In which I take a photo every day that I'm 50, and post it here on this blog, with a bit of related blurb.
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| unoriginal? |
Whilst wandering somewhat aimlessly around Homebase today, trying to remember why we'd gone there, I stopped short as I saw this interesting wall-hanging, which they're selling as decorative art.
It's not that the view is so interesting and atmospheric, but that it's so similar to a photo I already know well...
Early last year, in order to kick-start our outdoor climbing adventures, we headed off to Snowdonia...we were there to attend a course at the famous Plas-y-Brenin National Mountain Centre.
The course was about learning to climb on rock, in a Traditional style...that is, to learn the technical rope and climbing equipment skills and techniques that would enable us to head into the mountains on our own.
We were already competent climbers at this point, so the course was focussed on;
- placing gear - putting chocks and cams into the rock to clip the rope to...
- building anchors to, well...anchor yourself to...
- multi-pitch routes - those where it's necessary to split the climb up, and hence the need to build anchors halfway up a cliff face...
- abseiling - for descending, or as an escape route if required...
We'd foolishly not considered the weather when booking a course in the mountains in March, and so were surprised to arrive there in a blizzard!
Due to ongoing wintry conditions within the Snowdonia National Park, we were forced to the significantly milder coastal temperatures, to climb on Anglesey, and later at Tremadog, having many an adventure along the way.
On our final day there, we completed our first multi-pitch route entirely on our own...it was an easy 50m climb up a gentle crack system on the slab of Tryfan Fach (Little Tryfan)...right on the snow line, in bitterly cold conditions, we found we didn't quite have the right clothing!
Yet despite being utterly frozen, we came away triumphant at what felt like a significant breakthrough climb for us...the climb that opened up a great year of adventuring for us.
We also learned that day that we are not really cold weather climbers...or at least, we need better mountain-wear!
The point (there is a point, honest!), of all of which is, that whilst staying at the National Mountain Centre in Capel Curig, we went for a walk around the lake.
Anna took the lovely photograph below of the view up towards a cloud-enshrouded Snowdon at the top of the valley...
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| replica? |
Homebase stole Anna's shot!
Then again, maybe everyone who walks up there stops at that point and says, "oh look at the lovely view...that'd make a nice photo...".
At least Anna's is exactly as it came out of the camera...no fancy post-processing.
And beautifully framed, of course...
:-)
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| half moon |
Friday night again, and I've got a pretty random collection of photo's for you...and I'm completely distracted by something else entirely...
The top photo, whilst not so dramatic, made for a nice contrast with last night's sunset...looks like we're halfway through the lunar month!
In other news, I cleared the hole in the hedgerow this evening, after it had been blocked by a large pile of hedge trimmings.
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| hole whole |
All ready for the Autumn Edition, in about two weeks time...
Whilst clearing it, I came across some of the tree from the bottom of my 50@50 post...somebody had used it to block up the gap.
For reasons that will be revealed over coming days, I was looking at another hole in the hedgerow, within the garden, that I wanted to block...remembering my promise to the little tree we had to cut down, I gathered all I could find of it and used it to create a bit of lattice-work to fill in the hole.
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| manweb |
As I was doing this, Loz started to stalk and pounce on the end of one of the sticks where it lay on the lawn, so I quickly grabbed the camera.
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| target locked |
That stick is so going to get it - and probably much faster than I know how to photograph!
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| lightning strike |
Yep, sure enough, she homed in so fast that everything is in focus except her!
For those of you who are unsure of the joys of owning a cat, allow me to demonstrate...
Warning, not for the faint-hearted...
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| deadv0l3 |
This is the kind of thoughtful present you can anticipate coming home to on a regular basis, when you share your home with an active feline - it's the back end of a vole...when Loz eats a vole, she always starts with the head, and works her way down the body until she loses interest.
Much as I've worked my way this far down the blog before losing interest!
If anyone's still paying attention, I'll give you a clue as to why I'm so distracted...there may be an opportunity looming to tick off a significant Challenge for the year...it's a really important one, and I could get the tick within the next couple of weeks...
