Historic Dockyard - British Tattoo Exhibition

These are the 100 hands, part of the British Tattoo Exhibition at Chatham Dockyard until the end of September. Had a fab day there with Julia, James and of course Tedster, having a wander around the exhibition itself and the Dockyard in general. Think James was suitably impressed with what's on show there as he's either never been before or certainly not for a good many years. Given it's Tedster and I's favourite place we were happy to show him around.
 

Coney Banks!

So, having had another dry day today, Sunday, Tedster and I set out again for the Coney Banks to get some fresh air. Not that I wanted to be going too far anyway and especially not by bus given they are not very good on a Sunday and probably even less so with Covid-19 and mask wearing, the Coney Banks has become a favourite place since we can't travel too far most of the time. Like our local fields the mowers have been round and cut all the long grass so it looks quite different now from the long wild grass and flowers areas that were there in the height of the summer months. Still we clocked up just over 9000 steps so not bad considering I'm not getting out every day now for the walk into work and not even after work sometimes if the weather is bad. Which it has been over the weekend so far. In fact indoors has felt chilly enough to pop the heating on this morning just to take the edge off the place! And as I'm the one paying the bills I don't feel the least bit guilty over this ;-) Took the M5 along with its 15-45mm kit lens, ran the images through LR when I got home and been experimenting with the Auto Tone - which works quite well most of the time, and also split toning in the form of a type of cinematic look. Using blues for the highlights and oranges for the shadows. It's very subtle and I think some investigation on Google or YouTube is in order, but I quite like the consistency it gives one's images.
 

A Trip To Hurstwood Woods

So, having gotten frustrated with the rain this week stopping me from venturing out after work most afternoons this week, I thought I would step along to Hurstwood Woods this Off Friday. Whilst there was a shower not long after I arrived, I was ensconced under the trees at this point and managed to avoid getting wet or having to break out the brolly! Took the Goldie along for the ride and am still enjoying using this camera again. Can't believe the rechargeable AA batteries are still holding up after my initial charge up the other week! Well impressed although I always make a point of carrying spares whatever camera I take out for the day. Anyhoo, enjoyed being out in the fresh air, some sunshine and the peace that comes with these sorts of natural "venues". A few dog walkers strolling around, including a very exuberant dog that raced around whilst his owner strolled along, talk about walking himself! I remember these woods from my school days at Horsted, sometimes we'd take an afternoon walk along there and look for stuff. I've been reacquainted with them during Lockdown and the need to find places to visit that are on my doorstep. Initially because we weren't supposed to travel too far for our daily "exercise" and now because most of my favourite haunts involve a bus journey or two and I'd rather avoid mixing with the great unwashed as often as possible. So places such as this and the Coney Banks have become my new favourite places. At least the seasons have caused their own changes in these areas and like most record photography no two days ever produce the same images. Plus for infrared, these places are just right if the weather holds up ;-) This particular image was shot whilst sitting on one of the few dry benches, underneath the tree who's foliage you can see at the top of the image. Processed in Lightroom using my own home grown presets, I preferred the cream colour of this one although I have a similar pink version too. Infrared is a very unusual style of photography and whilst in recent years I have loved my deep black and white camera images, it's been nice to get used to some faux colour again.
 

More Goldie Fun

 So, in spite of the heavy showers this morning Tedster and I braved the rain to go mooch down to the Coney Banks and took the Goldie infrared camera along for a spin.

Saw this deflated football lying on one of the paths and took a low shot. Somewhat ad hoc framing as the camera is too old for luxury like a flip screen, so it was more point and hope!

Used the revised pink Lightroom preset and then having played around with the calibration settings on another image of some graffiti on a side hoarding, I created a virtual copy of this image, applied the purple tweak and then brought both images into Photoshop to allow me to use the purple image to just colour the football. Really like this effect although it's time consuming and so not appropriate for the number of photos I take when I'm out and about! As I said on Facebook, any colours within these colourful infrared images isn't real, obviously, and so creative license isn't held back in any way because you can pretty much do whatever you want to them, colour wise.

