Clarity, perceptions and colourisation
Original photo of late autumn fields and stone wall
Greyscale of original colour with histogram adjustment
Above two layered together with colour layer ‘multiplied’ and reduced
Which one seems clearest to you? Each has a different mood, but in which of the three does the wall and trackway in the foreground seem more ‘immediate’?
BTW, is anyone else finding they can no longer set their images to enlarge as before without having a website address to host them? Or set the order of images in the ‘attachment’ link? What am I missing in this ‘new’ image arrangement?
Late afternoon walk round the walls
We didn’t travel widdershins
Berwick-upon-Tweed has Elizabethan walls which make a handy circular walk. So that is what we did, taking random photos of views both in and out of the circle as we wandered round. It was a clear afternoon, around 15:30, with low, bright sunlight, making shots to the west flare and bringing out amazing colours and shadows all round. We used the Canon Ixus 60 but it was hard to see what we’d captured at the time. All subsequent damage to photos by way of selection, fiddling cropping and adjusting, is down to me.
Let’s not beat about the bush, I’ll start with my favourite shot of the afternoon – out towards the lighthouse, towards the end of the walk.
It’s a fairly long shot, though not the longest of the day, and, although a little grainy, has a lovely colour quality. Couldn’t bring myself to crop the bottom of the image of excess sea as was taken with the shading of the water and the three verticals together travelling up and across the image.
Being fairly high and steep ramparts, there are railings hither and thither to prevent folk tumbling off. Sadly it hasn’t always worked.
Walking up to one of the bastions (gun emplacements) and looking back over the river – made me think of the 1950s - photo taken by Steve
There really is a need for railings – here they’ve gone curly on themselves – photo taken by Steve
The fencing here brings to mind an attack of hiccups in an ironworks.
And then there’s always the serpent bench in the sky – not actually on the very edge of the earthwork
Or it could be an odd pair of spectacles with built-in gum guard – it all depends on your point of view
These benches occasionally congregate looking out to sea.
Talk about a long shot – you can just make out Bamburgh Castle on the horizon to the far left of the commemorative beacon basket
Bamburgh Castle is something like 12-16 miles away I reckon. I cropped a large tree off the left of the image behind the branches of which you might just have been able to make out the vague shape of Holy Island with Lindisfarne Castle some 8 miles away too, but that would have taken even more of the eye of faith.
Late afternoon autumn sun lighting up the upper windows of the Cromwellian Parish Church
Walking the early evening footpath
Berwick’s layer cake of bridges come in to view as we circle back
And then there’s this:
Where once was a cinema/theatre is now waste land – you should always take danger notices seriously …
because …
… you never can tell what you might come across – photo taken by Steve
After the bracing walk, the drive homeward to the hills – shot displayed as taken
Related articles
- Today’s News: Guild of Freemen call on council to mark historic Berwick event (journallive.co.uk)
It’s about light and shadow
Eye brain interpretation
As some of you may know, I spend a good deal of spare time building a 1/12th scale model set between 1450 and 1616 (theinfill). Attempts at figures have disappointed and been stripped down. I rarely post the same images to this blog, but I was taken by surprise by the subtleties of mood and expression that appeared in these purposely grainy photos and thought it worth the sharing.
These were taken in order to see how messy the detail still was and to try to judge the optimum lighting so as to add a little reality to the poor wee dummy and friend. (Must add dark colour to dog and do something with those horrid hands.)
Related articles – all very different and of interest in their own ways
- Broken Houses, Scale Models of Decaying Buildings by Ofra Lapid (laughingsquid.com)
- The Painted Lady Costume Ball (retailfix52.wordpress.com)
- Scale model of Borodino battle on display in London (english.ruvr.ru)
- One fan’s Giant labor of love: Retired grandfather creates replica of old Giants Stadium (nj.com)
- World’s Smallest Working V8? (foxnews.com)
The thumb print of the spider
A proper use for railings
A reduction/regression of treatment of shot taken into the sun
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Halloween in the Museum
Bit early with the Halloween around here?
Went away for a few days and took some shots of around and about. Still putting them together, but thought you might enjoy this one in the meantime.
Septembers and a contrast – around and about
Last year
Various experiments with photos at long range with and without zoom using point and click camera
On a gloriously sunny day, we went scrambling up Ros Castle (I mean why take the path, says S? Sheep tracks are fine. Sheesh – that depends on how long your legs are when scraping through the heather).
The colours, however, were wonderful.
