An occasional Photo Blog
It’s not often that I’m up and about before sunrise on a Sunday morning, so what better way to spend the extra time than to make a couple of pictures.
The first picture shows the car eager to leave the garage. The second image depicts the view I had as I climbed into the car after closing the garage doors. Not particularly breathtaking perhaps, but the early Sunday morning quietness was almost deafening…. except for me banging car doors of course.
Watching the cat stroll around the garden at the weekend, I thought it might be interesting to capture his view of my neglected lawn.
Having a few minutes to myself before tucking in to the next meal, it occured to me that I was a bit behind with writing cards this year…. so a very merry Christmas to those who are still celebrating, and a happy new year!
Today was my first day back at work after a couple of weeks holiday, so I had to carefully consider whether to interrupt by beauty sleep to stand outside in the cold and look at the moon or not. I didn’t want to look worse after the holiday than I did before it, but at the end of the day I couldn’t resist the temptation. So, with the help of all my alarm clocks, we sprang spritely out of bed at 3.30 am and peered out of the window. The moon wasn’t completely eclipsed at that time, but there was not a cloud to be seen so returning to bed was not an option.
It wasn’t until I stood in the garden staring skywards, with a cup of tea in one hand and the cable release in the other, that I was confronted with the various shortcomings of my photo kit; My old 80 – 200mm zoom is basically fine, but not automatic and a bit small for this type of work so there were various things to consider… perhaps a new one one day? My reasonably priced tripod is OK but not very ‘precise’ and it wobbled quite alarmingly when the heavy zoom was mounted on the K30. Then there was the question of experience, these sort of things don’t happen on a daily basis and I had to grope around in the dark for the important buttons and a lot of guesswork was needed for the exposures. More practice would have certainly been beneficial. But despite all the things that could be improved I was fairly happy with one or two of the images.
Whilst tending the barbecue on Sunday afternoon I read an interesting article in “Black+White Photography” about skies. The images printed in the magazine are, without a doubt, very dramatic and moody. Cooking is very hard work, so whilst reclining in my deckchair with a cool beer and a very fetching sun hat (hehehe) I took a moment off to look skywards. It looks as if I will have to wait for stormy weather to achieve dramatic skyscapes, but I was quite pleased with my cloud.
I’m delighted to say that the K30’s sensor is now nice and clean once again. No more post processing to remove that annoying little blob that seemed to smile back at me whenever I viewed a photo.
When I picked the freshly cleaned camera up, I had a good look around the photo shop, I couldn’t help noticing all those interesting accessories lining the walls. A neutral density filter or perhaps a graduated filter would be nice. That made me think about those old filters at home. This afternoon, before cutting the lawn, I rummaged through my old gadget bag to see what goodies I could find. (see http://www.harding.ch/photo-stuff/camera-info/) I experimented with a haze filter and a graduated colour filter…. just like old times.
With the last post’s print hardly dry, in which I praised the weather lady’s forecasting abilities, I’m afraid her crystal ball got it all wrong for today. On Thursday evening she told me, with a large portion of meteorological authority, that the weekend would not be very nice. A high percentage chance of rain! So here I sit in the sun, covered in 50+ sun cream playing with my Panasonic DMC-LX2.
Panasonic LX2? – What’s happened to the Pentax? you may ask. Well, taking advantage of the predicted ‘bad weather’ I took it to the shop to have it’s sensor cleaned. Hopefully that annoying blob will have disappeared when I pick it up on Wednesday.
The moral of this story: always have a spare camera… just in case the weather lady gets it wrong 🙂
One thing that really does seem to have improved over the last few years is the accuracy of weather forecasts. On Monday evening the weather lady told me that this week would be good and that today would be fantastic – and indeed it was. Putting my trust in the weather lady’s forecasting abilities I took today off. The temptation to go out and about with the camera, capturing all manner of beautiful Spring images was very strong, but discipline ruled the day, and I did what a man has to do in the garden. When the work was done I rewarded myself with a cold beer and a rest. I couldn’t let the day pass without at least a couple of photos – a beer and a selfie.
After a busy Saturday working over a hot spade in the garden, I decided I would take today a lot easier. Relaxing was very high on the agenda and the most athletic movement was bending down to capture these images of Spring.
Easter doesn’t stand or fall by the weather, so we decided not to head south in search of warmer climes. We had plenty of chocolate eggs to tuck in to, and the K30 performs well in rain, sleet and sunshine – and we’ve enjoyed all three. The three Black & White images were captured on a Good Friday stroll around the village. The three colour images were taken today, Easter Monday.
