last post of the year...

yes, this is the last post of the year.

I ended the year feeling a bit tom dick. Nothing serious, probably rusted joints due to all the cold rain. Anyway, today I was in need of some fresh air and exercise and, as the rain had stopped, I went for a walk...
Later at home I realised two hours walking is probably too much exercise on the first recovery day.

Note to self: new year resolution no.1 - must learn to do things by halves.

Still, it was a nice afternoon-evening for walking.


If only I had remembered to wear the right shoes.

New year resolution no.2 - be sure to wear the right shoes!

Shoes just seem so crappy these days, don't they?; even my favourite doc martin gibsons aren't what they were. But that wasn't what I had on today. No, I had on these Cat(erpiller)s which by the look of them could kick holes in concrete, however, some clever souls (no pun intended) at Cat HQ have cut corners by giving them nasty cloth inners so, inevitably, there's blisters.

Has that put me off walking? No!

New years resolution no.3 - more wandering abaht, sir!

same again...

ice cream vendor

not quite same again, I notice. The ram is more 'inky' - which, surpringly, is the effect I'm aiming for. The vendor turned out more...hmmm, gouache? It's interesting, nevertheless.

I could get quite into this photoshopping lark!

[A thought occurred to me: Is it still photography? There's no light involved...maybe it's graphic art. Hey, another field I've just got interested in! On gloomy tupperware sky days...]

I think the ideal is to know what you want to do and know how to get there. Practice, practice, practice...

ye olde curiosity photoshoppe

It's dull and freezing outside. And it's really disheartening. It's the kind of light that Bill Bryson accurately described as ''like living inside tupperware''; I'm not at all inspired to go wandering with ixus.

So I stay indoors and play around with photoshop.

I've not done much photoshop (in fact, I normally use paintshop pro - similar, I suppose, but I don't really know my way around either.) Mostly I use it to crop, cut and paste and shuffle around with layers to make new, but straightforward, images.

A very kind person has sent me a few special techniques to try and I thought I'd have a go on some photos I took a while ago and see if I can come up with something. I've used photoshop, not paintshop pro, because the terminology in the lesson is for photoshop - I may as well be hung for a sheep rather than a lamb...


aries: last winter, by the main road into town, there was a family group of an unusual breed of sheep, a ram, ewe and lamb. As I was taking photos, the big fella came across to see what my business was and obliged me with this profile. Handy really, cos the camera only has a little zoom...

the original aries portrait.

ephemera

here today, gone tomorrow... ephemeron: the mayfly - 24 hour party insect.

I have a passing interest in poster artwork, in particular old posters or in the style of old posters. I don't collect them as such...but we find we collect stuff over the years.

[I didn't know it was called ephemera until my attention was brought to william the dog's blog (why would a dog be collecting ephemera is anyone's guess).]





no cheese with this one, sorry.

out of the box with temp grex

I feel as if I've spent the past month in a box, working from sun to sun with no opportunity to get out, wander about and take some snaps. Now the holidays has finally begun and I'm chomping at the bit...

but I'm not entirely obligation free, it being christmas in a few days and I have to buy some cheese this afternoon, so I took a quick stroll with ixus around the town parks.


In the days of the roman occupation, Cirencester, my adopted home town, was the second-most important centre in England! (No cigars for knowing which one was more important.) Nowadays, London (okay, have a cigar then!) has a population of around 12 million while we muster about 20,000; so where did we go wrong...?



...anyway, I'm thinking its not always about finding the perfect subject and photographing it, but taking any old subject and finding the perfect photograph. Not that I'm saying I've done that but if you don't make mistakes, you probably don't make anything else either. It's just a study of temp grex; twenty minutes well spent - making mistakes. ;o)



I think it means Time Team though I must warn you that I failed to make double figures in my last latin test. The Team are a bunch of TV archaeologists who go around the country digging it up for our entertainment - only in the UK, eh?!

meanwhile....in the park

Man, it was warm today...8 degrees cee - at christmas time! global warming?

