It’s official
It’s been a great week with all our visitors. There will be photos soon. Promise. Meanwhile: Tonight… bowling, snacks, beer. Tomorrow, airports & farewells. Monday: catching up on a week’s worth of internet…
Tilt-shift Agave Field
There’s a technique known as tilt-shift which makes your photos look like close-ups of a miniature landscape by throwing sections out of focus and whacking up the brightness. It usually takes a good half hour of fiddling with images in Photoshop to achieve the effect and I’ve never really been happy with the results. However, Tiltshiftmaker.com makes things a lot easier…
This photo is from the toll road back from Tequila. We were travelling in a teeny tiny little car…
1st International Tapatían Phototour…
Lovin’ it… Busy week ahead 😀
We’ve got visitors
Having a fine old weekend with friends from Mexico staying. Here’s a quick pic from yesterday’s expedition…
Bijou
Taken after stumbling into the street blinking and full after lunch at Bijou in Portland with Tanya and Jonathon.
The sleet had just stopped, the sun came out, and it wouldn’t hail for another hour or so… Good weather for Powell’s books, then bananagrams.
I tried this in black and white, but decided it worked slightly better desaturated.
Starry snowy night
We had another flurry of snow last night, about half an inch, but by the morning it was gone. While it fell I took this long exposure shot with a flash so you get the trails of the snow with some flakes ‘frozen’ by the flash.
End of days
After the snow comes rain. After the rain comes snow.
Red
I’m feeling a little delicate today. Here’s a bold start to 2009.
Blwyddyn Newydd Dda
So Christmas has been and gone, the dog’s chalked up another few thousand air miles and I’ve got lots of new warm clothes for the rest of the winter. It was a lovely break all in all. I sorted out several laptops, got dragged through dozens of sales, all but destroyed several ficus trees, ate better than during the last 6 months, read Sir Pratchett’s Nation (one of his best I reckon) and now have an iPhone Touch to keep me out of trouble. The snow has totally disappeared and I’m at a loss for where to go for photos, though the waterfalls might be pretty impressive at the minute…
Back to work on Monday, but for now we’re weighing up the options for this evening’s seeing in of 2009… The neighbours are having a knees up, there’s a pub crawl in the NE, then there’s always the town centre too. It’ll probably be pretty subdued no matter what, but I’m already eyeing the six pack of zider in the fridge.
Since I’ve been sorting out me iTouch and organising music libraries, I thought I’d do another meme. 20 odd questions and you randomly fill in the answers with whatever the next track is on shuffle. It’s blatantly not aimed at married, thirtysomething males but it’s a chance to go through me iTunes library. If the list doesn’t appear below, click the title or the “More” thing if you’re having a slow day…
Small world
Still haven’t been out with the camera properly, so here’s one from a month ago or so taken in the little park at the end of our road. Today I’m definitely getting organised with the prints… and hopefully this evening with the pints too.
Differently-Temperatured People
We got back last night from our Christmas break in Los Angeles and I expected at least some snow to be left, but alas, tis all gone. I feel like I carpe’d the snowy diem though. I didn’t do much shooting in Los Angeles (there’s only so many angles you can take of Old Navy, Sears, Mervyns, Macy’s, Best Buy…) but shall be out and about in the next day or two to see how this mini ice age has affected the Oregonian landscape.
Sorry for the pause in posting too, especially after all the new sign ups. I didn’t want to broadcast to the world that the house would be empty so I just slipped away… I’ll be answering emails and getting your pictures printed and sent very soon. Thank you for your patience, and happy 2009, yo. 😀
Xmas photos
are here courtesy of Aunt Minnie, Gary & Martin…
Title: Self-Portrait. Medium: Nissan Altima
Who knew that you can press your face into fresh powder snow on a car and you get an insanely detailed imprint. I couldn’t bring myself to do this to the dog so I tried it myself.
If we weren’t heading off out so soon I’d try for a fuller recreation of Han Solo Frozen in Carbonite…
Yearly round-up
Flash publishes a traditional meme at the end of each year. She posts the first sentence from the first post of each month from the preceding year. Here goes mine, and I’m going to make a comment after each one…
J: England was great, lovely to see all me nearest and dearest in person and share a pint or three. I shan’t leave it so long next time.
Can’t believe a year’s gone by without getting back 🙁
F: Well, what with having bought another car and signed a 12 month lease on our apartment, we’re here for the long haul.
So young, so naive
M: Yep the 3:17 vowel-consonant ratio means it´s Saint David’s Day again.
And it was lovely to catch up with Ian and Yuri and their kids
A: This blog’s been a bit abandoned of late more due to an overload of work and little time to update it but in brief, saw Carrie Fisher’s show Wishful Drinking last Thursday.
And blimey, it was bad
M: The problem with not posting for a while is that it builds a certain level of expectation that the next post will be somehow life-affirming and brilliant.
Then I went on to announce Sita handing in her dissertation. I really ought to consider newspaper style writing, most important bits first, details later…
J: I just passed the 10,000 photos mark on Flickr.
And I’m at: 11,290 items / 65,673 views, but who’s counting?
J: We interrupt this prolonged silence to recommend this course to you in the Fall Autumn… Check out the last professor on the Faculty link too… Sign up now!.
And who knew that 6 months later I’d have admin privileges to edit that very page…
A: Greetings from our latest ZIP code!
I’ve forgotten what Alameda’s zip was now… seems like a long time ago
S: According to Peter Trigg’s Calendar – “My kind of Somerset”, it’s the first of September, meaning we can look at a grainy picture of All Saints’ Church, Aisholt for 30 odd days
I shouldn’t criticise his calendar. I’m just jealous.
O: Posting direct from Flickr… Here’s Nostromoo’s 2nd batch of Welsh Cakes… and evidence of probably the first time anyone has printed my blog out on paper.
7 months after St. Dai’s Day, we were all getting our Welsh on…
N: I’m off to watch ‘democracy’ in action with DrSita in a mo…
And lo and behold, Obama was elected that very evening. Oregon had an impressive 86% voter turnout.
D: Word Magazine just published an advent calendar with links to videos and suchlike, I thought, I could do that:
Presenting Countdown to Xmas with ‘Cus
And a calendar was born. Hope you enjoy Day 24
When I get a chance I’ll do a first photo from every month type post too…
Snow Flash
Not much in the way of technique here except try to keep the camera dry, try to stay warm, and try to keep moving… We’re at well over 2 feet of snow today, it’s still snowing… I made an igloo. Details, pics and details on where to find the video of it over at me blog…
Things to do today:
Check whether Lewis and Clark is open : 
(it’s not)
Stay Warm: X
Build a 6ft-tall-igloo out of ice and snow in the back garden :
The final video with the roof and everything will be along soon, quite possibly in Advent Calendar form…
Nuts to be out in this weather
Yeah, cheesy title I know. They don’t have it easy the squirrels round here, if they’re not being chased by Atticus, they’re under nigh on two foot of snow. I forget where, but I recently read that “squirrels are just rats with good PR”.
Also, thanks to Sunday’s publicity drive, I would like to welcome Amy to our small, but vital, community of people-who-get-a-picture-emailed-to-them-daily. Much appreciated 🙂 and if any other subscribees would like a signed photo postcard sent to them (by proper post) just email me which one you’d like and your address. Ta.
Atticalendar Day 22
is getting erased after Christmas day. The last third of it is anyway…
So… don’t forget to check out day 22…
