Tag Archives: photography

The Morning of the Show

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The day started at some indeterminate time for me. My bladder is playing up a bit and it’s difficult to tell where the night ends and the day begins. It’s really just a continuum of decreasing darkness at this time of year. When winter comes it will be simpler as it will still be dark when we rise.  I was up several times in the night and when my 7am alarm rang, I turned over, muttered and decided an extra 10 minutes wouldn’t hurt. On the other side of the bed Julia was turning hers off and muttering too.  I thought this was a bit rich, because it was her fault we had to set the alarms.

Today is the local village show and Julia’s entries had to be taken across, with the hall opening at 8.30. It was clear that it had opened sooner because all the decent (eye level) spaces had been taken on the boards. Now, to me, this is not an insurmountable problem. They are secured by velcro dots and are easy to remove and reposition elsewhere, leaving space for Julia’s shots in the judges’ eyeline.  Of course, she wouldn’t let me do it. There’s nothing in the rule book to stop you doing it, but according to Julia it’s not right. Ethically, she’s probably right, but as an ex-antique dealer I am morally bankrupt, and have been for years. If my wife wants to enter a photographic competition, I want to secure every possible advantage for her.

If you want to discuss ethics, many of the people at the hall have big cars, some of them live in cottages that used to hold more than one family, most of them treat it as a dormitory rather than a home. We may have only moved in last year, but if you go back to the late 1960s I went to all the village schools, from infant through to secondary, I worked for a company based in the village, and I helped with various community projects. I have a right to be a cunning county dweller and try to get one over on the incomers. In fact, it’s not just a right, it’s a duty. A line of rural rebels is calling out for me to right the photo positioning wrong, including John Gregson the fugitive Chartist. Well, I have an ancestor called John Gregson, and the authorities were hunting a Chartist called John Gregson at the same time and in the same area that my ancestor was living there. It’s a possibility rather than a fact, but when the possibility is more interesting than the fact, print the possibility.

Come to think about it, it isn’t too late to sneak back and do it now . . .

Actually, Julia says it is too late, so that’s an end to that. Nothing for it but to sit back and wait for the results this afternoon. Can you believe she actually referred to i as “cheating”?

 

 

A Post with No Soup

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Guinea Fowl on guard

There has been a lot of food in my last few posts, and a lot of soup pictures. Soup is a good subject for photography as it is not given to sudden movements and there are no problems of perspective. Buildings are good subjects for their lack of movement, but they do tend to look strange from certain angles. However, easy as it may be as a subject there are still challenges, even with soup. This is mainly the way lenses mist up as the steam rises. professionals will, of course do it all differently.

A Cricket on the cabbage

If I wanted a perfect shot I would let the soup cool down, decant it into a gleaming new pan (if you notice, all my shots tend to be a bit messy as a result of the blending) and I would add an artistic swirl of cream and a scatter of croutons.

I remember reading an article of food photography once. To get a good picture of cheese the photographer hollowed out a block of cheese and then illuminated it from inside. It seemed a lot of hassle just to photograph a block of cheese. I suppose the pursuit of excellence is its own reward. I merely pursue adequacy, and often struggle to achieve it.

Pizza with egg and nettles

As this is a blog post with no soup, I won’t tell you want we’re about to have for lunch – let’s just say that it’s a lot easier to make soup than it is to eat it. a pan of soup takes minutes to make, but can last for three meals. I really must develop the habit of storing some for later, but whenever I think of it, the freezer always seems full.

Californian Poppies

We keep saying we are going to eat out of the freezer instead of ordering more groceries. We have several part bags of seafood and frozen veg, with several store cupboard items such as veggie burgers and others that were thrown in there in a panic as their final day approached (sausages and fish pie mix to be specific). Ween we move I think we must clear the freezer and then develop  system before we start ramming the new one with rubbish.

Dog rose

Photos are from June 2016. My life was so much more interesting then.

 

Back to Blogging

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Sorry about the erratic service. I’ve been very tired and disorganised and my hands have been very sore. I’m not sure what happened – I was recovering from the arthritis flare-up when it suddenly became worse. It wasn’t particularly painful  but my knuckles felt very tender and I had no strength in my hands for simple jobs like tucking my shirt in or using a fountain pen. Even now it’s a bit tricky pressing on the mouse button and I only have three capable of pressing down a key on the keyboard. Fortunately I don’t need many as I am generally a two-fingered typist anyway.

