Passing the Time of Day…

Posted on December 10, 2025 by Guthlac

Cock a Doodle do…oink oink….

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Welcome To…

Posted on December 9, 2025 by Guthlac

The longer one hangs onto this crazy third rock from the sun the stranger things you see. It is probably a statistical anomaly. An infinite number of whatever trying to make a living. Something like that.

Yesterday was certainly one of the stranger things I’ve seen. We went out for lunch, as we old age pensioners do from time to time. As I turned onto the farm where the restaurant is situated I was greeted by…well a T.Rex. There are many things wrong with this site. Perhaps the most geeky is that even in its pomp T.Rex never walked over this land. We are closer to the T.Rex in geological time than the rocks it was standing on. I told you this was a bit geeky.

Of course such geological niceties didn’t bother Michael Crichton when he wrote the original book that spawned the model in the middle distance. Crichton’s influence on the day hadn’t finished.

Near to the restaurant there was a very sad looking Wild West recreation. I was going to type Westworld but somehow I don’t see Dolores Abernathy riding into this particular town. I suspect when the set is dressed up, it may well look a whole lot better than on a damp, dull winter’s day. The people that own and run Cattows are nothing if not inventive.

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Puzzling…

Posted on December 7, 2025 by Guthlac

What do you get when you cross the latest camera technology with 50 year old lenses? Strained eyes for one thing. Also a lot of fun. Well fun if you enjoy taking photographs that is. I suspect most of the people out there would also consider you just a little bit odd. Well that is alright as I suspect that has always been most people’s view of me.

This isn’t the first time I have attached my old Canon lenses to a modern Sony body. The difference this time is that the sensor is 61 MPixels. How would the lenses cope with such resolution. The truth is they were fine. Unfortunately, with no auto focus, my eyes had to do all the heavy lifting. Things I thought were sharp weren’t always. Old lens, very old eyes.

Still, I think the photos work. Perhaps this is the start of a lovely new relationship? Perhaps. It hasn’t worked out that way in the past.

PS. I’ve just searched through the blog for instances of me using these lenses. One of the post had perhaps the most poignant Post Script:

….just to prove how fickle I am…I am looking forward to the Photography Show next month at the NEC outside Birmingham…

The date of this blog was 21st February 2020…I never did get to the NEC!

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Winter from Afar…

Posted on December 5, 2025 by Guthlac

The alarm fades, and I rise slowly, the chill of winter lingering in the air. Pulling back the curtains, the world outside greets me with a quiet brilliance. Frost clings to every branch, turning the trees into delicate sculptures of silver and white.

The rooftops shimmer under a pale sun, its light stretching gently across the horizon, promising warmth yet holding the crisp bite of morning. Breath curls like smoke in the stillness, and the garden sparkles as though dusted with diamonds. There’s a hush, a calm that feels almost sacred, broken only by the distant call of a bird braving the cold. In that moment, the day feels new, pure, and full of possibility.

I linger at the window, savouring the beauty of winter’s touch, before stepping forward into the promise of this bright, frosty dawn.

Co-Pilot 5th December 2025

Funny old world. It must have been a frosty morning 9 years ago when I captured these two images. I can say with as much certainty as my addled brain can muster, I wasn’t thinking about how an A.I. program would describe the day. But here we are nine years later. A quick prompt to co-pilot and bang 150 words of AI fantasy. Is it slop? No. Is it me? Defiantly not.

Possibly the funniest thing about this is that the WordPress AI is having hissy fits over the text.

Welcome to a frosty Friday morning.

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Winter Sunlight…

Posted on December 3, 2025 by Guthlac

Bright winter sunlight. A chill in the air. A photography project to work on. What’s not to like? Actually a great deal. It was bloody hard work to get some half decent photographs.

But I guess that is half the fun.

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No More…

Posted on December 2, 2025 by Guthlac

Not too long ago this was what greeted the visitor to the Trent valley. Every few miles there was another monster machine generating MW of electricity. No more.

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Pinch, Punch, First of the Month…

Posted on December 1, 2025 by Guthlac

So it is the 1st of December as I write this. The weather has been appalling. Damp, cold and wet. Welcome to the first day of Winter. Of course this is a British winter so when I say cold that is somewhere between 5 to 8 degrees C. Not that cold I know. My blog my rules!

It wasn’t always that way. Over the past 20 years we’ve had snow and frost. However, that was sometime ago. More recently it has just been cold and damp.

Only 90 days to go to spring.

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November 23rd…

Posted on November 28, 2025 by Guthlac

What was so special about the 23rd November? I am sure there were many births, marriages and deaths on that particular day. Perhaps people were distracted by other things happening? Whatever the reason I didn’t get any visits to this tiny crevice of the internet. Anyone who has come here before will know that I don’t do this for the holy trinity of the online world: Hits, Likes and Subscribe. But nowadays I rarely see no visits. We all live in an interesting world.

Yesterday was a good day. We took the long road to Uppingham through SE Leicestershire. The purpose of the trip was to visit the Goldmark Gallery. Each time I visit the gallery I am transported to the commercial art world of the West End of London. The notional reason for this visit was to view the new Picasso exhibition. It was all very good (its Picasso so no surprise there). But this isn’t the charm place. No that is walking around the rabbit warren of nooks and crannies to see what is being exhibited where. One of my favourites was the toilet. Whilst you are using the facilities you can take in a series of prints by Toulouse Lautrec. On top of this the staff are always friendly and helpful. Just wish I had the spare cash to but some of the exceptional work. Are well it is a big payout on the Euro Lottery tonight. We can all dream.

Anyway, if you are in the area it is always a good place to visit and enjoy.

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Sticking things together…

Posted on November 22, 2025 by Guthlac

I’m too tired to make any sense of these. They just drawings I made over the past few days.

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Living with a Chronic Condition…

Posted on November 21, 2025 by Guthlac

Every now and then I start to realise that I am not as young as I was. This is usually associated with my chronic medical condition making an appearance.

Over the years I have been prodded and probed by any number of medical professionals. The result of this is that I have developed coping strategies when things do flair up. This mostly involves taking things easy for a few days until I start to recover. One positive affect is that I have time to remaster images I captured years ago. I have the latest versions of Photoshop and Lightroom along with x number of year’s experience of using said software. What can I produce?

New images of Whitby, Southall Minster and the Moira Blast Furnace is the answer. It is always an interesting experiment to remaster earlier images. It also passes the time of day.

A double bonus I guess?

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