Thumb twiddling

The same old things have kept me from taking many photographs again. Waiting for deliveries or collections and the shortening days.Having finished stage one of the poultry book I can't start on stage to until I get the hard copy in my hands, which will be in about a week's time. With no project getting me fired up it's been a case of a few random pictures, some of which slot in to my ongoing projects.

I found my first ball in ages but couldn't decide which picture worked best. In the end I felt that the vertical one had something extra to it beyond being a record of a lost ball.

The on-off church project might have got another addition, but the chances of the calendar being done this year is slim.

At a bit of a loose end this afternoon, which was the first free one in ages, I headed to the dreaded nature reserve armed with a wide angle and the ubiquitous superzoom which I tried to keep in my bag. I got off to a good start in using only the ultrawide, but very tame birds in the 'zoo' soon tempted me to try photographing them. It was a waste of time. Although the results were sharp enough there was nothing of interest to the pictures. Most of them got deleted and I remembered why I gave up on photographing wildlife.

Even more tempting than easily approachabe birds are fungi. There are lots about at this time of year and they have the advantage of not moving very quickly! But while it's a bit easier to get technically decent pictures of fungi than of birds, and to have more control over how you frame the shots they still end up being pictures of fungi. Of which I think there are plenty already. But it passed a few minutes.

Probably the best shot I got was the second I took as I left the car park. The trouble with an ultrawide lens is that you have to be very, very close to your subject to make it large in the viewfinder. Which meant I was nearer to the big duck than I thought I was and tripped over its base when I walked away!

Another egg display has appeared on a road I travel regularly. It's one of the more elaborate and professional looking displays but I'm not sure if quail fit my main poultry project. It certainly fits the side-project of egg displays.

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'Macro'

In the past I've mentioned how I had three focal lengths available back in the dark ages - 28mm, 50mm, 100mm - and how I have come back to finding them natural to use in these digital days. Having got rid of my brilliant but heavy 105mm macro lens and replaced it with a great and light 85mm non-macro I realised that I'd made a mistake. No doubt it's a fantastic portrait lens, but it doesn't focus closely enough to be useful for me. When a 100mm Tokina macro lens came up for grabs on 'that forum' I debated with myself whether it would fill my void. At the price it was for sale I took a chance.

Although I won't be using it much for real close up photographs I have tried it out and it's good. Mostly it'll be used as a normal lens and it certainly fits my requirements of light weight and small size. It focusses quickly enough and, quite importantly, it also renders the out of focus areas nicely. Compared to the Sigma lenses I've had it matches the colours that Nikon lenses produce. Sigmas were always a bit too warm for my liking. The burning question now is to dump the fast mid range zoom or not. Somehow I doubt I'll have the bottle for that!

Using a macro lens for landscape photography would be anathema to the denizens of photogeekdom. I see endless searches for advice on which landscape or portrait lens is best. A lens is a lens, it's what you point it at that determines whether the picture will be a landscape or a portrait. Trying to get that message accross is pretty pointless. People seem to want black and white answers.

It's the weekend, so I have been out and about looking for signs of eggs. Friday was bright and sunny which didn't make for easy photography. The light was either too contrasty or from the wrong direction. I much prefer a bright but overcast sky. Admittedly the pictures lack the punch which everyone else seems to deem obligatory these days. I'll stay out of step on this one.

Saturday was just the way I like it, except that it was trying to rain. My task was to revisit the feed merchant's and get a couple of better shots of stuff using flash. I'm well out of my depth using artificial light but I managed to improve one picture.

Anything poultry related is fair game for this project, so a couple of garden sculptures of chickens seemed worth a snap. I'd noticed them last week but knew I'd need more light to pick them out.

On the way home I stopped off at an honesty box to add to the growing collection of pictures of roadside egg sales. Although I did take a couple of wider views the pink box was appealing in issolation.

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Technical stuff

When it comes to computers I work on a 'need to know' basis. Which means I know how to switch them on and off and use the software I use. How they work or what the bits in the box are I neither know nor care. I am aware when they are full up though. Mine was pretty much full a year ago but by deleting all the absolutely rubbish photos I'd got stored on it I managed to keep it going. In one respect this was good in that it made me more discerning about my pictures. As the end approached it also made me more discerning about what I took photographs of - almost to the point of shooting like in the days of film!

Gratuitous picture to break page up.

Eventually the inevitable occurred and last week I had to either get a new PC or have a bigger hard drive installed. Either way I was going to have to save my Lightroom catalogue (among other things) and reinstall it on the new drive. Having opted for the cheaper alternative I now have my original machine running as it used to, albeit a little faster, but with loads of room for more rubbish photos! Getting Lightroom back and working proved surprisingly painless. With that done I thought that an upgrade to the latest version was in order. This was not done without trepidation when I bought the upgrade. The installation went smoothly and once more I had everything back as it should be and looking familiar. Naturally enough I was prompted to install another upgrade to deal with cameras released since Lightroom 5 had been launched - including my small 'fishing' camera meaning I no longer have to convert the raw files to DNGs before Lightroom will ingest them. This also was simple to do.

What I have found is that the upgrade was well worth it. Some sliders have disappeared, but more have replaced them. I have been most impressed by the defringing controls. Previously I struggled to remove fringing from shots taken with my little camera. It involved a lot of messing about, but one click pretty much deals with anything. If it doesn't shoving one slider across finishes the job. It's like magic!

There are other features I doubt I'll ever use, and some changes I still have to get my head round to use as intuitively as before but that'll come. None of this makes my pictures any better, they just look better processed...

