Saw this growing and took a few pix

I reckon it is a wild onion flower. I had one growing there a few years ago but they cut it off with the strimmer.
If they cultivated this to a gladiola size flower gardeners would grow them and boast about the colours etc.
My Nigella damascene plants from last years dropped seeds have come on fairly well after that very late spring.


l

Love-in-a-Mist bud

Another few days should see the flowers open I hope.

Saltings Kingston Seymour

Came across some 2.5 square colour pix whilst scannong.

I wonder how much spartina grass is surviving now on the mud flats.

This must have been taken off Crossman's Warth at least 40 years ago. Perhaps even 50 years back.

Pekin? bantam cockerel.

Went down to Broadstone to pick up Martin. There were a few bantam hens foraging in the front garden and a really handsome cockerel. Not a thing you see very often nowadays, even in the countryside.

Shows how the face of Britain has changed over the past years.

At least there are no close neighbours to complain about crowing at dawn.

Bloody ridiculous how folk move out of town and then complain of the natural noises from the farm animals. If I was judging a case like that I would be inclined to tell them :-- "If you don't like it move back into the city then"

Original print condition.

When scanning I came across a couple of slides I had taken of very early pictures of the old fire pump. Horse drawn at that time. It had been dragged out of the fire station and was I expect, waiting for the council horses to arrive to pull it to the fire.

Very poor condition picture and I had almost completely forgotten about taking them. This sone in particular had been in terrible shape, there had been folds across the  original and marks of creases and scratches.

I set to and cloned it with PSP8.

I didn't completely remove the fold marks only in the vital places and did not do anything to faces etc.

I understand from what I was told at the time I took the copy pix that Jack Willcox [the inventor and engineer] acted as messenger boy probably because he had a bicycle, that was a real luxury in those days - Edwardian 1900's.. 

The 

The Magic Spring

How was it done?

When scanning slides and prints I came across some 2.5 square pix taken with my Mamiyaflex. Probably around 40 years back.

Complicated exposure yet simple principle :---

Colour film uses blends of 3 colours, Red, Green and Blue.

All 3 colours together imprint as white.

Measure your exposure - say 100th at f11

Take 3 shots on the same film frame of 1/30th each

hold in front ot the lens a gelatin type filter of 3 colours using a different one for each exposure.

With splashing water like this it registers on only one of the colours therefore a change of position means it shows only the colour of the filter used at that time.

Where nothing has moved or changed the normal and natural colour is registered because each of the filters has combined and shows the same image.

I had to remember to change the exposure type to Cut Film on the Mamiya so as to be able to take 3 shots on one frame.

I used to enjoy messing about with film experimenting 

 

The Mystery of the Missing Trooper.

Since February of this year I have been scanning selected prints, slides, and negatives to the number of around 3,500. Now I have changed to some of my own stuff, I have been scanning a series of prints and slides selecting those of interest to convert to JPG’s. Total number selected to date is just over 1,000. Some of the images had been over exposed  and were very light with little highlight detail. One of the two extremely pale, I had of the old side-pump horse drawn fire brigade was damaged on the original and I had to work on the JPG to repair the scratch marks and folds.

In the picture of the Artillery group the central people have little facial detail

[To enlarge the pic for better viewing left click on it and then Press f11]

My favourite programme for the treatment of this type of picture is Photoshop Elements. There are controls there to lighten shadows, darken highlights, change contrast and also to allow sharpening of images.

Imagine my surprise when after darkening highlights in this picture of the old Volunteer Artillery I discovered ghost images appearing from what had been white borders to a vignette. The original printer of the picture that I had copied had decided the central and important characters were enough. Yet the suppressed image had lasted through not only his print but my copy picture on film and carried over to my scanned JPG on my computer.

   

My Great, Great, Uncle Thomas Lilly [the fisherman] and his son Charles ran pleasure boats and bathing machines on the beach.

Charles was also a member of the Militia Artillery and a crack shot in the shoulder gun contests.  The badge they wore was very large and incorporates the cannon of the present artillery badge

.

I wonder how many of them still exist?

What a beauty, fantastic condition.

Drove Martin up to Melksham Friday to get spares for his landrover.

Went to a surplus stock place - what an eye opener. First thing I saw as a superb Sunbeam S7 motorcycle. Excellent condition and looking just as if it had come that moment from the stockists showroom.

"Corgi" paratroopers bike.

Not to be compared with the other.

Ex-army "Tilly" car

For cannon you had a choice 

Big like this one

or there was a small one transportable by Landrover 20mm 

Small enough to manhandle into place.

How many lorries there? God alone knows. There was even an Ex-Wehrmacht light tank and a small German armoured car complete with cannon. They were packed in so close I couldn't get pix of them. 

Had several lectures from Martin about my driving standard. I don't mind that - I know he is a far better driver than I could ever be now, or was in the past.

He has already saved me about 8 miles per gallon by telling me in no uncertain terms, how to drive an automatic change car. My last average for local getting around was 41 MPG.

I had been getting about 32 MPG. and blaming the car !

When it all boils down - that means 1/5th saving on petrol price.

How lovely to be able to hang on with my connection. Before the BT Broadband engineer visited I would never have been able to keep a contact that long and post all the pix and text.