April Showers

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I went out for a walk this afternoon and caught this rather neat illustration of a shower.

The weather had the last laugh, because about 20 minutes later, it caught up and dampened me.
Yay for wellington boots and weather sealed cameras!

New Shoots

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I felt a lot better this morning, so I was rather disappointed when my lateral flow test came back looking pretty much as strong as yesterday's.
Still, at least I was well enough to get out for a decent walk to blow the cobwebs away a bit.

X Marks The Spot

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Another backup photo today.
Not sure what is indicated thereby, but it gave me something convenient to aim at 😁

On The Verge

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Another backup photo from a few days ago.

Glow In The Dark

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I thought it was time to go for something other than flowers, so I gave this LED the macro treatment.

Bluebell Season Is Upon Us

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A backup photo from yesterday.

The wretched covid monster has bitten my head off again today.
Based on the timing, it seems highly probable that it came from work [rant redacted].

Rest Your Wings A Moment

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I went for a walk in the woods today.
After struggling to catch any decent butterfly shots, I had all but given up and was heading back to the car when this Green-Veined White (I think) came past me and settled on a Celandine. It stayed there feeding from the flower for just long enough for me to drop down to my knees, bring the camera up and fire off a few shots before it was gone again.

I was quite glad I'd left my knee pads on and the camera awake and ready to go!

Two Close, One Far

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A backup photo today, I stayed at home and vegetated for the vast majority of today.

Into The Blue

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A backup photo today, I was doing my sound man bit, and the photos I took at the gig weren't anything to write home about (second pic after the jump just to prove it happened!)

The Picnic Is Cancelled

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I went for an evening wander round Highfields park and came across this rather unhappy looking table.

Lichen

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I went for a rather pleasant walk after an early finish from work. We had great weather, so I thought I'd better make the best of it before the forecast storms roll in!
The air quality here must be fairly good, there's a huge amount of lichen around.

Road Noise

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The Air Is Alive!

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I went for a walk at Attenborough Nature Reserve this evening. The air was thick and humming with flies down by the river.
I went for a slow shutter speed to capture the frenzied nature of the swarm.
One more after the jump.

Onward

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A backup photo today, shot last week.
I'm not quite sure where this evening went, I think I'm slightly off kilter with the clock change!

Disturbance

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Interesting clouds this evening.

Spring Sunshine

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I went for a last-minute walk before the light fizzled out.
I quite like this one.

Spring, Nearly Sunset

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The result of an evening walk.
I could have done with a bit of fill flash really, but I was travelling light with only the camera and one lens.

Your 2D Motorcycle Is Leaking

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Beauty In Decay

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I gave this leaf skeleton a bit of macro treatment.
I think it's fascinating to see how it's decayed but left the veins behind.
3x magnification stacked shot made from 10 frames shot with my WeMacro focus rail, stacked with Helicon Focus.

Blackthorn

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I took the day off to recover from my "fun" yesterday.
I went for a short walk mid-afternoon, where I came across this blackthorn doing its thing.
I quite liked the progress from bud to flower along the same branch.

Cooked?

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A backup photo today - and not a great day in general; I woke up in the early hours of the morning with chest pain, and found myself in the back of an ambulance instead of heading up the stairs to start work.
Long story short, I'm OK, and it wasn't cardiac in nature, but it was a bit of an alarming and exhausting day!

Dinky Daff

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One Of Many 7s

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A backup photo today, shot yesterday
The Caterham 7s were out in force, going around corners seemingly almost as fast as they were on the straights.

Chase Me!

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I went on a track day at Cadwell Park with a friend and friend-of-said-friend.
I got overtaken a lot, scared myself a bit, learnt a lot, then we finished the day with the track pretty much to ourselves.

I didn't get a photo of the car I spent the most time in, a Mk1 MX5 (yay for pop-up headlights), but I did get in a few laps in this silver Cayman too.

CAT5

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The innards of a bit of network cable.

De-Scoot

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A backup photo today, shot a couple of nights ago.

Apply Aerosol Here

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A backup photo today, shot last night.

Stars On Sticks

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I went out for a late walk this evening.

I Can Smell This Photo

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I was making a coffee this afternoon, and thought it was about time for another coffee-adjacent photo.

This one's not a stack (for a change), but it was approaching the limit of what was reasonable to shoot in one frame at this magnification.

Crocus Glow

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I spent a large chunk of the day on the road today, so didn't end up having time or the correct brain mode to shoot anything.

Not sure why I've not shared this one here before, I rather like it.

Happy Birthday Bailey!

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What it says on the tin really! This one's just a phone photo, largely because I didn't take a proper camera with me for some reason.

More Elf Cups

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Today was a rather busy day, and I ended up spending the quite a chunk of the evening helping my colleague de-wonkify his new car's headlight and bumper.

This one's a backup from my trip to the woods a few weeks ago.
It's a stack of 11 frames.

