BS: All welcome on this thread

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Pete from seven stars link
Date: 27 Aug 17 - 12:20 PM

They look good to my "inexpert " eyeDMcG

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: DMcG
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 02:53 PM

My inexpert snaps around Greys Court

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 01:58 PM

Well, back safe from Whitby and glad to see this thread still going. I would add more but the promise of cold beer is luring me away from the keyboard :-)

TTFN

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Will Fly
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 04:03 AM

Greys Court looks lovely - have a great day!

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: DMcG
Date: 26 Aug 17 - 03:51 AM

Today I plan to visit Grey's Court. I know nothing about it, having never been, but it is roughly the mid point between where we live and my brother-in-law's place, which they moved to this year so we are meeting there for a peruse and picnic.

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 25 Aug 17 - 12:10 PM

My name is Bruce and I'm a Mudcatter. I'm glad to be here.

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Ed T
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 06:24 PM

Music trivia 

A little below the line music trivia, just for fun.

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Will Fly
Date: 24 Aug 17 - 10:01 AM

That's my kind of day.

A sort of equivalent down here in Sussex would be to start at the top of the South Downs - somewhere like Devil's Dyke or Chanctonbury Ring and walk east or west as the fancy takes you. Fantastic views all round, always with the possibility of dropping down to the Weald on one side or to the sea on the other.

The downs are in the South Downs National Park - about which there has been a lovely BBC4 documentary, presented by the Vicar of Firle, Glynde and Beddingham, Peter Owen-Jones.

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 07:41 PM

Bude was the hottest place in the UK on Tuesday. My son, his missus, our precious one-and-only grandson (aged nearly two and blessed with both my good looks AND my intellect) and Mrs Steve did the relatively gentle walk from Trebetherick, across St Enodoc golf course to the church with the wonky steeple, paying homage at the grave of John Betjeman (on which someone, fittingly, had placed a cloth cap). As the spring tide was so low we had an excellent view of the Doom Bar across the Camel estuary. Then on to the beach at Rock where the little feller had his picnic. Next, across to Padstow on the ferry where we grown-ups found a bench, braved the seagulls and devoured our Chough Bakery pasties, in my view the finest in Cornwall (therefore the world), washed down with tea from the little takeaway hatch with the very nice lady a few yards from the pasty shop. Back across to Daymer Bay on the ferry and a goodly slog in the sunshine on one of Cornwall's finest beaches back to Trebetherick for a cup of char and a flapjack. Now that's what I call a day out.

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Raggytash
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 02:38 PM

Only when you the singer had had too much to drink John, not that you or I would ever do that !!

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: JHW
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 02:20 PM

Is 'Singing from the floor' what i might expect as a folkie?

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: DMcG
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 01:50 PM

My main camera is a bridge, a Sony a6000. This is a fair bit larger than most compacts, but when one of the smaller lens is in use it still fits happily in my pocket. The main disadvantage I find over a full SLR is that the range of lens isn't huge. I am not a serious photographer, so I think the most expensive lens I have was around £200.   For those who don't know about such things, a friend is a keen photographer and recently spent £10,000 on a glass (when you are that serious you don't call them lenses!)

If you are entering a photo in a competition, I can see why people might spent hours on it in Photoshop. My Photoshop use, except in the rarest of circumstances, doesn't go beyond a little fiddling with brightness and contrast. As a result, I don't really understand Photoshop at all. It is all very well to come up with a five step process to improve a picture - "Add a little magenta here" - but unless you have built up an intuitive understanding, coming up with the right five steps is difficult, and certainly beyond my skills.

I am not sure why this is become a photography thread, so by way of variety here's some of the books I am currently reading; I usually have several on the go.