I have discovered why some of my eBay photos do not allow me to edit them properly. It seems to depend on the camera settings I use. My Panasonic, despite being old and slightly faulty (some of the pixels are missing from the screen) continues to be better than the pink party camera foisted on me by the shop owner. It has better battery life and close-up focus abilities so I carry on using it. For some reason it will no longer let me crop images properly. I don’t know why, but I have tested it on some other settings and can now crop properly.

Even if other things hadn’t intervened, I think I would be ready for retirement soon. It’s very wearing having to go to work and use a dreadful pink camera and a computer that won’t switch on properly and which works very, very slowly . . .

My cheap laptop and ten-year-old Lumix actually do a better job. Having worn out two cameras in the last six years I am becoming quite resentful that I am not provided with proper equipment to do the job. It will be quite relaxing to retire.

Photographs are from Julia’s recent excursions.

Attempts at Photography

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A few days ago I did about 160 words then couldn’t get the next paragraph going. It kept petering out, or wandering off the point. I tried half a dozen times but eventually gave up.

It’s time to grasp myself firmly by the scruff of the metaphorical neck and give myself a good talking to. That sort of nonsense leads to writer’s block, and, as we all know that’s a non-existent condition, it cannot be allowed to take root.

It’s bad enough that I turned out to be a poet rather than a writer of lucrative thrillers, so I really can’t give in to imaginary conditions as well. If I have to be a poet I will at least try to be an industrious one.

Rear View Mirror Shot 1

Rear View Mirror Shot 2

Tonight, the sky was pink and cloudy when we left the shop so I unloaded my camera from my bag and took a couple of shots. The camera filtered most of the colour from the sky and as soon as I tried to take photos people appeared and got in my way. This was to be a theme of my picture taking for the rest of the evening. I tried with the sunset filter on, but that takes so long that everything was blurred. I missed some great moon shots to. Eventually I tried some sunset shots of teasel as the neighbours all decided to move their cars and shine lights everywhere.

The accompanying photos are a selection I took on the way home, including light pollution from cars, “abstract” shots and shots taken in my door mirror (whilst stopped in traffic, not whilst moving).

 

Camera Faults

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The featured image is the Belgian enamelled coin I spoke about yesterday, the one I couldn’t show as I’d left my camera at work.

They heyday of the enamelled coin in the UK was 1887, and many of the coins you see were ones with the 1887 Jubilee head of Queen Victoria. That’s why so many enamelled Georgian coins are worn – they were old when they were done. Most of the Jubilee head coins are in good condition as they were taken directly from the bank to the enameller’s workshop. It’s an interesting subject that I would like to know more about. That, to be fair, is something that could be said of many subjects. This is a paragraph I just rescued from yesterday’s draft, which I am about to delete – I try not to add things after publishing but in this case it’s something I should have covered, and forgot.

Today I had even more camera problems. It started with me thinking it was an eBay problem, which it sometimes is. However, it looks like there’s a problem with my camera card. I have a situation where I take photos but they don’t show up on my card. Other photos show up, ones I thought I’d previously moved or deleted. After a certain amount of switching on and off and trying cables and card readers, it occurred to me that I’d just taken five pictures of a tiger medallion and five pictures of a 1938 cricket giveaway had appeared on the card. What, I asked myself, if those five pictures of 1930s cricketers turned out to be my tiger photos.

It’s a bit of a stretch, I know, but by that time, having done everything I could think of, including clearing my cache, I was at the end of my tether. As I dragged the first photo, Don Bradman changed into a tiger. Very strange.

Haven’t a clue what is happening but it must be a card or camera fault. I will try to narrow it down tomorrow. Meanwhile, here is another shot of the coin with a different background. Generally I find the blue is better when taking pictures for eBay but the black is sometimes better when photographing things as a record.

Enamelled coin – nice rare example.

Learning from last night, I have answered comments and am about to post. Then I am going to watch Pointless and plan some poetry. Tim to get a grip.

