Sauntering Vaguely Downwards
I have worked my way through the remaining photos from last year, and have uploaded them all to Flickr. Small selection below, mostly flowers. I’m rather fond of the Lisianthus photos (first two and in the header), because I like they way the buds are tightly curled up, and then the flowers unwind going through several stages of shapes. Almost my favourite flower, pipped to the post by Lilacs, because of the scent.
Back in 2005, I took this photo of blue marbles. I have no idea how I did it, it was one of those happy accidents thing, and I guess that the sun just hit them at the right angle (I took this one outside). I love this photo, but there’s a problem with it. Because it was 2005, the only image resolution I have is 480×360, and that’s just ridiculously small these days. So I thought I’d set out to try and replicate it using various methods, including the original sunshine method, pointing extra lighting at them, using the flash, and also using my light box to back light them. Nothing replicated the effect. Maybe the sun was at the wrong angle, maybe it was those specific marbles from 2005 that were magic (if they ever turn up, I’ll try them). I was disappointed with the results, and had to take a step away from the photos for a while to get some perspective.
Dad recently cleared the pond after it got neglected for a while (seriously, ducks walked on the surface) and I’ve now verified the fish survived and they didn’t adapt to the environment by developing legs or shovel hands. It did mean that a whole bunch of water lily rhizomes got pulled out, and I was able to take pictures. Man, these are fascinating and creepy. Some of them look like they have faces screaming out from them. Nature is very, very freaky, and my camera is acting suspiciously strangely today. Seriously, these triffids host the souls of the damned. See the others on Flickr if you want to risk demonic possession of your computer, phone or tablet.
The UK heatwave has fizzled out (for now, with the current climate who knows what will actually happen), it’s under 20°C, grey and windy. I am a very happy bunny as far as that goes, just feeling generally tired. Being able to sleep without wanting to climb out of my own skin to cool off will probably help. Creatively speaking I got a few photos taken before it rained again, so I’m sharing a few here, the rest are up on Flickr. Photos below, along with crafty bits.
Not as many butterflies around as I’d like there to be, hopefully they’ll make more of an appearance as Summer wears on. Yesterday an area around some Marjoram/Oregano was being visited by a bunch of Gatekeepers (female and male, some flirting going on), a few Small Coppers, a Ringlet and a Small Tortoiseshell. There were also quite a few bees, but they weren’t hanging around on a particular flower long enough to get many useful shots. The flowers are small, so I suppose it makes sense. There are some photos of flowers mixed in, along with Jake. He took up residence on the old bench yesterday, haven’t worked out where he’s been today. Enjoy, and find the rest up on Flickr!
All caught up on photos (for now), I’ve got some new pens to play with and swatch, so that’ll keep me occupied for a bit.
Final batch from the backlog all sorted and up on Flickr! This lot are all from the garden in the past week, most of them an evening shoot so the sun did nice things with the flower petals. I took a lot of photos today (mostly some butterflies and bees, if they turn out okay), but will sort and post those tomorrow. I hope you enjoy them.
Second batch of photos! Almost done, last batch tomorrow. A few of ‘name the daisy’ titles because there are so many varieties that they’re easy to mix up, and I’m an idiot who failed to take a photo of the plant label. I took the melon pics yesterday on a whim. Definitely prefer them to the watermelon pics. The rest of this lot are up on Flickr for your perusal.
I’ve been quiet, but I have been taking photos over the past week (the furthest they go back is the 7th), I just haven’t started to sort through them until this weekend. It’s actually been a bit of a chore, because I had over 200 to winnow down, and I’ve still got 60 to do a final sort through and upload (it’ll be less than that, but not much less, just removing pics that have a glaring fault I only notice as I go in to crop). The heat is making me very sluggish, and my lethargy is not helped by the fact I took my meds last night and discovered I’d somehow missed two days of pills. I could have sworn I’d taken them, but evidently not. I decided the sanest thing to do would be batches over a couple of days, so this is batch one, and there will probably be two more.
To add to the meh, I did the watermelon shots and I’m not entirely happy. Most of them got ditched, the lighting was generally crappy, and I basically had way more fun eating the thing than taking photos. I may or may not try again at a later date. As always, there are more up on Flickr.
I went into town to do shopping yesterday, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that I stopped off on a verge along the main road into town near the GP surgery to take a load of photographs of the poppies, daisies, thistles and teasels, I would have been very annoyed and regretted that decision. As is was, I got a new favourite photo out of that batch, the teasel with purple flower buds that’s set as the featured image.
Some of the images are from the garden, but the majority are from beside a main road and not, shockingly, on a verge next to a bridle path. As always, more up on Flickr, and by more I mean a lot more. It took hours to sort through these yesterday, which is why the blog post is today. Now I’m off to do things with glue and string.
Playing with a light purple background. It’s just a sheet of card with my little LED globe lights to brighten things up a bit, I’m pretty pleased with the results so I’ll experiment with more colours at some point. I may also invest in a light box with LED strips as it’s going to provide better and more consistent lighting than positioning what basically amounts to night lights for kids. I have done peacock feathers in the past, but we’re talking 10 years ago with a lower resolution camera, so they were due a re-do. The feathers were cheap with the tops chopped off, so I might get some better feathers and do them again.
As usual, there are a whole bunch more up on Flickr, so head on over there. I’m also posting random stuff quite a bit on Instagram, so feel free to follow me over there for shots of goth as heck ice creams, views from hammocks, and Jake being fluffy (though he’s been hiding in his nests to escape the heat, so less of those right now).
In fun news, I’m on holiday for a week now, so hoping to get some art and craft projects done. After sleeping. And replacing the laptop fan (may the gods help me).