Adventures of an Idiot - occasional ramblings of a photography freak

Having had a bit of fun tinkering with the manual adjustment of white balance on the GX10 (see this post), was feeling a bit adventurous so thought I’d see if anything similar were possible with my point & shoot, a Konica Minolta DiMAGE z6.

And it is! And in a very similar manner, although the manual recommends the use of a white card (not grey, as with the GX10).

Clearly the obvious place for the experimentation was my favourite “weird lighting haunt”, inside The Bear pub in Bedford.

Overall the results were reasonably satisfactory although on reflection what I think I should have done, because there are varying light sources at the location, was to have reset the white balance for each separate light source. Something to remember when I’m doing it “for real”.

A very minor achievement maybe, but I’m inordinately pleased that I’ve finally got my head around this little tweak. All sorts of possibilities are now suggesting themselves to me!

Sometimes I really do regret having been born with certain deficiencies in the thinking and memory department, particularly when it comes to gadgetry and techie-type things, and… aargh… icons!
I’d like to be able to attribute it to approaching senility, or the consumption of significant amounts of alcohol, but unfortunately its a deficiency that seems to have dogged me for most of my life.

And it was inevitable that it wouldn’t be too long before it started manifesting in my new-found love of cameras and things photographic. It actually happened a coupla weeks back during my session in Wilstead Wood, and reappeared again a few days ago during the Shocott Spring shoot (although I have a strong suspicion its occurred before and I just hadn’t picked up on it), but I only actually discovered it yesterday. Purely by chance.

To explain…

This little switch on the GX10

is the Metering Mode Lever, neatly encircling the Mode Dial. (Disregard all the crud and dust surrounding it… that’s just me being my normal messy self.) Its for manually selecting either multi-segment metering, centre-weighted metering, or spot metering, and impacts exposure.
I know it is, and I know that’s what it does, and I know that’s what its for… cos I’ve used it before, particularly when I was doing some evening and night shots in town last year. And I read it in the manual!

And this little switch

is for selecting the Focusing Area, or “AF point”, offering a choice between auto selection of the optimum AF point, manually selecting one of multiple points through use of the four-way controller dial, or setting the focusing area to the centre of the viewfinder.
I know that’s what its for, and I know that’s what it does cos I’ve used it before, and I read it in the manual.
That said, I do have a bit of a tendency to ignore it, much preferring to select the AF point simply by pointing the camera at the intended subject, pressing the shutter thingy half-way down to fix the focus, then recomposing the shot (if I want to), and finally doing the clicky business. Got that whole procedure down to a fine art now. And it seems so much better than fiddling around with dials and stuff.
Either that or I’ll simply switch to manual focus and twiddle the focus ring on the lens.

On top of which, the little icons are a clear clue as to the differing functions of the respective controls. Aren’t they?

Well, during the Wilstead Wood shoot, back a bit, I had major hassles with exposure. Definitely a case, I thought, of pressing the Metering Mode thingy into service. But to no avail. Just couldn’t seem to get it right. Eventually overcame the exposure problems (half-way at least) by a judicious combined manipulation of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO… and a helluva lot of luck.
Similar problems reappeared (though not to the same extent fortunately) during the Shocott Spring session. And were dealt with in much the same way.
All down to the really bright sunlight of course.

However, this exposure issue had been niggling away in the back of my mind so yesterday I decided to refresh my understanding of the whole business by re-reading the relevant bit of the manual.

Which is how I discovered that the old thinking/memory deficiency had been having its ugly way with me again.

For what I want to know is, why the hell had I been trying to adjust the exposure mode using the bloody Focusing Area switch???

Tuesday. If you read my post about yesterday you’ll understand just how much of a disaster the day turned out to be… at least in terms of my intentions of first thing in the morning!
Well, today I’m more than making up for it. But having fiddled around for the past however many hours doing nothing really consequential I’m feeling a bit sort of… er… bored.

Hmm.

Quite a while ago a mate of mine suggested that some of my pics have a distinctly “Gothic” feel to them (I’m assuming he meant “Gothic” as in the recent “Goth” sub-culture, and not as in the architectual style… cos he knows I’m a bit sort of into that. The former, that is, not the latter. Although I quite like that style of architecture too. Just by way of clarification).

So that idea has been bubbling away in the back of my mind, but with no real intention on my part to do anything about it.
Then, only a few days ago, another mate had the audacity to suggest giving one of my pics the b&w treatment! I quickly disabused him of that notion of course cos I just don’t “get” black and white. This is the 21st century y’know. Cameras nowadays actually shoot in colour!

