I might be a bit late posting tomorrow as I am doing my day long photography experience Marwell Zoo.
Here's a fun bit of animation. It's called "Love in the Time of Advertising"
Nice 'n' Springy |
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How many of you remember the title? It was Z Cars, a British police television drama that ran from 1862 to 1978. Why am I reminding you of this (or in the case of the youngsters, telling you this for the first time)? Because I have had to have dealings with the local police. It isn't anything serious. I haven't been attacked by the local itinerant Irish tinker again - he wouldn't be that stupid seeing as the last time he tried it, it ended up in court with him losing. Perhaps I should say that it isn't anything serious... yet. Let me explain. Over the past three to four weeks when I have left to take Donna to the station at around 05:15 and have found the back garden gate unlatched and pushed as far forwards as it will go before the security padlock comes into play and stops it opening any further. It's only a matter of a couple of inches forward but it does mean that someone has opened the gate and given it a shove (it needs a shove because it sticks in the winter or when it is wet). This I find worrying but if it was only now and again it wouldn't bother me and I would probably think "I didn't latch it properly" but happening so often over the last few weeks, I have been setting the latch and checking it at night. OK, if any miscreant does get in then they will have to break into the padlocked shed to find anything of value and securitywise, the house is done up tighter than a crabs buttocks but it is the thought that someone is not only trying their luck in an opportunistic fashion, they are doing so on a regular, nightly basis. So that is why I have been talking with the law. Perhaps if an occasional police car were to stray through the village or if their presence was known then I would feel more comfortable or to be blunt, perhaps this miscreant would feel much more uncomfortable. It's either that or I am going to have to install some form of CCTV.
I might be a bit late posting tomorrow as I am doing my day long photography experience Marwell Zoo. Here's a fun bit of animation. It's called "Love in the Time of Advertising" Swift entry today. Uneventful morning where I spent the time helping Donna around her office and teaching one of her colleagues the basics of Word for Windows. It is a real pleasure to see his face light up when I show him a new tip or trick that will help him.
Lunchtime (Marks and Spencer sandwich, bag of crisps and a fruit salad) followed by a swift walk to The Museum of London to see the Cheapside Hoard exhibition. For those of you not in the know, in 1912 a handful of labourers were demolishing a building and when they broke into the cellar, they found a large hoard of sparkly gems and gold. Being honest gents they went straight to a pawnbroker to try and pop the stuff. The pawnbroker realised the value and contacted the London Museum and for two years the find was kept quiet, the labourers got very little and that was about the lot. When it went on display it went down a wow with the punters. Basically, this hoard of gems and jewellery (and some sardine bones but those might have been the remains of the lunch of one of the labourers) is from Elizabethan and Jacobean times with the date put at just after 1640. The unusual thing about the hoard is that it shows exactly what the styles of jewellery were at the time. Most pieces of jewellery from that era just don't exist because as fashions change, people tended to have gemstones reset in the current style so over the centuries they change quite dramatically. The exhibition was fabulous but don't take my word for it. Go and see it for yourself. The only thing I will sya is that the exhibition added years to my age - the lady who booked the tickets for us a few weeks back was convinced that Donna and I were both over sixty and got a discount for us on that basis! Here's a fun music video for you. A day of bits and bobs and odds and ends. It started off with a surprise which was that Parcel Force delivered the flash accessory I ordered yesterday in a very timely fashion. There was a tap at the door at just before eight o'clock this morning and ton the doorstep stood a very jolly fellow holding out a package and an electronic "sign here" machine. So "Well done Parcel Force!". You have come up trumps! So I started the day with a bit of a play with off camera flash using my new honeycomb grid and produced the shot above. You wouldn't think that I was standing with my back to a bay window with daylight behind, would you? The day moved on apace and I managed to find Donna a birthday present. I have adopted a plot of land at Arundel Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust for her. Only for a year but it is something a little different. It must be a bit of a wildlife day because I heard about the new photographic experience days at Marwell