triffids – Boy, Interrupted

Triffids of the Damned (I think my camera is now possessed)

8th August 2018 Red

Dad recently cleared the pond after it got neglected for a while (seriously, ducks walked on the surface) and I’ve now verified the fish survived and they didn’t adapt to the environment by developing legs or shovel hands. It did mean that a whole bunch of water lily rhizomes got pulled out, and I was able to take pictures. Man, these are fascinating and creepy. Some of them look like they have faces screaming out from them. Nature is very, very freaky, and my camera is acting suspiciously strangely today. Seriously, these triffids host the souls of the damned. See the others on Flickr if you want to risk demonic possession of your computer, phone or tablet.

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Flower photography, crafts and playing with alcohol inks

29th July 2018 Red

The UK heatwave has fizzled out (for now, with the current climate who knows what will actually happen), it’s under 20°C, grey and windy. I am a very happy bunny as far as that goes, just feeling generally tired. Being able to sleep without wanting to climb out of my own skin to cool off will probably help. Creatively speaking I got a few photos taken before it rained again, so I’m sharing a few here, the rest are up on Flickr. Photos below, along with crafty bits.

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Photos of a few butterflies and flowers

18th July 2018 Red

Not as many butterflies around as I’d like there to be, hopefully they’ll make more of an appearance as Summer wears on. Yesterday an area around some Marjoram/Oregano was being visited by a bunch of Gatekeepers (female and male, some flirting going on), a few Small Coppers, a Ringlet and a Small Tortoiseshell. There were also quite a few bees, but they weren’t hanging around on a particular flower long enough to get many useful shots. The flowers are small, so I suppose it makes sense. There are some photos of flowers mixed in, along with Jake. He took up residence on the old bench yesterday, haven’t worked out where he’s been today. Enjoy, and find the rest up on Flickr!

All caught up on photos (for now), I’ve got some new pens to play with and swatch, so that’ll keep me occupied for a bit.

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Final batch from the photography backlog

17th July 2018 Red

Final batch from the backlog all sorted and up on Flickr! This lot are all from the garden in the past week, most of them an evening shoot so the sun did nice things with the flower petals. I took a lot of photos today (mostly some butterflies and bees, if they turn out okay), but will sort and post those tomorrow. I hope you enjoy them.

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Photography backlog, batch the second

16th July 2018 Red

Second batch of photos! Almost done, last batch tomorrow. A few of ‘name the daisy’ titles because there are so many varieties that they’re easy to mix up, and I’m an idiot who failed to take a photo of the plant label. I took the melon pics yesterday on a whim. Definitely prefer them to the watermelon pics. The rest of this lot are up on Flickr for your perusal.

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Backlog of photography, batch one

15th July 2018 Red

I’ve been quiet, but I have been taking photos over the past week (the furthest they go back is the 7th), I just haven’t started to sort through them until this weekend. It’s actually been a bit of a chore, because I had over 200 to winnow down, and I’ve still got 60 to do a final sort through and upload (it’ll be less than that, but not much less, just removing pics that have a glaring fault I only notice as I go in to crop). The heat is making me very sluggish, and my lethargy is not helped by the fact I took my meds last night and discovered I’d somehow missed two days of pills. I could have sworn I’d taken them, but evidently not. I decided the sanest thing to do would be batches over a couple of days, so this is batch one, and there will probably be two more.

To add to the meh, I did the watermelon shots and I’m not entirely happy. Most of them got ditched, the lighting was generally crappy, and I basically had way more fun eating the thing than taking photos. I may or may not try again at a later date. As always, there are more up on Flickr.

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Photography, 7th July 2018, wildflowers and a couple of bugs

7th July 2018 Red

I went into town to do shopping yesterday, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that I stopped off on a verge along the main road into town near the GP surgery to take a load of photographs of the poppies, daisies, thistles and teasels, I would have been very annoyed and regretted that decision. As is was, I got a new favourite photo out of that batch, the teasel with purple flower buds that’s set as the featured image.

Some of the images are from the garden, but the majority are from beside a main road and not, shockingly, on a verge next to a bridle path. As always, more up on Flickr, and by more I mean a lot more. It took hours to sort through these yesterday, which is why the blog post is today. Now I’m off to do things with glue and string.

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Experimenting with photographing things on a purple background

30th June 201830th June 2018 Red

Playing with a light purple background. It’s just a sheet of card with my little LED globe lights to brighten things up a bit, I’m pretty pleased with the results so I’ll experiment with more colours at some point. I may also invest in a light box with LED strips as it’s going to provide better and more consistent lighting than positioning what basically amounts to night lights for kids. I have done peacock feathers in the past, but we’re talking 10 years ago with a lower resolution camera, so they were due a re-do. The feathers were cheap with the tops chopped off, so I might get some better feathers and do them again.

As usual, there are a whole bunch more up on Flickr, so head on over there. I’m also posting random stuff quite a bit on Instagram, so feel free to follow me over there for shots of goth as heck ice creams, views from hammocks, and Jake being fluffy (though he’s been hiding in his nests to escape the heat, so less of those right now).

In fun news, I’m on holiday for a week now, so hoping to get some art and craft projects done. After sleeping. And replacing the laptop fan (may the gods help me).

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Photos from the past few days and some crafty experimenting

26th June 2018 Red

It’s been a busy few days, but I did manage to take a few photos (I have a list of things to photograph that I haven’t gotten around to yet), and some crafty things (you can see those below the photo thumbnails). The photos are of a few triffids in the sky, mostly roses, more of which can be found on Flickr.

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Flowers in the Sky, 22nd June 2018

22nd June 2018 Red

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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