Some people tend to leave them as they come out of the camera with the cyan foliage and brown skies, but I've seen all manner of other combinations, purple/green and blue/yellow to name but a few. There are quite a few filter options out there for anyone interested in conversions, or you can opt to go full spectrum and use an external filter to dictate what the camera captures. All good fun and brings a different viewpoint to one's photography.

Goldie Infrared

So, dug out the old Goldie Infrared camera in the week, charged up the AA batteries and amazed to find both the batteries and the camera still work happily!

I'd forgotten how interesting this camera is with it's colourful rendition of the infrared world around us. Prior to editing in Lightroom, the images have cyan coloured foliage and brown skies. Some judicious tweaking of colours using the calibration tab and the HSL tab in Lightroom allows me to convert it into something like this, choosing either pink or yellow foliage with blue skies. In Photoshop it would be classed as channel swapping but obviously in Lightroom that isn't possible so you have to come at it via a different approach. It's a technique I have honed over the few years that I've had my collection of converted infrared compact cameras. From the 720nm which I bought first, to the 850nm deep B&W which I really love and which is my infrared camera of choice more recently. Hence the reason why the Goldie had kind of been mothballed in the cupboard! It'll definitely start getting some use again now though.

Happy 4th Wedding Anniversary!

 Happy Anniversary to my daughter Julia and son-in-law James.

How can 4 years have gone so quickly?

Seems only yesterday we were putting on our glad rags for your big day :-)

And what a day it was, smiles all round and miles of happiness.

All the more poignant given that 2020 has tuned out to be a less than happy year.

Still we'll pause the celebrations until next year, when it'll be 5 years and hopefully a new house too 💕  

Evening Stroll

Popped out for an evening stroll yesterday as I'm getting a bit weary of walking the bottom field over and over again ;-)

Although it seems to be getting darker, quicker, these days it was pleasant enough to walk up through Horsted Park and down the Ridgeway. I love some of the houses on this street, one is a gorgeous thatched house and many are very different to their neighbours.

These were a couple of images that caught my eye and snapped on the Galaxy S20. A Teddy dressed in a Disney Princess dress fixed to the front of a works van up at Horsted Park and an abandoned hub cap leaning up against the wall.

Obviously the obligatory selfie too!

Enjoyed a good natter with my girl on the way home which was via the estate shops and Crescent Way. At  least it chalked up 6000+ steps which these days as I'm working from home and hardly going anywhere is not bad!

Coney Banks

 So on this week's off Friday, as the weather had thankfully cooled down, Tedster and I took a mooch along to the Coney Banks again, to walk the hillside which was too hot to do last week.

Think I am starting to remember the route ;-)

Couple of photos off the moby plus one of the obligatory selfies that are so much a part of our lives now. Even I have stopped feeling stupid shouting "Smile" at my phone in order to trigger the shutter when I cannot easily touch the screen shutter!

Saw some more evidence of a recent fire up near the top, no idea whether it was deliberate or not, but suspect, sadly, the answer is yes.

Think that the kids, teens especially have been off school for too long this year and they are so bored they end up causing trouble in their surroundings. And parenting is not like it used to be, for some anyway, kids being dragged up with no sense of right and wrong and no respect, for themselves, for their parents, for anyone really. They have been allowed to think the world revolves around them and that somehow the world owes them a living. I fear that when they finally emerge into the "Big Wide World" they are going to receive a mahousive shock that actually they are waayy down on the rungs of the ladder and in order to have all that cool stuff that Mummy & Daddy have been buying them they are going to have to WORK hard. Sadly for them they will have wasted their school years and realise that a continued education costs money.

Disney Princess Annie!

 

Seems Jamie has been playing with some filters!

This is Disney Princess Annie :-) When Julia whatsapped this to me it made me laugh - God I love this dog sooo much 💗

Not that she isn't adorable enough, but who could resist this cheeky look???

You Know You're Getting Old When...

