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I had intended going for a walk this morning and then having a wander round Glasgow by myself. It started off dull with a bit of a drizzle, so I changed plans and managed a different type of painting, using oils again, but limiting my time to 1 hour. Didn’t manage to get to Glasgow either, so no photos. I went out in the early evening to move my car and saw the leaves sparkling in the streetlight. It was difficult to get the colour balance right, so I used photoshop to layer two copies of the shot. Desaturated the top layer and used a layer mask to cut through locally and show the golden leaf. Simple!

Oil on card 280 x 220mm

A little bit of ‘shopping was done!

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Aw naw! It’s nearly Christlefridge! Went in to Glasgow today because S thought it was time we started Christmas shopping. Why, I ask you? It’s not even December yet, let alone double digit December (alliteration) when all sensible people start their shopping. Anyway, it was an excuse to have a nose around Waterstones, the art shops and maybe just a wee jaunt into Jessops (nearly alliteration). Followed by lunch, of course.

The light was quite the opposite of yesterday with bright, bright sun creating high contrast. I liked the way that worked for the pic of the futuristic cinema complex just off Sausageroll Street. A wee bit of post processing in LR5 which did a great job of curing the converging verticals for once and a bit more processing in Intensify to finish it off. It could probably do with a bit more saturation, but where do you stop then? This will do for the moment.
It looks like I’ve got another dustbunny here, but like the last one, it’s a flier. This time it’s a twin engined turboprop. Those with a greater fascination will no doubt be able to ID it from this tiny image. Me? I don’t care, I just like the fact that it’s there.

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Sitting in O Sole Mio having lunch, I glanced across the street and saw the sign for the off sales at the same level as the one for the Tron Church. Two examples of good spirits perhaps?

I was taking my niece to Hamilton today and had a half hour or so to myself, so I took a walk around the mausoleum and it’s beautifully landscaped park. No sarcasm there for once, it’s a real testament to the landscape gardeners of Hamilton council. Of course, the lovely weather helped!

It looked to me like a canal in Amsterdam on a small scale. It’s actually the Cadzow Burn in Hamilton S. Lanarkshire. I was lucky today because the light was simply beautiful. What I liked most about this pic was the (almost) symmetry of the scene and the textures on the grass. Truly, It’s all about the light.

The mausoleum was built in 1842 by the 10th Duke of Hamilton.
I remember going on a guided tour, ‘way back in the ’60s and being told that the building was tilting because of subsidence due to mine workings and the effects of flooding of the nearby River Clyde. Now it appears to have righted itself again. Its high stone vault previously held the record for the longest echo of any man-made structure in the world, taking 15 seconds for the sound of a slammed door to decay. Still an impressive building.

The avenue of trees leading to the mausoleum, looking rightfully regal in the late autumn sun.

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Just some folk enjoying the sunshine. I liked the way the streetlamps on the left seemed to echo the trees on the right.

Two gentlemen out for an afternoon stroll. Just coming out of the underpass that links the the Low Parks to Strathclyde Park under the M74.

It was only when I got a bluetooth speaker, I realised just how difficult we make it to connect devices. With this simple protocol we can take away the need for a jack plug. You know, the one that always tangles in headphones. That’s why I bought myself a pair of bluetooth headphones too. In our connected world, we seem to make things more and more difficult for ourselves. Why do we have at least three common USB systems? Have manufacturers forgotten what the ‘U’ stands for? That’s not to mention firewire 400 and firewire 800 and USB3 and … The list goes on and on.

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… the heart of the sun.

Sunday 16th Nov 2014

Just another somewhat less than ‘diamond day’ where the sky cleared around 2.30pm and for an hour there was some useable light.  S encouraged me to get out for a while before I made the dinner.  Salt crust sea bass.  Fiddly but lovely!  Here are the results of today’s walk around St Mo’s and other places.

I usually try to clone out the cables from the pylons, but I actually like them here because they seem to frame the sun.

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Solitary crow watching the sun set.