However, here am I mooching around indoors (deterred from going outside by the brilliant sunshine which, if I did venture forth, I just know would catapult me into another photo session, and subsequently entail hours of work) with that strangely uncomfortable and distinctly unfamiliar feeling that I think’s known as “boredom”, with these two suggestions still rattling around in my brain.

So I decide to have a play. Unfortunately, the pic I had in mind to play with was shot in the days before I shot most of everything in RAW, so I had to start out with the less-than-ideal JPEG format. But what the hell. After all, I’m only playing.
Now the result is not strictly “Goth”(ic), nor is it actually black and white. But it was fun doing it. So much fun in fact that it wouldn’t take a lot to persuade me to do some more.

You can comment if you really want to!

(Click on thumbnail for full size)

Monday. Today wasn’t meant to be a photos day. Today was meant to be a slobbing around day. Y’know, doing lots of nothing much at all, followed by a bit of a rest, and then doing a bit more of nothing much at all. Taking it easy sort of thing.

Which it would have been, had I not discovered I was running short of a couple of essential supplies. Couldn’t be asked to trek into town but, weather being gorgeous, decided that a casual stroll to the nearest shop (in the next village, just short of a mile-and-a-half away, or thereabouts) wouldn’t be too demanding. After all, nothing better to do… just slobbing around.
And, almost without thinking, shrug on the photokit backpack… its become a sort of a habit now.

Mission accomplished and slowly ambling back, was just about to pass a driveway leading to what I’d hitherto thought were fields when I spotted some sort of notice on the gate.

Ah, terrible thing, curiosity. Which of course got the better of me.

Hmm. The gate leads to somewhere named “Shocott Spring”, which apparently is a recently planted area (within the past 18 months or so as I subsequently learned) intended to become a “community woodland”, and part of the Marston Vale Forest.

Wow! Practically the birth of a brand new woodland! The opportunity to take a few pics of this project was just too much to resist. Anyway, its a nice day, and I’ve nothing better to do, so grab the chance!

Encounter a farm worker in my exploration and he it was who told me about the very first plantings. Interesting. So the whole area’s unlikely to resemble anything even approaching a proper wood for at least the next eight or ten years.
So carry on walking and snapping, and come across a couple of guys who’re spraying some sort of stuff over the newly planted saplings. Consent to have their pic taken and carry on about their labour. And they have a companion… a gorgeous black labrador who decides he’s found himself a new friend, and promptly encourages me to throw his ball for him. Which of course I dutifully do. And again. And again. And… oh, you get the idea. But I still manage to snap a few pics in between throws.

Back home with a brand new batch of pics and nothing much better to do, decide I may as well process/upload ‘em.
Hmm. But before I do that there’s a whole bunch of pics already on the computer (from the last few sessions) which really could do with sorting and archiving first. Oh well. Nothing better to do, may as well get on and do that.
Thus passes the next couple of hours or so. And with the last one neatly tucked away I can at last start on the new batch.

Finally get them all transferred from the memory cards and almost finished processing them when I begin to get the first inkling that I can kiss goodbye to any idea of a “slobbing around” day.

Bloody computers! Give me one with about 20Gb RAM and a hundred thousand processors and I might be happy. As it is, my poor little machine just can’t cope with the intensive and prolonged processing I’ve demanded of it, so it goes on strike.
Well, refuses to work, anyway. In fact, refuses to do anything, including rebooting!
So I have to commit the cardinal sin of cutting the power, restarting it, and then wait ages whilst it toils through its self-diagnostic routines (with that horrible doom-laden blue screen) before finally deciding to boot into operating mode. Damn!

However, eventually get back going again, finish off the processing, and start uploading to Flickr.
Which seems to take an inordinately long time. “Odd”, thinks I, but persevere anyway. And the batch upload kicks out just short of the end! Damn (again!).
But don’t panic… check Flickr first to see what’s there.

Hmm. Apart from the last four or so they all seem to be present and correct. Well, at least I can start adding descriptions, tagging etc, can’t I?
No. I can’t! Seems Flickr’s experiencing some sort of glitch which, according to a very new thread in the help forum, is impacting uploading and editing!

Now far be it from me to suggest that this may have anything to do with the recently introduced video uploads feature. However, I can’t help observing that it’d be really nice if they could focus upon getting their core service running reliably and glitch-free before introducing anything new!

