macro – fraggle ~ rocking a camera across the Universe

365 ~ 14th ~ 20th March

March 21, 2021March 20, 2021Posted in 365, flower, food, Fuji, FujiX-T2, macro, photography, still life, UncategorizedTagged #365picturetoday, 365, fraggle, FujiX-T2, March2021, yellow55 Comments

This week was colour week, and the colour is yellow. I have even less yellow things than pink, not sure why as I like yellow better, but it was fine, I didn’t struggle to find anything. I’m not overly enthralled with any of these, somehow, except maybe the car.

Day 73 ~ Triangle. Yellow can represent freshness, happiness, positivity, clarity, energy, optimism, enlightenment, remembrance, intellect, honor, loyalty, and joy. It is also associated with Spring and fresh yellow flowers.Today be on the lookout for yellow triangles. I am standing in a parking lot next to a yellow arrow. Where else might you find yellow triangles. You could also choose to create a yellow triangle using items you have around the house.

It was raining and cold of course, so I decided to do the ‘use items from around the house’ bit. As I was making my toast for breakfast, the idea of the butter triangle popped into my head. Always good to have an idea that ends in yum. And yes the toast is burnt at one edge and raw at the other, my toaster is pants, but this bit was an end crust and just done for the photo.

Day 74 ~ Safe. Whether it be ducks in Boston or here in Texas, deer on a mountain highway, or children on a neighborhood street, these diamond-shaped yellow signs are used to help keep everyone safe. Road crews and runners also wear yellow vests helping to keep them safe by making them more visible to motorists on the streets.Where do you see yellow being used as a safety measure? Photograph it today.

As always, being at work all day doesn’t make things easy. Annoyingly I saw many yellow jacketed workmen on the journey home, but stopping on a major roadwork site at rush hour wasn’t an option. I resorted to my local shop instead, as they have yellow social distancing signs on the windows and floors. Londis and Morrisons are gifts that keep on giving. (Also that’s my little Minty car reflected in the window, it’s so cute 😍)

Day 75 ~ Wheel. See if you can find a wheel on a bicycle, a yellow car, a yellow bus, a yellow truck or anything else…you get the idea! Just include a wheel in the photo.

Well I couldn’t find one. I kept checking the carpark outside where I work and no yellow vehicles visited. None around where I live either. So I got out the little people and dinky cars when I got home from work and took them out on the front driveway. The sun was going down so I had some nice light for it, am sure the neighbours think I’m mad.

Day 76~ Brilliant. Yellow is my favourite colour! To me it symbolizes sunshine and light, happiness and joy. It is indeed the most brilliant of colours.Yellow is a ‘stand out’ colour. It simply glows. What brilliant yellow can you find in your world today! Let us see the sunshine in your life.

Pfft! Sunshine my arse. No matter, Morrisons do flowers, so I called in after work to see if they had any daffodils, they did but they were still closed up, but these chrysanthemums were just gagging to be photographed. Me,me,me! they shouted, I’m brilliant! I agreed.

Day 77 ~ Sign. There is no shortage of signs that are yellow after all it is a cautionary color! All along the road there are signals and alerts, with warnings of hazards and dangers. There are markers to guide us as well as to deter us; this battered sign is giving us a warning that you are about to go over the cliff! So your challenge is to share the yellow sign that helped you out today!

This one didn’t seem that different to day 74’s ‘safe’ really. I didn’t get a yellow sign helping me out as I already knew where to go for some warning signs. The coast line at Trow Landing is eroding at a fair rate, so there is a risk of cliffs crashing down if you are walking along the coastal pathway, not that I’ve ever seen that happen. I quite like the right hand triangle sign here, the little guy looks like he’s having a rave.

Day 78 ~ Inspiration. We can find so much that’s inspirational in our life. What inspires you today?

It’s raining (again) today, so inspiration comes from looking at Saul Leiter’s photographs and reading books on art and creativity.

Day 79 ~ Cloth. Cloth and material can be found virtually everywhere and I’m sure it won’t be hard for you to find some yellow cloth to include in your photo today.

It nearly was hard. Phil has got a faded pale yellow T shirt but he’s gone to work in it, and I don’t have a damn thing in yellow! How’s that happened? Will have to rectify that for spring. Luckily I remembered Giorgio in the spare room, and that sufficed for yellow cloth.

So that’s another week done and dusted. Stay tooned for next week ~ adventures with angles.

