An occasional Photo Blog
The sun seemed to inspire the vast majority to venture outside today, and with the clocks changing in the early hours of tomorrow morning Spring certainly seems to have arrived. For some its the end of a long night’s sleep. Both tortoises were up and about before lunch, but only one seemed to enjoy posing for the camera… the older of the two kept running off. But it’s not just the tortoises that are up and about, the lawn is dotted with flowers and spiders – lots of spiders.
If I remember correctly I was, according to superstition, supposed to say ‘Rabbits’ this morning before leaping out of bed. I’m not quite sure why it should bring luck, but then superstition works in mysterious ways. I tend to associate rabbits with Springtime, and as the the last remaining snow diminishes little flowers appear in its wake.
Even on chilly, miserable days Sunday wouldn’t be complete without a walk. Whilst waiting to venture out into the wintry afternoon I checked the K-30’s battery, polished the shiny bits and made sure there were no grubby marks on the lens. Just to make sure everything was working as it should I took a photo or two before slipping on the winter pulli.
What everybody has been dreaming of since before Christmas has now arrived, better late than never I suppose. Whether it will still be white tomorrow is another matter and so I thought I’d better enjoy it while I can. Shovelling snow is actually quite a pleasant way to pass the time on a wintry Saturday morning with nothing better to do. Chatting with neighbours who have not been seen since the end of summer and watching snow ploughs eagerly going about their ploughing with their dramatic display of headlights and flashing beacons. Having cleared the drive and garden path I was sufficiently pleased with myself and so took time off to go searching for a reasonable snowy image or two.
Somehow I just can’t get the hang of photographing Christmas lights. All the shops are dripping with them, the Christmas markets are ablaze with them and the pedestrian streets are all aglow. But it doesn’t matter where I point my lens my images just don’t look ‘right’. But there’s no mistake, Christmas is just a few days away and a blog without Christmas cheer is just not on, so below I’ve included just two of yesterday afternoon’s efforts taken in the town and one taken in the garden upon returning home.
Despite its simplicity I’m quite pleased with the garden image. The logs symbolising Yule logs and a few fairy lights to give it a seasonal flavour – Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone!
Stepping out into the garden on Saturday morning I had a whole list of things to do. There were some urgent rabbit hutch repairs to be done, the tortoises needed to be bedded down for the winter, I ought to do something with the garden gate and of course there were numerous leaves to be gathered up. But first things first, I fetched the camera and captured a few ‘Saturday morning in the garden’ images.
I’m happy to say I did manage to get all my jobs done by late afternoon, and in the evening was able to enjoy a pumpkin show in one of the neighbouring villages. The decorated pumpkins were fantastic to look at, but photographically the event was quite a challenge. Despite the bright moon and the orange glow of dimly lit pumpkins it was dark, very dark. Several of my photos were at best mediocre, but I was quite pleased with the elderly pumpkin couple with their pumpkin cat… rather due to the subject matter than the image quality.
It’s quite fascinating what a drop of dew and a ray of sunshine can do to a spiders web. Most of the year they go quite unnoticed, but during the misty autumnal mornings the whole garden seems to be full of them.
Having spent Saturday pulling out weeds, reclaiming the garden path from the ever encroaching grass and generally doing a bit of cosmetic gardening, I decided to spend Sunday doing very little. While a couple of chickens spent the afternoon roasting in the smoker, I spent a pleasant couple of hours keeping the temperature constant, reading the newspaper and wandering about with my camera. Here are the resulting images from a very relaxing afternoon.
A week has passed since my last posting, and I’m quite pleased I didn’t commit myself to posting at least one photo per day or something similar. Not that photographic motivation is lacking, but I’ve been leaving the camera at home during the week and have had my nose buried deep in a book during the journey to and from work instead. Yesterday saw me once again pottering in the garden and subsequently relaxing with a beer and the K30 in the late afternoon sunshine. Perhaps I should have made an attempt to free the garage roof from all manner of plant life but somehow capturing images of it was far more fun.
So far I’ve been unable to confirm it on the internet, but I heard somewhere that onions shouldn’t see August rain. Being August 2nd. and sunny, a day in the garden was on the agenda and while I was making lots of noise mowing the grass (lawn would be an overstatement) and playing with the trimmer, wife was busily harvesting our onion crop and tackling a very healthy weed plantation. Before reclining in a deckchair with a cool beer I dutifully tied them in bunches and hung them up to dry.
As mentioned in ‘Summer-fourteen 7’, I’ve been experimenting with the myriad of settings on the K30. Yesterday’s onion photos and the couple of images taken this morning were captured using the ‘User’ settings which I’ve set up for B&W use. Increased contrast, yellow filter and one or two other goodies are now available at the turn of a dial, rendering the term ‘straight out of the camera’ quite meaningless. I’m not sure the digital yellow filter is as impressive as the glass filter used with film was all those years ago, but perhaps I need to experiment more and keep a look out for dramatic, characterful skies.
