. I don’t want to go to a Microsoft machine, but maybe needs must … Difficult decisions.

Today’s PoD was a bunch of Cowslips growing in the wilderness (ie, the bit the council don’t cut and call a ’wildflower garden’) in St Mo’s. Thank goodness the Sony and its lens are weatherproof, which hopefully means waterproof too!

A half hour of dance practise tonight rubbed some more of the rough edges off the Waltz, Tango and Rumba and went some way to building the Bossa Nova too. We did finish off with a Salsa, but Oh my Goodness, the amount of stuff we’ve forgotten in just over a year! We need to get to some Sunday Socials once normality returns!

Tomorrow we may hasten that normality by taking a run in to Glasgow. Just to see if we can remember what shops look like!

A day of comings and goings – 20 April 2021

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Arrivals and departures.

First arrival was along thin cardboard box addressed to Scamp. The postman didn’t want to damage it by pushing it through the letterbox, so I took it from him at the door. It was the April delivery of flowers for Scamp. Part of her birthday prezzy from JIC and Sim. Just like last time the flowers looked dry and wilted but this time we had more faith in the clever preparation and packaging. Scamp also knew how to feed them and water them after the surprise of the last bunch. This one was a mix of Asters, Snapdragons (which my mum called Map Maps), Stock, Solidago and Bupleurum. The last two, we had never heard of before. They were all immediately trimmed, watered and fed and are standing proud in their place between the piano and the display cabinet. One very happy lady is Scamp!

Next visitor was the DPD man to pick up my box of lenses and a camera. Handed over the box, he stuck on a ticket and gave me the other half of the ticket as a receipt. They’re now on their way to Brighton.

Half an hour later the third visitor was a lady bearing another box, this time for me. On the strength of the offer from MPB I’d bought myself another camera. Not ‘YET’ another camera, JIC. One went out today and one came in. The camera mountain remains at the same height. This is the updated version of the camera which was travelling to Brighton. An amazing box of tricks it is too. It can do summersaults while juggling three balls and walking on a tightrope. I’m still working my way through the user’s manual, wishing it came as an audio book! By the way, I’m about two thirds of the way through What Abagail Did That Summer by Ben Aaronovitch. It’s read by Shvorne Marks. I’m getting to like the idea of someone telling me a story!

As well as all that, Scamp had been for a walk to Condorrat to post a birthday card. I’d dusted half the surfaces in the living room, taking great care to place all the Bus Stop Ladies back in their respective places and giving the wee green snake that hold my brushes a gentle rub over too. I’d also been for a walk in St Mo’s and got today’s PoD on the way back – taken with the new toy, of course.  I think it’s a Berberis thunbergii.  The leaves are beautiful in autumn. When I got back, Scamp had just finished clearing out the spice rack and had found jars in there dating back to 2005! Quite a lot of jars went in the bin today, as you can imagine.

Dinner tonight was a Scamp speciality, a prawn stir-fry. Nothing fancy, just things from the fridge and freezer that should be used up. That’s the best kind of meal. It was lovely.

We had a run through of the Bossa Nova tonight to ensure that I don’t make a complete fool of myself on Sunday. Although I wouldn’t say it was the smoothest practise we’ve had, it is beginning to flow a bit better now. Counting seems to help me. Just as long as I don’t do it out loud!

Tomorrow may be a better day than today which started wet and just became dull after that with the threat of more rain if we didn’t behave. If it’s good tomorrow we may go for a walk somewhere other than Cumbersheugh.

Was that a drop of rain I saw? – 18 April 2021

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Indeed it was. When I was making breakfast this morning, I detected some ripples on the bird bath in the garden.

It was actually raining. The first rain we’ve had in weeks. It’s not often I get to say that. The rain stayed all day. Not constant, but just the occasional shower and not heavy either. Just a gentle dampening of the ground.

I spent most of the afternoon playing real live 3D Tetris, trying to fit six different shaped boxes into one larger box. It was one of those irritating puzzles that should be possible, but wasn’t. I think I’ve managed it now, but even Scamp who is excellent at fitting things into boxes to be posted south at Christmas couldn’t find a better use of space than I’d managed. One camera and five lenses off to find a new home somewhere, probable never to meet up again, ever. I felt quite sad.