365 ~21st ~ 27th February

February 28, 2021February 27, 2021Posted in 365, food, Fuji, FujiX-T2, lego, macro, photography, UncategorizedTagged 365, Feb2021, fraggle, FujiX-T2, photography58 Comments

This week is Symmetry week which I thought wouldn’t be too bad, and it was mostly OK.

Day 52 ~ Square. Symmetry in our images can be achieved when two halves of an image hold the same weight. However, symmetry doesn’t have to be literal in the sense that each half mirrors the other. But rather, it’s a balancing of objects and space. Symmetry in composition can also be achieved when different elements are used to help achieve the appearance of being symmetrical. This one caused me problems, not sure why, I did a whole month of squares back in the 366 days of 2016, maybe that was it, hard to think of something I hadn’t done before! Kitchen tiles to the rescue!

Day 53 ~ 2 O’clock. How will you find symmetry today at 2 o’clock? Maybe it’s just the story behind your symmetry. I am very excited to see how you will find it today! This one was also hard, I had a full day of clients so had to cheat and alter the clock when I had 10 minutes spare. At the real 2 O’clock I had a sucker in someone’s ear! Still this is what I do after each client, write up my notes on the laptop. There’s symmetry in there somewhere!

Day 54 ~ Incredible. When it snows, I like to go out and photograph snowflakes. It makes winter more bearable. To me, snowflakes are incredible! Each one is unique and the symmetry presented in each individual flake is perfection. If it’s snowing in your neck of the woods today, why not try and capture the symmetry in a snowflake. No two are the same! If not, I’m sure you can find all kinds of other symmetrical things in your world. What stands out as incredible to you? Nope, no snow here anymore. What we do have is Winnie, who is incredibly crazy, wild, nosy, fast-as-lightening, funny and definitely symmetrical.

Day 55 ~ Window. Windows are great photography subjects…. whether looking at them or looking out of them. They provide interest and can even pick up cool reflections. We are practicing symmetry in our photography this week and windows are perfect for this. Look for houses or buildings and notice where the windows are placed. How can you photograph them with symmetry? I decided the Love Window in my shed would be good for this one. Thinking about it could have used the Wallace & Grommet Window for square. Duh.

Day 56 ~ Meaningful. As we’ve seen this week, symmetry is a multi-faceted word. In its broadest sense, symmetry means balanced. In photography, this means that your photo is well-composed and that it has interest and movement throughout. How lines and light move through an image create balance. How a subject is placed in the frame with regard to negative space or background creates balance.Find something that is both familiar and meaningful to you. Study it for a few minutes. Notice its shape. How does its look, change in different light or from another perspective? Photograph the object such that you create symmetry by way of balance. You may choose to include the entire object or only a part. Whatever you do, create a meaningful image of something that is meaningful to you. This was easy.

Day 57 ~ Segment. Some images are symmetrical around a central point, like a spiders web. This type of symmetry is harder to find, but when you see it, it will immediately make sense. Radial symmetry pops up in architecture from time to time. Getting into the forest early in the morning to get the best light and with the dew still hanging around makes for great photos. I am lucky to have such a great place to go so close to home. Segments can be found in most circles.Where are you going to find your segments today? My first day off and nope to getting up early and finding a forest. I walked up to our local shop and bought a lemon!

Day 58~ Cones.

Are you ready for some photo fun! It is scavenger hunt day! Here is a list of items to go out and find and photograph! Once your hunt is complete, you will compile those images into a collage. Symmetry is everywhere. Today you are going on a scavenger hunt to look for cones and you will be photographing them in symmetry. The cone shape naturally lends itself to leading lines. Let’s find some cones and leading lines!Today you are on the hunt for cones! You can either position them in your photograph to draw your viewer’s eye, or maybe you might just want to find cones! Pine cone, ice cream cone, traffic pylon, pencil tip, nacho chip, tree, funnel, party hat, strawberry. I had to send off for party hats and funnels from Amazon as our local shop doesn’t have either, but I managed to cobble everything else together, and Phil got a cornetto for helping me out. I forgot about symmetry and leading lines and just made up little stories for most of them.

Well that’s another week over, and next week is the first week of the month so more ‘selfies’. 🥴😟

Stay tooned dear reader!

