Nobody Knows…

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Guthlac

One never knows just what little creature will turn up when clearing out years of rubbish from the garage. Today it was a young Common Toad. We moved it in a glass jar to a part of the garden that we hoped would be suitable for its toad needs.

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Not Much on the Tele…

Posted on September 25, 2023 by Guthlac

It is one of the more nonsensical things about modern life. So much TV – nothing to watch. 3 channels and only one TV in a house – always something to watch (I suspect someone has been sniffing at the nostalgia to type such a line). Perhaps the older you get the more you realise that most of TV is crap and it has always been thus.

So instead I just sit on the sofa with my iPad and doodle and sketch which is actually more rewarding – most of the time.

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So Sally Can Wait….

Posted on September 24, 2023 by Guthlac

A question for the philosophers out there – When is a photographic image created? I’m really not sure what the answer to this is. As I have mentioned I am currently working on a photographic project called Gartree Explored. This is a photo essay set in the Gartree (Harborough District Council) hundred. It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me or who might have been following this blog for sometime but I have captured images based in the Harborough area before starting the project. Could or should I use them? Or should I remaster the images from the original DNG and then use them. These images will be brand new images as, in the case of the images here, 14 years has passed with a significant improvement in the image software. They are images made in 2023 just from DNGs that are 14 years old.

I have no answer to that question other than to ask does it matter? To which the answer of course is not one jot. These are constraints I am putting on myself and it will affect no one else.

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Horse Whispering….

Posted on September 23, 2023 by Guthlac

It is very strange but I find talking to a pony is very pleasurable. Very relaxing. Somehow makes sense. I know the pony is just a bit hungry and is eyeing up a potential snack coming its way but they are the most wonderful listening creatures. They are nothing like as nosey as cattle who just can’t help sticking their snouts in and having a good sniff.

So this morning I was up early(ish) and out with the animals in the Welland valley. I had hoped for a bit of mist – not cold enough but the season is still early and we’ll see. Instead I did a bit of communing with all creatures great and small as the sun slowly rose above the horizon.

I ended up in Slawston, a more rural place you couldn’t wish to visit. The last time I drove through there at dawn I shared the main street with a hare casually lolloping along. So bucolic. Only of course it isn’t quite as first reported. Slawston is infact 15 minutes from the train station that will take the Slawston resident to central London in just over an hour.

Still on a crisp autumn morning none of that really mattered. It was just so nice to have a chat to my four legged friends.

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Photographs on the dashboard…

Posted on September 21, 2023 by Guthlac

Not quite night swimming but rather evening walking. A typical best camera situation – my iPhone 13 was excellent but with many pitfalls – not least of which is the small size of the produced by the super wider lens. Still we must enjoy what we can.

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I’m not here for…

Posted on September 20, 2023 by Guthlac

One of the main advantages of using an iPhone to capture an image is spontaneity: You see something that needs to be captured and before you know it you have you iPhone at hand. Click – job done. Are the images any good – yes when judge from this perspective. Taken in the round? Who knows and who cares anymore? (Well of course I do but that is about it.)

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Guess it’s True….

Posted on September 19, 2023 by Guthlac

A season of mellow fruits is now fully upon us. Just to prove it we have fungi, not sure whether it is a mushroom or toadstool, popping up in the lawn.

As for the new Mac Studio what to say? It has been two full days so this is very much first impressions: Firstly, it is silent especially as my old iMac was puffing and blowing all the time – one of the reasons why I upgraded. Now nothing. It has got so bad that my two HDD I use for backup now seem very noisey indeed. Secondly, it is very quick. Yesterday I had to install a software upgrade for my database and it was a blink and you’ll miss it moment. Finally, the base model comes with 32GB of RAM (sorry Unified Memory – old habits but I have been x86 for over 30 years so give an old fart a brake!) and at the moment this is more than enough for my needs. Lightroom is resource hungry but with that running it hardly gets above 24 GB leaving me with a welcome bit of headroom. One thing I have noticed is that Chrome is a piglet when it comes to gobbling up resources. I’ll need keep an eye on that. Overall, first impressions excellent. Let’s hope in 6 years time I still feel the same.

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Get the Stretch…

Posted on September 17, 2023 by Guthlac

Oh no more testing!!!! This time it isn’t the camera but rather my new Mac. Yes I’ve been splashing the cash and have ponied up for a Mac Studio et al. Of course things are never straightforward apart from this time. This has been the simplest change of computer I think I’ve ever experienced.

It is all very well setting the computer up but what is like when undertaking the task it was bought for – editing and managing my photograph collection? To find this out I went out this morning and took around 200 images to put it through its paces. Early impressions – very good. Time will tell just how much an improvement things are but having lived with the machine for almost 24 hours I’m a happy bunny.

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The Last Batch…

Posted on September 15, 2023 by Guthlac

So these are last batch of images I have been using to test my new workflow and some of them date back to the much simpler times of 2018 – a simpler time (haha). It is a strange experience to rework images that had been buried in my archive and then due to a flook of chance they have been given a new lease of life.

Perhaps the most satisfying thing about these images is that I have learnt a great deal about using the latest software to overcome the deficiencies of the iPhone as a camera. It just goes to prove we are never too old to learn.

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Further Tests…

Posted on September 14, 2023 by Guthlac

I mentioned the other day that I have been trying streamline the way that I edited images I captured an iPhone. These are the latest results. This image was captured using an iPhone 8 plus back in the good old days of the pandemic. The image above was developed using the new process whilst the image below was not. I’m not sure whether the difference will show up on the blog images but it certainly does show up with the actual images on screen.

Now of course it can be observed that the software has changed in the almost three years between both of these images were created and that is true. What is really different is the ease at which these images are now transferred between machine and use of the iPad as an editing machine rather than leaving it to the iPhone.

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