But, after much fretting, and writing the draft of this post just to pass the time (after all, I’ve nothing better to do) check Flickr again and it seems to be functioning ok again.

Problem is though, cos of the glitch I then have to individually tag, sort into sets, groups, etc all the pics I’ve just uploaded. A hugely boring task that I normally do as a batch job.

So much for my “slobbing around” day!

You can see the full set here

In an earlier post I related how I’d been trying out the new “Monotone Photoblog Theme”, but without much success. Basically, I couldn’t get the pics to display.

Well, the designer of the theme, Noel, very kindly added a comment to that post, offering to help sort the problem out.

There was an exchange of emails, then nothing much for a coupla days cos he was otherwise occupied, as was I. Then I get another email from him asking me to create a new post on the test blog and send him the resulting code. Which I dutifully do (create the post, that is). And lo and behold, it works!

And I think I may have identified the problem. It seems to be in the underlying code for the post, in the “img class” tag. Seems the attribute wp-image- requires a value of 6, whereas in the test posts I did that didn’t work the value mysteriously appeared as 3.

Dunno how the error crept in but I’m mighty pleased its now resolved, and great appreciation to Noel for his offer of help.
(I can’t recollect having changed that particular attribute of the tag, but knowing me anything’s possible. On the other hand, the tag is generated automatically on hitting the “insert into post” button on the uploader, so perhaps there’s been some tinkering going on behind the scenes? But whatever, I just knew it had to be something simple!)

Only dilemma now is, shall I deploy the new theme on the “faves of the month” blog or stick with the one I used as a temporary fill-in (and for which I’ve developed a bit of a liking)?

Or maybe set up another blog entirely with the new theme, for a different class of pics? Hmm…

[Edit 10th May '08: Hmm... all that stuff about the value of the wp-imag- attribute of the img class tag's a load of rubbish! Having uploaded a few images now seems that value changes. Looks as though I'll have to investigate further. What this really means of course is that I still don't have a clue why the theme's working now whereas it wasn't before!]

Recollecting my earlier post about the window-dresser’s dummy I happened to pass by the same shop window again yesterday (in fact, I pass it virtually every week, but that’s neither here nor there).

And couldn’t help glancing at the display.

And couldn’t help noticing that the display was the same as last week.

Apart from there now being something draped over the dummy’s knees!

Much more respectable, and much more in keeping with the tastefulness/stylishness of the rest of the display.

And much more in keeping with that particular High Street store’s reputation.

These are not the photos they’re meant to be!

It all started last week, when someone posted a comment on one of my Flickr pics that in my mind suggested a very good (albeit simple) theme for a photo session.
In fact, the more I thought about it the more attracted I became by the idea. To the extent that I’ve spent the past few days mulling it over (and inevitably making plans of course… bad move!). With every intention of embarking upon this self-imposed assignment on Wednesday (the 7th, that would be).

By a curious concatenation of circumstances I’d also been invited to shoot a few pics of someone’s rather attractive-looking cottage, and I’d provisionally penned that in for Tuesday (the 6th).
However, come Tuesday my fundamentally lazy nature kicked in and I decided I really couldn’t be asked to go chasing after pics on both days, so I postponed the cottage session until… um… I dunno, somewhen in the future. All geared up mentally y’see for this really exciting project on Wednesday.

Well, come Wednesday, up with the lark. Gorgeous day. Brilliant sunshine. Temperatures threatening to reach record highs for the time of year. Great!
Wander into town (the location for the “assignment”), do a few nuisance bits and pieces like pay a bill, pick up some tobacco etc and then, wow, the moment’s finally arrived.

Slight problem though. The sun, brightly shining down, is in completely the wrong direction. Probably could’ve worked around it had I changed my gameplan a wee bit, but I’d done so much mulling beforehand that I’d sort of conditioned myself into doing the job in a certain way, from a certain direction, and perversely I just wouldn’t budge from that. (Lesson of the day: don’t think too much about a photo-shoot in advance!!!)
Anyhow, I persevered. But I knew right from the off that it was all gonna be crap. And I was right. And with virtually every shot falling far short of how I’d anticipated it sort of stymied my “ability to see” as it were.
Whilst I’d actually planned about a half-dozen specific shots (none of which worked incidentally) I’d left the rest pretty much to the “inspiration of the moment”. But with the light and my pre-planning working against me, that inspiration simply didn’t happen. Damn and blast!