Yesterday was wet, with the rain promised to clear in the afternoon. Which it did, providing that fleeting period when the skies are leaden in one direction and the sun bright in the other. Depending on wind strength this can last a while or be over in a few minutes. Having had white balance difficulties with the smaller camera earlier in the week I'd shifted the setting from auto to sunny. It didn't seem to make much difference and everything looked a bit blue. It took me a while to twig that this was a white balance issue for some reason, but once I did and I made a slight adjustment the grey skies lost the vivid dark blue and looked much more like they had in reality. D'oh.

The beach can usually be relied on for a lost ball or two. With the total number of balls photographed now over 250 I'm open to more experimentation. Using a small camera that can focus close gives opportunities DSLRs don't. After playing safe for a couple of shots I got in much tighter and cropped the ball in the foreground. It's a bit soft, but as a picture it's different to all the other ball pictures I've made.

I tried some other ideas on a bit of a ball I found later, but it didn't work out. It did give me something to try another time though. After four years of taking pictures of balls it's nice to know I haven't exhausted all the posibilities yet.

There is no great depth or meaning to these ball pictures (although I could invent some arty-farty BS I suppose!!), they're a way of keeping the creative juices flowing. Of making me think. Of finding ways to work with limited resources. A sort of visual and technical work out to try and keep in tune.

While I was wandering around ideas for the parking theme began to crystallise at last. Nothing to show yet. Although I think I now have an idea where to go with it. Maybe.

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Calling it a day?

Having photographed ball number 200 this morning I'm wondering if it's time to stop or if the 'series' should be open-ended. It's not as if it's a great hardship to stop and take a photograph or two of a ball when I stumble upon one.

This is the perennial problem with personal 'projects' that have no finishing line. Particularly for someone as indisciplined as me! I need deadlines otherwise I let things roll on, and on, and on. I finished at the quarry because spring arrived. The Gone Out project was time limited as it had to be done in one hit on the day I thought of it. Everything else seems to remain in a state of flux, getting dipped into now and then, abandoned, picked up again.

Part of the difficulty is that taking photographs isn't a full time occupation, it fits in around other things like work and fishing. And I can only concentrate on one thing at a time. If I get my fishing head on then it's fish or bust. When the camera head returns it's photographs or nothing.

At best I'm 'noodling' around with photography. I'm not committed, because such a commitment seems absurd to me. Just as when I noodle around on a guitar most of what's produced is junk. Repetitive or imitative junk. Just the same every now and then something original and surprising materialises. If I get lucky it can be worked into something more substantial.

That's not to say I'm not serious about my photographs, only that I can't take photography very seriously. It's as absurd as catching fish and letting them go. The important thing, personally and psychologically, is in the doing rather than the end result. Both involve problem solving in order to achieve an end. It's that problem solving process that engages and exercises the mind. That's where the interest lies.

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Trompe-l'œil

Because photographs flatten everything they allow one to play around with representation in an ambiguous way.

For example, the reading of the picture above alters when the information is provided that the sky is reflected in water.

The Lost Balls Found series continues apace. I have now clocked up 112 balls.

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Milestone

A walk to the shops today gave me two more Lost Balls Found taking the total to 50. The interesting fact is that I spotted number 49 on my way out but didn't notice number 50 (which must have been there all along) until my return journey. It's always worthwhile retracing your steps or to keep turning round to get a different view. It's surprising what you can miss.

Number 50 - with 49 in the background.

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A walk in the park

After an early tea I set off to a country park because the rain had eased up and the sun was looking like it might appear for the first time yesterday. When I got there the rain had beaten me to it. Not wet enough to put me off I sheltered the camera under my jacket to keep the drizzle off it.

The first top spot of the day was another Lost Ball! A lucky one because it had been washed downstream by the time I returned. The rainfall hadn't been much, but these upland streams don't need much to pick up pace and colour.

Lost ball 19

The dampness was keeping the smaller birds under cover, which was fine as my big lens is at the lens hospital, the waterfowl were mostly laying on the bank with their heads tucked under their wings. That made them easy to approach and photograph, particularly the bedraggled cygnets.

Ugly ducklings

I haven't visited the park for a lot of years, and it's more manicured than I remembered it, but still wild in places. Parts of it reveal it's industrial heritage, although nature is reclaiming it in the less visited areas. Of course dog walkers abound. Which can be fun when the dog is a lively five month old bearded collie!

 George

The rain had stopped by the time I'd completed my circuit so I headed for the hills of the Land that Time Forgot. Of course it's micro-climate was in operation and the world was misty and wet there. After climbing up the side of a stream that had been almost dry a week ago I descended and tried some arty shots of water droplets on bracken fronds. Nice idea. Poor execution.

Looking down the formerly-industrialised upland stream

Droplet

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Everyone loves a teasel shot

Up early on a frosty morn and back to the quarry hoping the light might be good. It sure was sunny and the sky blue but the rim of the quarry was shading too much of the place. It's a shame that somewhere that is being reclaimed by nature is obviously invaded by people who are happy to leave litter. Anywhere flat was a tip and the windward margins of the pool full of bottles and, for some reason, shoes. Two more lost balls were among the flotsam and duly added to my collection.

Despite all this there were rabbits to be seen, and birds of various sorts - notably jackdaws perching on the cliffs. In amongst the vegetation were teasels, backlit for a perfect cliché photo. But who cares?


There wasn't much else that inspired me apart from a couple of attempts at photos without subjects, and one missed opportunity that would have benefited from the use of the tripod, but which didn't look worth the time and effort through the viewfinder or on the review screen. Which goes to show that you should never make your mind up until you are back in civilisation. Another lesson learned the hard way.

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One shot isn't art, but a series is

It's always surprised me how many footballs find their way into rivers. Over the last few days I've seen a few lost balls - not just footballs. So I've photographed them. Here's a couple. I wonder how many I'll end up photographing? Probably no more now it's in my mind! But the rule from now on is only one exposure of the ball and no cropping of the image.

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