So, all these Canada geese flew in from...Canada (I checked their passports). In the interest of safety and in compliance with our new articles of war against terror, I took all their pictures just to be sure... ;o)

...then I went and bought some cheese.




silver birch trees

hey, I played around a bit on some photo software - just the vanilla controls - but I also took the photo at an odd angle to try to exaggerate the drooping branches. out of the box.

goose getting out of the bath

coot and swan

swans: they pair for life and can break a man's arm.

I find it diffult to photograph swans, not just because I don't own a zoom lens and I fear they might break my arm, but they really are whiter than white! It's like bleach-out, man!

they think it's all over.

close to the edge

avebury

no one knows why our ancient ancestors erected this huge circle of standing stones. some weigh up to 40 tons and the stones form an almost perfect circle about a mile in circumference. the circle itself is surrounded by a wide earthwork ditch which in turn is enclosed by a high mound (I'm guessing this is the earth extracted from the ditch.)

not that I'm superstitious but each time I've visited it's been a bit spooky. on this occasion, it was a beautiful cloudless sky - that's why we decided to go! - within a mile of the site, it became overcast with thick grey swirling cloud which remained, more or less, all the while we were there. As soon as we came away, the sky became bright and blue once more. :-0

view from on top of the outer ridge. note the blue sky beyond!

...and the dyke. all man-made but without machines.

older than history itself.

I'm sure my ancient ancestor buried a bone around here somewhere...

the fractal tree

The best bit about blogger is sharing interests, learning stuff and seeing things from new perspectives - ones I wouldn't have thought of myself.

I'm made up because Anne has sent me a version of the fractal tree. I don't know how it's done but it's brilliant! Thanks Anne. :o)

See Anne's beautiful images at A Day in the Life


hmmm, I'm feeling in the mood for some poetry - luckily for everyone I don't know how. Here's a haiku instead which, the way I do them, is more word puzzle than poem. If you don't want to see the results, look away now.



twigs sprout from branches
sons in their father's image
grand family tree

bad haiku monday

I declare monday, bad haiku day. Here's some bad haiku I prepared earlier...


ovums yellow pearl
treasured orb from juices deep
prairie oyster cure

soft breeze parts your blouse
enticing valley between
smooth and curving flesh

evening classmates
learning the language of love
one has to start here


this was intended to be a clue to a movie title. first correct guess goes to the top of the class! [extra clue: it's not a hollywood movie]

sculpting with movelets

I'm using a little Canon ixus - for the gizmophiles out there, it's an ixus400 - it's diddy and that's why I like it. It can be a constant companion without getting in the way (a nice thought if only I could get into the habit). It'll be two years old this christmas, the same length of time I've been interested in taking photographs. (well, I dabbled before but I was more of a gadget queen than a photographer and it was ages ago and most of it has been lost in the passing years, including my old camera!) If I'm still keen come my next birthday, I may acquire a new SLR... woot!

So, what does one do with the whistles and bells that come with these digital cameras? All cameras seem to have this ''movie mode''. I think you either decide to concentrate your interest on taking photos or making movies. If you set your sights on the latter, you buy a movie camera – it’s the right tool for the job. But like many excited, new digital camera owners, I tried out the mode on its first outing – I filmed my wife trying to concentrate on her magazine and getting very irritatable at my antics, a scene probably duplicated in households all over the western world - but after that initial experiment I put the feature in the mental folder labelled ''gimmicks''.

Then I came across Debbie Moorhouse's movelets. In Debbie's words;

''Movement is the key''.

''Although the term "movelets" hints at the idea of a short movie, it is primarily intended to draw attention to the principal feature of the movelets, which is this. They are little films of things that move. Move-lets''.

Debbie's movelets can be viewed on her website, Alternative Species. Look out for her From The Bus which, for me, is particularly inspiring.

Move-lets?! Yes, they're not supposed to be movies.

Movelet (n) ;
1. An image taken in the regular manner of a point-and-shoot photo, but with the video mode.
2. An whimsical experiment in utilising one of the more inadequate whistles and bells that come with digital point-and-shoot cameras.
3. A little picture of things that move, and
4. Just a bit of fun.

shadow theatre

doodling with soup

At school I liked nothing better than sitting at the back of physics class and doodling cartoons. I was inspired to do a cartoon recently after reading a story about someone's hapless pet fish...