I simply couldn’t get the Tamron lens to focus on the grass stem.  The target was just too small and the lens kept being drawn to the clouds and the setting sun.  So, it was back to old fashioned manual focusing.  If I’d been thinking properly, I could have used the focusing screen on the back instead of the viewfinder, but that would have come with its own camera shake problems.  In the end, this was probably the best choice.  It’s not quite 100% sharp, but it’s good enough and the f10 setting probably gave me a bit more DOF latitude.

Went to photograph a farm in deepest Ayrshire today, but the light wasn’t right and I wasn’t happy with the results, so until the results suit me, you won’t be seeing them here.  My blog, my rules!  After that, I got solidly lost in the hinterland of Newton Mearns.  Didn’t actually thing they’d allow a dobber like me into their gated community, but they did.  Having said that, the polis did tail me for a few miles, just to make sure I got the message and got back on the M77 sharpish.

This is the Balgray reservoir.  To be more precise, it’s the access walkway to the little control tower on the reservoir.  I liked the detail in this vandal deterrent.  You can see by the graffiti on the door in the background that it’s more decoration than deterrent, unfortunately.

This is the picture of the day.  It’s the tower and access walkway at the reservoir.  I watched two Polish blokes fishing nearby.  One of them caught a pike.  I remember my dad telling me that Poles used to fish in the loch at Glenboig for pike and were the few people who would eat the fish.

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I left the dreadful Blipfoto today.  It’s been on my hit list for a few weeks now.  It consistently loses entries I add to my collection there.  The interface is clunky and extremely user-unfriendly.  Ok, so is this at times, but I’m making this my own as I go along.  Any mistakes are mine, not some dobber in Embra collecting my money and not providing a decent service.  It was good to start with, but now it’s becoming worse each week, so I’ve left.  That leaves me with Flickr (slow, but a reasonably good audience) and this (long may it continue).  Thoughts of Chairman Zog.

Yesterday started out well and got worse.  Today started out worse and got better weather wise.

After a dreary morning and early afternoon having spent hours repairing the depredations Itunes had dealt to my music library, the sky suddenly cleared and I set off in search of good light.  This was the shot I intended taking.  With the glancing light it looked good.  Good colour in the grass and a bit of texture in the land and sky.

This was the first shot I got and it looked better than I had hoped for.  The warm light from the low sun lit up the land perfectly IMO.  I even managed to capture a homeward bound crow silhouetted against the far hills.  And you thought it was a dust bunny – shame on you!

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It looked like a decent morning, so I decided to get up and out fairly early. By the time I had dragged myself out, it had dulled down a bit, but at least it was dry. Wen along the path from Auchinstarry to Twechar and got some autumnal photos.

Queenzieburn and the Campsies

Another Scottish pronunciation anomaly. Although it is spelled Queenzieburn, it is pronounced Queenieburn.

Red and yellow and pink and green

Bramble leaves showing off their autumn colours. These are probably the most colourful leaves in this country at this time of year.

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Little umbrellas are everywhere found

Mushrooms/toadstools growing on a fallen hawthorn tree.

Not the shiniest day.  Went in to Falkirk to pick up the tickets and have lunch at the tea shop.  Then the clouds came over and the rain came down.

The little flower looked startled at being a star for a day.

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One of the great things about being retired is that you can do more or less what you want, when you want without someone telling you there’s work that needs doing.  So with that in mind, I took myself into Glasgow this morning with nothing more to do than buy some oil paint and my lunch – though not on the same plate, thank you very much.  I had a fine day, too.  Just wandering, or as someone else put it, a flaneur.  An aimless wander.  Ye cannie beat it!

No Exit

Don’t try to use this as a fire escape.  You’ll just be disappointed.

To Infinity and Beyond

Under the M8 In Glasgow there are wonderful vistas to behold.
It’s the leading lines that impressed me along with the painted “trompe-l’œil” painting at the end.  The figure in the mid-distance was a ‘lucky’!

Symmetry

Under the M8 In Glasgow there are wonderful vistas to behold.
I liked the fact that the only colour here was from the leaves and the yellow stair guards.

Glasgow’s Flat Iron Building

Every time I pass this building on the M8, I promise myself I’ll photograph it some day.  Today was that day.  It’s actually Shamrock Street and I really like this isolated tusk of a sandstone building.  I’ll be back on a day with better light DV.

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