367-50 Week 45

No mucking about here. As Marvin Gaye said, lets get it on.

17/09/12

Monday's are not good. I'm not going to go all Boomtown Rats on you here but I really don't like them. At all. Work, counselling appointment and then having to do some shopping. I was tired and worn out by the time I got to Tesco and was carelessly throwing stuff into a trolley. As a vegetarian of some years, can you spot my mistake here? Bollocks.

18/09/12

Playing about again with multiple images. No photoshop involved here at all. Several photos taken, uploaded and set as my desktop picture and then a text window placed on my hand. Straight out of the camera. As you'll guess, I had nothing photographic planned at all and ended up pulling something quick and pretty unoriginal out of my arse.

19/09/12

Finally getting a decent harvest of tomatoes from the greenhouse in September. Really should get them started a bit earlier next year! These little chaps are delicious - sweet and tasty. Very few are making in into a salad as I've been eating them like sweets. Hopefully get a few more weeks worth of fruit and a few more peppers as well. Had my first real red pepper this week.

20/09/12

Work stuff cancelled on me, leaving me looking at a pile of paperwork. As usual in such a situation, I engaged in quite a bit of task avoidance behaviour such as learning a couple of new tricks with the diablo and the lead guitar solo from Werewolves of London. This was third on the list - play with shaped aperture discs in my Lensbaby Composer. I did hearts, starts, swirls, birds etc. Liked this one best. A string of fairy lights was used to make the bokeh behind the cup, pinned to a black sheet.

21/09/12

Culture Night and decided to skip the big do in Belfast and visit the inaugural event in Holywood instead. This may have been a mistake. Although it has to be said I was really impressed with this bunch of kids who put on a free running demo outside the town library. Energetic and risky - note the guy at the back with his arm in plaster who threw a few somersaults later. These guys were from Rathgael Gym I discovered later.

22/09/12

Cycling on the Comber Greenway this afternoon with my daughter Sarah. She had brought her bike round to me a few weeks ago because it wasn't working. By that I mean that nothing on the bike was working. I stripped and repaired the brakes and then replaced the broken gear shifters and cables to get brakes and gears working again. I added bar ends to the handlebars, a waterbottle and holder and a Hello Kitty bell. Bike was now working again, all for the princely sum of around £30 and several hours work. Not bad for someone as handless and mechanically useless as myself. Today was the first real cycle we got to go on - not bad at all. Covered around 10 miles, although Sarah appears to have only two speeds when cycling - full-out sprint and stopped.

23/09/12

Sarah and I took off this morning on a trip down to Nendrum as a result of a conversation we had yesterday about Vikings. Nendrum itself was a disappointment, but the trip was enjoyable enough with Sarah coining the the term "a slim road" for the roads we were driving down. Stopped to take a few landscape-type shots and this is one. Liked the hay bales - they remind me of Autumn/harvest time.

367-50 Week 6

A belated Merry Christmas to anyone who reads this, and an early Happy New Year. I'm a little late posting my weekly update due to the festive celebrations, but here's my shots from the week leading up to baby Jesus' birthday.

My first shot is of the Block Design subtest of the good old Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC-IVuk to give it it's full designation). I was assessing a higher education student this evening for dyslexic-type problems and took a quick shot of this before packing all the test gear away when I was finished. I remember starting out with the older versions of this test and this subtest has always been there. I couldn't even begin to estimate how many times I've used this test kit in the 25 years I've worked as a psychologist but I'm guessing it runs into the mid-thousands. It's like an old friend.

19/12/11

Tuesday brought a day of sitting in a staff meeting. These are usuaully pretty dull affairs but this one was a little lighter an more fun. A bit of craic was had. I had turned up early to discover than I'd brought some of my wee men with me in my camera bag. I set this up, entitling it "bored in the board" - a wee pun at my employers' expense since usually being in the Antrim Board Centre equals boredom on a life-threatening scale, for me at least.

20/12/11

Wednesday was my last real day of being out about visiting my schools. These lovely red barn roofs are out between Ballymena and Tommebridge near the Crosskays Road I think. I pass these now and again and am always struck with the sheer redness of them.

21/12/11

By Thursday thoughts were turning towrds Christmas. As you will see from the shot below, I wasn't in an entirely happy place in the few days leading up to Christmas to the extent that I was trying to make some rather snotty allegory along the lines of "Xmas=burning money." Just in case you're worried, these were our Xmas napkins, not real money.

22/12/11

My mood did start to lighten a bit as Xmas got closer. Buns were baked, cookies were cut and shopping and presents got sorted for everyone. By Friday I was getting into full-on eating and drinking mode which appears to be still on-going.

23/12/11

On Christmas eve  I had the pleasure of Sarah's company for the day which we spent doing last-minute shopping and lying around watching pretty soppy movies on the TV. This was shot with my little 50mm lens set at f1.8 with the bokeh in the background produced by the lights on our Christmas tree. It's kinda cute.

24/12/11

Christmas day! Santa brought some very expensive and sexy glass for Trish and me - matching 24-70 f2.8 lenses, one Nikon (for me) and one Canon (for my better half). A macro ring flash was my little treat from Trish and I've been looking for one for ages - the wee men shots don't you know? It's wild bright and produces incredible portraits as well, although your subject will be temporarily blind afterwards. Just warning you.

25/12/11

Cheers everyone - hope you had a good time and that the new year brings happiness. Next week should see the initial results of the new pressies. Looking forward to it already.