Zoo so I decided that I would sign up for the day on this coming Friday. That is all done and I hope that I will get a slew of good, exotic wildlife pictures. The afternoon was taken up, most enjoyably, with a trip to Nymans Gardens and the chance to have a good old chinwag with HH over a cup of coffee or two and a naughty slice of ginger cake. That was the ideal way to pass a very wet afternoon. My goodness the heavens opened. On leaving, I went to Horsham to pick up Donna but there were several minor floods to contend with and people were driving too carefully once again. Consequently, Horsham was locked up tight with traffic once again. Oh well. If this rain continues then perhaps more folks will learn to drive properly in wet conditions. I might be a little late posting tomorrow because I am going to be up in London to see the Cheapside hoard (sounds like a rabble of football supporters doesn't it?) at the Museum of London. Given the amount of rain we have been having, I thought this animation called "Juste a'leau" (or "Nothing but water") was quite apt. Juste de l'eau (2014) from Carlos De Carvalho on Vimeo. "What on earth is he talking about in the title?" I hear you ask. "Is it the name of a character in the book he is supposed to be writing?". Well, surprisingly it could make a really good name for a spoof superhero or private detective or secret agent but what it really is, is a light shaping tool that attaches to a flashgun thus allowing light direction and intensity to be changed. Because I went on the course last Saturday at Park Cameras, I had been offered one of these cheap devices at a discount. So I decided I would go and see if they had one in stock. They did have and at the same time I treated myself to a second radio transmitter Speedlight unit so I can now have two off camera flashguns to play with. An expensive little trip but if I am going to get into flash photography more seriously then I will need that capability. The only other thing of note was that my photograph of 17th of January won the song title competition and I have had to set the next one. This has already been done and I have chosen "A kind of magic" by Queen as the song title I want people to produce photographs about. That should give them enough scope to be getting on with. Now! How would an alien describe coffee to the inhabitants fo their planet? Coffee Propaganda from HYUN JI AJ BAE on Vimeo. Yet another day off from photography and my goodness, do I need it. After a day up in London, a day's training and now a day with Donna's parents things are starting to catch up with me rather than me catching up with them. Thankfully I have tomorrow off to recover but there are a few other things coming up this week to tire me out once again(I am up in London once again on one day but I am not sure which.) So what is there to report? Not a great deal. A lot more rain has fallen - our trip down to Hampshire was accompanied by rain almost all the way, much of it heavy requiring the use of headlights and fog lights to see and be seen. Apart from the usual glut of silver car drivers who deem it unnecessary to switch them on for whatever strange reason. Now here is a quick heads up for anyone planning to use the Chichester bypass over the next two to three weeks. DON'T! They are going to be working on the bypass (hopefully to resurface it) and will be shutting off great chunks of it for three or four days at a time albeit overnight. This is going to make rush hour screaming agony for anyone passing through. Here is an article about it. You have been warned. Speaking of roadworks, try to avoid the A283 Washington road from the A24 towards Storrington. There are traffic controls where they are performing more drainage and water mains work. This is going to be a nightmare too. In fact, almost everywhere we went today there were notices for long delays and overnight closures. It never rains but it pours, eh? OK. With those two public service announcements out of the way, I am going to settle down with a cup of tea, a hot cat and a nice log fire (not for the warmth but for the psychological joy of watching it) before settling down to a meal of fish fingers, baked potato and peas. Yes. It is the end of another fasting day and with a bit of careful weighing and preparation that little lot comes to a mere six hundred calories. Yum! Have a great week. Ever wondered how much image editing goes on and what effect it can have? Here's a Hungarian video that shows the effect very nicely as the young lady sings. Very little time to write today as I have just returned from the first of two days worth of training in flash photography. All I can say is "Wow!" and I really want to have that second day's training as soon as possible. I am now going to read, learn and inwardly digest all of the information given and try out some more Speedlight photography in the next few days to consolidate the information imparted. Have a great Sunday (and I might be late posting tomorrow because we are off to see Donna's parents).
