Portrait of a Teenager

Anyone for Facebook?  Nikon D7000

7th January 2013

Today I thought it would be good to try for another portrait.   I wanted to capture a portrait that was also quite representative.   I thought 'youth' may be a good title; luckily Liz obliged with a pose that quite sums up the 'youth of today'.

One wonders what 'youth of today' will be best portrayed by in another decade.

Mud

Alex after a bike ride.  Nikon D7000

6th January 2013

Today we had a little outing down by the canal.   The dog had a run, Jo and I had a walk and Katie and Alex rode their bikes.

Alex's bike does not have mudguards unfortunately.  So after a few rounds of riding through exiting puddles, he looked like he had shat himself; badly.

Luckily he still has a car seat for the way back, otherwise he would have had to sit on a carrier bag (yes I am that cruel :) ).

Indefencible

Mutilated Defensible Barracks.  Fuji F11

5th January 2013

I was shocked today to see a mutilated image of the venerable Defensible Barracks used in an advert on TV today.

I spent many a happy hour as a child, playing in the moat (often chasing after the goat which lived down there) and looking for golf balls that had been lost from the nearby golf course.

The picture is quite a recent one as I noticed when I was last there they have cleaned off the Ivy and replaced the door; the old door was becoming rather 'picturesque'.

Barracks taken in May 2011.
0.3mm pinhole in 6x9cm view camera
onto Fuji 160C colour film.

Nice Pear

Pear. 4x5 view camera through
130mm 1930's Kodak lens. Pre-flashed Ilford VC paper negative
through yellow filter. f/8 for 3 min 38 seconds

4th January 2013

I broke out my MDF 4x5 view camera today and captured a picture of a pear.  It has been far too long since I did some real non-digital work.

Part of the problem has been the incessant rain; I do not like getting the cameras wet given that they are mainly wood and paper.

The pear tasted great too :)

Unclean

Washing Up.  Nikon D80

3rd January 2013

I have tried capturing every day objects before, but not Every Day Processes.  I thought about it and washing up is one process that we do more than once each day.

We used to have a dishwasher, but when that died, the cupboard space was more useful for putting the recycling in (what Alex calls his 'craft' cupboard).

I thought a wide-angle lens would be fun to capture some of the horror of the state that the kids leave mugs in when they have dissected a cup of hot chocolate.

At least the smeg was fresh today, unlike when Liz clears out her room and has left mugs to develop cultures.

Retrograde Progression

Windows 8 start screen.  Nikon D7000

2nd January 2013

I have had no option recently to move into the current century; part of that has involved getting to grips with Windows 8 on a laptop.

Any new operating system and touchpads take time to get used to, but Windows 8 is 'entertaining'.

There are some really good features of Windows 8; it seems to be generally stable and reboots really quickly in the times it was not stable.

The new 'app based desktop' is a step backwards however.

It is not me being a Luddite and not liking change, rather I would like to use my laptop to actually work on multiple tasks at a time (like I am used to on unix and the older versions of windows).  Previous Windows versions always were best for 'light office use' rather than real engineering work, but it sufficed and had their useful features such as recognising even odd devices and being able to make a reasonable stab at a working driver when I plugged new hardware in.

It seems that Windows 8 has been designed to run on a touch-screen tablet or mobile phone.  If you have a laptop or desktop that could be capable of much more; tough.  The new 'apps' open full screen and any intuitive controls (such as mouse buttons doing much) seem to have been removed in favour of weird touch-pad swipe operations to control behaviours that are really hard to remember.   The desktop is now relegated to also being an 'app', however seems to be quite necessary when making any system changes (if you can find out where the options have been hidden).

I think I will power up the Raspberry Pi and go and sulk.

Sun and Shadows

Shadows cast by rising sun.  Nikon D7000

1st January 2013

I was up early this morning (i.e. before 8am) and realised that it was not raining!   I waited and captured the first rays of sunlight of 2013 as they cast shadows on the wall of a mix of the candle holder that sits on the dining table and the apple tree in the garden.

With a good deal of squinting and luck, I also managed to take a few images of the sun as viewed through the apple tree, without being blinded from looking through the viewfinder of the camera :)

Happy 2013.

Rising sun viewed through the apple tree.  Nikon D7000