Not as clear as it can be, but the soft colouring of the countryside was very comforting as the year turned to autumn.
This year
Heavy rain has filled the streams and rivers. None of them large, but they can still cause endless havoc when they flood. After bad flooding a few year’s back, earth barriers were built to protect the homes within reach of an overflowing river, and the bank edge was designed to give at a particular point further along to allow prevent a bottleneck, and let the water fill the farmland bottom.
This has worked but unfortunately higher up, banks are giving way and taking largish trees with them, causing further blockages and damage lower down. Today, tree clearing went on to prevent more trees trying to sail to the sea causing mayhem on their way.
Meanwhile, the river is ignoring the central span of the stone bridge and building an island for itself.
Related articles
- Weather: floods warning as rain sweeps across Britain (guardian.co.uk)
A moment to pause and breathe clearly in this often hard pressed world
Across from our small cottage garden is a country lane verge. For many years this was long grass and adventitious plants which tended to get used as a loo for every walked dog in the area, which was a ‘swine’ if you happened to be playing ball in the lane or wanted to talk to the neighbour over the wall. So one year we dug it up and I planted it with everything I could get my hands on that would spread and mix interestingly, in a vague hope that -
- the smellier plants would put the dogs off
- the semi-cared for look of it would put the dog owners off
The young fruit trees were eaten one hard winter by the wild goats, but on the whole, though not pretty, it has worked, and gives colour of one sort or another year round. It’s become a survival of the fittest amongst the plantings; is full of amphibians, and its growing chaos brings happiness to my life, blueberries and gooseberries in season and such strong herb smells that, every time I kneel down to see to any tidying up a bit, it makes me think of the line “ I know a bank where the wild time blows“.
Looking up the lane along some of the verge
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And on a different note, whilst I’m at it, another ‘share’
Occasionally we become temporary hosts to racing pigeons who stop off for goodness knows what reason. I suppose over the last 30 odd years we’ve had 10-15 or so.
The data we have for contacting local fanciers’ clubs to come and rescue the hesitant flyer is now out of date, and this pigeon has been here for 3 days and does not have the look of being on the move, more one of eying up the local ‘talent’.
I’m not usually one to share the moving and philosophical moments I come across, preferring them more as an internal experience. But on this somewhat fuzzy headed morning, whilst searching for websites to locate a local fanciers’ club, this link popped up – you may, or may not, have already seen it.
Can’t find a date on it so it may be old news. I hope it helps bring a smile to your day and apologies if you’ve already seen it, but you can’t have too many smiles pass through your life, can you.
Reblog:
Wild Rose Rescue Ranch – Noah and Bunnies
yes, it’s in Texas, but the Scottish pigeon club is spreading the word.
PS: no sooner had I typed this than away the pigeon flew. Hopefully that will soon be one relieved pigeon owner, but I hope the delay won’t bring ‘sadness’ to the life of the pigeon.
Centuries of the old and the new
Blackfriars – Newcastle-upon-Tyne
On the wander on Saturday and stepped into Blackfriars to refresh my memory of some of the old building’s details and keep my brain working on the period model I like to work on – see theinfill for more info. It rained a lot, so this ‘piece’ comes to you from your soggy (and now sneezy) reporter on a day’s escape to the big city.
Parts of the buildings date back to the 1300s and was in almost continuous use, one way and another, which is unusual as most monastic buildings seem to have been left to fall into disrepair after the Reformation in the 1530s. These buildings, and I think there was quite a development of them by the 1500s, were rented by the various trades guilds in the city.
“In the year 1552, the mayor and burgesses demised this house of Black Friars, (fn. 6) with its appurtenances, of orchards, gardens, &c. to nine of the mysteries, or most ancient trades of the town, at the yearly rent of 42s.; a ninth part to be paid by each company, to the respective uses of which were portioned out the several apartments of the monastry, with the adjacent grounds. This grant has saved the monastry from destruction; and though it has undergone many alterations, yet it still retains a considerable share of its ancient monastic character, as will be noticed hereafter.”
The only parts left that are based on some elements of the original buildings are around the cloister area, the entrance being through a long, arched passageway.
What is left is a jumble of the centuries, with sections altered according to the then current need.
Currently it is a restaurant and studios and showroom/outlets for various crafts.
The Dominican Friary Church is now a patch of grass with bits of masonry still in evidence, but, circling round to the right, on the far side of the Church site there are modern buildings designed to echo some aspects of period architecture.