- The Suicide Club
- Miss or Mrs?
- The Handmaid's tale (rereading after few decades)
- Singing from the Floor
- The Complete CS Lewis Signature classics

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 10:39 AM

I never go anywhere without two cameras. One is my iPhone 6S, fabulous in emergencies and remarkably good at getting decently lit pics. Of course, you can't really zoom. My other is a titchy little Canon Ixus 285HS. It has built-in wifi so that I can upload my pics on to my iPad, thence into the Cloud, after every trip. I can zoom in and take smashing little videos with it. But here's the rub: I can shove it into the pocket of my shorts. I do know that they can't hold a candle to modern DSLRs. I admire you guys with you DSLRs and interchangeable lenses and filters. I dabbled in that meself for a year or two many moons ago in the pre-digital days, but the hassle of carrying it all around and the sheer bulk of the camera were no good for me. I'm very much a hands-free rambler and the only thing I'll ever countenance around my neck is my tiny pair of Olympus 8x25 PCI bins, even then not if I don't have to. I've got pair of DDR-made Carl Zeiss Jena 8x30 that I've had for forty years which are greatly superior (they are the genuine article, not a cheap fake copy), but they're also three times the weight so they stay at home for astronomy and birdwatching in the garden.

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Mr Red
Date: 23 Aug 17 - 04:14 AM

So my advice would be stick to film and an SLR

Digital cameras have a few options that film struggles with. I document my town (aka village with excellent shopping) for 2017 have 2000 pics on-line, some of which are of overhead. The only way to get these shots of moving objects is to point and hope. But with digital I can point and shoot 20 times and select the best one, discard the rest. With film you would struggle to get 4 in and have to re-point the camera each time.

Then there is the notion of saving to the "cloud". It will survive even the "kids' clear out".

And how are you going to lighten, crop, zoom? In a darkroom that you don't have?

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 05:48 PM

See the BS thread on author Robin Jarvis
regarding his latest Whitby iteration.
Written for 'tweens and young adults,
suitable for families
(who don't mind some "Goose-Bumps" style horror)

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 05:06 PM

I hope to be setting off from Haworth by 11 but with the best will in the world that is likely to be nearer to 12. 3 hours-ish to Whitby. Set up camp for the girls - an hour. In the pub by 4. So theory has it...

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Raggytash
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 04:32 PM

Yesterday was a bit of a non event in Whitby, no doubt in some part to my excesses's over the first two days, and in some part to the fact it was Regatta Monday.

Today started off quietly but built up into a very pleasant day. Time for food and some sleep however.

Tomorrow is a new day !!

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 12:30 PM

The good news is that you folks are still here.

The other news is that I can't say a thing about photography.

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Will Fly
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 06:03 AM

Indeed, Raggytash - many of my photographs have had hard copies printed on archival paper - which is another way of preserving them.

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: DMcG
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 05:11 AM

On excessive precautions for photos. I went on a trip of a lifetime a few years back and decided I needed every bit of security i could come uo with, so ended up taking a 64Gb memory card for every morning and evening, eight spare batteries, a second camera and a portable hard disk sdcard backp gadget. Then when I got home I backed everything up to an ftp area and the cloud and a secondary 2Tb drive. At that is all in addition to my normal nightly backup to the cloud.

It is not as if the photos are that specual, but they are mine!

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Raggytash
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 05:11 AM

Will, A word of caution. A few years ago I was tasked with collating and storing all company records which, because of the nature of the business, had to be kept for a minimum of 80 years.

During this work I had a long meeting with a Kodak rep. The upshot of which was that he couldn't guarantee that digital photographs of the files could be kept for such a period.

However microfiche could be kept, or so it was calculated for 500 years.

Hopefully your record of the village will at some point be made available publically. So my advice would be stick to film and an SLR

Cheers

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Will Fly
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 04:58 AM

Good luck with RAW, Dave. Adobe Lightroom - like most modern Adobe graphics products - is now only available with a monthly subscription, and it's impossible to buy the up-to-date version of Lightroom. (I use a Mac laptop with 10.6.8 OS).

However, I managed to find and buy a CD of Lightroom 4 for a Mac with my old operating system - on eBay - and it works fine. There are alternatives to Lightroom, by the way.