 

Why Bother Blogging? (Part 2)

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Joking aside, (and I wasn’t entirely joking about my desire for fame and fortune), I needed the writing practice. My writing had come to a halt and my brief career as a poet had fizzled out. It wasn’t a concious decision, I had about a dozen poems published, I was just getting into a better class of magazine when I let it all go. It was a combination of children and poverty, as I recall. There just wasn’t enough time for everything and I spent the next eight years writing match reports for various junior rugby teams and hiring myself out as a jobbing gardener.

Then, while I was working on the farm with Julia and the Quercus group I decided it was time to start writing again. The blog was my first step back into regular writing. After two thousand posts and establishing a habit which I am seemingly unable to break, I think it’s safe to say I write regularly.

I also like the company. I know it’s only virtual company but that’s good enough for me. WordPress friends are better than flesh and blood friends as they don’t disturb you in the middle of doing things and they don’t come round and eat your biscuits.  They also let you blether on without telling you to shut up. This is a model of behaviour that Julia could do with adopting. In WP there is also a touch of the feeling you get when you look into people’s back gardens from the train. (Or is that just me?) I’m curious to the point of being nosey.

The other thing with WP friends is that I was till able to visit during lockdown.

Apart from a disturbance in my shopping habits, and a morbid fear of sniffling strangers, I hardly noticed any difference between lockdown and my normal life,  This, I feel, says nothing good about my normal life.

Blogging is also a reason to get up in the morning, go out, observe things and set targets. You can say this about many forms of writing, but if I hadn’t started blogging there’s a chance I wouldn’t be doing any other writing. It’s a chilling thought.

I wouldn’t be doing any photography either, because I started that to add photographs to the blog.

You frequently see people making the same point about writing haiku, and it’s true. If you are going to write a lot of Japanese style poetry of any type you need to keep looking out for details.

If you get into the habit of observing it becomes easier to see things and, this gives you more to write about so it’s a sort of virtuous circle. (Julia saw a weasel today in the Mencap Garden. A real one, that is, not a jumped up school caretaker or a cowardly manager. It must be hard being an animal when your name is used as a term of abuse.

It’s particularly hard on weasels, who are quite affable, and don’t really deserve the opprobrium they get. When you think of the personal habits of the stoat, it’s the stoat that should be the term of abuse. The word itself sounds more like a snarled insult too. Weasel is a bit of a woolly word.

You also learn a lot from blogging – particularly as you browse Wikipedia looking for links for the blog.

I’m sure it does other things too, like keeping my fingers flexible but I’m starting to tire now and it’s time to go and read my new book. It’s a Kindle book about how to be an autodidact, and before anyone asks, yes, it’s a Teach Yourself book…

I’m going to use the penny picture again to tie this to the Part 1 post. I’m not sure if I’ll use any others as it’s too much of a faff on the old editor.

 

Old Habits Die Hard

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The secret of training, as many top athletes have said, is not dedication or motivation,, but habit. You don’r drag yourself into a November night because you are dedicated or motivated; you do it because you have established a habit.

At the moment I cannot help myself and have sat down at the blog to write. I will not, however, post it until Sunday.

I can’t really complain, because when I started the blog I did it partly to practice writing and establish a writing habit. I think I have succeeded in that ambition. The other part of the plan, to promote the Quercus Community group, did not go quite so well.

“C’est la vie”, as Chuck Berry said, it goes to show you never can tell.

Bumblebee bottom
Bumblebee – Sherwood, Nottingham
Bumblebee – Sherwood, Nottingham

On my return from work, I found the lighting subdued, the temperature cool and the air still. There were three bumblebees on the teasel in the front garden and, with it being cool and still, they were more inclined to pose for me than they had been last night. I was able to use both hands on the camera and work close to the bees without them taking flight.

I can’t see myself having to attend any awards ceremonies in the near future, but at least it’s progress. Looking on the bright side, if you don’t get prizes, you don’t need to polish them. One thing I do need to improve on, as the photos show, is learning which end is which. I would not like to be known to posterity as the man who took pictures of bumblebee’s bottoms.

Bumblebee – Sherwood, Nottingham
Bumblebee bottom
Bumblebee – Sherwood, Nottingham

Doh!

Despite what I said, I just pressed the button automatically and posted on Saturday night.Old habits, as I have already said, really do die hard.