Watch this space...
;-)
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| underglow |
Well, that worked out better than expected!
As I was driving home I realised that it's getting dark earlier and earlier, and I suppose we will be putting the clocks back in a few short weeks...available light for getting a decent Photo of the Day is fading daily...
So when I got home, I grabbed the camera and went for a wander around the garden, looking for subjects.
I got a couple of shots of one of our robin's, but the light was poor...
I got a shot of a crow landing in the field, a lovely profile silhouette...and all blurred and out of focus because it was a true snapshot...
I got a vaguely interesting shot of the top 25% of a large tree over the road, all lit up in the golden evening sun...but it really was only vaguely interesting, and too similar to yesterday's photo to be a serious contender.
I was beginning to give up, and heading back in, hoping that one of the photo's of the robin would come out ok, when I realised the Sun was setting.
For some reason I'd absently assumed that I couldn't point the camera straight at the Sun...I tried a few shots of trees, and a bird on the wire (avoiding including the sun in the shot), but they seemed a little washed out.
Still, whilst I was there I figured I might as well take a few shots with the Sun, to see what they might come out like.
I was really pleased to find they'd captured some of the warmth of the light, and I like the aura effect around the Sun too.
In fact, I found that of all the shots I took, I liked those that included the Sun the most.
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| bird on a wire |
Here I decided to frame it a little differently, and catch a little more context. Again, I'm pleased with the glare below the sun, and the crow sitting on the wire gives the shot some scale.
Maybe as the evenings draw in over the next few weeks, I'll take the opportunity to practise, and refine my sunset skills...
I'll keep you posted!
B-)
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| summary of the day |
All in all, today didn't quite go as planned!
I suppose we set it up badly...after the curious incident of the locked door in the night last night, we didn't finish our dinner until gone midnight, and it was nearly 2am by the time we got to bed.
Unusually, I managed to get back to sleep after being awake at 8am, and eventually awoke suddenly to the sounds of Jezz and Stef (our landlord) standing just outside our bedroom discussing the bedroom door...only to find we'd slept until nearly 11am!
Feeling bleary and behind schedule, and realising that my lurgy (which had been receding) was back with a vengeance, we got up and got on with the day. It was a really hot morning, high 20's, and Jezz wanted to pop to Decathlon to get a singlet (which he's suddenly developed a bit of a penchant for) before we climbed.
We headed a few miles north, and grabbed a few items of hot weather clothing...I got some shorts, which I'd stupidly not brought to France with me.
By the time we got to La Foret, it was nearly 2pm...we changed in the car park and wandered in to the boulders, which all looked really high and scary.
We were at a place called Bas Cuvier, which is one of the earliest climbing areas in the forest, with documented climbing dating back over a century...consequently, the rock is very polished, and the climbing is generally much harder than you'd expect.
On the walk in, the immense power of my middle-aged belly proved too much for the press-stud on my new climbing shorts, which promptly fell apart...
(note to self...stop pretending that you can get into size Large clothes, and just accept that you're eXtra Large)
So I trekked back to the car to change my trousers, whilst Jezz and Anna prepared for the first problems.
Immediately, the climbing was quite tough...for the third of the day, I chose Blue 10, which turned out to have quite a committing, dynamic move up to a high, poor handhold. On my third attempt, my foot slipped and I fell off from the dizzying height of about 2 feet.
In an episode eerily reminiscent of when I broke my leg falling off a low boulder at Cratcliffe in 2012, my right toe caught the rock as I went down, forcing my weight into my heel, and consequently bending my foot upwards from the ankle much further than it was really happy to bend.
For a few minutes, the pain was intense, and I thought that my climbing might be done for this holiday. Fortunately, it turned out to be one of those injuries that quickly eases, and within about 10 minutes I was standing on it again, and prepared to have another go at climbing.
Then Anna announced that she'd felt a spot of rain...sure enough, immediately we could hear thunder rumbling faintly in the distance.
As we attempted the following problem, the raindrops increased, and so we were rushing more than was sensible...it turns out that there was enough time to injure myself some more!
