Going Dutch

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I quite like this one, grubby weather notwithstanding.
Another backup, I am a tired quasi-human

The Netherlands, you say?

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More like the Bikerlands!
Another backup shot from Arnhem, where the Dutch certainly live up to the cycling stereotype.

Storage For Persons In Transit

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This one's a backup from the 7th, but amusingly, I could have taken essentially the same photo today had I been inclined - I was on the same vessel going in the opposite direction.
A tolerably successful trip, all told.

You Parked Over Here

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Arnhem, and perhaps the Netherlands in general has some very interesting buildings that would be plain, boring, functional blocks at home.
This is one of the walkways in Arnhem Centraal station's car park. The building itself is a very funky freeform shape, and the stairwells are quite cool, with very few perpendicular lines, glass in unexpected places, and walls that are slightly angled in interesting ways.

The widget I was testing passed (yay), apart from the bits we ran out of time to do (boo), and the bits I failed to ask for a quote for (hiss).

Stupid Boy.

Welkom Op De Korenmarkt (unless you have more than two wheels)

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I've been to Arnhem a few times over the years, but never had much opportunity to explore it until today.
I quite like it, at least the bits I've seen.

Incidentally, the rain in the Netherlands is every bit as wet as the rain in the UK (who knew?...)

Adjust Course

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En Route to the Netherlands for a work trip, my first overseas work trip since late 2019, as I recall.
A surprisingly easy trip on the way out, although I do wish the very drunk and slightly randy people out in the corridor would have kept it down at 3:30AM!

Setting Fire To The Budget

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I bought myself a new 3D printer from Prusa.
I'm looking forward to doing some interesting things with the 5 heads on this machine.
It's very nice to finally have a real toolchanging machine which can swap materials in a matter of seconds with minimal purge waste, as opposed to my previous MMU system, which took ages for every material swap, and wasted a lot of material purging the old material remnants out.

Amy

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I went to see Amy Macdonald live in Nottingham with a friend tonight after taking a last-minute day off work.
I really don't like crowds and close proximity to people, but she was fantastic, definitely worth putting up with the crowd for. It probably also helped that I've had the tickets for ages, and I've really been looking forward to it.
Lots of (great) new songs, but she dug through her back catalogue and belted out most of my old favourites too.

The Fuji definitely wasn't the right camera to shoot this with, at least from where I was sat, but the last thing I wanted to do was get kicked out by taking a bigger camera, so it had to do.

Running Rings Around Me

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I think this is the biggest diameter moon halo I've ever seen. It was really quite spectacular.
I was out and didn't have a real camera on me, but my phone has done a decent job, especially after a bit of massaging in Lightroom.

Quality Street

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A present from my in-laws subjected to the snackro treatment.
This one's a focus stack of 52 shots.
Ideally, I'd have either found a nice shiny example of this chocolate, or somehow polished it up to remove the marks from the surfaces.

Bottoms Up

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A backup photo today, I got home from work and crashed out, falling asleep on the sofa for a couple of hours.

Stick In The Mud

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Rather pleasant weather today.

Rainy Recharge

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I seem to recall from a few years ago hearing some particularly idiotic politician blathering on about how it was impossible to drive or recharge an EV in wet weather.
(He was very wrong, in case you were wondering).

Data Behind A Yellow Fence

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About 17 hours into an 18.5 hour working day.
Babysitting a twitchy transformer, listening to a 50Hz buzz, while waiting for a spreadsheet full of boxes to turn (and stay) green.

At least the software I wrote a couple of years ago is working well here, slurping up numbers from a data acquisition unit and filing it in an orderly manner for analysis.
I need to do some fairly significant mods to make it fully windows 11 compatible soon though, running it on my old laptop isn't a good long-term solution!
Maybe when this project is put to bed, I'll be able to sit down and deal with it properly.

My Lightning Impulse Generator Needs Cleaning

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A spider appears to have been living on it.
Not a very exciting photo, but I was stuck in work for an obscene number of hours working on a very urgent, very long test run, and was losing my mind at this point in the proceedings, so this is all I shot apart from photos of the actual thing I was testing, which I can't share for now.

Greenery And Lights And Things

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But no coffee. Not until tomorrow, at least.

Peppercorns

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The week has gone to pot by Tuesday afternoon...
Not the best shot, but I'm knackered, and the other one I did was worse. I think I've got some minor vibration issues coming from the focus rail with the setup in this orientation.

Pop!

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Continuing my occasional theme of macro photos of snacks with this 1x macro of a piece of popcorn (or my brain, I can't be completely sure these days 🤯)
Snackro photography, you might say.
This one's a focus stack of 39 shots.

I Don't Do Sport

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This one's my 52Frames submission for the "Sports Photography" challenge.
Sport is very much not my thing, and I have no idea where I'd go to shoot any without looking like a more massive weirdo than usual.
The sole concession to sport that I have in the house is this baseball that I was sent when I joined Smarter Every Day's Patreon, so that's my subject for today.

Misty Flares

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The first decent misty evening I've seen this autumn.

Murmuration

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Not a backup, for a change.
I went to see an early-ish display of the murmuration at Attenborough Nature Reserve this afternoon.
I'm planning to return later in the season when the murmuration is bigger.

Tricolour

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Another backup photo, this one from the back end of last month.

Please Be Seated

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A backup photo today, again (see the 17th for why).

(Almost) Everything Shall Be Aligned

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A backup photo today.
I quite liked the regular lines and patterns in this new building seen from my hotel room window. Ideally, I'd have been a few rooms to the left so I could have made the composition symmetrical, but such is life.

