A Bit Of Everything

What with a baby on the way, hospital trips to sort Devon out, oh and a bit of work, it’s not been a photo blog summer. So I’m just going to put up a sequence of one-off photos which have absolutely nothing to do with each other at all, except that they were taken by me. So let’s kick off with an experiment I did one summer’s evening:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 20 secs at f 4.5, ISO 200, on a tripod no flash. This was a long-exposure test I did one evening after watching the farmer cut the big field behind our house. It was a lovely peaceful evening and I decided to play around with some of our garden lights.

And now for some mugs:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 50mm, 1/320 at f 2.8, ISO 200, hand held no flash.

And here’s Marie’s bump, 8 months in, August 2009:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 52mm, 1/20 at f 2.8, ISO 1600, hand held no flash. Practising low-light, slow-shutter handheld photography with my best lens, the hefty Nikon 24-70mm 2.8, ready for when the baby’s born.

This is a shiny Mini on a wet early evening stroll around Stamford:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/30 at f 9, ISO 800, hand held no flash.

Here’s our future ASBO trying to look tough:

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 95mm, 1/13 at f 5.3, ISO 250, hand held no flash.

And a wall somewhere in deepest Rutland, lovely high resolution shot that I got about right:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 24mm, 1/160 at f 9, ISO 200, hand held no flash.

This is our beloved stray cat Lucy, moments after she first appeared in our lives – sitting atop our secret garden (pre-decking), half-chewed ear, crying out for food (which we gave her):

Nikon D300, Nikon 18-200mm VR lens at 200mm, 1/4000 at f 5.6, ISO 400, hand held no flash.

And to finish, here’s Marie and her family, on Grandma Anne’s birthday a couple of years ago, in a reet good carvery somewhere in West Yorkshire:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 at f 4, ISO 200, hand held with flash.

Oh You Cow

 I’d spent an unsuccessful day, on balance, trying to find the patience and the finesse to take landscape style photographs on a day-long jaunt into our neighbouring counties, Northants and Leicestershire. This was a rare day off work, and I had all the kit with me. Trouble was, although it was all very relaxing, I wasn’t getting anything to really go crackers about. But on my way back I found a lovely big lake by surprise, called Eyebrook Reservoir, and spotted some cows on the far side. No harm, I reasoned, in switching to Wildlife photography mode. After all, I can take a great picture of a domestic cat. In fact , all things considered, I could see no udder alternative.

I bravely got very close indeed to capture these magnificent beasts in their prime. Now that’s what I call a cow picture: 

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm, 1/160 at f 10, ISO 200, hand held with flash. I found Cow Number 401181 to have the right combination of looks, personality and susceptibility to bribery – in the case of the pic above, by a bit of bush dangled by yours truly just out of shot. Don’t worry, the cow got to eat the bush.

I did not trespass, because 401181 and her butch friend had a slightly petulant look about them: 

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 18mm, 1/500 at f 5.3, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Close enough thank you ladies.  A word about the Sigma wide-angle 10-20mm lens at this point if I may. As I’ve said before in this blog, from time to time this lens produces just remarkable quality pictures. The high-res version of both this pic and the one above are just packed with detail.

At the gate, 401181 signalled the herd, and the sisters began to gather: 

 Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm, 1/160 at f 10 ISO 200, hand held no flash. I am aware that it’s not cool to take photographs of cows, but I have never claimed to be out to impress in any way with this blog.