''...that time I saw him and saved him from the cat.''


Captions to pictures and pictures to captions, every picture tells a different story - and the more absurd the better.

The idea was to introduce a cat called mirth but I'm not sure I'll find the time before the enthusiasm runs out...

possum

gears

traction

weir wheel on the churn

chapel

poste restante

swirls

images of nature

fractal: A geometric pattern that is repeated at ever smaller scales to produce irregular shapes and surfaces that cannot be represented by classical geometry.

can you see it? :D

anyway, the london plane is a fine tree; a hybrid of east and west - a metaphor for london culture. i was happy to leave london for the sticks and i wouldn't go back now. i do miss the culture though - but you can't have your cake and eat it. i miss it when i see the fantastic urban images people take; the city is so capricious, the happenings seemingly so much more transient and plentiful than anything in the country.

hey, why can't i have my cake and eat it?!

cow parsley in autumn

october

the recipe for disaster asks for a can of worms

I may as well declare this blog open.

Now I've got to think up some stuff to put in.

'Sculpting' alludes to a desire to be creative/expressive though I'm not sure how, hence 'With Soup'.

I’m not even sure I actually like soup…

My Soup

Some people say that chicken soup is the panacea of all ills and the eternal comforter. If you’d have asked young ian russell he’ll have told you it was cream of tomato. Soup to me was cream of tomato; if my mum offered me ''soup'', it wouldn’t be anything else. I’d have it with little bits of broken bread – not croutons, mind. Oh no, we’d never heard of them – just small square pieces torn from a larger square slice from a rectangular white loaf.

After I’d eaten the soup, I’d be left with a tell-tale orange tide mark circling my lips, looking like a prototype for Ronald MacDonald. I think at that point my mum would grab me and scrub my chops with a damp flannel before sending me out to play in the street.

Now, if I think of soup at all, I’d say my clear favourite is my wife’s gazpacho. On a warm day, al fresco, it is to die for!

Now, mulligatawny is anglicized Tamil for pepper water, and minestrone is a soup of ''multitudinous miscellanea'' – there are few rules to this soup, anything goes. It’s the kind of soup that if it was a flag, I’d salute it, if it was a lover, I'd wrap my coat around it and if it was a dog I’d throw it a stick…for a very, very long time.

So, that just about covers all the bases (everybody knew about animal crackers, eh?)

procrastination is the mother of stress; shop early for christmas?!

So, I bought this donkey yesterday.

Normally I don't take much notice of those flyers that newspaper people slip in between the sections of their newspapers.

I believe they're called flyers because they fly to the floor as soon as you open the paper. And it's a short hop from the floor to the recycle bin which is their destiny - unread.

Anyway, last week this happened and I looked down and this donkey looked up. And it said Buy Me!

So I did. Yesterday, with the convenience of internet shopping and I hope it is going to make someone's christmas a bit special this year.

I don't much like conventional shopping - all that pushing and shoving, never finding an assistant when you want one, beating great hords of them off with a stick when you don't. All that frustration ending in inevitable disappointment. But internet shopping is a boon! In fact, I find it so enjoyable I fear it's addictive...

After I put the donkey in the basket, I looked around to see what else they had and I ended up with a couple of mosquito nets, 50 small trees and a fresh water supply for 50 villagers. But the donkey still remains my favourite.

Of course, it isn't right to brag about your charitable donations, and I wouldn't. If I'm honest, I couldn't pretend to be very charitable. I agree with causes if pressed but I must have a high conscience threshold because without pressure it rarely crosses my mind that people are so much worse off than I would ever know.

The beauty of the 'Oxfam Unwrapped' scheme is it makes it fun - more than an act of slipping a fiver in a tin or buying a ticket for a raffle. Also, the bizarre notion of buying exotic farm animals as christmas gifts just about gives you permission to mention it to your friends in the pub.

And this is a mutual benefit because the more it gets around, the more donkeys will be wrapped up this christmas.

Or camels, or milk cows, or goats...