Climbing Blue 17, I was trying to pull up on a thin crimp (that is, a tiny hold, maybe half a centimetre in depth, which I could just get three fingertips on), but it was getting increasingly slippery in the rain. I pinged off it two or three times (probably rushing it), and wrenched my right elbow a little in the process.
Tomorrow, both my elbow and my ankle are going to be rudely complaining!
Anyway, to finally put the tin hat on it, the rain, complete with thunder and lightning, set in...
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| pleuvoir dans la forêt |
Anna, who'd very much been up for some hard climbing today, was not amused!
We sheltered under overhangs amongst the boulders, and ate our sandwiches whilst wondering whether we'd get to climb any more this trip, let alone today.
I found lots of little puffballs, and spent a few minutes getting photo's after the worst of the rain had passed.
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| little ball of puff |
Thence, we headed home, a little bedraggled, mildly injured and a little disappointed.
Still, we're off out into Fontainebleau for an evening meal shortly, and tomorrow we hope to get one last session in...more thunderstorms are forecast, but we're remaining optimistic that we'll find something climbable at some point during the day tomorrow.
Also, we found this spider doing some web repairs outside our gite when we got home.
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| henri le spider |
Not the greatest photo, I couldn't quite get the lens combination right for the light conditions...and the critics amongst you will no doubt tut and sigh over the vignetting...
But let's see your photo of a French spider, huh?
:-p
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| behind you |
It was a glorious day in the forest today - bright and shady, warm and cool, tiring and invigorating, tranquil and challenging...
When we were in Font this time last year, Anna and I had done the first half of a fabulous Orange circuit at an area of the forest known as Haute Plaines in Isatis, not far outside the town of Fontainebleau itself.
As it happens to run alongside a yellow circuit, which Jezz was interested in doing, and in reverse order (that is, the orange circuit finishes where the yellow starts) it seemed like a good pick, and sure enough, we had a brilliant day.
Anna and I finished the Orange circuit, which was just as much fun as we remembered it...and Jezz did half of the yellow circuit in a final prep day for his 40@40@Font Challenge, which is currently scheduled for tomorrow.
Some of the problems Anna and I did today were a bit harder than yesterday, and so Anna had her game face on...
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| elvis? |
This was also handy for scaring off the giant cave troll in the red vest top that was hanging about all day (see top photo)...
We saw a brilliant green sand lizard as we walked into the forest, the biggest lizard I've ever seen in the wild, I think...and it was around about this time I realised I'd forgotten the camera (although not very helpfully, I did have the heavy lenses in my backpack). Jezz had his camera, but of course not the right lens...and conveniently he has Canon and we have Nikon, so they're incompatible.
Huzzah!
Still, I borrowed Jezz's camera to get this cool shot of a spider...
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| harry the spider |
Check out the amazing bokeh on this, that's a nice lens of Jezz's!
Speaking of which, today I sub-contracted out the boulder that looks like something else photo for today to Jezz, who promptly found a submarine...
Good work, buddy!
B-)
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| on the up |
I've been wanting to get a shot of this chap for ages, and this evening I just about managed it!
I didn't get home until gone 6pm, despite having left just after 7.30 this morning, and I was tired and distracted. But as I bimbled about saying hello to Anna and the Cats (great band name - it would be worth starting a band just to call it that!), I realised I could hear in the background, like a bee somewhere in the undergrowth, the steady drone of a little prop plane.
Just as I realised he was up there, several things happened.
Firstly, I realised I'd been vaguely on my way to change out of work clothes, and consequently I was climbing the stairs and taking my trousers off at the same time.
Then I realised that the camera had the wrong lens on, and the right lens was packed away in the accessories bag somewhere.
As these thoughts jumbled around my head, I heard the distinctive increase in pitch of the plane's engine, to an angry whine, followed by a disturbing silence...and then a few seconds later, a hack and a cough as the engine sputtered back to life...it's the aerobatics guy!!
Quickly changing (but with no time to do my trousers up), I rushed to grab the DSLR and hastily swapped lenses, before dashing out into the bright, sunlit evening.
