Decking is Open!!

 

Spent Bank Holiday Monday reopening the decking and assisting my Dad who was busy with his jet-washer cleaning off 3yrs of crap and algae - looks bloody amazing now!

Despite the mock rattan furniture being a relatively cheap set from Aldi 3yrs ago, it seems to be lasting just fine, wrapped up as it is each winter until the Spring. In this case Spring seems to have come a tad late, May being particularly wet and cold, so it's only just seemed sensible to open up and get everything out again.

Still charging up the few solar lights, hopefully they will kick in again this year!

Second Place in Work's Nature Comp!

 

On our work's employee app recently was a call to enter photos into a Nature Comp which would be held across all the sites, the winner of each site going into the final. You had to pen a few words to accompany your image and I thought what better entry than one of my favs from Hurstwood Woods, a local haunt of mine since the onset of Covid-19 and having to try and stay local without a car!

This image has been tweaked in Lightroom, using clarity and texture, to give it a somewhat arty feel.

And lo and behold, I got 2nd place :-) Well chuffed as usually I'm lucky to place in the works comps, although I'm not convinced either that they were inundated with entries but hey let's not knock my obvious glory.

The winner was a little duckling flexing his wings in what looked like the rain - cuteness overload, no wonder it won!

The American Garden

 

Managed to finally get to visit this amazeballs garden this year having lucked out last year dur to Covid-19 and their obvious decision to not open under the weird circumstances.

Happily this year, despite a slight delay due to cold weather having delayed the blooms, they reopened the garden on the 8th May. We managed to get a visit in 23rd May, a slightly wet Sunday morning to begin with but the sun eventually decided to put in an appearance.

The garden primarily specialises in rhododendrons and azaleas and because of this is only open during the month of May at the weekends and two bank holidays. The garden gets it's name from the collection of Californian Redwood trees that also reside there.

Usually it's just me 'n' my girl who visit but this year we also took along my Dad and James. 

A wee bit muddy in places and some of the grounds seem to be naturally boggy even on a good day so the wellies were a necessity. 

Really good to be back in a favourite place and doing something normal :-)

PowerBI

 

So, have spent the day playing with PowerBI on my camera data... Bit of a two-pronged reason. Firstly I wanted a better way than Excel to dice and slice my camera info because I like to know these statistical types of info. And secondly I have a PDR objective to pen some notes for the team to be able to use it 😊

Got to say it is MUCH easier when using your own data, something you have generated and therefore totally understand what is in it. Plus you gotta have a reasonable idea of what it is you actually want to see in the visuals. Like I say easier when it's your own information.

So the image above is a first and last year look, my data currently only runs from 2017 through to 2021, and no I'm not going back any further! In 2017 I can clearly see that most of my camera usage was my trusty DSLRs, whereas things have changed and now it's my mirrorless picking up the baton. And 2021 is still a work in progress.

In the interim years it's a slow migration from the DSLRs to my compacts in the form of the TZ70 and later the TZ90. In 2020 my mobile picked up 26% of my usage, probably all those local walks...

And my Deep B&W compact accounts for 70% of the Infrared images I take.

All this myriad of data has come from Lightroom I may add, thank goodness it makes you import images thus providing a comprehensive database even if extracting that info is a somewhat mandraulic affair.

See - metrics that are useful to me and much easier to find that kind of granularity out using PowerBI - it's like Excel on steroids 🤣

Up & Down Week

 

So my week started off on a high in the form of having Annie spend the day with me in the home office whilst Julia & James went into work. Easier her being at my house for treats and wee breaks rather than having to wander up the road to let her out. Treats are more easily covered by the myriad of Kong toys she has which are normally dotted around the house for her to find, certainly the frozen variety lasting a lot longer than the rest. Just think of them kind of like a doggie ice-cream 😋 I took her for a whistle-stop walk after work in amongst the hail and rain and then James popped in to walk her home. She kept me company and no doubt my telephone callers entertained whilst she bashed her planet Kong against the legs of my chair trying to encourage the treats to come out 🤣

My week finished on a low note when we said goodbye to a special lady, my Step-Mum Margaret, at Medway Crematorium on Thursday. As these things go it was a poignant and very well delivered service by a lovely lady celebrant, Kathryn Sansom, who obviously gleaned all she needed to know about Margaret from our Zoom meeting with her and managed to sound as though she had known her, no easy feat when she didn't even meet us until the day! My brother and I managed to share the reading of one of the poems and despite the sad occasion it was good to meet up with the famalam for the first time since C-19 struck. I like to think we did her proud on the service and helped to celebrate her very full 90 years of life. Not something that everyone can claim but something we should all aspire to.

