photography

15 Apr 2016

It’s April, what happened to the weather?

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them:
there ought to be as many for love.
Margaret Atwood

With the longer evenings since the clocks went forward, last Saturday was the first day that we had the opportunity to visit our favourite spot at Beacon Fell in the early evening.  We’d been on a visit to family and thought we could come back the ‘scenic’ route and whilst it was likely to be far too cold for a picnic and the timing might well be wrong, we packed a flask and books, thinking we could at least enjoy the scenery for a while and have a little peaceful interlude.

This little chap and several mates dashed to the fence to see us as we passed and weren't spooked at all. If it hadn't been lashing down, I would have got out of the car and tried for some better photos.
This little chap and several mates dashed to the fence to see us as we passed and weren’t spooked at all. If it hadn’t been lashing down, I would have got out of the car and tried for some better photos.

The weather in the morning had been glorious, despite a frigid wind, but the forecast clearly showed it worsening as the day progressed, but we were determined to get out anyway.  It didn’t give any indication however of just how badly it would worsen.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen weather quite like it before.

It was spotting with rain as we closed the miles to our very favourite spot and the intensity increased to the point that by the time we came to a standstill, we were reduced to a robust negotiation as to who should venture out to the back of the car to fetch the flask and our books.  My husband grabbed the bag he thought everything was in, which thankfully at least included my pocket camera and the flask.

The rain increased still further and we commented on how it was now clearly sleety – from the way it made little bumpy splodges on the car windows.  Then there was a gentle thud on the roof of the car and then another.  We demisted the windscreen, wondering what it was and could clearly see great big dollops of snow in amongst the rain.

It was the oddest phenomena.  Sometimes in summer when it rains very hard, you get a lot of leaves coming down with the rain, torn straight off the trees by the ferocity of the raindrops.  At a glance, this looked similar, but the lumps among the raindrops were big white dollops of snow, big enough to look like leaves and to make a sound when they hit the car.  Normally rain is all of a similar texture, with largely evenly sized droplets, but this was torrential and substantial rain, with visible lumps of snow falling at the same time.  The snow pieces were at least twice the size of a 50p piece and dropping slower than the rain around it, drifting down at a leisurely pace.

The rain that fell that day had great big lumps of snow in it and as the cloud lifted, we could see that more of it had been snow at slightly higher levels. I felt rather sorry for the tiny lambs out in the sudden blast of cold and unpleasant weather.
The rain that fell that day had great big lumps of snow in it and as the cloud lifted, we could see that more of it had been snow at slightly higher levels. I felt rather sorry for the tiny lambs out in the sudden blast of cold and unpleasant weather.

I variously tried photographing and videoing this strange weather experience, but nothing I got could do it justice, so you’re just going to have to take my word for it.  We listened to the Grand National horse race on the radio, then concluded that it was at least improving a little, the sky was tangibly brightening and the cloud lifting – at the zenith of this weather, the hillsides adjacent were completely hidden, but as they re-appeared, they were dusted with snow.  Not something I would have put on the list of things I might have expected to see today.

We headed home whilst it was still light, hoping that the better weather to follow would show itself so that we could enjoy the scenery on the way home.  There were at least some new lambs in the fields now, having not yet seen many, so I did manage to snag a couple of photographs and you can see above how wintry and cold the weather had been.  I must admit to being a little concerned at the tiny new lambs shivering away in this unexpected wintry snap.  The following day was thankfully sunny and spring-like, so I’m sure that they enjoyed that much better.

My work this week:

I worked several existing designs for orders and to replenish stock and made one or two variations of ‘classic’ designs that I have in shop that have sold consistently over the years – spiral earrings for example, have always been a favourite and I made a couple of pairs of un-hammered simple spirals.  As with all seemingly ‘simple’ designs, poor workmanship has nowhere to hide, so you have to work with care.

 

16 Mar 2016

Coiling copper and spring sunshine

She turned to the sunlight
And shook her yellow head,
And whispered to her neighbour:
“Winter is dead.”

A. A. Milne, Daffodowndilly, When We Were Very Young

I saw my first ladybird of 2016 on a gorgeous sunny spring day in early March. Obviously catching some rays to warm and wake up.
I saw my first ladybird of 2016 on a gorgeous sunny spring day in early March. Obviously catching some rays to warm and wake up.

My husband and I have been laid low by one of those especially horrible winter colds that happens about once every 15 years.  A particularly nasty variant that kicked the stuffing out of both of us for around 6 weeks.  Whilst we both experience long-term chronic health issues, we’re not ‘poorly’ very often and neither of us take much time off work for illness.  But this episode has caused us to merely exist for all of February, having started at the end of January and extending now well into March too.