Scanning the skies, I saw him above and ahead, circling around for another go at the loop the loop, and barrel-rolling as he went.
It's really hard to focus on something small in the sky a long way away...if you're not close, focus wise, you can't see the subject at all, and so can't aim precisely at it to focus on it.
Catch-22!
Once you find the plane, and manage to both zoom in and focus (best done in stages), your troubles aren't over...when you take a photo, the camera tries to auto-focus - if you're not pointing the centre of the viewfinder directly at the tiny (and moving!) plane as you hit the button, the camera will zoom out wildly trying to focus on nothing...and then you've lost sight of the plane and have to start all over again...
It's quite frustrating!
I must have looked quite a sight, stumbling around the garden with my trousers falling off, wildly pointing my camera with the full-on perv lens on at the sky!
Good job I'm too old to be bothered about that! ;-)
Anyway, I got 3 photo's before he wandered off into the sun...here's one of him the right way up:
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| on the level |
It's good to see him back, I haven't seen him for a while...and actually, I'm not sure if it's the usual guy, as it's a different plane...maybe he's got a new one?
Maybe he's Donald Shimoda, The Reluctant Messiah, (which is a great book that you should all make the effort to read at some point)....that would be so cool!
In any case, it looks as though he's having fun...
Wouldn't mind a go at that myself!
B-)
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| 5p, 32GB |
A comment Jezz made in his blog last night provided some handy inspiration this evening, when I was tired and otherwise all out of ideas...
He mentioned macro photography, which reminded me that we have a little macro lens that I've not tried yet (it fits onto our prime 35mm fixed lens)...so I soon found myself scanning my desk for a subject.
I have these little Micro-SD memory cards knocking around as I'm gradually gathering stuff for our trip to Font...and I'm constantly amazed at how small they are, with such huge capacity.
This particular one is 32GB, and you can get them as large as 128GB...these are a rare breed, almost never spotted in the wild, but the technology is there - you can buy them on Amazon...
A 128GB card could hold 24 hours of 720p video...even the 32GB could hold 175 episodes, nearly 8 seasons of Friends.
I think the first PC I bought, back in the early 90's, had a 128MB HDD...it was the size of a small, thick book, and weighed about a pound!
Now, one GB, (traditionally referred to as one GigaByte) is equal to 1,000 MB (MegaByte)...so this tiny card has 1,000 times the capacity, at 1/1000th of the physical size...stunning!
Around these parts (and somewhat anecdotally), my good friend Andy (erstwhile lead commentator on this blog), coined the perfect alternative word 10 years or so ago, when discussing a technical support issue with me (and simultaneously revelling in his PC-illiteracy, as he was wont to do)...I asked him something along the lines of, how big is the hard drive in that PC?, to which he replied, it's 128...erm...GoogleBigs...?
Do you see how much sense that word makes? If I said this MicroSD card can hold 32 GigaBytes, you'd be all, like, oh ok, awesome or whatever, I suppose...
But if I said it can take 32 GoogleBigs, you'd be all like, woah, dude, that thing is huge! It's like totally rad', brah!
Thanks Andy, I'm still enjoying that one! :-)
Anyway then I realise that that first PC was nearly 25 years ago, and it just makes me feel old...it's not like I was a kid when I got my first PC...
Yet still I do find it absolutely remarkable how tiny these MicroSD's are (you'll have noticed me remarking upon it, mere moments ago...).
And they provide the perfect opportunity for a bit of macro action.
For scale, I found the shiniest five pence coin in my small change receptacle, and stood it next to the memory card...I took around 30 shots, varying angles and lighting and f-stop with abandon, as I went...
Now, usually when I take multiple photo's I find myself using the first one, and feeling that I wasted all that time taking all the subsequent useless shots, and I should just go with my first instinct.
But tonight, this was the very last shot I took! I'm fairly pleased to have worked my way towards a half decent capture.
I also learned that the camera can still focus with this combination of lenses, as close as around 3 inches (but no closer).
I think this photo demonstrates that it has some capacity for capturing the detail of the very small...