With that done and most of the afternoon gone, I went for a quick walk in St Mo’s to see if there was anything worthwhile photographing with one of the remaining cameras. The best I could find was a couple of clumps of Cowslips, but one was past its best and the other had still to achieve full flowering. I didn’t come home empty handed, but close to it.

After dinner I grabbed a few shots of some cut flowers sitting on the kitchen window ledge. Just a few white Freesia and a red Carnation. Lovely looking texture in the freesia and the carnation added a much needed splash of colour. PoD nabbed, just before dance class started.

Dance class tonight was Bossa Nova. What my latin teacher at school delighted in telling us fourteen year old boys meant New Beat. He even asked us if we’d heard of the dance. The only dances we knew back in the early ‘60s were the Dashing White Sergeant and the Military Two Step and nobody would admit to knowing even them. Dancing was for girls and weddings. I do believe he was disappointed in our lack of enthusiasm.
My own enthusiasm for bossa nova is at the same level as it was in the (not so) Swinging Sixties. I struggled through it tonight and managed about two thirds of the routine. The final third is a mystery to me. We did an acceptable Tango and finished with the Valentino Jive and Rumba One both of the last two are sequence dances which I’ve grown to accept as worth learning.

Watched an interesting Italian GP with thrills and spills galore. It got even better when a full on fist fight looks as if it would develop. Spoke to JIC and heard more about their plans for houses and work. Good to see them getting on. They both deserve it because they both work hard.

Tomorrow we are hoping the DPD man will arrive with a box of fish for us. Dinner may still be spaghetti, but I’m willing to come and go on that score.

A Scottish Day – 10 April 2021

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In other words, four seasons in one day.

It was still below zero when I was making breakfast. I did toy with the idea of getting dressed and going out to take some photos, but that was as far as it got. I decided instead to go back to bed after I’d set the iMac to do a backup. I browsed the Audible site to see what books were available and more importantly, after a warning from JIC and Hazy, listening to the readers. Some of them were terrible and were rejected immediately. I under the “Valley Girl” description Hazy. I think I’ve settled on one, but I’ll have another listen tomorrow.

It took the sun quite some time to raise the temperature above the zero mark. There was frost on the roofs of the cars and it stayed for quite a while in the shadow areas of the back garden. We weren’t all that bothered about rushing out, because we were waiting (im)patiently for the post. Eventually he arrived and yes, he had a parcel in his hand. Inside was a little snake shaped paint brush holder. I’d been meaning to make one of these since I saw a tutor using a brush holder in a video I’d been following. His was just a piece of wood with slots cut to hold the brushes, but this was shaped like a little green snake hand painted by the look of it. A brilliant prezzy Hazy, even if the Royal Mail were hoping to keep it for themselves. Thankfully they relented and handed it to me. It will go into the painting room as soon as I get the table cleared. At present it’s a propagating table for my Aquilegia flowers.

Eventually, after lunch we did go out for a walk in  the sun. Once round the pond at St Mo’s for Scamp then she exited in the general direction of the shops, while I went into the wooded area looking for interesting photos. That’s where I found today’s PoD. It’s another horse chestnut bud, but this is from a bigger tree than the last one and is a bit closer to opening into full leaf. Such beautiful detail in the veins of the leaves.  When I  got home we had a snow shower which looked as if it might lie, but it soon went off and the lying snow melted away,

Dinner tonight was a Chinese stir-fry made by Scamp. I don’t have the skill to work fast enough to make a stir-fry without burning it.

I messed around with two of the front runners to replace Lightroom, but neither of them offer much of an advantage over Lightroom, so I suppose I’ll just keep it running for a while, maybe using the free cut down version of Capture One if I need it.

We had a quick dance practise tonight and although we made a decent attempt at the Rumba, Tango and Waltz, our Salsa skills are decidedly rusty now and maybe we’ll be feeling the effects of that more energetic dance tomorrow.

No plans for tomorrow, other than doing the Tesco order! Such fun.

 

Happy Birthday to me – 8 April 2021

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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.