Monday 18 March 2024
Pending extinction
The last coal fired power station in the whole UK.
While I'd be a very long way down the list of people to argue against the transition to cleaner energy, I have to admit that I'll be kind of sad to see it go when it closes down later this year. It's been such a fixture on the horizon, and a landmark on the way out to the motorway all of my life.
I wish I could go on a tour of the station before it closes, but it doesn't look like they offer tours.
One more after the jump.
Sunday 17 March 2024
VHS
Remember these?
I've been digitising a few old tapes for a family member, and felt inspired to pay homage to the way we used to do home video.
Less than half a megapixel equivalent resolution, and full of analogue noise. Today, HD or even 4K in your pocket is now pretty much the standard.
I wonder what we will be recording our family memories on in another 30 years' time?
Saturday 16 March 2024
Never mind faffing with those flowers, I'm much cuter!
A long walk with my parents and Bailey seems to have done my mental health a bit of good today.
One more after the jump.
Friday 15 March 2024
It's a drill!
A few years ago, I did some macro work on a mirror. I thought I'd try it again here.
It may not have been the best idea, especially with the very harsh, raking light setup I went for. Despite cleaning the mirror carefully, I still ended up with a lot of dust spots in the image that had to be cleaned up in post. The flashes were very low down, in the same plane as the subject, so any dust on the surface of the mirror gets intensely highlighted!
Thursday 14 March 2024
Monochrome Bay
I'm not entirely sure what to write today. I don't know how I feel. Perhaps a bit better than yesterday, but still a bit dented.
It's been a full on day again.
I spent the majority of the day working in our High Voltage test area with an external calibration engineer. Unfortunately the test area is rather bodged onto the factory floor, and far too close to a lot of noisy production work for my liking. It was very unpleasantly noisy, and I spent most of the day shouting over the noise of machinery while trying to carry out a calibration. Despite a near-disaster that I thought had killed part of the equipment at one point, the work was successful, but my ears are still ringing now.
Wednesday 13 March 2024
I am exhausted
Sorry if you're one of the numerous people I've missed messages from or let down in some other way.
Life is very busy, and emulating normal human behaviour is exhausting. I'm forever half a step from running out of mental bandwidth completely.
Normal service may resume at some point, but for now, here's a backup image taken a few days ago.
Tuesday 12 March 2024
Bubbles!
Continuing the (unplanned) abstract theme with some bubbles today.
This is a very transient subject to shoot, so I ended up with a fairly narrow aperture and blasted the scene with a softbox from above.
I don't have any flashes with modelling lights, but I tried bouncing a worklight up onto the face of the softbox, which worked really well for finding my shot, but was dim enough to make little impact on the final shot.
The extension tubes are proving pretty handy for getting a bit closer. I might splash out on a decent set at some point, just from a quality of life standpoint.
A couple more after the jump.