Thanks for the reminder, Jezz!
Now I just need to find an actual, non-contrived subject!
:-)
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| stride |
A day out at Cratcliffe and 'the Stride today...Robin Hood's Stride that is, in North Derbyshire, in the south eastern corner of the Peak District.
It's a beautiful place, a jumble of rocks and trees and boulders and cows on a hill in the middle of nowhere...lovely!
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| style |
We have some good memories there...it's the first place we climbed outdoors, as it has lots of easy bouldering (a rarity in the UK)...it's also where I broke my leg on one of these easy boulders in May 2012, not 5m away from where the photo below was taken.
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| sun dappled |
Of some significance, it's also where we started to really get a feel for climbing on gritstone, the hard, abrasive rock that is largely confined to the Peak District, and is heavily symbolic of what Peak climbing is all about.
Gritstone is generally rounded and weather worn, which means many of the cracks and edges have been smoothed off.
When first trying to climb on grit, it just seems impossible - there's no holds for hands and nothing to stand on with your feet either! And it feels very abrasive, so cuts your hands and arms to ribbons, whilst at the same time being slippery and polished to get a grip on.
A critical skill on gritstone is smearing, which means placing the toe or ball of your foot flat on steep rock, pushing some weight through it, and ultimately standing on it.
Not only is this physically very difficult, involving fine control of body weight and a significant test of balance, but it's also quite challenging psychologically.
You just don't believe that you can put any weight on that foot without slipping off and scraping yourself down the rock...and this mindset makes you hesitant, which makes you not weight the foot much, which makes you slip off.
But if you trust that it will hold, and really positively put some weight on it, some sort of mystic magic happens and you can stand, and even push on what seems to be nothing.
Here's Anna taking her smear test...
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| delicate |
The prescribed challenge here is to smear along this slab of smooth rock from right to left, relying almost solely on the friction you can create between your shoe and the rock, and a carefully controlled state of balance.
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| easy does it... |
The gritstone does feel slippery and damp (not helped by sporadic rain from the turbulent grey sky), and whilst this may look like a simple problem, it really isn't...what it does is force you to pay attention to detail, to climb carefully, and most importantly, to trust your feet.
Here Anna reaches the left arete, and escapes upwards with relief.
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| phew |
Meanwhile, there is a classic climb at Cratcliffe called The Egg Arete, on the Egg Boulder, which I've been battling with for two years now.
As its name implies, the boulder is like a huge, oval egg, and there are climbs of varying difficulty on all sides of it. As it happens, this is the very same boulder that I broke my leg falling off of!
The Egg Arete is a blunt, smooth corner of this big boulder...it's a V3 problem, which makes it sound easy-ish, but it really isn't. Just getting on the rock is very difficult...the first time I tried to do this problem, in late 2012, this is about as far as I got:
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| almost off the ground |
During 2013, I tried it 2 or 3 times, and managed to consistently get here:
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| solid step up |
Today I made some more good progress, but still nowhere near getting up the thing...this is about as far as I got:
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| push/pull/etc |
We took loads of videos of each other failing to get up climbs...fortunately (for you!) I haven't had time to upload any.
Usually, of late, we've looked to do as many problems as possible...but today, we just felt like working a few harder climbs. We didn't actually complete any of them, but we made bits of progress here and there, and feel as though given the right conditions (cold and dry - basically the opposite of today) we might get up a few things.
And we wanted to spend a little time on actual rock before Font in two weeks time...
A good day out...and I'm officially very tired indeed!
)-zzzz
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| how many sgs3's?! |
Preparations for our climbing holiday in France continue apace!
When we started climbing outdoors a couple of years ago, we quickly discovered the value of documenting our adventures with video and photographs. It adds a new dimension to a day's escapades when you can sit and relive the day in the evening...it always sparks memories and conversations that you couldn't have at the time, because you were at opposite ends of a rope or whatever.
At the end of our first year, we were able to produce a lovely photobook documenting our journey from outright noobs to not quite such outright noobs. It's a lovely way to distil 2,000 photo's into something interesting and meaningful.
