A beautifully frosty winter morning to mark the end of the year.
Thanks for putting up with me and my photos for another year!
Here's to 2026.
Thanks to @countryside_joy for phoning me at the crack of dawn to wake me up and encourage me to get out and enjoy the sunrise, I would certainly have remained in bed until at least noon without this provocation; and also for the behind-the-scenes photo in the last frame.
(More after the jump)
Another backup photo today, shot on christmas day when we decamped for a walk.
This field was thoroughly laced with webs, whether spiders' or some other bug, I'm unsure, but it was quite striking when the low sun caught it right.
Fine, moving details like this are often difficult to capture as convincingly as they appear to the eye in the moment, but I think this has come out OK.
A backup photo from a couple of days ago.
I spent quite a lot of the day sorting out a proper place to put the new 3D printer in the workshop - it had initially been occupying a rather large portion of my kitchen worktop, and it was past due for removal to a more appropriate location!
A bit of a smash-and-grab shot as the light was fading, using the fill light built into the front ring of the EF-M 28mm macro lens.
A backup photo, shot a couple of days ago.
I've not felt very photographically inclined today, and haven't taken anything beyond a couple of fairly boring phone pics.
The weather over the last couple of days had been markedly better than forecast a few days ago.
I tried shooting these rather pleasing trees a couple of weeks ago, but wasn't overly happy with the results.
Today, the light and little bit of haze aligned almost perfectly with the look I was hoping for.
I got my EOS M6 Mark II back from a family loan a couple of days ago, so I've been playing with it again.
It's very small and neat in that a remarkably capable little setup with 5 lenses covering ultra-fisheye through to mid telephoto fits into a space roughly equivalent to the R5 with a single lens, but it is comparatively fiddly to use, and the viewfinder feels very low resolution by comparison.
Still a decent little camera though.
Quite pleased with this winter afternoon shot, taken on a post-lunch walk.
A backup photo, shot last week.
Today ended up being fairly busy.
This is a tiny bit of new growth that has appeared in the last few days on a small rose plant that I thought was completely dead.
It very nearly got binned last week, but I thought I'd give it a couple more weeks on the off chance. That appears to have paid off.
This one's a stack of 17 shots at 1.5x magnification.
I went on a rather pleasant misty walk at lunchtime.
We came across another walker who commented "miserable weather" as he passed - this gave us quite a laugh, because the aforementioned weather was the express reason we were out to begin with.
I'm quite pleased with this one, the fog has really helped to isolate the trees from the background, and I thought the punchy black and white treatment suited it.
Thanks to @countryside_joy for the behind-the-scenes photo of me shooting the same trees from a slightly different angle, a couple of minutes before I took this shot (after the jump)
Not the finest of photos today, but a record of my day, nonetheless.
I was running the sound for In Disguise performing at The Dog & Parrot, Eastwood.
Aside from a very minor spot of confusion involving a mis-ordered setlist on my laptop, the gig went rather well, and the audience seemed to be having a great time.
The whole effort raised a nice chunk of cash for Crisis too, so a good cause was served into the bargain.
A macro shot of a little gearbox that (along with a bag of other bits) has been consuming rather a lot of my time this week.
We managed to reduce one of them to a small pile of dust on an endurance test last night, so I spent several hours this afternoon working on some improvements - Let's hope we can treat this one better!
I found myself feeling rather down Tuesday night, and took myself out for a nocturnal walk to try and restore some balance to my addled brain.
The fog was quite pleasant, although an unseen horse sneezing without warning in a field behind me was a mildly shocking experience!
A backup photo today, shot Saturday. A common theme lately!
(Of chocolate to biscuit, in case you were wondering)
Another snackro. The delight of doing these is that you get a tasty treat when you're done.
I find it interesting that you can see a bit of machining chatter, or perhaps more likely CNC stepover marks from the mould on the internal cone shape. I suppose they don't worry about achieving a nice finish in the chocolate mould machining world. How dissipated. Perhaps they are too busy "quality controlling" the final merchandise...
This one's a stack of 41 frames.
This one's a backup from yesterday.
I'd like to take the macro rig out here and get a photo of the wonderful little forest that's growing on top of this old fence post, as well as the way the water drops wrap round the individual strands.
The apple tree and the sunset filtering through the other trees in the background makes for a nice bokeh effect, too.
I actually went for a walk and took photos today. Remarkable.
I don't particularly love this lens from an image quality point of view, but it is certainly versatile.
The archive is taking a beating again, this one's a backup from about 3 weeks ago.
I spent most of my nominally free afternoon fiddling with work related things, albeit ones involving playing with my new 3D printer.
Geneva wheel mechanisms are really quite satisfying.
