“Step 1
Determine whether the flowering plant is an annual or perennial, herbaceous, deciduous or evergreen.”
Huh? It’s pink/purple and has distinctive fine pointy petals in a 6-pronged star arrangement.
Does anyone know what it might be?
Category Archives: photos
My Favourite Camera Settings
There’s one particular combination of camera settings I keep coming back to, that forms a base for almost all my work. Just in case anyone else is interested:
Great Success: a replanted willow tree budding, in black and white
Circular polarizer filter: for acting as an optical control of local contrast
RAW+JPEG: so I have vast amounts of data to process properly and a reference of what the camera thought of it, which can also be recovered more easily in case of SD-card corruption (rare, but not unknown)
Mode: maybe 90% aperture-priority (auto-ISO, auto-shutter speed), 5% shutter-priority (auto-ISO), 5% manual (because the NEX-7 fixes ISO to 100 by default); of these, unless I’m doing a long exposure, the aperture is the most distinguishing control between closeup and landscape work.
Processing: black & white, so I get to think in terms of shape and form and colour-contrast even if sometimes a scene is processed for colour.
Great Success: a replanted willow tree budding, in colour
Metering: matrix/multi-zone metering, because it’s quite good enough, especially when coupled with a histogram on-screen
Compensation: normally +1/3rd EV for reasons of expose-to-the-right, improving the signal-to-noise ratio.
Shooting: HDR +/-1 EV
The shooting-mode is a new departure; not because I’ve suddenly started “doing HDR” (I’ve been open to that workflow on demand for several years), but rather because the ability to produce 30-40megapixel photos requires multiple input images. By shooting hand-held at high frame-rate I get enough image-data to combine upscaling (using super-resolution) with noise-reduction (using stacking). Full-speed burst-mode on the NEX-7 is a very fast 10fps, which leads to taking bursts of 5-6 images by the time I’ve thought I’ve got 3; the camera enjoys a wide dynamic range so even if the scene contrast doesn’t require HDR per se, there’s only a little difference in quality and using the HDR bracketing restricts the burst to 3 frames at a time.
A little barn: scenery from Steel Riggs on Hadrian’s Wall
Solar Halo
It’s one of the more common atmospheric-optical phenomena, but I still had to stop and admire this ring of colour in the wispy clouds, sun hidden behind the chimneys.
What It Looks Like
Two views of Portpatrick from the middle of the harbour; one taken on the mobile and processed as usual with snapseed:
and the other on the Sony NEX-7 with an ND1000 filter to give a long exposure brushed silver water and hint of movement in the clouds, processed with Photivo and Darktable (amongst other things):
Portpatrick Harbour under a mackerel sky
A Democracy
For the past month or so, my Facebook and Twitter streams have been fairly awash with politics – several positions represented from `at least do something’ to more specific suggestions. And so one’s braincell has been suitably spinning with big ideas of economy and nation-states, social equality, whether proportional representation is the right model for governance, whether one can apply `reduce,reuse,recycle’ to politicians, and all sorts of things.
What you actually get is the local defence budget blown on no fewer than 8 A4 printed direction signs guiding you 20yd into the village hall, finishing with “Queue Here” taped down a table-leg.
A Democracy
“I’m being a queue.”
Ten seconds later the two elderly ladies gave up personning the stall and came out to talk to Dog instead.
A View Down a Hole
My most popular photo on flickr, Raw, is a view taken an increasing number of years ago, as the light faded, looking down a big hole in the ground – the gorge below the lower bridge at the Falls of Bruar.
Today, whilst strolling along with Dog, I looked over some railings in the village carpark to another small gorge, and saw the cloud iridescence above me, reflected in a pool, the surrounding rocks draped with slimy green moss. How elegant…
Shades of pastel colours
Roadside Geranium
And why not? No need to multiply words of explanation. Just, roadside geranium.
A Bit Spooky
I’ve taken a few photos of these small waterfalls since the start of the year. This time, I went for the context of the surrounding caves as well, and just for a change, shot it using the new mobile phone camera before processing as an HDR panorama.
Port Mora, along the Southern Upland Way from Portpatrick.
A Carpet of Bluebells
It appears to be spring again; with the ground covered in a carpet bluebells all around, walking Dog in the local woods is a joy.
6 shots, made fresh this morning, with the Pentacon 50mm f/1.8 lens (almost wide-open).
Fern Bokeh
Ferns
The past couple of days I’ve been experimenting with the old Pentacon 50mm f/1.8 lens; its bokeh wide-open is quite spectacular, giving this small scene a strong sense of depth.
Formulaic Landscape
Light and cloud shadows on the sea, overlooking Portpatrick.
An Invasion of Silver Boxes
It’s a bright sunny bank-holiday weekend, which means only one thing.
Of five approaching cars at which I waved, only one young yet surprisingly dour-looking passenger waved back.
Visiting vehicles are easily identified by how caravans clog-up the roads, how cars perform 3-point turns in the mouths of T-junctions.
Avoiding eye-contact becomes the norm, as does the body-language of shying-away from Dog when passing on the pavement. Instead, out come the silver insulated food bags that bring their suburban life to us, their chilled packet contents probably bought from the perceived safety of a generic supermarket en route rather than in one of the local shops.
It speaks of an indifference to the existing social networks within the village being invaded, a separation of us versus the self-centred them.
I do not see merit in the argument that tourism is good for the local economy. It might seem to be, in a short-sighted fashion; but when all visitors see is each other and perceive landscape as pretty, its shallowness does not compare to the depth and quality of soul that comes from involving oneself in committing one’s life and work to a place.
Flame On!
A couple of days ago the shed door started coming off its hinges altogether in ordinary use – the wood underlying the screws had rotten away.
This afternoon, we burned the whole thing – and a great bonfire it made, too, with the roofing felt melting, burning, exuding a thick black smoke (fortunately not for too long).
Evening Light
Narcissi and Dutchman’s Breeches backlit in the evening light.
Around Cairnryan Point Lighthouse
I walked maybe half a mile along the pebbled shores of Loch Ryan, attempting to make interesting photos in classical landscape style. Of this kind of scene, one particular favourite survived the editing purge:
However, the photo I favour most from this afternoon was a serendipitous find, a result of some gentle urban exploration. Just standing in the doorway of this ruined building, all the light through the windows and lines and curves somehow fell together into a classic composition, a celebration of abandonment in grunge:
It also looks radically different in colour:
