Adventures of an Idiot – occasional ramblings of a photography freak

Oh what a busy little bee am I. A busy little bee indeed.

Dammit! Why didn’t Gilbert & Sullivan write a song about that? It sounds exactly the sort of thing they could have written a song around.

Then I could have quoted some choice lines. A little ditty perhaps. Bloody inconsiderate pair! Think I’m gonna remove them from my list of favourite… er… favourite whatever they were. Song-writers, composers, I dunno. Excellent they were though. Catchy tunes too.

Busy then. Not so’s you’d notice photo-wise however, even though that’s where most of my busyness has been directed today.
Um… yesterday by the time I post this.

Managed to grab a good bit of kip last night after a real marathon coupla days, so was fresh as a daisy this morning. Well, perhaps that’s exaggerating just a wee bit, but certainly feeling more on top of things than I was Tuesday after mate and I had finished our little pic-taking sesh.

Thing is though, jobs are piling up at home cos I’ve not had time to get around to them because of this stupid little bit of extra work I took on (yep, still moaning about it!) and consequently I’m continuing to feel a bit “pressured in the head” so to speak.

Stressed, sorta thing. And I don’t like it. In fact, I very much don’t like it. Doesn’t sit at all well with my hard-earned reputation of being a bone-idle layabout.
Or something like that.

Bit like my reputation as an antisocial hermit I guess. Mate reckons I’m the most imcompetent and failed antisocial hermit he’s ever met.

And no chores are gonna get done at home again today (um… yesterday) as once more I need to dive into town. Guess I’ll just have to put the dusting off for yet another year. Ho hum.

There was I then, sat quietly at the kitchen table leisurely sipping (can’t rush these things y’know) my final cup of coffee before heading down to the bus stop when what’s this I see?
The Sun pops out very briefly… just to say “Hi, remember me?” sorta thing.

And there’s some shadows! So,very quickly, before they disappear…

Right then. Into town… no pics. Mooch around town… no pics. End up at the Bear… no pics. Wander over to the shops with mate and entourage… no pics.

What’s going on then?

Finally back home, and now the real business kicks in.

Time to do my monthly theme shot I s’pose, especially given that three of my compatriots in crime fellow project participants have already done theirs.
Well, two of them have… and I just know that the third is in the offing.

Now this is where all the tricky nonsense begins.

The theme wasn’t a particularly easy one this month (for which someone’s definitely gonna suffer if I have anything to do with it) but within a few days of its being announced I knew pretty much what I wanted to do. Or try to do at least.

And the rest of the time’s been spent planning how I’m going to do it. Not easy. Not by a long shot. Not for what I’ve had in mind.

And fraught with risk. Literal, real risk. Risk to life and limb. My life and limb in fact.
I can foresee things getting knocked. Things tumbling. Things breaking. Things gouging and cutting and slicing. And things getting hurt. Badly. Me mainly.

So lots of pain and suffering unless I’m very very careful. Lots of pain and even lotser of suffering. And I have to rather shamefully admit that carefulness isn’t exactly one of my most highly developed qualities. Though loathing of pain and suffering is. Oh dear.

Not only that, I’ve had this nasty ‘orrible sinking feeling that what I’ve had planned isn’t going to work very well anyway.
And then I’m going to be really up the creek… without a paddle. Cos I have no backup idea. None whatsoever. Oh pooh!

And I appear to have almost run out of month too. Bloody hell. It’ll be the first month since this little project’s been going that I’ll have nothing to contribute. Oh, the shame of it! Made even worse by the fact that its one of mate’s themes! I’ll never hear the end of it.

So, it took about an hour or so to set everything up. Then I spent another hour or so fine-tuning and taking some test shots. All the while being very very careful. Moving very very gingerly. And making damn sure the First Aid kit was somewhere handy. And the TCP. I do so love TCP.

Just about ready to do the stuff for real then and, er, well, do it basically. For real. Then whip out the memory card… er… very delicately slide the memory card slowly out of the camera whilst same is still carefully and precariously positioned, also trying to avoid bumping into anything in the process. No mean feat let me tell you.
And dash upstairs to offload onto infernal machine to find out whether or not I’m still in the running.

Yep! Seemingly so. Well, that’s a bit of an achievement on its own!

Pics now duly uploaded to the project blog, along with an absolutely essential and rather lengthy explanation thereof that I must have knocked out in about thirty minutes flat… or less!

Thing is though, the pics seem a bit sort of… well, “simple looking”. Nothing whatsoever about them suggests the sheer effort (mental, physical, and general faffng around, to say nothing of the abject fear of mortal injury) that was entailed. Bit disappointing really.

Anyway, I’m posting ‘em here as well… but you’ll have to visit t’other blog to find out what the hell they’re all about!

Though I will tell you this for nowt… that round thingie isn’t some crystal ball sort of nonsense, despite appearances. And, believe it or not, that bottom thingie is the same thingie as the round thingie. In a manner of speaking. Sort of thingie. Heh heh.

More jolly japes today… in company with mate.

Who wanted to go to a particular location, to take a particular photograph, for a particular project in which we both participate. All very hush hush.

And of course, at the merest sniff of photography being involved somewhere along the line, I just had to tag along didn’t I?
And as I’d already planned my own particular photograph for this same project, well, that’s ok innit? (More of this later I don’t doubt.)