Botanical Gardens ~ May 2018 ~ Bluebell edition

July 21, 2018July 20, 2018Posted in Adventures, Fuji, FujiX-T2, gardens, landscape, macro, nature, photography, uncategorisedTagged adventure, bluebells, flowers, fraggle, FujiX-T2, landscape, macro, nature, photography, UK, woodlands23 Comments

The Botanical Gardens are surrounded by native woodlands, (as opposed to tourist woodlands? ) and when we were there the woods were absolutely carpeted with millions, or at least very many, bluebells. After doing the garden, and having lunch we went to photograph them. Might have gone a bit OTT. 🙂 So here I’m going to have a bluebell~fest if you get bored just move along 🙂

Well you get the idea:). After that, we went back to the car. Now, regular readers who read Part 1 will know we had to hand our registration number in to the desk at the Gardens, so they could let the car park people know, and thereby prevent a nasty parking fine. When we got back to the car guess what? A nasty parking fine stuck to my window. I was enraged dear reader! Sophie went and found the carpark man who put the ticket on the car (I didn’t dare approach him as I had violent urges) and when she came back she told me – “He says it often happens that the Garden people don’t send the information through quickly enough.” We would have understood that IF he hadn’t then gone on to say “I saw youse park up and head off without paying at the machine which is why I ticketed the car”!!! So basically he hadn’t bothered to wait for information from the Gardens and ticketed us before we had a chance to get in there! I was pretty apoplectic by now. We had to walk back to the gardens, get hold of one of the 3 staff there who were trying to deal with a long queue of people’s lunches and entry fees, get them to ring the carpark head office, and have the ticket nullified. This all took for bloody ever of course so not the best ending to our trip there.

So be warned if you are intending to visit, the Gardens own car park is very small, maybe 20 cars at a push, so the public one on the other side of the garden is where to park. Put a BIG note on the dashboard saying you’ve gone into the gardens, so the nitwit cockwomble jobsworth leaves you alone.

🙂

Durham Botanical Gardens ~ May 2018 ~ part 2

July 19, 2018Posted in Adventures, flower, Fuji, FujiX-T2, gardens, landscape, macro, nature, people, people, photography, uncategorisedTagged adventure, flowers, fraggle, FujiX-T2, landscape, macro, nature, people, photography, UK33 Comments

Part 1 HERE

After we exited the hot glass house we toddled off around the grounds,

So many different blossoms and blooms everywhere

As the Gardens are part of the University Campus, on sunny days the students come here to study, or chat, or be romantic 🙂

So that’s all for today folks, stay tooned for the Bluebell Woods just across from the Gardens.

Durham University Botanical Gardens~ May 2018

July 11, 2018Posted in Adventures, Fuji, FujiX-T2, gardens, landscape, macro, nature, orchid, photography, uncategorised, UncategorizedTagged Durham University Botanical Gardens, fish, flowers, fraggle, FujiX-T2, macro, nature, orchids, photography, UK26 Comments

At the beginning of May, Sophie and I went off to the Botanical Gardens at Durham University. I can’t say Durham is my favourite place to drive through (which you have to do to get to the gardens) as it’s olde worlde charm rapidly disappears when you have to navigate traffic bottlenecks on tiny roads on busy days. But we got to the gardens without too much stress and we were lucky enough to have a sunny day. There’s a large carpark near to the back entrance and a notice in it telling visitors to the gardens that the car park is free if they give their registration number to the garden’s pay desk, which I did. It cost £4 to get into the gardens.

The gardens are set in 10 hectares (which is 25 acres, not sure about feet/meters etc 🙂 ) of mature woodlands, and was opened by Dame Margot Fonteyn for reasons unbeknownst to me in 1970. I would have gone for Alan Titchmarsh meself 😀

After we paid our entrance fee we started out surrounded by magnificent tulips, they looked glorious in the sunshine.

loved the serrated edges on these next ones

and the blobs of purple on these

the first bit we visited was a big greenhouse thingy (called a glasshouse I believe) where they had exotic plants, cactii or cactuses (whatever) and the place was hot and humid. There was a button you could press that made a fine mist cover everything and everyone, which I pressed a couple of times soaking the family who was ahead of us while I hid behind a cheeseplant 😀 (note to self- grow up!).

There was also a pond in the glass house which was full of fish.

There was another pond with a huge lily pad on it, but sadly no lilies were out yet

It did have a crocodile head in it though so that was the consolation prize.