So we’ve done a lot of treading water and not made much progress beyond concentrating on getting from one day to the next. And we largely shut ourselves away in an enforced quarantine, as we certainly didn’t want anyone we cared about to suffer with it.

We found a very quiet spot to eat some lunch in the car and just enjoy looking out at the spring sunshine.
We found a very quiet spot to eat some lunch in the car and just enjoy looking out at the spring sunshine.

But I think we both are at the tail end now (I think I’ve progressed a little faster, my husband had surgery just before it took hold and certainly had two separate colds in the same time) and can start looking forwards again and think about a bit more than just going through the motions.

Thankfully, after we’d met our commitments this weekend, the weather forecast was supposed to be decent and we decided to take advantage and just get out for some fresh air – we’ve long wanted to, but this weekend was the first time that we had the energy to make that desire to do so, into reality.

I know that we both seriously enjoyed it and I’m sure it did us both good too.  There’s been talk in the media lately of the value to health and well being of green spaces and spending time in nature, but this is something I’ve known since childhood.  Fresh air, sunshine, good food and quality sleep – Mother Nature’s healers.

My first lambs of spring 2016. They were very new and clean, but Mum, understandably, wasn't keen on me getting too close.
My first lambs of spring 2016. They were very new and clean, but Mum, understandably, wasn’t keen on me getting too close.

We didn’t do anything particularly energetic, but the spring sunshine felt wonderful after what has felt like a bit of an enforced curfew – just hearing the sounds of the countryside and breeze through your hair on a particularly nice spring day was most rejuvenating.

It makes me long for the long days of May and June when we try and get out as much as we can after work to enjoy those extended evenings – I think that’s perhaps my favourite time of year.

The area we travelled through had a lot of livestock in the fields, including some fabulous long horn cattle, which I wasn’t able to photograph due to the narrow nature of the lane and an impatient 4×4 driver behind us, but there were a lot of heavily pregnant ewes.  I finally saw my first lambs of this spring, two youngsters just tucked inside the perimeter wall of their field, so I got out of the car quietly, hoping to snag some photos, but Mum really wasn’t keen and promptly took them away, so all I got was retreating bottoms this time.

Gallery:

I’ve popped the photos from above, plus a couple more into the gallery below, including a couple of new ones from this week.  They each have captions to describe them.  You can click on any of them and it opens a pop up window and you can scroll through the full set.

My work this week:

Coiled copper teardrop loop earrings.
Coiled copper teardrop loop earrings.

I have a number of designs that feature either twisted wire or coils of wire and it has been my practice to use a small cordless screwdriver to give me the twisting/coiling action.  It needs a power tool that’s capable of a gentle start and slow speed.  I’d been using an inexpensive and very small hand unit that worked a treat for this, but it has been in its death throes for some time and I knew it wouldn’t be long for this world, despite giving me long and valued service.

But my father came to the rescue with a more substantial cordless screwdriver that had a failed battery and he adapted to run from the mains instead. It works an absolute treat and the additional size and weigh allows me to use it standing on its big heavy battery base, freeing me from the need to hold it up as well as co-ordinating the trigger finger and guiding the wire etc.

A longer teardrop of coiled copper wire in these antiqued copper earrings.
A longer teardrop of coiled copper wire in these antiqued copper earrings.

It has an accurate, well aligned chuck, which is especially valuable when coiling wire and it starts up lovely and gently, making for much easier coiling, less wire wastage and reduces the amount of swear words uttered.  I’ve enjoyed using it so much, that I replenished my stock of coiled wire lengths for regular designs and was able to make longer pieces than I have previously, so I put together some new teardrop loop earrings, as shown.

I see some wire twisting in my near future too.

 

 

16 Sep 2015

The English Lake District in September

By all these lovely tokens September days are here, with summer’s best of weather and autumn’s best of cheer.  Helen Hunt Jackson

We have just had a lovely holiday in our favourite spot in the English Lake District. We had pretty decent weather and got to walk out every day.  We had occasional torrential rain, but fortunately, not at any times when it interfered with our plans.  Some of the days were a bit grey and flat, which makes for lacklustre photographs, but we also had some spectacularly beautiful days, with bright sunshine and haze free, clear views, which more than made up for the rest.  Some of the areas we visited looked as fabulous as I’ve ever seen them.

So this post is pretty much just about the photographs, so I’ve set it up as a gallery.  Please click on any of the photographs to see a larger view.  I’m trying a new gallery feature for such image-heavy posts, so the images all open in a simple pop-up ‘lightbox’.  If you want to view them all in sequence, simply start with the first one and scroll through them using the left/right arrows at the edges.  I have set it to display the images at random, so if you refresh the page, they will appear in a different order.

There are captions with the photographs that explain where they were taken etc.  The lightbox re-sizes to a proportion of your browser window, so if you want to see them larger, go to full screen and they’ll possibly increase in size, especially the portrait images.