Not the Worst of Days

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Last night I checked out all the references to me on Google. There aren’t many but I thought if I looked them up once a week and maybe listed them on the blog I may drive myself up the ratings.

At work, I did a lot of photography. The owner has been sorting out loads of coins for eBay but he doesn’t do photography. That’s my job. It’s kept me busy for a few days so I mustn’t grumble, but today I messed up slightly. When photographing runs of virtually identical objects I normally photograph a few markers or notes amongst them so I know what things are as I load them. I forgot today.

As a result I ended up struggling to sort photos of pennies with wide dates and narrow dates. Yes, collectors do differentiate between such things.

Wartime Lincoln Cents

Wartime Lincoln Cents

As a result of that and an influx of customers (with no appointments) I was late picking Julia up.

We arrived home to find my sister had sent us another selection of masks. She has selected a more masculine design this time and uprated the nose clip by replacing the bendy metal strip with an iron bar. I discovered this the hard way when I put it on and tried to bend it round my nose. It was touch and go whether the iron bar or my nose bent first. She claims it’s only a stout piece of wire, but I’m not convinced.

We had fish and chips for tea. I had some of Julia’s chips instead of having a portion myself so I’m feeling virtuous.

I haven’t done much tonight and am currently watching Love Actually. I do like a good romcom.

It hasn’t been an exciting day but I’ve had worse. And at least we didn’t have moqueca.

 

Some Pictures from Last Week

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Bumble bee on bramble flowers – Sherwood Forest
Bumble bee on bramble flowers – Sherwood Forest
Bumble bee on bramble flowers – Sherwood Forest

These are just a few photographs from our trip to Sherwood Forest last week – I’ve just got round to sorting them out. It’s amazing what you can see if you wait around for ten minutes on a roadside verge. Quite a lot of them were blurred, or featured the space where something interesting used to be. The bees were quite frisky in the sun, as were the Ringlet butterflies. I didn’t even manage to frame a Ringlet. They are always tricky to photograph, but I can usually get something, even if it is blurred.

Flowers are easier because they don’t move as much. Fortunately there wasn’t much of a breeze.

Roadside – Sherwood Forest
Roadside – Sherwood Forest
Roadside – Sherwood Forest

They aren’t the the most inspiring pictures, but they are a start. We couldn’t go to Clumber Park because you have to book now, and we couldn’t go to Arnot Hill Park because the car park always seems so full.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

A very light grasshopper

I’m not sure what sort of grasshopper it is, probably a common one with funny lighting rather than a pale one. I suppose a light one would soon be eaten. It really was at that angle when I took the photo, but was down near my feet and I didn’t really frame the shot properly. I would try to turn the photo round to make it look more normal, but I can’t get the rotate button to work.

When we arrived home I noticed we had a couple of grasshoppers amongst the weeds in the front garden, but they had gone before I could get the camera.

All that travel, and I could just have stayed at home. There’s a moral in there somewhere.

 

 

 

Photographs and Percentages

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It seems that one or two of my readers are suffering from damselfly envy. There are two ways of coping with this – either with tact and sympathy and empathy, or by publishing loads of links to previous photos. This second was would obviously be unkind and tactless.

So, here is the first dragonfly picture I took, after building a miniature wildlife pond when we were on the farm. Within days it tempted a dragonfly to appear from nowhere. In two years it was the only one we ever saw.

Common Darter

This is a common darter at the gardens in Wilford – the background and composition leave a bit to be desired, but you have to take your shots where they happen.

There’s another  dragonfly here too, and here. And here.

Finally, and it took some finding, is a picture of a ruddy darter from Strumpshaw Fen. This was one of my better days for photographing dragonflies and damselflies.

Ruddy Darter, Strumpshaw

Ruddy Darter, Strumpshaw Fen

The truth is that after walking miles round nature reserves and taking hundreds of shots, I’ve managed three or four shots I’m happy with.It’s much the same for butterflies, but make that thousands of shots and a dozen I’m happy with.

I really must start targeting dragonflies and try to get some better shots. If you want to see some good insect photos try Eddie the Bugman. He is an excellent photographer, even if he does hide his light under a bushel and spend his days sitting next to me photographing lots for eBay.

Big learning experience of the day was that I must use better links – I hard to search dragonflies, dragonfly, damselflies and damsel flies to find all these links and photos.