Not so sure the contrasts in the modern arcade do it for me – possibly over-egging the pudding. The pseudo Tudor chimney is pleasant but somehow doesn’t ‘go’ with the roof – is it the shallow angle, possibly?
The theme of staying in tune with what used to be around is carried out in other new building too. Outside the cloister on the site where the Tanners’ building once stood, a modern arcade has been erected, with pleasingly varied arch heights and brickwork.
All this is on the edge of China Town with one of the main shopping and entertainment areas just round the next corner.
The mix and match and huge variety of history, people and place, brought back how much I do miss the city sometimes.
A potted Wikipedia history of Blackfriars Priory
Further elated article
- St. Dominic and the Friars Preachers (insightscoop.typepad.com)
It never rains but it pours
Now here’s a coincidink
Rain moving in on Lindisfarne Castle (Holy Island), Northumberland
Less posting, more spam?
Has anyone else found that they get more spam when they’re not posting than when they are? Been busy here with life and all that but seem to have needed to clean up spam more frequently – go figure.
Equation:
- inactivity = vacuum = influx of rubbish (?)
A coincidink entirely
Dried flower pod or escapee from Babylon 5
Playing around and having fun during a much needed break from heavy, heavy work moving stones outside, I decided to use a dry seed/flower head, that’s been lying around for at leat a 12 month, as my subject.
Back to work – but does it remind you of one of the Vorlon type ships from Bab 5?
Disappearing Smileys
Overflowing ditches and gullies to be cleaned
Next door’s roses are rotting where they sit, mould spores forming and spreading before you can reach them
Fence caught mowings smothering field margins
and a silt drowned Smiley - glug
Damp, hay unturned and rotting, ditches full and roads strewn with slimy debris from field and verge
- a drear summer
Welcome mat – part III
Down by the side of the ivy overgrown store runs a stream, on its way through the graveyard
Very dark and noisy – water rushing and foaming.
Image rotated, unnamed, untweeked
In adjusting the image for a little more definition, the water became fascinating – it has the look of a Victorian drawing from a weekly melodrama, where the heroine stands by the rushing torrent etc. Believe you me, even this small stream made a terrific sound in the echoing tunnel of low bushes crawled through to take the photo.
Illustration for a ‘Penny Dreadful‘ or a Victorian Melodrama
The foaming torrent
The soft feathers of foamy water as they spray the rocks and the blurring of the waters as they flow down from the fall have all the feel of a drawing. This is how it came out on the image – there has been no alteration to the look other than colour and contrasts.
Going mini – further notes from a bad gardener
Little things in the background easily overlooked
Sisyrinchium sundial
I like to overcrowd our flower garden, leaving it to the survival of the fittest and then infill with ground covering, preferably flowering items. This way the taller guys hold each other up a little and the whole lot together keep out some of the weeds and provide lots of layers of cover for the many frogs, toads, lizards etc that live around us and who, in turn, keep down the slugs and snails.
What’s the general aim?
This is a ‘cottage garden’ that ought to have an old school look: you know, the sort you get on jigsaw puzzles with some woman in a bonnet, long skirt and apron and carrying a woven trug on her arm whilst standing on the doorstep of a wee stone cottage. However, as a 4 foot 10 inch gardener, I’d never be able to see any of that style of tall planting unless I went around on stilts or with a ladder. I try to achieve that higgledy-piggledy mish mash look with other, shorter and more solid growths, giving steps of differing height in the beds as the eye travels back.
This is a wasteful way of gardening
It does mean you spend money on plants that you may never see again because they’ve got no chance. The conditions in each of the small flower beds are different as they each face a different direction: at the foot of a small garden wall or in with miniature trees or a box hedge or with surface water drain running though, so each can produce different results from the same or similar plants. But, after 6 years plus, each spring, other than tidying up and hacking back, I spend very little on new plants unless I can’t resist something. Usually there’s plenty coming out of each size of plant that can then go in any gaps that have appeared due to winter weather or animal depredations.
Sisyrinchium (a plant with a name that sounds like a made up planet in ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide’), is an exception to the survive or go under planting. I try to rescue as many of them each year from the inundations of the more rampant. There flowers are so precise and delicate, fairly sparse per plant (even when not over planted) standing proud above their carnation-like foliage. They have a whole personality of their own and provide contrast to the sprawling lower ground cover.