There's a second picture today as this is my day for posting in the se7en group on 365project.org And that is about all you Today @padlock and I helped Nicola Eastwood (aka "Big Bill") spend her hard earned dosh on a brand spanking new Canon 5D MkIII (plus a yummy 24-105 L lens, battery grip, UDMA 7 Compact flash card and filter). Park Cameras in London were very happy until @padlock said "Now let's talk about the discount you are going to give". You should have seen the smile slide off the salesman's face! Still, the squeaky wheel gets the grease and Nicola left considerably poorer but just look at the smile on her face! Is this the look of a mother with a new baby or what? As an aside, if you are in town and you get the chance, go and see the "Behind the Mask" exhibition at Somerset house - totally fabulous. And that is about as much as you are going to get today and I will probably be late tomorrow as I am off on a one day course. Sorry about that! So tell me... what does a match head look like when it is ignited, in slow motion? Just like this. I love Internet shopping. It is the best thing since sliced bread when you want something in a hurry and it is so fast. You can order today and have something huge delivered to your door tomorrow. Gone are he days of "Please allow twenty eight days for delivery" (although there are some firms that still do that sort of thing. The only drawback of Internet shopping is the delivery itself. Where most items require a signature then you have to wait in. Today was one of those days. With normal couriers like DPD, Yodel and UPS, they track your parcel swiftly and accurately and give you a planned day for their arrival followed by a one hour time slot for the actual delivery so that you don't have to wait around for too long. With City lInk it is different. I have had a big run in with them before when a "next day delivery" took them five days and in the end I had to drive over to Crawley to pick the parcel up because on two separate occasions, they couldn't find my house (there it is... bang slap on the A281... that's a fairly major road, boys and girls). So you can imagine my horror when I received an email from a supplier telling me that City Link were going to deliver my parcel. True to form, City Link tracking told me that they were awaiting delivery of the package at their Gatwick depot and then they would give me a delivery time. That message was still the only message on the tracking page this morning however they hoped to deliver my package today. Then their website refused to work. The "search for"delivery code told me that there were too many parcels with that code and would I put in my post code as well to narrow it down. So I did and received the same message. So I resigned myself to sitting downstairs and waiting for the delivery for 07:30 this morning and would have sat there until the last planned delivery at 17:30 if needs be. Eventually, their website started to work to tell me that the parcel would be delivered between 10:11 and 12:11 (although there was no guarantee on the time). It was nice that it wasn't until 10:30 that I picked up this message so the alleged start time was in the past already. Eventually the van drew up at just before 12:00 and I took delivery of my package. All in all, for City Link, this was a relatively painless experience and a vast improvement on the last few times. Perhaps they will lose their pseudonym of Shitty Link if they keep this up. What was I waiting for? A new cafetiere because I have worn the other one out! No picture today because of the longish wait for Shitty Link. Now for a movie mashup. "Get Down!" Council cafeteria also known as "Chips with everything". I suppose that I shouldn't lay all of the world's problems at the door of our county council but where the local area has become my world (I don't get out and about as much as I used to) I think that I see the smaller , more local and intensely irritating picture. We will start off with my trip home from Horsham station this morning when a car coming in the opposite direction flicked up a sizeable pebble which it hurtled straight at my windscreen, striking it with a hello of a "Crack!" and leaving me with yet another chip which will require filling courtesy of Autoglass. I have better things to do with my day than visit the local branch in Crawley and hand over another fifteen pound insurance excess to have the job done but there you are. So anyway, I could berate the other driver for driving in the gutter where most of the foreign objects lie and get picked up from but I have done that before. It isn't really their fault and if they want to drive where most of the broken glass and stray nails congregate then it is their tyres that will suffer not mine. No. I lay the blame firmly on the shoulders of the local and district councils for not cleaning the gutters more often. Times gone by, an army of street sweepers would trot along several times a week, clearing away debris with a broom and a shovel. Then the age of mechanisation came in and sweeping lorries overtook individuals but there has been a cutback in their numbers too so now the gutters fill with debris and then so do the drains causing flooding and road surface damage. So the cost saving is where then, ladies and gentlemen? The reason I am annoyed is this (apart from the trip to Crawley, that is); today, the postman delivered (by hand) a rag called "West Sussex Connections January 2014. Number: 53". First question... Where have issues #1 to #52 got to then? We have never had one of these before. Question 2: Why do you need to spend so much of the