I don't know how your Fuji operates - I've got a couple of Finepix compacts - but the Canon produces RAW files in a format called CR2. This is a Canon version of RAW which has to be converted into DNG (digital negative) format for use within Lightroom. So be aware of that,

The other point to note is that RAW files are fairly massive - around 50Mb each - and computer hard drive storage can get eaten into pretty quickly! The resulting JPGs produced from Lightroom are also between 10Mb-15Mb each, so you could just keep those and trash the original RAW files. I keep both, however, and store them on two separate 8Tb external hard drives - backed up immediately.

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 04:45 AM

I have a Fuji 'bridge' camera that does raw - Must have a play! Thanks Will.

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Will Fly
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 04:36 AM

For those who want to see one or two pictures in high resolution (the website with my photos compresses uploaded images), I have some full-size photographs. There's a page of thumbnails of them here, all taken over the last two years with the Canon:

High resolution images of Henfield

This page contains links to a few selected, high-resolution photographs taken from my archive of many hundreds of Henfield images. The images are held on a separate server, allowing me to display photos of a greater file size. Click on a thumbnail below to display the photo in a separate browser window - then click on any area of the the displayed photo to see it in extra detail. Clicking on the photo caption will take you to the relevant page of information about the subject.

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Will Fly
Date: 22 Aug 17 - 04:28 AM

Places change constantly. New roads, new houses, changes of business, repairs and repaints, etc., are all part of it. The seasons bring their own changes as common lands and agricultural fields are filled with grasses and crops, and trees blossom and then close up for the winter.

Recording all this can seem a little obsessive at times, but - looking back over the years - it's like seeing a film of a village in slow motion. I've always been an amateur photographer, and still have my old Pentax S1a 35mm SLR and various lenses. When cassette cameras, digital cameras and the like came in, I also had several of those over the years. However, I realised after retirement some years ago that it was all too easy to relax in a chair with a guitar or the laptop - and get no exercise. So out came the camera really as an excuse to walk regularly - and to walk with a purpose. Then, about two years ago, I got fed up with the compact digital and had a yen to return to an SLR where I could have complete control over focus, aperture, shutter speed, etc. - just like the old days.

I now use a moderately expensive Canon DSLR with a "kit" zoom lens (18mm-135mm), which does me fine. And, more to the point, I shoot in RAW - which allows me complete control over the post-production with Adobe Lightroom software. For those non-camera buffs, RAW is the unprocessed file taken by the camera, containing all the information needed to create a JPG. Compact camera software creates a JPG according to the software in its chip, and you have very little overall control of it once the picture's been taken. Lightroom and RAW, together, are the equivalent of taking, developing, fixing and printing in the old darkroom process.

But that's a huge digression from the original point - which is the people I've met, the conversations I've had, the hidden places I've been to while doing all this - just from casual conversations and being interested in other people!

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: JHW
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 02:19 PM

Ref Will Fly post and Mr Red. As a junior electricity board engineer I laid on removal of supply to properties that were coming down so having this advance warning I would take photos of them, polaroids back then. Alas as I moved on the project faded and I've just been reminded of it.
It is important that areas are photographed in every era or there will be nothing to look back on.

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 10:45 AM

They were very good indeed. Let's have more! Anyone with such a hobby should share it here and let the 'cat enjoy the fruits of our labours :-)

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Pete from seven stars link
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 08:33 AM

I remember you posting your pics awhile back will fly and enjoying touring your village on the cat !

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 07:16 AM

See you on Wednesday! :-)

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Raggytash
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 05:40 AM

The first two days of the folk festival have been a joy. Saturday morning involved a constant stream of tea and coffee to friends who dropped in to say hello ......... and take advantage of the parking behind our house and the music has been great. Saturday afternoon saw us in the Waiting Room and the Black Horse in the evening. Yesterday we decamped to Glaisdale for a fantastic session in the Arncliffe Arms and then the Blach Horse last night.

More to follow today.................