Drip, Rebelling, Momentarily

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I dug out the Miops Splash for the first time in ages tonight, and had a bit of fun with it.
We bought some lab jacks for the x-ray work we did recently. When I found them in the car boot the other night, it occurred to me that they might be a useful thing for macro work, so I've been playing with one of them with most of my setup on it. It's rather useful to be able to move the subject rather than, or at least in addition to manipulating the camera.
I'm quite tempted to buy myself at least one as a result.

Success!

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We finally got through the EMC tests we have been working on at work today, with the addition of a little widget we designed.
That's another bit of the project in the bag.
This one's a focus stack of 68 images.

Unrelated, but this is my 1250th post here.

Catkins or Microphones?

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A rather long day today, but I did manage to shoot this after I recovered a bit.

It's a focus stack of 15 shots, manually incremented

Hurried Camellia

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Lucy's camellia is coming out nicely this year.
I was a bit worried about it last year; it looked pretty sickly and failed to flower.
On the advice of greener-fingered humans, I dug it out of its pot, and found it had become badly pot-bound. A bigger pot and some more compost last year seems to have done the trick for this year.

This was a fairly rushed shot as I was on my way out Saturday afternoon, but I don't think it's too bad.

The Evening's Entertainment

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I stuck my sound man hat on again this evening for an "In Disguise" fundraising gig.

It all seemed to go rather well, with the dance floor filling up from about the third number, and some nice feedback from the organisers afterwards.

I have finally got round to tidying up my network, power, and monitoring accoutrements, with everything now mounted to a board. Setup was much easier and neater than it has been.

Like yesterday, this one's not much more than a snapshot, but I've shot so little this week, and it's a memory of a thing accomplished, so it means something to me, which is really why I'm doing this.

Flyball

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I went to Crufts with a friend, and we managed to get seats in the main arena for the Flyball among a few other events.

Lucy would have loved this, she really enjoyed watching Crufts, and particularly the Flyball on TV. We never got the chance to go together, with the spectre of Covid rearing its ugly head not long after she discovered how much she actually liked dogs.

Flyball is incredibly fast, the dogs make it there and back in around 4 seconds, sometimes less.

This one's no more than a snapshot really, but I've shot so little this week, and it's a memory of a good day, so it means something to me at least.

Dead Lifesaver

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Another backup photo, shot last week.
This one's another bit of playing with the new-to-me fisheye.
I thought the dead face graffiti was quite funny in the context of lifesaving equipment.

I could have done with a tripod here, I was pushing the limits of handholding (at least for me), at 1/10 sec, and I had the ISO cranked up to 25,600.
Even then, the result was quite dark, and I ended up whacking the exposure up by more than a stop in Lightroom.

Another X-Ray

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And a very late, backup image, at that.

One of my favourite lenses, the EF70-200mm f/2.8 L IS.
It cost me more than my first car did, but it's still going strong, despite having suffered a few insults over the years.
It once went back to Canon to be put back together after someone (not me!) kicked it off a bit of staging, and at some point it picked up a dent in the barrel.
While it's getting a bit old, and has been superseded at least twice in the EOS range, I still love this lens.

A Shorter Wavelength

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I was X-ray imaging some stuff for work today.
Once we had finished the real work, there was a bit of time left over in the rental period, so I had a bit of fun and stuck my R5 and 85mm f/1.2L II in there.
I think it's come our rather well.

An interesting day, all told.

I'm not exactly sure what detector panel we were using today, but we were using a Hamamatsu 180kV microfocus generator.

Way...

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Another backup photo today.
I like this one, the layers in the scene really stack up with the reflections in a rather pleasing way.

I am very pleased with this lens; I wish I'd bought one before. It's much nicer than my previous 50mm f/1.4, but has kept the things I liked about that lens. EOS R5, EF50mm f/1.2L

Crane Index

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A backup photo today.

Dans Le Noir? / T15

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We marked Eve's birthday with a trip to @danslenoirlondon today.
A remarkable experience, and a real hands-on insight into the world without vision that she had lived through latterly.

I don't think I've ever been anywhere so utterly, impenetrably dark. The closest experience I can think of was a tour I once did at the Ilford Photo factory. The very darkest area was, as you might expect, the film production line, and even that had occasional tiny betalights to navigate by.

We went for a drink and a wander round afterwards; the late afternoon light was great, and perhaps perceptually intensified by the couple of hours we had spent in the dark.

Today's actual photo after the jump.

Beachballs?

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I'm in a strange, unsettled frame of mind today.

Moon In A Box

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A backup photo, shot last night.

Who Cares? Chuck It On The Floor

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I thought this was a reasonable, not-too-cliched debut for my new fisheye lens.

It's taking a bit more getting used to than I expected, you need to get very close, and it's weird to have it zoom between full frame and circular images.
I'll probably ruminate on here about how it compares to some of my other wide lenses once I've played with it a bit more.

2026-02-24: Cider / Goods In.

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I Think You Dropped Your Glove

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I took a walk this evening and this dropped-and-retrieved glove caught my eye.

Scarlet Elf Cup

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We had a lovely day today, sunny and warm for the time of year.
I went for a walk in the woods with my parents, and we spotted lots of these Scarlet Elf Cup fungi.
This one's a stack of 10 photos. I manually incremented the focus between shots.