T Allen, the funeral service people, were the very epitome of respectfulness and we thank them for their quiet support and courtesy on the day. Last mention goes to Donna from Orchid Memories for the amazing order of service that she produced and printed for us based on some Photoshop drafts I'd generated from her sample files.

Despite C-19 and people not being able to meet to help us to organise things I think they/we did the best we could to bring everything together for the day. Even the weather stayed dry for as long as it needed to, which considering how awful May has been and indeed how crap it has been today, was a small miracle in itself.

 

Photo Breakdown for Jan to May

 

So been playing in Excel and making a note of my image making statistics thus far, from Jan to May 2021. Looks like April was a busy month;-)

Also seems like the new mirrorless is my instrument of choice, reasonably closely followed by the mobile phone. The 77D looks to have been relegated to the indoor studio/garden/around the home usage judging by it's paltry 1% of my total 1045 images so far this year!

To be fair the M50 should have been the mirrorless camera I bought first, and then I wouldn't have needed to buy another ;-) I'd expected mirrorless to effectively be represented by kind of a "baby" DSLR, which is very much how the M50 comes across. Not so the M5 which is what I bought first and is more like a compact on steroids! Different operating system, menu layouts and behaviour make for a more confused learning and in the field this doesn't aid one's creativity. Still one lives and learns and it is only money after all. 

What A Difference A Year Makes...

 

So on my evening walk yesterday I mooched along past the bus stop outside St Stephens Church on the Chatham Maidstone Road looking for what's left of the Covid-19 bus stop signage. Most of the painted signs, like the above, have long since begun to chip and fade away. Should probably have snapped them much earlier on, along when I did the other signage, for prosperity. Now their tiredness reflects our mental state I think having dealt with the varied restrictions on daily life from this pandemic since March 2020.

At least now we are in a much stronger position and seem to have the upper hand, mostly, as it were. News stories regarding global enquiries make for depressing reading in that there is much criticism aimed at the World Health Organisation and governments for not acting sooner in order to prevent the spread and the subsequent deaths. Cold comfort for those bereaved families who have lost their loved ones to the virus. I'm sure that in Spring 2022 when the UK is supposed to be holding it's own independent enquiry there will be similar blame laid. Don't get me wrong, I think the vaccine rollout has surpassed most people's expectations and the fact that we have vaccines at all seems like a miracle given that the talk of vaccines last year seemed like nothing more than wishful thinking. But those successes are more down to the scientists, NHS staff & jab volunteers than the government per se. Although they have obviously dug into deep pockets to fund such things.

With any luck, come 2022 these hurriedly painted signs will have worn away completely with no need to follow up with a refreshed paint job. The red Covid-19 signs will be taken down and we can all collectively give a huge sigh of relief and move on with our lives again. Social distancing will cease to be an everyday phrase and our face coverings can be relegated to the back of the wardrobe ;-) I for one won't miss having to dance around strangers on the street just to protect my personal space, although equally at the moment I cannot imagine being in a crowded place, surrounded by strangers closer than 2m away. The fear this virus has instilled in people will be a long time dispersing...

Photoshop Oil & Paint

 

Playing with the Photoshop Oil & Paint filter - or more like trying to remember how to use it ;-)

It works pretty well straight off the bat but have tweaked the Lighting settings at the bottom.

Love the swirly look to the final image and added a white border. Created an action this time to help jog the old grey matter next time around!

Ranscombe Farm Nature Reserve

Spent an idyllic few hours at Ranscombe Farm Nature Reserve with my Dad and the cameras. Bluebells are putting in an appearance finally after tons of cold weather so it was good to be out in a natural environment surrounded by beautiful trees and woodland flowers. Bluebells, primroses, wild orchids.

Think walking the woods is good for one's soul. It certainly did us good to just meander around, shooting the breeze and snapping some wonderful images of woodland with trees as far as the eye can see. 📷