Pratia – regarded by many as an invasive weed
I love this tiny flower but many do not. (See ‘Alpine Garden Society’ - a bit of a dramatic garden health warning). The flowers are a little over 1.5 cms and make my eyes go funny. Not a recommendation in any way, you may think? The blue is so glowing that shade is essential to try to get a photo of them. It does spread, but that’s what I wanted it for, and it if grows in and between and below taller plants, then all the better as far as my gardening tastes are concerned. It’s been placed in a ‘deprived’ bed in front of a semi-espalliade Morello cherry and had has to compete to survive.
Where do I draw the line with spreading, invasive plants? Well, nothing too tall gets planted if it can be helped. Usually no plant over 5 foot and or with a spread greater than 30 inches. The problems come with the medium sized spreaders that I yank out wholesale 2-3 times a flowering season, knowing that they’ll be back again before the end of flowering time. Then, at the end of the year, and sometimes at the very beginning of the next, out they have to come again. As the garden is fairly small with 5 distinct planting areas, the labour is not arduous and can be easily broken into work loads, day by day. With the invasive smaller items the same is done, but usually they intermix quite nicely. If there’s one that could do with more space so that it makes a better ‘show’, it gets popped in a pleasant plant pot or trough of suitable size on the bed in the place I’d like to see it.
What happens when I get too old to be a doing of it? Flame thrower most probably.
I don’t usually buy bedding plants other than pansies, violas and occasionally sweet peas, but this year trailing Lobelia joined our jungle, placed in various pots that have been plumped in and between the taller perennials. The pots give contrast, help support and separate the bigger growers and, this particular year, were bought to provide us with any colour. The rabbits have been a plague to anything they could reach and it looked for a little while as though we would be good at growing lines of 2 inch stalks and nothing else.
A bit of a ‘dolly mixture’ set of colours but they’re doing their job nicely
Related articles
- Invasive Flowers that May be Threatening Your Garden (proflowers.com)
A busy day on the High Street, Ephesus
Meanwhile, the sensible sought a little shade
No felines were harmed in the taking of this photo, however odd the juxtaposition of rock and cat may look
And the super strong held up the leaning stonework
Both when you are very young and as you get much, much older, your brain questions what you see and sometimes misinterprets it. Knowing someone who once said ‘What a lot of people there are pushing that bus’ on seeing a bus queue, I always have this in mind. With profound apologies to the two lovely people in the above photo, but on viewing it for the first time, for the life of me all I could see was the woman on the right holding the stone in a balanced position whilst the gentleman on the left was taking a drinks break.
Everyone heading down hill towards the library
Did they have a picture ‘on he lid’ to work from for this jigsaw puzzle, do you think?
When is a dome not a dome?
Cathedral of the Assumption in the Citadel of Rabat,
Gozo (Ghawdex) – Malta
Trompe l’oeil dome – Rabat was also named Victoria, by the British but the local population have mostly stuck to Rabat, unless talking to tourists when they might use both names
Think I took this one and Steve took the movies we’ve got of the ceiling. He wisely went for the moving image as it seemed to capture light better and, although lower res, is less grainy than this still image. Ghawdex I believe is an ordinary western alpha representation of the Maltese name for the island of Gozo.
Many of the Maltese we met in Valletta who were working with the tourists, seem to be able to speak in a combo of their own language, Arabic, Italian, French, English, Spanish, German and Greek with the odd Scandinavian language thrown in. Eavesdropping on them serving in shops and restaurants is an awe-inspiring experience as they switch from customer to customer or table to table always remembering who speaks what; and then, when the next client comes along, rewriting that memory with the appropriate language for the new conversation.
Before the Ancient Egyptians got a-building
The Megalithic Temples of Malta
‘The oldest stone buildings in the world’
Just how big is this? Well let’s just lift it and place it 6 inches to the right, do you think?
Have you ever been to Malta? We’d never been before but selected it because of the history and, of course, the archaeology.
Yup, more piles of rocks. But these you have to see to believe. Here are a few images of a couple of Malta’s cliff top temples.
The two, on a cliff on the main island, are under ‘canvas’.
Lower temple tent from path down from top one – a long, hot walk in the open.
Some perspective of the size of the stones now, after millenia of cliff top wear
Honey glow of the stone below the tent roofing
And then there’s the Tarxien Temple, and Ggantija too, not to mention the Hypogeum (said to be the only prehistoric underground temple in the world) and all the finds in each of these. Quite an eye opener for those of us who’ve only trawled the shallow end of the available ancient archeological info that floats around for the public.
How to keep your feet dry in a storm
Levitate
Small part of image but some fun to share this Saturday morning – and boy oh boy did it rain that day.
