The Sunday Fraggle report

Well I missed last Sunday as I only had 4 pictures, and as a result have now got too many, so lots to look at this week 🙂

The weather has not been kind, but I have had some long journeys to see clients, so have come across some quite lovely views, and my little Nikon S1 has been doing a cracking job. Last week I went to North Yorkshire again, and the sun was arguing with the clouds to see who would win out.

North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire~Nikon S1
North Yorkshire
North Yorkshire~Nikon S1

On my way back I went through a village called Ravensworth and came across this ruined castle.The remains here date from the 14th Century, although it’s thought there has been a castle there since Norman times. The chap who built this one was Henry Baron FitzHugh. n 1391 he enclosed 200 acres (81 ha) around the castle, creating a park.The castle started to be pulled down in the 16th century, and the stone was used for other buildings in the area.

Ravensworth Castle
Ravensworth Castle~Nikon S1
Ravensworth Castle
Ravensworth Castle~Nikon S1

hmm blew the sky out a bit in t hat 2nd shot but I like the composition so all is not lost.

Last weekend Phil worked on Sunday and I spent a little while trying to get some decent shots of the birds in my garden, through the front window as it was too cold out.

Mrs.Blackbird
Mrs.Blackbird~Nikon S1
Mr.Robin
Sir.RobinZNikon S1
Mr.Robin
Sir.Robin~Nikon S1

I tried to get a decent shot of the Lady Robin too, but she’s a bit more bashful and quicker to jump back into the bushes out of sight as soon as she’s got something from the feeder.

This week I had a 3 hour drive over to the west go the country, visiting clients in Whitehaven on the West coast, Penrith,Dalston,and Kewick. Lots of long driving times, I set off at 7.15am and eventually got home at 6.30pm, but was hugely compensated by seeing the mountains and Lake Bassenthwaite on my travels.  It’s been quite a while since I had to go there, and it was lovely to visit old photo haunts and take new ones with snow in place.

blog124-3-2
duvet cover :)~Nikkon S1
Cloud cover
Cloud cover~Nikkon S1
light and shade
light and shade~Nikkon S1
sheep
black sheep & white~Nikkon S1
Blue sky Mountain
Blue sky Mountain~Nikon S1
Skiddaw & Lake Bassenthwaite
Skiddaw & Lake Bassenthwaite~Nikon S1
Lake Bassenthwaite
Lake Bassenthwaite~Nikkon S1
View from my clients front driveway
View from my clients front driveway~Skiddaw~Nikkon S1

That was the photo highlight of the week really. I am very impressed with what the tiny Nikkon S1 can do, especially with the 11-27mm lens that it comes with which I used for the landscape shots, and I also used the little 300mm zoom I got for it, for taking the bird shots, to the point where I no longer take the big D700 out for work journeys and everyday use. It captures a fair amount of detail, granted that that has to be brought out in Lightroom, but at least it’s in there to begin with.

There are some jobs though that only the D700 can do, and one of those jobs was for me to take some decent photo’s of Phil’s bass guitars. (A commission no less!!) I decided I would shoot each one separately and use a light painting technique. This was a bit of a faff as of course the room has to be completely dark and the room I use is quite small so lots of bumping elbows and knees.  I had a black backdrop specially bought on Amazon,  it came all the way from china,worked really well and a was a bargain. The photo’s have come out really well, and I am going to do some close ups and arty farty shots to go with, here are a couple of the ones I took.

Fender Jazz ( mexican special edition)~Nikon D700
Fender Jazz ( mexican special edition)~Nikon D700
Can't spell this
Rickenbacker

and finally my shot for The Sunday challenge~ theme Gadgets….

:)
🙂

I can’t claim originality, I saw a similar picture way back when, and always fancied doing my own version.

And now it’s Sunday night, I’ve burned my fingers cooking Sunday dinner, spilled boiling milk on myself, sigh, but had a lush roast ham dinner. Shelley and Cal came for a visit and Cal fell over and bumped his head in 2 places at once for heaven’s sakes. I don’t think he will be someone who does things by halves, or even singles!  Now Phil’s practicing bass lines over a C maj 7th chord 🙂 and I am saying goodnight WordPressiverse,

laters gaters 😉

 

 

 

moving house

hello goodbye
hello goodbye

 

So I have been absent for many days. Not really moving house, but changing from old mac to new, which is just as arduous and slightly more stressful than moving house.  I had my old one for 5 years, and my new one is a result of the savings I’ve made from giving up smoking, and a contribution from my luvverly hubberly for my birthday (which was yesterday 🙂 ).  OMG though, macs have a ‘migration assistant’ but that didn’t work for me, I didn’t want ALL the old crap, just some of it! Lots of faffing with dropbox, evernote, and the loss of a load of photo processing software I bought a long the way.  That was a hard bit, over the years as I’ve got into photography I’ve squandered my pocket money on photo processing software, Elements 9, Lightroom 4, topaz, SPE, photomatrix, Nik FX HDR & colour pro (are you horrified yet??) And to be truthful I’ve used all of these a lot and had some grand results (well I liked them)!  but a lot of them are not transferrable, and I also realise that as I’ve developed (no pun intended- but it is a good one!) as a snapper, I’ve felt the need for most of these programs less and less. Maybe because the time I have to give to photography is less and less as work time grows more and more :).  Needless to say I have kept lightroom, and am upgrading to elements 11, and that will be that.  Maybe when I retire I’ll go doolally with HDR and stuff again.   So here I am on my big screen, it’s amazing to see photo’s so large!, Amazing detail, so I am loving the 27″ screen I have now, and how fast the mac responds. If only my internet connection was so good! 😦

I’m also using the cloud for a lot of stuff I used to store on the old mac hard drive, so am hoping this mac is cleaner for longer.  My son is going to take charge of the old mac, so it’s got a good home to go to, and me and the newbie, well we’re in lurve 😀 😀

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