 So, this has been a recent purchase this week, a sign that I am well and truly beginning to feel all of my 55 years ;-)

After a couple of visits to the doc to measure my blood pressure, I've been instructed to measure it three times a day for the next four weeks - JOY!

So Mr Amazon kindly delivered this to my front door and I have dutifully been measuring it ever since.

Happy to say it behaves better when I'm not having to drag my sorry arse up to the surgery and wear my mask whilst being seen to!

Field Fires!

This was the damage caused today in the children's playground. At the time I wasn't sure whether it had been deliberate or not, I didn't even know what had happened until I looked out of the curtains and saw the fire brigade finishing up.

The second photo was their initial port of call, think the neighbours said they spent 2hr putting this one out before dealing with the smouldering playground.

A subsequent news story in Kent Online has confirmed both were arson, set alight by teenagers with nothing better to do 😡 Maybe their parents should keep a closer eye on their offspring, better still give them a good hiding.

I'm sure the fire brigade have much better things to do than run around putting out these senseless fires started by yobs who don't even live on our estate.

Long Time No See!!

 Wow, it's been ages since I wrote anything to this blog - in fact it's only because I've been overhauling the website to migrate it to Google's New Sites that I stumbled across the blog link ;-)

The website looks a bit more modern I guess given the lack of themes etc. on the new Google Sites but it will suffice. I've updated it for the Texas Moon Fancy Dress and tidied up the pages as they migrated across and looked a little untidy.

Probably ought to have lots of time on my hands these days what with working part-time now and also from home given the advent of Covid-19 and everyone going into Lockdown on the 24th March :-( Schools closed, shops closed along with pubs and restaurants and shock, horror, even work closed for 48hr whilst they decided what to do about the situation 😱 In the 30+ years I've worked there, they have never, ever shut their doors and I didn't expect to see it during my lifetime there. But close they did and now 2/3rds of us are working from home leaving those who have to go into work to do so as safely as possible.

I've had one visit back to the Dockyard since it reopened 25th July, was bitterly disappointed that my usual Off Fridays have been so drastically curtailed by events but needs must I guess. Every trip I'd booked with Chalkwell has either been postponed or canceled and I cannot see much improvement for the run down to winter and Christmas. No idea what will happen to those favourites such as the firework evenings or seeing Santa for the little ones but somehow I'm half expecting them to be binned off this year, which is sad.

Most of us are supposed to be wearing masks (face coverings) when indoors shopping, seeing the Dr, whatever, but inevitably there are and always will be those who don't comply which ends up annoying the rest of us who at least try and make the effort. Social distancing is a dance around other people when you're out and about trying not to get within 1m+ of them or better still 2m. That is something I find uber annoying because I feel like I'm always the one having to make the effort to move instead of it being more of a two-way street. And I gotta say, hats off to those people who wear masks every day in their line of work - I HAVE NO IDEA HOW YOU DO IT - THEY ARE DISGUSTING TO WEAR!! You end up all soggy and hot and don't even get me started on glasses fogging up. Glasses were never designed for masks! It's like wearing that scarf up across your mouth that your Mum always said you should do in the winter to keep warm. It's gross.

The only positive this year so far is my daughter and son-in-law in the throes of moving house - exciting times.

I feel like I'm getting old faster and faster - at 55yrs young I'm now permanently hypothyroid following RAI treatment for hyperthyroidism and on life long medication. Something that still feels totally weird when I dutifully take my little white pill every morning. It's not like I would croak straightaway without it but given enough time I would eventually peg it, hence the free prescriptions. Which as it happens could be a blessing given that I now also have high cholesterol (something which isn't helped by hypothyroidism) and have now literally been put on statins. It's only a matter of time before the pills start building up...

At least over Lockdown I have tried to keep my hand in with the photography and feel quite chuffed at what I have managed to achieve. To help the famalam, along with our weekly video calls, we also have a weekly photo challenge and that has been a very good way to keep the creativeness ticking along.

Right, best publish this before it turns into War & Peace - think I'm going to have to try and keep this up.