As the rain clouds gathered, the light got more interesting, and the cows got more demanding. There just wasn’t enough bush to feed the stampede, and shortly after this I made my excuses and left:

 

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 18mm, 1/500 at f 5.3, ISO 200, hand held no flash. Note shadow of self, holding camera in the air to get this aerial view. A decent bit of Photoshop work and I could have removed that shadow, but as I have said before, this isn’t art. I wonder how many of these cows have appeared in McDonalds by now, or perhaps on a barbeque. Come to think of it, we had one the other day. Oh, Cow Number 401181, I hope you were what they call a right old milker…

Being Lazy

Who doesn’t love those days when you realise you just have nothing to do, but you’re not bored by that? So you just take it easy, do what you feel like, and all the better if it’s a sunny one. Here’s my wife’s constantly-moving feet drumming away on the warm conservatory floor while she reads her baby book:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 70mm, 1/200 at f 2.8, ISO 100, hand held with flash. Because we love our time at home so much, quite a lot of this photo blog illustrates the little domestic details of life…we don’t have many big stories to tell, I work very hard and that’s in the public domain widely enough, so it’s nice to put things onto these pages that are the small grace notes of our real life, behind closed doors. Marie’s heels gently tapping on the floor being one of those grace notes…

And as always our cat – who frequently inhabits this blog – was nearby, finding somewhere new to get comfortable:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 24mm, 1/400 at f 4.5, ISO 100, hand held with flash. It’s a battered old magazine box, one of c.200 places Jesse knows, within these four walls, which provides safe haven from people.

By now he’s used to his geeky Dad zooming in and trying to take pictures which show every tiny hair on his face:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 24mm, 1/200 at f 2.8, ISO 100, hand held with flash. Such a peaceful day. As I write this, Marie and her Mum Bev are wrestling with some dodgy bolts as they build the baby’s new cot, which arrived flat-packed from Mamas and Papas. By way of contrast with the harmonious scenes shown in this blog, the bad language coming from the other end of the room … “these ******* allen keys were designed by a *****!” … is pretty spectacular. Good work, girls, I’ll do the blog, you build the furniture. Today my role is to stay out of the way and boil frequent kettles. Upstairs, dad in law John is laying the wooden floor in the extremely, extremely pink baby’s bedroom. If that child is born with a widgey, instead of a hamburger, then we’re not changing it and he’ll just have to grow up in pink, widgey or no widgey.

One Big Yawn

You may have noticed that other photo bloggers on the interweb write about their travels. Images of the snow capped mountains of Oregon. A dramatic sunset over the Great Wall Of China. A smoke-filled riot in Rio de Janeiro. The Northern Lights ablaze over Tromso. Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically over the plains of Tanzania.

Here’s Jesse having a yawn on our bedroom windowsill:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm f 2.8 lens at 38mm, 1/1600 sec at f 4, ISO 200, hand held no flash. I submit this to the global wildlife image bank and trust my fellow photo bloggers will give it the respect it deserves.

Here’s Jess posing for me while I practice my HDR techniques:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 10mm, 1/2500 sec at f 4, ISO 200, hand held no flash. I’m a novice at HDR, but twiddled with Photomatix Pro until I got something fairly tidy. It’s nice, as windowsill shots of a cat go, and 21 March 2009 (The Ides Of March) was a lovely morning. Note house with conservatory in the background – we nearly bought that one instead, but we’re so glad we didn’t. Ours has a much nicer view out the back…

Cat Is Sole Survivor

Jesse is our sole surviving cat…

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f 4, ISO 1000, hand held no flash. Just a silly quick extreme wide angle shot, mucking around in the kitchen. After eighteen months, five cats plus a stray, and two puppy dogs, our cheapest, smallest, toughest cat is the last man standing. We’ve lost two, sold four and given away one (Lucy the stray cat who became an honourary member of our zoo). We made a net loss in cash terms, but net gains all over the place in other ways… memories, no small amount of sadness and frustration, and lots and lots of love. And hairs. It all followed a sad event in our lives in late summer 2007… the pets helped us, especially Marie. Jesse was a farm kitten, twenty quid, he never took any nonsense from any of the others, and now they’re all gone (making room for the baby), he’s become the focal point. Tiny cat, lovely big character.

Charlie, Dog Without A Face

Marie’s Grandma Jean decided to get a dog, to keep her company after Grandad Ken ‘Shep’ Shepherd died in December 2008. She wanted a dog who was affectionate and undemanding, who would look at her adoringly, love in his eyes, tail wagging, craving communion between two beings separated by species, and language, but united in one purpose – to share years of contentment together, a pair of mavericks, a team, against the world.