Smear

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Almost a week late posting this; things went very sideways with my photo project this week due to work pressures, and I ended up not shooting anything other than work related photos on my phone almost every day.

This is the first time I've properly fallen off the wagon on this project, and it's a bit irritating to break so close to the end of the second year.
Proverbs of spilt milk and crying come to mind, so I shall try and resume normal (ish) operations, although I'm expecting this week to be relatively hellish again at work.

Bi-Metal

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Another possibility for 52Frames "Black And White Minimalism" today.
Can't decide between today's or yesterday's shot yet.

Waveform

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This one is probably going to be my submission for this week's 52Frames "Black And White Minimalism" challenge.

Stick The Moon On A Bracket.

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Another backup photo today, I got home from work and crashed out.
It's been a full-on week, and not entirely pleasant in places.

I'm calling it a win that I actually ended up with the energy to cook something recognisable as a meal for dinner, as opposed to eating comparative junk, which I've been doing rather too much recently.

2025-11-13

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A backup photo for today, posted late.
I spent almost all evening making some prototype parts, and ran out of time for photos.

It's The Little Things That Get You

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This caption gets a bit deep, so skip it if you're feeling delicate.

I've been listening to the latest Jack Reacher book over the last couple of days. It's a series that Lucy introduced me to, and one which we used to enjoy listening to together quite regularly, often in the car.

At the end of the book, there is a discussion between the series' original author Lee Child, and the long-time narrator Jeff Harding; several times while listening to it, I had the involuntary, automatic thoughts "Lucy would like this", or "Lucy would be interested by this", or even "I'll have to mention this bit to her", shortly followed by the jarring, unpleasant jolt of realisation that she is no longer here to have these chats with. It is a visceral, almost physical reaction, which is really quite unsettling, and gets you when you least expect it.

A bit heavy perhaps, but this has become almost as much a personal diary as a photoblog now.

Sometimes, People Sit Here

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A backup photo today, shot last week.

The Glitter Machine

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I've spent quite a lot of this evening prototyping a widget for work on my little CNC mill, flinging copious quantities of fine brass glitter all over the place.
To (approximately) quote Blondihacks, "When using a milling machine, the chips are usually confined to" (waving her hands broadly around the workshop) "this general area".
I then spent an instructive few minutes measuring, wherein I discovered that my shiny new 2mm cutter was in fact not 2mm at all, but more like 2-and-what's-a-tenth-or-two-of-a-millimetre-between-friends-mm, and my part is consequently the wrong size.
Trust but verify, they say...

At The Toybox

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This is my submission for this week's 52Frames' "Show us your toys" challenge.

I recently improved my equipment storage setup with a new cabinet, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to show it off.
It's nice to be able to grab the right lens without wrestling it out of the tiny cabinet I was using before, and my flash and grip gear now has a proper home rather than in boxes on the floor.
It's also been a while since I took a self-portrait, so you get to have my ugly mush foisted upon you today too.

Many lighting sins were atoned for with Lightroom...

Please Hold Handrail

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For safety, of course.

Between Two Points

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It seemed like an appropriate title for this photo (a backup shot from last night), and some of the lyrics felt a bit fitting after <rant redacted>.
I've been a bit obsessed with the song since I discovered it a few months ago - Between Two points by David Gilmour and Romany Gilmour.

Foggy Conversations

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It was unexpectedly foggy when I went out for a walk this evening.
I quite like this one.

Bonk!

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A backup photo from my rather damp walk last night.

11 Years

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I met Lucy for the first time 11 years ago tonight.
This place has rebranded from Copper to Gilt in the intervening period, but it looks virtually the same inside, although I didn't go in tonight.

Even at this early moment, we really clicked, and had a proper side-splitting laugh when I talked about a recent visit to a Toyota factory, where a new car was rolling off the production line every 70 seconds. Lucy took this very literally, and pulled a horrified face at the thought of thousands of cars falling off a conveyor belt into a smashed up heap at the bottom of the hill!

I wonder how many cars have rolled off the end of Toyota's production line since...

Copper Plated

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This one's a backup from last night's walk.
I love the colours here.

Lengthening Shadows

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Lovely light this evening, so I went out for a walk.

Meander

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Surprisingly nice weather at times this weekend.
2025-11-01 - late posting this one.

Unplugged For The Weekend

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2025-10-30

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It's a backup today, because I wasn't happy with anything I shot this evening.

Rising Damp

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Lovely light this evening, but I picked this one as I enjoyed the look of the mist coming up.

Take A Bite

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I actually set up a shot this evening.
I used actual effort, and everything!

My parents brought me this apple back from a trip to Barnsdale Gardens, where I got married. It's a nice apple, and it's a nice reminder of the best day of my life.

Slightly Uphill

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Another backup, because the only photos I took today were at work - first of a blown-up distribution board (a rather novel start to the day), and second, of a temperature rise test we ran (which I can't show you, because I would prefer to remain employed)

Of Great Utility

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I've been feeling very un-creative this last week or so, so I was struggling to pull anything together for this week's 52Frames "Centred composition" challenge.
I had been assembling some new flatpack furniture, and a screwdriver caught my eye as possibly making for a good centred composition, and the balance in the shot might be a nice nod to the perfect balance that a good quality tool often has in your hand.
I added a little catchlight to one side with the aim of accentuating the shape, and to prevent the shot looking too 2D.

Sail Away

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Another late backup, taken a couple of weeks ago.

Concrete Lace

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Very late, but actually taken on the advertised day. How remarkable.

2025-10-23

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Very Late, Very Backup.