rate payers cash on printing (in full colour, I might add) and hand delivery by the Post Office when these are times of austerity and you are supposedly trying to save us money? and Question 3... Why did you bother in the first place? It is a puff piece for our local and district council telling us all of the good news about the local services that you provide. Where is the news about the failures? Surely it should be balanced information or would that make it a great deal larger, heavier and more expensive to produce and deliver thus wasting even more ratepayers money? The only good thing about this rag is that it will fold in half nicely and line a litter tray for which Xarifa thanks you as she makes the most effective use of it and adds to the editorial content with a load of sh*t of her own. Here's a touching tale. "Cicada Princess" Cicada Princess from Jesse Solomon Clark on Vimeo. Lots of nothing happened today. The new foam cushion for my study futon arrived and that was about the most exciting thing that happened. My "Get pushed" challenge was to create a water crown photograph and I decided that this was the task to tackle today. It caused me a few minor headaches to tackle like "Where am I going to find a pipette to drop water from?" and "How will I make a nice white base?". I solved these problems by buying a cheap large white plate from Tesco and a turkey baster. These useless items are sold in every cookshop but I have never ever come across anyone who has used one, most people preferring to whip the turkey out of the oven and use a spoon to ladle up the juices and fats and ladle it over the bird. Anyway, I set up my rig of a couple of tripods, the camera, a flash gun, plate, backdrop, remote release, wireless flash trigger and turkey baster full of coloured water and set about dripping water slowly onto the plate. It took me three hundred and sixty four shots to get five decent crowns, two half crowns (that's about twelve and a half pence for the younger, decimal generation!) and a handful of "Meh! Whatever!" splashes that might come in useful elsewhere. I am only glad that I was using digital rather than analogue photography otherwise that would have been a waste of almost ten whole rolls of film! Never mind. The result of my travails (see above) has been duly posted on the 365project website and it seems to be going down reasonably well. I don't understand what the fuss is all about. People do these sorts of shots all the time. If I was serious about it, I would have purchased a laser trigger and saved myself a few minutes effort and swearing to get a reasonable result. Oh well. There is no accounting for the public's tastes, eh? Now for a public service announcement. Sugar might be addictive! Monday again... YAWN! First things first, it was take Donna to the station and then home for a quick photography section. There were two challenges I wanted to enter, the first was to produce a High-key image (where most of the tones and shades are closer to the white end of the RGB histogram) and the second was to create a six word story. I decided to combine both shots in one although I do have another shot in mind for the six word story challenge so maybe I will use that tomorrow. Then I went visiting. I had been invited up to Horsham by my friend OE, she of the very loud voice. Today was no exception. We had a cuppa and a chat (nothing unusual there then) and finally I ended up doing small DIY items (also nothing unusual there). I tried to drown out the sound of her voice by inwardly chanting a mantra and singing heavy metal songs inside my head but I couldn't drown out the talk of wanting to decorate her lounge with wallpaper. Fair do, she wants to have a go herself but in the parlance of youngsters these days she "doesn't have a Scooby" about what to do. I refuse to do it for her but she kept pumping me for information. In the end, I pointed her at Youtube and the plethora of videos on the subject but I doubt if any of my advice will be heeded or the videos watched.. I wash my hands of the whole thing. In the end I left before my ears closed down in protest at the decibels and made my way home for a quiet lunch and afternoon nap. Blissful. Now for cats and dogs playing dead when shot with a finger. It would seem that there is an increasing trend for people to be noisy. Not so much the kids because as far back as I can recall children have always been noisy little beasts (me included) and the cry of "Be quiet!" from parents was an oft heard one. However, increasingly it appears that adults are getting as noisy as their children. Today was a prime example. Whilst walking the woods at Nymans to get some fresh air and to get plastered in mud, we were both startled by an incredibly loud shout of "THIS LOOKS LIKE A GOOD PLACE! WHAT ABOUT HERE?" in an adult voice. Enter father / parent / guardian with an extremely loud and piercing voice followed very closely by a youth of about fifteen clutching a large model boat which he obviously wanted to sail somewhere. Father did not need to shout at all because the boy was only a couple of steps behind him however, shout he did and he continued shouting as we walked quickly past and tried to put some distance between us. Then there is my friend Olivia who is more than a little loud. Partly this is due to having had two increasingly deaf parents so a volume increase was necessary. However, now that both parents are deceased, she has yet to adjust the volume downwards. Seeing as I have arranged to meet her tomorrow, I am going to have to adjust my hearing or keep talking so that she does little but listen!