Instead she got Charlie. He could be handsome, he could be ugly. Nobody knows:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f 5.6, ISO 200, hand held with flash. Crazy wide-angle stuff, me taking pictures on the floor (again), Charlie was inches away from licking the lens (again), I kept chucking him back across the lawn to take a picture but the plucky bugger kept coming back. I don’t think he’d had a proper play with someone for a while, Jean’s been worn out already (and she’d only had him 8 weeks). Any road, I love this picture, the foreground’s blurry, the top of his bonce is over exposed and the background’s cluttered, but to me it’s got a disorganised cheerfulness which utterly suits Charlie himself.

What Charlie is, is a Shih Tzu, the oldest and smallest of the Tibetan dogs (he’s one of the smallest in Royston, South Yorkshire too).

Jean, apparently they live up to 18 years…

Charlie, less than four months old when I took these pictures, takes his new alpha male duties seriously. Here, he guards Jean’s back door:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f 5, ISO 400, hand held with flash. Yes it’s been a while since Jean painted her back door, but it’s very photogenic and I believe Charlie is fine with it. Great fun taking pictures with the Sigma wide angle lens, you can get very, very close and still get it crisp, lens-licking permitting.

If you’ve seen Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi, you’ll notice Charlie has a certain Ewok quality:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 17mm, 1/60 sec at f 5.3, ISO 200, hand held with flash. On this day, I played with Charlie while Marie and Jean had a one-hour circular conversation in which Jean repeated the phrase “ah don’t think he’s going to get much bigger” nine or ten times. And she’s probably right, Charlie won’t be jumping the high fences at Crufts, and he is just a tad over-enthusiastic about life for Jean’s tastes. A lovely wee companion, yes, but where’s the Off switch? Somewhere under all that hair, Jean, along with a face. Good luck, Charlie. Good luck, Jean.

Dogs in Darkness

Lazy Saturday night in for me and Marie, but nobody told our two puppies. So what was meant to be a cosy evening in with a DVD or two ended up as a play session with the dogs. This was taken with a powerful flash gun, aimed directly at them – which made the background go almost pitch black. A bit of work in Levels later, and here we have the finished, slightly Marxist, image of a couple of bouncy little Cavalier King Charles Spaniels, planning their revolution…

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 10mm, 1/60 sec at f 5.6, ISO 200, hand held with flash. This was pretty much as it came out of the camera, I darkened a touch but I was in experimental mode and found that aiming the SB-800 flash straight at them created this striking, low-key portrait effect.

Paw Show

Here’s Beefy the cat, taking up a strong defensive position against our two dogs:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm EX lens at 20mm, 1/60 sec at f 5.6, ISO 200 hand held with flash. Location: under the sideboard in the hallway.

Dogs Take Over

Billy is an extremely affectionate dog:

Nikon D300, Sigma 10-20mm lens at 13mm, 1/60 sec at f 4.5, ISO 200, hand held with flash. Heavily (and clumsily) retouched but what the hell, it’s just a snapshot. It’s just as well Billy’s not a Saint Bernard.

Billy Wears A Cone

Some dogs keep them for their whole lives; others, like Billy, have them for less than a year. 9 days ago Billy said goodbye to his conkers, and hello to his cone. This is him dealing with the shame, and getting some revenge, by sitting on Marie’s ironing pile:

Nikon D300, Nikon 24-70mm at 29mm, 1/160 at f2.8, ISO 1600, hand held no flash. Sharpened considerably in Paint Shop Pro, although the results in natural light at ISO 1600 were pretty good out of the camera.

Billy loses the cone on Monday, three days before Christmas. To be honest he’s perfectly able to lick his bits cone or no cone, and has adapted to cone life very well. It’s an effective weapon with which to entrap and subdue his young sister Poppy, and when he’s eating it gives him a private space on the floor into which no cat or dog can enter.