367-50 Week 43

Week 43 starts with me feeling worse than I've felt for a long time. The anti-allergy drugs I have to take to counter-act an attack of my eczema have left me feeling completed wrecked. I've been tired and sleepy all day and my mood has been very low. I suspect that the shots from early in the week will not exactly be "keepers" as they say.

3/09/12

It's a crap shot, but the effort was made. The inside of my greenhouse at night on a long exposure. Peppers to the left, tomatoes to the right. The white light trails at the rear are the tracks of the torch I was using to light up the plants.

4/09/12

If i was feeling bad yesterday, I was feeling worse today. Full blown 'flu descended last night and it was mid-afternoon before I was able to crawl out of bed and even then I only got as far as the sofa. I only took this shot because the dog came and sat on me while I as lying on the settee and my camera was sitting beside me. This is Honey, she's not mine (before you jump to conclusions) and her owner had kindly called in to make me something to eat and a cup of tea. The Jameson's was a bonus.

5/09/12

Tonight's post-dinner fun was provided by everyone trying to programme a mini-BigTrak to run through a slalom course made out of our shoes. A test of geometry and logic if ever there was one. I failed. This was the first time for many months that I had all 5 of my children who live in Belfast together in the house for dinner. It was noisy, hectic and there were (as always) dozens of not always linear conversations going on over the dinner table. I'm aware that a lot of the talk between all of us is in some bizarre form of code ("Barbourspeak?") with frequent references to things, events and people that no-one else would ever pick up on or understand. And I just love it. Probably the best pick-me-up after a bout of the 'flu you could get.

6/09/12

First full-blown school run of the year today, and this was breakfast. I'd forgotten the complexities of getting two girls ready and out to two different schools and the painful experience of driving through Belfast at that time of the morning. No-one died or was late for school - have to count that as a success of sorts.

7/09/12

Don't know what to think about this shot; I'm not even sure that I like it. It's an HDR'd shot of Parliament Buildings at Stormont. I was bored after working at home all morning and needed a bit of fresh air, so took a walk up the big lane at Stormont. Took my wide angle lens to take this and when I got home and had processed it the lamposts were doing that "converging verticals" thing and looked a bit like bananas. A bit of a youtube search later and I worked through fixing it in photoshop. Worked out all right. Or as George Formby used to say "turned out nice again."

8/09/12

The 3rd annual Belfast Zombie walk was on this morning in the grounds of Stormont Estate, as part of the Yellow Fever Independent Film Festival taking place across the street in The Stormont Hotel. Poorly attended this year compared to last but fun none the less. On the left is George Clarke, main man of Yellow Fever Productions who will forever live in my memory as the man who brought us Battle of the Bone, Belfast's first (and only) kung fu zombie movie and the only film where I was able to attend the international premiere. I also had my picture taken with two Start Wars Imperial Troopers. Just saying - not that I'm a Start Wars geek or anything.

8/09/12

But seriously - this was the dashboard of someone's car. I must have looked a bit suspicious standing pointing my camera in through the windscreen. These were blowing around in the breeze but think I've got them sharp enough. Loved the colours - couldn't resist taking this picture and just saw it as a nice wide crop right away.

367-50 Week 23

Back to work this week and a million wee things nagging at me to get done. Colleagues who eat up your time needlessly don't help. Anyway, that was all before I even had a cup of coffee in the office on Monday morning and I like my coffee early.

16/04/12

Glad to escape early today to perform my second shooter duties with Trish. Very small and intimate wedding in Belfast City Hall, another lovely couple to work with and great family and guests.

17/04/12

It was late and I didn't have a particularly good day. Everything was making me cross. It then got to be 10 o'clock at night and I hadn't taken my shot for the day. I retired to the kitchen and gave myself 20 minutes to come up with something. This was it.

18/04/12

So, it was a straight choice between a photo of Trish explaining how chicken nuggets are made (you know, when a mummy chicken and a daddy chicken love each other.......), Hannah's face while this was being explained to her, or a shot of Sarah demonstrating how she can put her foot behind her head. No prizes for guessing which I went for. Sarah then completed her yoga demonstration by falling off the sofa.

19/04/12

Having spent almost an entire weekend getting stuck into the garden during March, the first fruits (see what I did there?) of my labour have appeared. Several lines of rocket have shot up, well, like rockets. For the gardeners, they're still under a cloche as I'm well aware of the risk of frost. The rocket has today been joined by spinach. Meanwhile, on the kitchen windowsill, tomato and cucumber seeds have sprouted but there's no sign of the notoriously slow peppers. I love growing my own veggies. Mainly because I can eat them.

20/04/12

I was working in a nice solicitors office and was sitting beside this rather marvellous bookcase. It was the two pairs of shoes which caught my attention (one pair black, the other brown). The elegant flat cap and designer scarf also caught my eye. This smacks of a level of disorganisation that even I can only aspire to.

21/04/12

Spent this morning in Dundonald Library getting the prints ready for our camera club exhibition which opens on the 2nd of May. The club's prints look really well when displayed like this. Sadly we weren't able to put up the winning prints on the main wall within in library as there was a collection of photos already there. Without sounding a wee bit catty, there are not that good but the author is selling them (canvases) for £100 a pop. If they're worth £100 I could sell my pictures and be able to quit my day job. Miaow. Rough count on this wall - I have four shots, Trish has five, Sarah has one.

22/04/12

Last minute decision to visit the newly opened MAC in Belfast today. Thanks to Facebook, I saw that there were a couple of seats left for the play Titanic (Scenes from the British Wreck Commissioner's Enquiry 1912) and bit the bullet and went along. I was impressed with the new building, although it was less airy and a lot more of a tall, thin space designed in the style of an underground car park. The play (by Owen McCafferty) is a fascinating piece of theatre. I hear that good old Roderick Jaynes will be reviewing it over on Shitflicks at some stage. We saw him at the bar drinking a rather large stiffener during the interval.