A nice sunny morning at just after 8 a.m. so I went up the Alexandra Road and took an infrared of the gardens, Then out to Nortons Wood, and on to Nailsea Wall.

I noticed the crab apple trees along Davis Lane were in bloom so I stopped on the way back and got some shots using the Tamron 90mm macro and flash.

They were doing riding practice on the tan at the equestrian centre so I got a few pix of that as well.

Quite a good mixed morning.

Yet man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upwards Job 5/7
And don’t I know it.
No sooner had I got my starter motor replaced than it turned out that my battery was not holding a charge. £43 Starter £68 new battery, then I found the offside door hinges were breaking away from the fibreglass.
No way was I going to try and get a second-hand door. I had done that only 3 or 4 years back.
I managed to patch the top hinge with the door on the car and discovered the bottom one was also in a bad way.
I managed to get the door off with the help of a neighbour and did another job with the resin and hardener. My nephew came down and put the door back on with me helping and then I managed to put back all the extras that I had taken off and it works OK.
Not a pretty looking job but as long as it will hold that is all I worry about.

Went back to Nailsea Wall and tried another few exposures. Found part of the problem was switching off too soon. The processing takes much longer than normal process. If live view is used that shows on the rear screen.
With a bright exposure I can treat it by turning it to greyscale and then "Enhance picture" and auto contrast. If it not plucky enough ‘Clarify’ fixes it.

After having found out by being told on Flickr that it is possible to adjust the compression of pix when saving I had a good look at Paint Shop Pro 11 and found there is also in the later series a reasonable shadows etc. lightener.
So I decided to see what could be done with Infrared pic. Used the following for the Nailsea Wall pic.

In PSP 11 select Adjust – Colour – Red/Green/Blue
In this instance
Red 62
Green –37
Blue –39

The change to Image menu select Grayscale.

Back to Adjust - Smart fix
In this instance
Overall 28
Shadows –30

Highlights 20
Saturation 99
Focus 89

I think this will work better in future than dodging between programmes.

Went out to Nailsea Wall and tried out some Infra Red pix. Some Ok but one set very bad. Will try again tomorrow perhaps.

There was a discussion on Flickr with someone asking a question about flash. I took some pix of my flash arrangement for macro and insect stalking.

I think the Stiz bracket with the adjustable angle for the flash gives the best result.

Saw a new Phalaenopsis orchid in Morrisons and it looked quite pretty. Decided to treat myself, bought myself a bottle of cooking whisky at the same time to celebrate.