Not Quite Spring

Its Easter Weekend, the beginning of April, its really cold outside and there are still patches of snow on the ground.

I have spent the weekend in the UK lake district walking and photographing in the hills and lakes around Grasmere.

Today it was sunny and bright but the other days were rather grey and cloudy, which overall I don't find very inspiring to photograph. I prefer to photograph in 'bad' weather, generally i find this provides the most interesting light and sky.

Of course there are always some interesting shots - like the shot below of Alcock Tarn with the tarn completely frozen, and the snow lying on the hills beyond.

This is a shot at ground level on the bank of the tarn showing last years grass stems poking above the snow drift

And this vista which shows the view on the climb from Grasmere up to Alcock Tarn

In a completely different style below I have a couple of iPhone shots, minimalist sky dominating the image with a strip of the landscape at the bottom. I really like this type of shot, but other people who have looked at don't always agree. What do you think ?

iPhone Panormas and Dusty Demons

I was working in Finland for a few days this week, unfortunately no real time for photographing the beautiful scenery, maybe this was just as well, there is still a lot of snow around which is great to photograph, but the temperature was -15C so not very comfortable to be outside for very long.

We did have a 90 minute car ride from the airport and I spent some time trying to take photographs through the car window using my iPhone.  Then I started using the panorama feature on the phone.

The usual way to use this is to set up the phone, press the start button and then slowly move the phone to take in the panorama you want, doing it from the car offers an alternative technique where you simply hold the phone still as the scenery moves along past you.

For photographs where you have only the distant scenery this gives a pretty nice picture from a distance looks pretty neat in fact, but if anything more close by pops into the picture - like a passing car or truck - this gives a different effect entirely, you can see what I mean in the examples below - (tip have a look at the cars in the pictures and you will see the effect I mean)

 

 

  

This last picture was made in the more conventional way of standing still and moving the phone

 

This week I realised that the marks I could sometimes see on the photographs taken with my little Sony NEX camera were caused by dust on the sensor.  You can only see this on the sensor using a strong magnifying glass.  I expected just one or two specs of dust, it actually looked like someone had emptied their vacuum cleaner on to it.

Dust marks in the senor= marks on the photo

No problem I thought, just blow it off with a blower brush.  This did not seem to have much effect so I tried with my little can of camera cleaner compressed air.

I had seen a guy in the camera shop do this, just check first on the back of your hand that its not too powerful and then in you go.

All went well for about one second then a big blob of water (?) came out of the compressed air can and landed - yes you've guessed it - right on the sensor.

So now not only has the sensor got dust on it - now it looks like a my car windscreen in summer - that is as if a fly has been squashed on it.

Senor after cleaning (Really the desert in Morocco)

So onto the internet and order a cleaning kit, which promptly arrives the next day.  Looks simple enough - has a little swabbing tool and some cleaning fluid.  Set it all up and manage to clean the gunk off the sensor.  Problem solved - until I decided one last swipe just to finish off - and suddenly I have a big smear of oil (?) from something at the edge of the sensor.

Back on the internet and order some extra special smear cleaning fluid - promised for delivery next day but so far I am still waiting .... so more to follow next week 

Blipfoto and cold weather

A few days ago I had to close down my little local exhibition, my photos have now been replaced by some oil paintings by a local artist.

No sales during the exhibition though it seems there were quite a lot of viewers, maybe the price is too high but there is not much left out of my pricing once you include the cost of making and framing the print, and excluding any time element.

The cold weather continues in the Netherlands, snow on the ground all week which has created some nice photo opportunities.

I have been using these shots on Blipfoto, my daily photo journal. I started this on the first of January so I have now 26 photos on this site, seemed easy to just take a photo every day but it is sometimes really difficult to find both the time, well more the right moment, and the right shot.  The website checks the dates in the photo information from your camera, so you have to take the photo on the correct day.

I want to try and only add good quality images so i build a good looking record of where I went and what I did throughout the year.

So far I have a mix of photos from my Sony camera and my iPhone -  you can see the whole set at..
http://www.blipfoto.com/Bizonderimage

Some of the photos caused severe freezing of my hands, I cannot quite work the camera with my gloves on, and at one point my hands were so cold I could no longer push the button on the camera.

I also have a few shots which did not make the cut for Blipfoto this week.

Ducks at the Marina

Sunrise Panorama

Heron in the garden in the snow