Crazylegs

Grandaddy's boots...

No Pity

Some people think that cats' faces are expressionless. This is one of a set of pictures of Buttons taken by me lying full-length on the floor and using a miniature tripod. Click on the picture to see a larger version.

Five legs good! Two legs bad!

A colleague ended up -- by a convoluted path -- owning one brand new telescope and two brand new tripods, so I (naturally) bought one of the tripods from her.

"Sure, that screw-in yoke will fit my camera. No bother," I said, as she handed the box to me in the job car park.

I wonder what the security people made of it all. A plain white package emerges from the boot of car and is passed to the fat guy with the ponytail who waltzes nonchalantly back into the building with it turcked under one arm. I'm sure someone was electronically marking the security videos for future reference.

Anyway, the tripod is about six feet tall extended. My camera is about a first-class stamp in size, all ready for action. But the screw-in bit DOES fit, so I'm happy.

When out in the garden yesterday afternoon (see this post), I figured I'd use the tripod to capture old Hover Boots in action. So I unwrapped it from its canvas satchel, unclipped its upper leg lock clamps and extended its telescopic legs. Then I unclipped the lower leg lock clamps and extended the telescopic legs of the telescopic legs. I unclipped the camera plate and screwed it into the base of the camera. I fitted the camera plate back into its groove on the tripod head and locked it in place. Then I loosened the tilt nut and using the pan handle I angled the camera until it was roughly horizontal. Then I tightened the leg lock clamps, which I should have done before anything else. I grabbed a classy, white plastic garden chair and sat down on it. Then I was ready. For anything. I thought.

The subject was hovering about twelve inches from the camera. I could see him flitting back and forth in the viewfinder. Not having many manual controls on the focus, I started tapping at the autofocus until he appeared momentarily in the middle of the viewfinder.

Click.

"Bugger!"

He had buzzed off to the right. I grabbed the pan handle, loosened the lock and panned slightly to the right. A blurr of wings hovered in the middle of the viewfinder. I tightened the pan lock and tapped on the autofocus.

Click.

"Feck!"

I peered over the camera at the hover fly. It stuck out an insect tongue at me and went on hovering.

I picked up the tripod and moved it forward a couple of inches. I looked through the viewfinder. Nothing except green leaves.

I craned my neck around to the right. No sign of the fly.

"He'll be back."

A couple of minutes later, he pinged into view in the middle of the LCD screen.

"Focus... focus-focus-focus-focus-focus-focus focusfocusfocus... Feck!"

The tripod and I marched back and forth across the garden for half an hour until both me and the fly sat panting and wasted.

"Okay," I said. "You don't like formal shots? I'll try informal then..."

I grabbed the camera off the tripod and started stalking about the bushes. In ten minutes more I had 50 or so shots, two of which were really good, the rest useable. My neighbour and his family took turns at looking at me through the back bedroom window. No doubt ehy'll say a little prayer for me on Sunday.

None of the shots taken with the tripod were any good. There were a couple of blurry smudges in the middle of each photo which could have been anything.

The tripod is presently resting back in its satchel. I may take it out for a walk another day.

Good year for hover flies

Don't know if it's because of the warmer weather, or because I haven't cut back hedging too early this year, or perhaps a combination of both, but we have been observing many more hover flies in the garden on the sunny days than we've noticed before.

Today, as I sat out enjoying the late afternoon sunshine, I saw one of them, looking like a bee, hovering over a patch of warm concrete near the shed where we lodge the cats at night. Hover flies are harmless insects who bluff predators by looking like a more aggressive insect like a wasp, or a bee, in the case of my new-found pal.

After a few passes in my direction, he (I'm fairly sure it was a male, as these are the ones which defend territories and try to attract females) got used to my moving about with the camera and would rest from time to time on a sunlit leaf. For my part I practised getting used to the macro focus on the camera. It had trouble locating a particular spider on a web that I tried to photograph unsuccessfully.

Took the above pic among about 70 or so others today. You can view a larger version of this pic and also one of a red-eyed fly I saw today on the Flickr item to the right of the screen.

Happy Birthday

My mother would have been 83 today. Happy Birthday, Ma...!

That's her in the white dress. I'm the short bugger...

No. Not the black and white one on all fours. The other short bugger.

Frost

Hold On

Pearls

Gift of Gold

Crib

Poinsettia

Santas

The Mouse and the Owl

Globe II

Globe I

Rocking Horse

Tinsel

Winter Morning

Irish Skies

When I was small and full of beans I would run around the fields outside our rented farmhouse and drop to the ground to stare up at the skies passing by.

You may think I mean the clouds, but when you lie down and look up for long enough, the clouds appear to stay still and the sky, or the earth itself, appear to move.

The skies are still passing by, but like most adults I've forgotten mostly that it's okay to stop and just look up. Here are a few recent pictures of what's up there over our heads.