Category: images

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Sockage

The sock family.

My father looks as though he has elephantiasis because his sock was retrieved from the laundry basket and he insisted on putting it on over the thick one he was already wearing.

FirstSpawn’s sock has a huge hole under the heel (not visible in this picture) because he’s been wearing it almost constantly since he got it, half the time sliding around on wooden floors without shoes on. He has ordered me to darn it. I have ordered him to take more care of it.

The next sockage will be long ones for my father probably based on this golf hose pattern which dates from when he was two years old.

It is, in our collective experience, quite true that hand-knitted socks are warmer and more comfortable than shop bought.

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Colour

It was so ridiculously sunny and warm today. And it was the first day back at the shrink after the Easter break occasioning a couple of miles of walking equipped with the camera. What I notice most about the pictures I took today is the vibrant colours. Sunlight and flowers. A winning combination.

forget-me-not

Forget-me-nots were my favourite flower as a child. Small, shy, retiring, a brilliant blue and signifying the sort of love and tenderness I believed might exist somewhere.

keria

I still remain stubbornly convinced (despite the evidence of this picture) that keria blooms are orange. F claims they are yellow.

pink stuff

I don’t know what this stuff is called, but it’s gloriously, fabulously pink and what after all could be more important than that.

I saw men wearing shorts and innumerable individuals of all ages and sexes in diaphanous, truncated tops. The weather forecast is for snow over the weekend.

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Don’t buy an Olympus camera

Just don’t. Really. I have no idea why anyone ever does. I so wish I wasn’t tied into the damn things. They’re probably fine and dandy if you’ve got shed-loads of cash. If you haven’t, they absolutely stink.

Take, for example, the subject of a ring flash for macro photography.

If you are fortunate (or sensible) enough to have a Canon or Nikon DSLR not only will you already have a high quality, reasonably priced macro lens (unlike the pathetic misguided – and I use the word advisedly – Olympus owner) but you will also be able to acquire a perfectly adequate ring flash for a mere £128 or so, no doubt considerably cheaper in dollar terms if you live in the US.

If you own an Olympus then dream on. There’s no third-party ring flash for you. Should you want a set-up like your happy Canon or Nikon owning friends you have to shell out for the notoriously over-priced Olympus branded accessories. So a mere £470 (lowest price I could find) is all that’s required. Unless of course you actually want to – gasp – use it with your macro lens. In which case you also have to shell out for the “optional Flash Adapter Ring FS-FR1” (in what sense “optional”, I ask myself, when the fucking thing won’t actually fit on the lens without it) which is a no doubt highly engineered piece of kit looking suspiciously like a plastic tube which costs the absolutely trifling sum of £85.

To summarise. Nikon or Canon? £128. Olympus? £555.

And don’t get me started on lenses. Just don’t. I might have an embolism or something.

Posted on

Don't buy an Olympus camera

Just don’t. Really. I have no idea why anyone ever does. I so wish I wasn’t tied into the damn things. They’re probably fine and dandy if you’ve got shed-loads of cash. If you haven’t, they absolutely stink.

Take, for example, the subject of a ring flash for macro photography.

If you are fortunate (or sensible) enough to have a Canon or Nikon DSLR not only will you already have a high quality, reasonably priced macro lens (unlike the pathetic misguided – and I use the word advisedly – Olympus owner) but you will also be able to acquire a perfectly adequate ring flash for a mere £128 or so, no doubt considerably cheaper in dollar terms if you live in the US.

If you own an Olympus then dream on. There’s no third-party ring flash for you. Should you want a set-up like your happy Canon or Nikon owning friends you have to shell out for the notoriously over-priced Olympus branded accessories. So a mere £470 (lowest price I could find) is all that’s required. Unless of course you actually want to – gasp – use it with your macro lens. In which case you also have to shell out for the “optional Flash Adapter Ring FS-FR1” (in what sense “optional”, I ask myself, when the fucking thing won’t actually fit on the lens without it) which is a no doubt highly engineered piece of kit looking suspiciously like a plastic tube which costs the absolutely trifling sum of £85.

To summarise. Nikon or Canon? £128. Olympus? £555.

And don’t get me started on lenses. Just don’t. I might have an embolism or something.

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Macro

frost bitten

I wept last night alone for loves lost, missed chances, hopes unfulfilled and those who I have known who are now dead. For the grey grief of the turning globe.

old and new

It is not wrong, I think, to mourn. To deny would be to cut out half the world.

highlit

What is sad, I think, is not to move the mind from loss to life.

budding

To miss the thrust of winter into spring.

drops

We are as fragile as the raindrop on the petal. It is our curse to know. And perhaps our consolation.

goldfinch

So when from grey sky and black branches there falls a shower of song we bathe in the bliss that is the blessing of our death.

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Drying bird

drying bird

Bad phone pic of print drying in dark corner of the study. It’s beautiful! That’s me reflected in the glossy silver paper. It’s pegged to last year’s calendar which is too lovely to get rid of.

A print! a print! It’s amazingly satisfying having a physical entity. Now it just has to dry quickly enough to make it into the frame before the framing shop shuts.

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A week (or so) in pictures

I keep forgetting my camera and then forgetting I’ve taken pictures on my phone instead. Here are some I discovered earlier.

birthday lunch

Birthday lunch at Cubana.

idli sambar (another birthday meal)

Another birthdayish meal, this time the long-lusted-for idli sambar at the haunt of my student youth Diwani Bhel Poori House. Their card machine wasn’t working, it was cash only, but they gave me half a free lassi since I didn’t have enough. Absolutely scrumptious and well worth the wait.

for acb (double impaling)

The single became double and then both disappeared overnight.

taking a bow

I like this elegant creature all the more for its not being all over my jacket.

big hips

One of the blustrous sunny days.

This is all displacement activity from actually printing out a completely different picture. But I must now bite the bullet.