Calendar

Had the Britannia calender though my letter box today. Found 3 of my pix from morguefile used in it.

I went down to the lake a couple of times to watch the seagulls “fishing”. A young herring gull was learning and rather clumsy but the Little Gulls were very adept. I don’t know what their success rate is but I did see one with a little fish in its beak.

Weather nice and bright so I took a little trip. Went out to Rowberrow to start with and took some pix at the church. I noticed an unusual gargoyle right up at the top of the tower. Luckily I had the SLT A77V with me so i set it to 2 times and got a close shot. It seems to represent a goat which is rather odd because goats are normally associated with the devil. However the church is dedicated to St Michael and he was a "disinfectanting" saint.
So there might be pagan sites in the fairly close area. I must check on the O.S. Maps.

Book Cover

Had information today of another book cover from one of my morguefile.com pix.

Went up to Sunhill and got some squirrel pix. They were very busy feeding and finding acorns. One of them could carry two in its mouth, greedy devil.

Took some rugby pix Sat 22nd afternoon using the SLT77V tried out the 2 times tele-extension and got pix right across the field. This one was used by North Somerset Times. Should be a Colts match this week-end, see what i can do there.

Went up to Nailsea Sat 22nd to get pix of the double header. Stopped at Backwell lake on the way back and took pix of the little gulls flying.

Top of the town

Took some pix from Dial Hill Road looking down on to the Middle of Clevedon. The 1.4 & 2 times tele-extender work well. No f stop increase like a 2 times add-on extender would cause, just a reduction in mega pixels. As the SLT 77V has 24+ MP's it merely reduces them to 12+ on the 2 times.
Isolating houses from as high as this point makes it hard to identify individual places. If I didn't know exactly what I had taken.

Had my replacement SLT 77V arrive in the week and went out to get some shots and familiarise myself with it. Driving along The Beach and spotted this Baby Austin, fantastic condition and I managed to find a place to park and took a set of pix. Posted them on Flickr and also Morguefile. There has been a few downloads on Morguefile already.
I wonder if cars made today will still be able to run in 75 years time like this one?

Went over to Keynsham to get pix of the 'Earl of Mount Edgecombe' steam train. Picked a good spot on the platform. Man about 10 feet away and standing back as I was. As the train came through the stupid basket stepped forward about 5 feet and complately blocked my chance of getting a pic. The loco was going so fast by the time I got forward as well it was gone by.
I was fuming but said nothing to the little swine. As a consolation I went back via Woollard and Publow. Got some shots with my Sony A350 that has been converted to take infrared pix.

Went up to Nailsea to get shots of the "Devonian" After the disappointment of the Bank Holiday run it was nice to be able to get some steam pix without too many people there.

Jiggling pix

I found an old slide, probably 40 years old or so. I took the pic on the down road to Washford from Raleighs Cross on the Brendons. I tried to scan it but it was very spotty so I jiggled it to a simulated water colour using PSP 7.
When I went digital I had gone to the place to take new pix but the trees had grown so high along the slopes that it was impossible to see the view It was looking down from the B3190 towards Leighland Chapel at around a hundred yards or so down the road from Raleighs Cross Inn. .
Fairly easy to do. First reduce the size of the pic to around 200kb. Save this as a seperate pic to work on. Go into PSP 7 and select "Effects" then "Noise" and choose Salt and Pepper filter. Set to around 5 pixel size and study how it has worked. Adjust to larger or smaller pixel sixe, to change the way it goes.
Save the reult and then go to "Image" then "Resize" Pic around 300 pixels per inch and do not allow the new dimensions suggested but save the image to about 8/9 inches on the longest side.

High tide

Went for a visit to the seafront Sunday morning to try an experiment. I took pix at around 1/15th of a second hand held.
The Sony "steady" helps a lot. Wind was around force 5 to 6 and the waves a little splashy. It was slow enough to show movement and blur but I was able to hold to get decent focus on the pier legs and the rocks. Quite a cold wind and I was glad to finish and go home for a coffee.

Horses

Went along to the Hand Equestrian Centre when they were doing jumps.



Took over 100 pix in around 30 minutes. This one has had 40+ views on Flickr in a couple of weeks..