Then there are the nasty neighbours. Noise? They haven't heard what a racket they make. I swear that in their case it is because they live in a house with few soft furnishings and have a loud television. Thus they have to raise their voices to be heard. Their farewell conversations with their friends (which they seem to have at the back door for some reason) are incredibly loud and as departing friends walk farther down the garden path, the shouting and volume level goes up as the conversation becomes more awkward to hear. Maybe it is just me but I don't like excessively loud people and the world seems to be filling up with them. Perhaps I should just plug my iPod in and try to ignore them. No picture today... I am having a day off for once. Time for a peaceful and pleasant video. "B E A U T Y" I am not hard on clothes. To give you some idea, I am still wearing two shirts that I bought when I was first made redundant way back in 1997. However, there comes a time when wear and tear happens, zips break, seams come unstitched etc. That has happened to a couple of pairs of corduroy trousers and a fleece gilet just recently so today we decided that it was time for me to go and buy some more. In common with a lot of men, I hate shopping for clothes and normally leave that sort of pleasure to the women folk but just recently I have taken to enjoying the experience a little more than usual. This is partly because after years of dingy colours for menswear, more vibrant colours are coming onto the market. This made me brighten up and I will say that I purchase three pairs of jeans (salmon pink, bright blue and mauve), four gilets and two shirts. My only problem now is the cloth. Almost everything is fleece these days. The gilets were fleece for instance. Thankfully the trousers and shirts weren't but there is a lot of fleece on the market. Places like the Mountain Warehouse and Craghoppers live on the stuff. Don't get me wrong, it is a wonderful material (made from recycled plastic, colourful, warm, durable, lightweight, easy to wash and dry) but I do wonder if it isn't going to come back to bite us on the bum (collectively). Products like wool and cotton are biodegradable but fleece isn't. There is enough of a plastic problem in the centre of the Pacific already, why are we intent on adding to it? In the meantime, manufacturers are going to leap on the cheapest possible material to make their clothes from and there isn't a lot we can do about it. Oh well; at least my wardrobe is better stocked than it was first thing this morning and I shall be warm for a few more years.
What's this? A second picture? Yes. The shot above is my entry for a new group (seven of us got together to start up a group for showing off our camera and editing skills) and the shot below is for the "Eye of the beholder" competition where you take a mundane item and try to portray it in a beautiful manner. What with the floods this morning (for "floods" read somewhat deeper puddles across the roads) and overly cautious drivers, today has been an incredibly long day. The trains that were running from Brighton to London earlier on when the "floods" were at their "worst" suddenly dried up (only figuratively). People in our village were full of "stories" about how bad it was when most of them had not gone half a mile outside of the centre of Cowfold. Come to think of it, some of them have NEVER gone half a mile from the centre! I am sure that some of them saw a large wooden boat with animals going in two by two, given the way they were speaking. It really wasn't that bad. Let's face it, we are becoming soft in this country. The slightest bit of inclement weather and it's "They said on the telly that I shouldn't travel so I'll work from home today". Let's look on the bright side. If it was as cold as it was last January then we would have had "umpteen feet of snow" according to the locals or, more likely, a white dusting that would stop most people from going anywhere because either the trains wouldn't be running or they wouldn't be able to drive. It would spawn a swift phone call to the office to say that they couldn't get in. What with the trains taking an ill deserved day off after five thirty today and car drivers being "oh so cautious" in case they splashed the underside of their car as they drove slowly through puddles that were little more than an inch deep, we have had a very long day indeed travelwise. So tonight it was time for an Indian takeaway to take away the pain and now we have a weekend of doing nothing ahead of us. I'm sorry... I can't get up on Monday just in case the ice age that was scheduled to happen in a million years time comes early. Here's a country where they do get extremes of weather. Greenland. Have a good weekend. The Waters of Greenstone from Nathan Kaso on Vimeo. As the need to create a photograph per day disappeared, I was sure that my creativity would dry up at the same time. That is why I have been accepting various challenges on the 365project website. The shot above was asked for by Deb (@gypsy6) who asked for contrasts not only in light but in substance so I created this Fire and Ice picture using an ice cube and a small splash of whisky. Yes, HH, I sacrificed a very, very small amount of my Christmas present from you (less than half a cubic centimetre) to create this shot and wept at the same time - I really have to suffer for my art! Thankfully a very small amount of high quality spirit goes a very, very long way and most of the fluid you see here is the water from the melting ice cube. The only problems (apart from a slightly singed eyebrow) were the ice cube getting smaller very quickly with the heat, the whisky diluting thus making the flame burn lower and the house smelling like a distillery afterwards! Actually, today was rather fun because there was a second challenge which was to use a very wide lens aperture to create a shot. So I did that too (see below). Thus, I am all photographed out at the moment. See you all tomorrow.
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May 2015
AuthorPaul Everest - Shining wit (at least that is what I think they said) |