So feeling well and truly p****d off I retired to my favourite watering hole to review the few shots I had taken. Hmm. Pretty much as I thought. Most of them were rubbish. Oh well, just have to try again later on. Much later on. Like maybe after I’d slit my wrists, died, and reincarnated!

Sulking a bit (and receiving no commiserations from my mate cos he’d had a coupla bad days as well) I quaffed a few coffees, smoked a coupla fags, sulked a bit more, then my intrinsic optimism began to bubble to the surface again.

Maybe I could salvage something from the day. The problem was the sun. Well, I recollect a little spot I’d been promising myself to take a few pics of whenever I could be bothered to make my way out there. A wood I’d discovered a few years ago during a midnight trek (don’t ask!) with a mate (a different one. “How many mates does this guy have”, I hear you ask).

Hmm.

Wait until a bit later in the day. Early evening maybe. Sun going down. Interplay of light and shade. Nice long shadows. Sun-dappled leaves. Great!
So pick up a few supplies for home, avail myself of some transport, and eventually start out on the hike to this little wood.

Wilstead Wood its called. Part of something called Haynes Park apparently. By a strange coincidence near a village named Wilstead (used to be called Wilshamstead a few years back, but they changed the name). Five or six miles or so south of Bedford.

Arrive there late afternoon-ish and straightaway, cameras a-brandished, delve into the woodlands.

Bugger! For every shot I want to take that sun just happens to be in the wrong direction, and there’s unseemly gaps in the trees through which it can peer at me! And when it isn’t, I suddenly discover a curious anomaly.
Trees. Leaves. Shade. You’d think that if anything the problem would be lack of light wouldn’t you? Not a bit of it. Seems that leaves appear to exhibit this curious property of somehow intensifying the light! How weird. Every shot I took I was checking the LCD, and they all looked completely burned out. Fiddle with the settings. Try again. Same thing. Fiddle with all the settings. Same thing again. This is getting boring (to say nothing of frustrating). So eventually I give up completely on the LCD and just trust to my own judgement.

Well, when I finally get back home and transfer all the pics to the beast (for those unfamiliar with my terminology, that means the computer) I’m a bit surprised. Ok, they’re certainly not up to the expectations I had for them before the start, but there are a fair batch that are quite reasonable, subject to a little tweaking (heh heh). (And how many times do I need to discover not to trust the LCD? Talk about monotonous!)

Time for a digression…

Standing outside the gate to the wood at the end of the session, packing up my kit, I get into conversation with this local resident. Chap named Simon.
I’d encountered him a coupla times in the wood, out walking with his daughter and pooch (friendly little fella it was. Some sort of spaniel I think. If I’d had my wits about me I’d have asked if it was ok to take his (her?) photo).
Anyway, he exits the wood as I’m packing my gear and enquires in very friendly manner what I’d been shooting, and had I got any good pics?
So naturally I have a moan about the light and so on and so forth (irrepressible, that’s me), and he gets to tell me a bit about the village, and the wood.
Apparently at the other end of the village there’s another entrance to the wood which, at that end, the villagers have named “Dragons Wood”! Hmm. Sounds exactly like my sort of thing. Have to go back there for another session methinks.
However, we chat for about 20 minutes or so, I give him one of my (brand new!) Moo cards, and we go our separate ways.

So, to return to the tale. I now discover a curious thing. As I start my tweaking (post-processing if you want the proper term) I find that thoughts of friendly Simon are lurking in the forefront of my mind, and for some unaccountable reason it becomes even more important than usual to get the pics looking as close to how I remember seeing things at the time.
Important so that this hitherto stranger, should he ever see the pics, may enjoy and appreciate them and be reminded of pleasant times he may have had walking in the woods. How bizarre!

Well Simon, whoever/wherever you are… thanks for stopping, thanks for chatting, thanks for being friendly, and thanks for inspiring me to put just that little bit more effort into the pics. I really hope you enjoy them, imperfect though they are.

And a final word. No, the pics don’t come up to my expectations, but at least (or so it seems to me) they’re a significant improvement on the disastrous Rowney Warren Wood set of a few months ago (these woodland shots aren’t as easy as they look y’know!). Perhaps I’m getting somewhere after all!
And if nothing else at least I’m well on the way to getting my first suntan of the year (my arms seem to be a very offputting shade of red at the mo’!).

You can see the full set here
and on Ipernity here