There were some lovely orchids in the glasshouse too

This little chap was in a glasshouse all on his own

but he had plenty to eat…

That’ll do for today, but stay tooned for when we visit the grounds and have a wander about.

all pictures can be embiggened by the flick of click 🙂

Alnwick Gardens ~ part 3 ~ flowers

June 11, 2018Posted in flower, Fuji, FujiX-T2, gardens, macro, photography, uncategorised, UncategorizedTagged adventure, Alnwick Gardens, April 2018, flowers, fraggle, FujiX-T2, macro, magnolia, photography, tulips, UK30 Comments

Part 1 HERE. Part 2 HERE

Of course, a garden isn’t really a garden without flowers. At the top of the central water cascade is where they’re all at, in a walled-off courtyard. Plenty of tulips in bloom in April of course, all gloriously coloured, such happy flowers to see after a long grey winter.

a lovely magnolia was in bloom too,

always glad to get the macro lens out.

Stay tooned folks, more to come. 🙂

Castle Eden Dene~ April 2018 ~ Part 2

April 22, 2018Posted in Adventures, Fuji, FujiX-T2, landscape, macro, nature, photography, uncategorised, UncategorizedTagged adventure, fraggle, FujiX-T2, landscape, macro, nature, photography, UK46 Comments

Part 1 HERE

After crossing the bridge we walked steadily down towards the burn (stream) and along the way I turned my lens on the little things along the way

But also took some of the obviously very old trees

On the way we came near to a road and could see this lovely building from it

Rowland Burdon III, a merchant banker, purchased the manor of Castle Eden in 1758, and in about 1765, with the assistance of architect William Newton, built the house which came to be known as The Castle. The house has three storeys and a seven-bay entrance front. The central three bays are canted and the whole carries a castellated parapet. Last October it was put up for sale for £3 million, some pictures of the interior are at THIS LINK, if anyone’s interested it’s still up for grabs! 🙂

The whole of the dene was covered in wild garlic plants, I bet it smells great when they all bloom!

That’s the end of the tour, though there’s a full album, which can be found HERE

All photo’s can be clicked on to embiggen so you can marvel at their wondrousness 🤣

Stay tooned for our next outing, back to Beamish Museum to see WW1 themed vehicles and horses.

Fraggle Report- Castle Eden Dene- April 2018- Part 1

April 16, 2018Posted in Adventures, Fuji, FujiX-T2, macro, nature, photography, uncategorised, UncategorizedTagged adventure, Castle Eden Dene, fraggle, FujiX-T2, macro, nature, photography, UK36 Comments

Last weekend Sophie and I managed a day out at Castle Eden Dene, it stayed dry and it wasn’t too cold which was enough for us to get out and about. Spring hadn’t quite arrived, but some flowers were popping up, and there were plenty of mosses and lichens for my new lens to have a look at.

The Dene itself is the largest, and biologically the richest, of a series of deep ravines that have been incised by streams flowing into the North Sea through the Magnesian Limestone and overlying boulder clay of coastal Durham. It is the largest area of semi-natural woodland in north-east England and, because the steep valley sides are mostly inaccessible, it has suffered relatively little from human interference. Over 450 species of plants have been recorded in the wood, many of which are typical of ancient woodlands that date back to pre-medieval times.

It didn’t really look very inviting as we set off along the path

but I put my new macro lens to good use, discovering the little things you don’t normally see when just walking on by

Catkins are a sure sign Spring is on the way..

Goat Willow catkins have separate male and female trees. Male catkins are clad in golden stamens; female catkins are spiky and green. Both secrete nectar – key energy for bees and butterflies in early spring.

We walked up a main pathway to start with, and to the right of us people’s gardens were on the opposite side of a big fence, but bits and bobs poked through it here and there..

we turned off the main path onto a track that led through the woodlands and found our way to Gunners Pool bridge. The bridge is one of sixteen that cross the Castle Eden Burn. It was fabricated in Hartlepool in the late 19th century for the Rev. John Burdon, whose family owned Castle Eden Dene, and is thought to have been erected in June 1877.

It was quite vertiginious and I was glad to get to the other side

More to come so stay tooned!

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Rising Sun Country Park ~ November 2017 ~ part 1

January 23, 2018January 24, 2018Posted in Adventures, animals, autumn, birds, Farm animals, Fuji, FujiX-T2, landscape, macro, nature, photography, uncategorised, wildlifeTagged adventure, donkeys, fraggle, FujiX-T2, horses, landscape, macro, nature, Nov17, photography, Rising Sun Country Park, UK39 Comments

Although Autumn was just about over, and the temperature wasn’t that great, Sophie and I decided to wrap up warm and go for a walk around the Rising Sun Country park. There’s 162 hectares of nature reserve with ponds, woodlands and extensive grasslands; a farm and Countryside Centre, so we figured there’d be enough to point our cameras at. No history lessons today, just a gentle walk to see what Mother Nature leaves for us when summer is over.