Mind you, I’m beginning to regret it now… now I’m back home with aching bones and thoroughly chilled.
Doesn’t help of course that I’ve managed to grab only about three hours’ sleep in the past 35 or so!

Probably explains the thoroughly chilled and the aching bones. That and the age of course. I’m sure I’m far too old to be frollicking around like a loon. But I just can’t seem to stop myself. And then have to live with the bloody consequences.
I just never learn really do I? And do I care? Not a lot.

Anyway, gripes aside it was a bit of a rewarding day cos mate managed to get what he wanted.

Leastways, I think he did. Though no doubt he’ll blame me if he didn’t… and after all the… er… trouble I went to just to keep him company [ahem]. Ungrateful sod!

And I ended up with rather more than a good handful of usable pics. That are now all on Flickr of course.

Which can’t be bad.

Oh, I nearly forgot to mention… during our little amble we stopped at one point to… ah… attend to calls of Nature. And whilst I was about my business mate grabbed some really neat shots of shadows and stuff around a building.

And didn’t show me until after we’d left the location!

Toerag! Depriving me of the chance to have a bash at it meself. Clearly I’m gonna have to think up something really nasty to do to him for that.

Mates? Pah!

Off to a flying start with this month’s phototheme project!

The theme for November (set by stalwart Flickr mate trainmanchuff) was “Perplexed”.

Perplexed? Hmm. That means confused; bewildered. Dunnit?

Shouldn’t be much of a problem for me then cos that fairly accurately describes how I feel most of the time.
And when I’m not bewildered and confused I’m usually totally engrossed in pursuing a line of thought or action… only to discover some way down the road either that I’ve been doing it all completely wrong (in the case of action) or have completely misunderstood the original premise or whatever (in the case of thought).

Which plonks me right back into my original state of confusion and bewilderment.

Happens with conversations too. Usually as a result of mis-hearing something somone’s said. But in that case it tends to plunge the others partaking into a state of confusion. Heh heh.

So, back to the topic… hunt around for things that perplex me. It was just too easy really.

Check out my post on the project’s blog for my explanations re the above pics.

Remember that photo theme project to which I contribute?

Well, this month it was once again my turn to pick the theme and I ended up with something a bit on the bizarre side and very much in keeping with my own sometimes curious take on things: “Ramblings of a Deranged Mind”.

The full set that I contributed this month comprising five pics (the max we agreed to allow ourselves, per theme, at the very start) can be seen on the group blog, and on Flickr of course.

And I have to say, once I finally got into actually creating the images it wasn’t anywhere near as challenging as I’d initially thought it would be. Should I be worried by that d’you think?

Rarely do I impress myself. And today was no exception.

But I’ve come pretty close to making it one with my contribution to that theme project thingie.

The theme for this month (August ‘09) was set by some awkward bugger blogger who pretends to be a mate of mine (yeah, right) and my initial reaction was “Hell, this is gonna be a real head-scratcher”. What’d he decided on? “Through the eyes of a stranger”, that’s what. Toerag!

Unlike most of the themes that have been set so far nothing sprang to mind fairly quickly. In fact, not putting too fine a point on it, I was completely stumped.

So resort to my favourite tactic when all else fails, and forget all about it… just trust that rather suspect and, frankly, quite unfathomable beast that masquerades as my subconscious to throw up an idea or two in its own good time.
Its a favourite tactic cos so far (and I’m talking here about my entire life wouldya believe) its never failed me. Mind you, there’s always a first time I s’pose.

But sure enough, having ruminated unto itself for a while, it delivers the goodies!

There am I, laboriously and somewhat reluctantly dragging myself from the depths of slumber on Monday last when “Wham!”. An idea for the theme springs unbidden into my thoughts. Along with a lot of other stuff that we don’t really need to go into here. Suffice to say it was all a bit dodgy, as befitting a guy with my somewhat dubious interests!

Only problem was, I didn’t think I’d actually be able to get the shot I wanted. Oh pooh. Neat idea. Shame that neither my kit or me is up to it. So common sense told me I’d best wait for something else to suggest itself.

But then again, suspecting I won’t be able to do something has never stopped me before, so why should I let it now? Hell, if I’d followed the voice of reason, caution and common sense throughout my life I’d probably be… er… well, prob’ly not doing this crazy photography stuff for a start. So stupidity prevailed.

And today I cracked it. Got exactly the shot I wanted, and it turned out to be surprisingly easy.

As I said, I’ve nearly impressed myself.

And no small thanks to my “model” Karen, who’s remarkable eyes she managed to prevent from blinking for the entire little session.

Just done the photo for this month’s contribution to that theme project group and I have to confess I’m somewhat pleased with it.

Firstly cos of the way it turned out, but also because it matches almost exactly what I visualised for it. Only difference is, I thought Alka Seltzer still came in tubes; didn’t realise they were packed in boxes nowadays. Still, a minor compromise.
Mind you, I took about 20 or so shots to get precisely what I wanted. Then spent ages tinkering with it, first in Lightroom, then Photofiltre, then back to Lightroom.

But I got what I wanted in the end.

And the theme for this month was?

“No Words Needed”

Heh heh

So this is my contribution to the Monthly Theme Project, which this month was titled “A Song for Summer… with a Colour!”

As for that “more in this than meets the eye” business, well, you’re just gonna have to visit the project site to find out what!