And of course we made a couple of cool videos of our trip to Fontainebleau last September.
To be honest, I would have made more (and intended to), but it is very time consuming and let's face it, nobody else is really that interested.
It's also really incredible how ubiquitous high quality video cameras have become, even just over the last year.
In September 2013, in Font, we had one decent smartphone that would take HD video, one half decent smartphone that took reasonable quality lower-res video, and one purpose built video camera that claimed to be 720p but was really atrocious quality.
We had one little tripod that fell over as soon as you tried to attach anything heavier than a lighter to it, and one of those spider wire things that you can fashion into a shape that can hold a phone whilst it video's, but are really hard to fix into an unmoving position, and even harder to get to point specifically where you want it to.
The result of all that was a lot of faffing about trying to balance phones and cameras on rocks and uneven ground, and a lot of badly framed, poor quality video.
By contrast, this year we will have at least 5 smartphones capable of producing 720p video, two of which can take 1080p, and one of which even claims to take video in 4K!
Alongside those, we'll have two very good DSLR cameras, both of which will take HD Video, and at least one GoPro type action camera, which again takes extremely good video.
So I've gathered this collection of tripods to assist our documentation...
The yellow one has extendible legs, up to about 1m, and is quite sturdy. We already owned this, so I just got a phone holder attachment for under a tenner.
The one with the fat black legs is bendy and robust. The legs can be bent to suit uneven ground, or even wrapped around branches of trees or similar. That cost just over a tenner.
Finally, the monopod (purchased for the princely sum of £3.39) is a phone clamp on the end of an extendible arm. This will have a variety of uses, from taking selfies from much further away, to filming climbers from above, to who knows what interesting motion shots!
To store the huge amount data we're going to create, I've got about half a dozen 32GB micro-SD cards for the phones, and a 32GB SDHC card for the camera. I assume Jezz will have significant capacity for his 3 or more cameras too.
I've just realised I'm probably going to have to take a good sized hard drive to store the ridiculous amount of video we're going to end up taking!
Fortunately we're all into photography, and we all have a different approach. With a bit of luck, we should get some really interesting and creative stills and movies.
Interesting to us, anyway.
You'll all be getting samples of it on this blog, of course...
You can't escape it...resistance is futile!
B-)
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| catch that pigeon |
It was another of those longest days today...but not in a good way!
Work was really busy all day, culminating in an intensely frustrating and inconveniently over-run meeting with HR (how do these people sleep?!)...so I left work just before 5pm, later than intended, and had to (literally - and I mean that...well...literally!) run round Sainsbury's to grab a few supplies, before dashing home by around 5.40pm.
I'd promised to help Anna with some weird bat bothering escapade this evening, and as it was taking place in Melton Mowbray, we had to be away by 6pm.
By 7.30pm we were on site and preparing to start the survey.
The plan was for each of us to take a pre-planned and very specific route around the perimeter of two adjoining fields. We were to spend 5 minutes in one spot, listening for and recording bat sightings, before spending 5 minutes moving slowly on to the next spot (whilst listening for and recording bat sightings). This process was repeated 12 times over 2 hours, as we covered both fields between us.
In order to complete this seemingly simple task, I had to carry in one hand a clipboard with a map and spare paper for recording manually if needed. In my other hand, I was to carry a bat detector (which transposes the sound of a bat's echolocation down to a frequency that human's can hear).
In my other, other hand, I carried a large box containing a sound recording system, to record any passing bat activity for later analysis. In my final other hand, I held my smartphone and recorded details of any sightings onto a Google Form (one handed of course).
I had to do this whilst walking around an unfamiliar field, in the deepening dark of night.
So that was easy...not!
All was quiet for the first and last 50 minutes or so, but in the middle there was a flurry of bat activity....mostly pipistrelles foraging and commuting, although there were one or two other species which I'm not familiar enough with to be able to identify.
I did catch a brief glimpse of a fox, sneaking through the field behind me, and at one point a deer was barking away just a few metres away from me on the other side of the hedgerow.
