Flowers in the Sky, 22nd June 2018

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Purple African Daisy petals on a sky blue background.

I wasn’t planning on taking photographs today. In fact, I told myself this morning that I wasn’t going to because I had other creative things to be getting on with. That resolve lasted for about an hour, until I went out to get something from the car and spotted new triffids, so grabbed the camera. Then I thought I’d take advantage of the bright, blue sky and sun to take some pictures of flowers in the sky, at which point I was doomed because there were a lot of pictures to go through. So, hey, another photography blog post!

The great thing about these photos is that they look epic but are really easy to do. Backdrop that doesn’t have shadows cast on it, bright natural light from the sun, hold a flower up with your fingers, snap a macro shot. The hardest part is that your arms ache after a while, and you need to wear a cap and/or sunglasses to avoid the glare. There are a whole bunch more up on Flickr, along with the few aforementioned regular triffid pics.

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Photography from 21st June 2018, strawberries and triffids

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Fizzy bubbles on a red background.

I finished work, sorted some images, then fell asleep for five hours without meaning to. Clearly I needed the sleep, and now all the images are sorted and posted. There are the normal flowering triffids, and also strawberries. It’s a journey from the plant to ending up in my fruit infuser bottle filled with lemonade. They were delicious.

I’m going back to bed. More strawberry and flower pictures are up on Flickr.

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Welcome to Trump’s America (or the art of being angry)

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It seems these days I’m always angry. Usually at various governments and Nazis, and often at ‘phobes of various flavours. Right now it’s the US government’s treatment of immigrants (not that the UK government is any better with this, fuck you Theresa May and your Tory puppeteers), in particular the separating of children from their parents and the subsequent mistreatment of those children. Angry doesn’t really describe I feel about this. Incandescent with rage is perhaps closer. Enough that my brain threw an image at me, and I felt compelled to actually do a piece of political art to vent my feelings. It didn’t make me feel any less angry, but I feel better for having channelled it.

Artwork with a child's red shoe pinned to a fence with the pole of a tattered American flag. The fence alludes to the shape of a cross. A blue sign below reads Welcome to Trump's America, population whites only. There is barbed wire wrapped around the sign, fence and flag pole.

Triffid photography from 18th June 2018

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Serbian bellflowers.

Way more triffids than I thought snuck onto my memory card, so it took a while to sort them. There are more here because there are a whole load more in this batch up on Flickr. Mostly flowers, some cherries that may never get to ripen because the birds will be on them like locusts at the first hint of being edible, and some faded wooden sign shots. The wooden sign was originally made by me about 10 years ago, and was eventually replaced a couple of years ago with a more durable one – it hangs out so delivery drivers can actually see it easily. It was printed letters on wood covered in sealant, so I’m genuinely surprised it lasted as long as it did and the sign is actually legible. The mock orange is a different variety to the previous photos I’ve taken, blooming later. Most notable for being under my bedroom window along with a wisteria (which is really late this year, the photos I’ve taken have all been from the one around the back) and a honeysuckle. Smells amazing at night.

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Blue sand photography

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Blue sand art.

It’s been a beautiful day, and yes, I took triffid photos, but I’m not posting those yet, I want to take a few more before the sun goes down. Plus, I need to do some sorting of the shed before I get to have fun. Bah. Instead, we’ve got one of those moving sand art photo frame thingies, and I thought they’d make some interesting photos. It also apparently glows in the dark, but we forgot to test that before we went to bed last night. A couple more on Flickr if you’re interested.

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Getting crafty: Avengers keyring made from melted pony beads

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I made some fridge magnets a while back using an Avengers silicon ice cube tray sent to me by @pith by melting pony beads in them. It worked really well, and I’ve been meaning to make a purple one as a keyring (Hawkeye, natch). I got around to it today (and made a few more for more magnets), so I wrote up how to do it because I know a couple of people were interested. So if you want to make these yourself, I’ve got the full instructions up over on Instructables.

And while I’m mentioning Instructables, I feel like I should show off my table made from cardboard, duct tape and papier mache. It won third prize in the 2016 cardboard contest. I’m still pretty chuffed with it, we use it as the bedside table in the spare room.

Keyring of a purple Avengers logo. A rectangular white table with red mosaic patters around the edges and floral mosaic decoration in the middle.

Bright flowers stare into the inky black void

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White chickweed flowers on a black background.

Today has been so much better than yesterday that I’ve actually had the energy to take, sort and post photos to Flickr, and get a blog post up. Go me! Flowers (and some bracken) on a black background. Produced by putting black card behind the flowers, angling it so the background is as dark as possible (mostly cloudy day helped), and then tweaking the brightness and contrast a bit to make it properly back in post-processing. The tricky part is getting it so the background is dark enough to make editing the editing for impact worthwhile. There are nearly thirty of these, so head on over to Flickr if you’d like to see more.

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Photography of flowers in the sky (and a few extra friends)

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Pale aquilegia flower with a bright blue sky in the background.

Yesterday was not a good mental health day. I was in a better frame of mind by late afternoon, so took a bunch of triffid photos with the sky as a backdrop, because they please me. I was pretty exhausted by the time I’d got them sorted and up on Flickr (along with a few other random photos), so I opted to go to bed and do the blog post today. There may be another one later on as today I’ve been experimenting with black backgrounds, and I’ve got some regular triffid shots as more new flowers appeared. May be tomorrow if I’m still tired after sorting them all.

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Experimenting with photographing flowers on white backgrounds

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Mixed flowers.

I wanted to do something different than the usual flower photography (mainly due to the fact there’s nothing new blooming just yet), so thought I’d try some flowers on a white background in softer light than the death ball in the sky. I’ve got a soft light cube… somewhere. (It’s the shed. It’s in the shed. It may never be seen again, though the preserving pan turned up at the weekend, so it may not be a lost cause.) As it wasn’t accessible, I decided to do some quick and dirty experimentation. I’ve put what I did below the thumbnails with a picture. Different plugin, the other one seems to have been abandoned and there were some annoying caching issues. No extra photos on Flickr as this was a trial and didn’t produce a whole pile of images.

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Vampyr review: a gorgeous vampire game that delivers despite its flaws

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Title screen for the video game Vampyr.

Anyone who’s known me for, oh, five minutes? They know I like vampires. A lot. Since I was a child watching The Little Vampire on TV in the 80s. I will consume vampire media like it’s chocolate, so I was especially excited for Vampyr when I heard about it. After months and months of waiting, it finally landed in my grubby paws on Tuesday the 5th, release day. I finished it on the 7th, and I enjoyed it very much, it was a fun game, I loved the vampires, much of the story and lore and the world building. I also did a lot of nomming of bad guys. It was pretty satisfying. So I feel the need to waffle about it and write a review. Advance warning, I’ll be putting actual spoilery content after the bug list, as it’s a pretty obvious place for you to jump off if you want to avoid any important plot points. Anything before that is right at the beginning of the game so is basically on the box and doesn’t count, or discussion about mechanics and how the game works.

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