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 05:11 AM

I saw that Mr R - Good news for those of us with a social disposition. Not so good for the ant-social ones :-(

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Mr Red
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 04:03 AM

an interesting thought - the thread on longevity implies that being nice to people helps with the subject. Though social media are not big predictors (if at all).

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 21 Aug 17 - 03:59 AM

Anyone else want to contribute to a non-argumentative and polite thread? I am sure many would enjoy it.

DtG

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: keberoxu
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 03:04 PM

Wishing that Mudcstter Senoufou, also known as Eliza, would join in. This is the kind of conversation that she favored and she has much to contribute, wherever she is now. Miss her much.
And her lovely Cote d'Ivoire husband.
And her two male Siamese cats.

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Mr Red
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 02:18 PM

In my town (3,500 inhabitants) people do talk but rarely about my photographing the town. There is a project to archive images for 2017. My take is to photograph the minutia. When you see old photos it is inevitable that your eye goes to features. ie minutia/social history.
House Names
Miscelaneous - eg boot scrapers see "iron on buildings"
Business Hoardings
Wall Art (including Yarn Bombing)

and in the greater area (Stroud, Gloucestershire) I do talk to people, at bus stops, via contacts and at drop-in centres. The interesting recordings of life in the old days* are edited to 2 minutes that usually is about one or two subjects.
Stroud Voices (search engine) (I have seeded it with- "courting"!)

*specific to Stroud before about 1970

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 01:47 PM

Lovely, cousin McGnome :-) Just had my grandsons over for the weekend. Bit older than yours at 6 and 8 years old but great fun. Going back to believing that people are intrinsically good I think you only need to watch children for a while to see that they harbour no preconceptions or in-built prejudice against anyone. We could learn a lot from them.

Wes it Crosby, Stills and Nash that included the lyric 'Teach your parents well'?

:D tG

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: DMcG
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 01:41 PM

I spent Friday and Saturday babysitting my 16 month old grandson, who lives about two and a half hours drive away. We talked a lot about shapes (which let to a fb chat with a goodly number of relatives and friends about how the word 'rectangle' dies fit with the other shape names); I spent much of the time buried beneath an ever increasing pile of toys he kept bringing. We sang lots of nursery rhymes and morris tunes and discussed geometric series (which he didnt quite grasp the final details of, but no matter)


His mother is Italian so reading his books was challenging

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Jim Carroll
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 01:33 PM

"Just been over to Manchester to clear up round the grave that my Dad's ashe"
My grandfather, a Liverpudlian, donated his body to medical science
Two years after his death, we received a letter informing us that what was left of him would be buried in Didsbury Cemetery
I don't think he ever visited Manchester in his life
Jim Carroll

Subject: RE: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Will Fly
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 01:25 PM

One of my long-standing projects - one which I've pursued for nearly 40 years - is photographing my village: streets, houses, pubs, churches, the countryside, etc. So I regularly walk the streets and footpaths, camera on my shoulder, shooting what catches my eye.

I very often get into conversation with householders in or near their houses - mainly because they're curious about what I'm doing. I always respond with a question about their property, and give them a "business" card which advertises my website about the village. Just to allay any fears...

I've had some great conversations - and got some great photos from being invited through the front gate and into the grounds. (I never take photographs inside the houses). Only this morning I had a 20-minute conversation with the owner of a 16th-century house, with him talking animatedly about its history and what he'd had done to it over during his 20-year ownership. Fascinating stuff.

Motto: Take an interest in people and their interests, and you'll learn some wonderful things.

Subject: BS: All welcome on this thread
From: Dave the Gnome
Date: 20 Aug 17 - 12:55 PM

...provided that you are polite and not here just to argue. Anything goes apart from that. How long can we keep it going?

Just been over to Manchester to clear up round the grave that my Dad's ashes are going in in a couple of weeks. There was a crew of men there, of all ages, with words to the effect of 'putting back into the community' on their hi-viz jackets. They said they would do a major clear up of the area tomorrow. I have no reason to suppose they will not. In general I find people are good and helpful as long as you are friendly with them.

Cheers

DtG