Lake District Panoramas:

Some of the vistas in beautiful places like this are very hard to do justice in a mere photograph, so I love creating panoramas by stitching together multiple individual and overlapping photographs to make a single very wide view.  This requires the individual frames to be taken very carefully, with everything set manually (including focus and white balance), so details don’t change from one frame to the next to get a consistent join. If you’re interested in creating your own panos, I wrote a tutorial some years ago about my own technique, which is still pretty much how I do them now.

I note with each one how many frames form each image.  The original master images are all in excess of 50 megapixels.  In this gallery, they’ll open at the width of your browser window, even though they’re actually larger than you’re likely to see them, but if you want to see more details, there are links below to even larger versions which will allow you to scroll around the image to see more, as you’ll be seeing the image in the browser at exactly the size I uploaded it.

Larger versions:

If, like me, you like looking at the details in large panoramas, I’ve also uploaded a bigger version of each image too – I’ve put them separately so that they don’t load unless you click the links, in case you’re on restricted data.  They’re all in the region of 2.5 megapixels and around 3000 pixels on the long side and around a megabyte in data size, so they will take a moment or two to load. They’re in the same order as posted in the gallery above.  Depending on your browser and settings, they may well load initially at a reduced size to fit the window, but can probably be clicked or swiped to enlarge and allow you to scroll to view it all.

25 Aug 2015

Getting closer

If your photographs aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough  Photographer Robert Capa

Please click on any of the photographs for a larger view.  I’ve created these images a little larger so that you can see more detail.

One of the most important criteria when I recently selected my new DSLR camera model was size – in that I wanted a small – and light – one.  I want to be able to carry a decently capable camera and yet walk as lightly as possible.

I've not seen a 'small skipper' butterfly in the garden before and he was very patient with my photography.
I’ve not seen a ‘small skipper’ butterfly in the garden before and he was very patient with my photography.

I realise that, to a large degree, it rather defeats the object to choose a DSLR and then not want to change lenses, but to me, traveling light, coupled with decent image quality and speed and smoothness of reaction are my main criteria at the moment.

So I’ve been considering what equipment to take away with me on holiday next week, to give myself a good working set up, yet not increase the gear I carry.  There are perhaps three main scenarios I like to photograph; landscapes, close ups and zoomed shots of things like wildlife that is distant from me.  On most walks, the first two are the most likely to crop up and I was perhaps prepared to forego the third category in my desire to reduce weight – as a decent zoom lens would weigh as much as the camera – and I will still have my bridge camera with 720mm equivalent zoom lens.

I've always been fond of hoverflies and love to see them in the garden.
I’ve always been fond of hoverflies and love to see them in the garden, here on my sea holly.

I did actually decide to buy the 18-55mm kit lens that has been made available with the camera – not something I’ve done before, but it had several features I rated highly; such as image stabilisation, 10″ minimum focus distance, silent focusing and zooming, along with no external movement when you focus.  It seemed to be well reviewed everywhere I looked and didn’t add a huge amount price-wise to the camera body – and certainly a lot less than buying it independently.  It also has a plastic chassis making it very light and consequently pairs beautifully with the light body.  I’ve only had it a week and like it very much – it focuses very fast and accurately and I’m pretty happy with the image quality.

The zoom range of the kit lens covers most ‘scenic’ shots I’m likely to take, so I wanted to see how it would fair at close ups (a reason for me to value the 10″ minimum focus) and have given some thought to how to get the best of my set up with minimal additional equipment.  So I’ve been tinkering with extension tubes which reduce the minimum focus distance, thereby allowing you to get that bit closer to your subject, thereby making it larger in the resulting image.

This shot isn't especially good, but I do love the movement blur of his fast-moving wings.
This shot isn’t especially good, but I do love the movement blur of his fast-moving wings.

Then I looked at diffusers to allow me to use the camera’s on-board flash and after a bit of trial and error with on-line tutorials have made two different ones that both seem to work surprisingly well – one or other has been used in all of the photos on this page.

So I thought I’d share the results with you.  The weather hasn’t been very good over the last few days, when the sun has come out briefly, it has been accompanied by a stiff breeze, which isn’t conducive to establishing good focus on little things, no matter how fast your lens can focus.  I’m pretty happy with the results considering that I can use things that I already have, weigh a few grams and I didn’t spend any more pennies.  All of these images were taken with the Canon 100D DSLR with 18-55mm IS STM kit lens and one extension tube (either 13mm or 22mm) and the on-board camera flash.

Gallery:

I’ve put the remaining images into a gallery and the images now all open in a simple pop-up ‘lightbox’.  If you want to view them all in sequence, simply start with the first one and scroll through them using the left/right arrows at the edges.