The photo above was an experiment with Night mode, using a new camera app I've been playing with on my phone. I'd disturbed a pigeon which was hiding in the long grass, and didn't seem able to fly away...this is an 8 second exposure of that pigeon!
So, erm yeah...Fail!!
Finally, to illustrate just how long a day it's been, check this out...
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| what's in the bag?! |
I've been waiting for this big bag of SportPursuit delights to arrive for weeks...today, at last, it arrived...
But it's just a few minutes before midnight now, and I have yet to open it!
This will soon be rectified!
;-)
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| roe doe or doe roe? |
Our evening walks have tailed off lately, so even though the evening was a little windy and rain threatened, we made the effort to take a stroll down the lane to see what's happening out there.
We needed to get going anyway, as we're both still feeling a little tired, worn and generally under the weather, and we were in danger of flaking out for the evening.
It's Week 3, Day 1 of our Pull Up Challenge too, so we need to muster some energy to stick with that particular (or puh-chick-ullah, as the Tai Chi guru pronounces it) programme.
So we wandered down the lane listening to the oddly persistent shrieks of a buzzard across the field, and trying to spot where it was and what was up with it.
We never did spot the buzzard, but this lovely doe roe was bimbling around the edge of the field, and seemed curiously unperturbed by our presence (albeit we were partially obscured by the hedgerow).
I took about a bazillion photo's, which weren't great in the main, as the light was poor. But I quite liked these two, which I tried to frame a little differently to the usual target in the middle of the shot framing.
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| big ears |
I couldn't decide which of these two I preferred, so I'll leave that up to you, if it even matters.
We also met this strangely brazen sheep...it had an unusual and slightly unsettling bravado, compared with the usual run away if anyone looks at you attitude of our local lambs.
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| one shoop |
I wasn't even zoomed in for this shot, she was only about 3m away from me...weird!
A propos of nothing much, if the singular of geese is goose, then shouldn't the singular of sheep be shoop? Several sheep, one shoop...makes sense to me....
Anyway we arrived home and immediately got stuck in to the pull up thing...it was hard tonight, as we are still sore from climbing on Saturday...but we completed our sets, painful as it was.
For some reason my schedule totalled 3 more pull ups than I've done in a 10 minute session before, which seemed quite a steep increase in difficulty.
But I just about managed it, so with hindsight I'm treating it as significant progress!
Tired and hungry now though...
:-)
 |
| tiny ball of cute |
This is a really terrible photo, but it has proven quite difficult to get a shot of this little chap, so I'm claiming it!
He's one of our local wrens, and I just happened to notice him in the hedgerow this morning (I say him, I've no idea of gender, in truth...).
After admiring his cuteness for a couple of minutes, I suddenly realised I was missing a golden opportunity to make another addition to my Different Species collection.
I dashed back with the camera, as bleary eyed as you'd expect before 8 in the morning, and rattled off a couple of grainy, badly focussed shots.
Honestly, I've no idea what I was doing with the camera...
On the first shot the aperture stayed open for ages, so my mind went into spasm trying to debug that little problem. The only thing I could think was errrrrm, f-stop?
So I wheeled the f-stop to the opposite end from where it started, and this seemed to help.
Unfortunately it didn't help with my framing or my ability to see clearly.
The net result of all of which is this reasonably poor shot of a really lovely little bird.
Wrens are tiny birds - I think only goldcrest are smaller in the UK. They are remarkably noisy, and can sometimes be seen sitting on a gatepost giving off loud, strident peeps, and doing an amusing little dip with each call. I guess this is a territorial thing...at other times they sing beautifully with a clear, high tone.
Anyway we regularly have them around our garden, and they often nest in the ivy outside our bathroom window.
I'm very fond of them...they seem, along with the robin, like my little gardening buddies, that hang around chirping encouragement (on the odd occasion that I'm out there working without noisy machinery).
But they flit about a lot, and I never seem to see them at an appropriate moment.
So even though the photo is sub par, I'm pleased to have finally got a snap of one.
In other news, TFI(nearly)F...I'm tired and hoping to catch up on sleep sometime soon...
B-zzzzz
