A spiderweb, in the smoking area of my favourite pub. Obviously there’s no shelter from the rain for man nor beast…
Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone
Lens: Susie
Flash: Cherry Shine
Film: AO DLX
Feb12
Category Archives: Photography
Feb11
Small fame with big rewards
I forgot I had this photo. I was updating my iPhone because there is a new, free, Hipstamatic lens. While doing so, I looked at some of my Hip pics. While this isn’t a good example of what the app can do, it’s the only pic I have of this:
This picture was taken inside my favourite local pub. What a great advertisement for Guinness! Look how happy the model is! Look at that perfect pint! And, of course, the Guinness logo on the glass is turned perfectly to face the camera.
What’s so special about this poster? Well, it’s been up in the pub since early August. It’s a not-very-good colour printer job, on big paper, and stuck to the wall with Blu-Tack. You could say that alone is pretty impressive – that it has lasted this long in a pub when it is so fragile in nature.
What tickles me to no end is that I’m the one in the picture! It was just a night with a pint, lost in history – until iDJ chose it as one of many pictures he printed out and stuck around the pub for my fortieth birthday party. We took them all down at the end of the night – except for this one. The landlord asked if we would leave it up. Of course I wasn’t going to say no. He says he still gets compliments on my smiling face and the perfect pint in hand. Yay, me! I especially like that I just happened to also be wearing a necklace made by my stepmom which is very appropriate: it’s an Irish penny.
My short-lived modelling career when I was young didn’t pan out, but hey, I still got it. Particularly when someone gives me a fresh pint…
Feb8
Google street view discovery
I have to be Guarda vetted in my new job, as I have ‘access’ to vulnerable people. Part of that process was having to list everywhere I’ve ever lived. Ever. Perhaps that’s an easy task for the average person.
Perhaps that’s an especially easy task for the average Irish person. For iDJ that list is just two places, unless you could his digs when he was in college. So, four, I think – at the most.
Me, I’ve moved a lot. A crazy amount. I racked up seventeen addresses, and I know (in retrospect, now that I’ve turned the form in) that I forgot three in Florida and one in Ohio.
Three times I moved over a thousand miles, and once I moved over 3,000 miles. I think I’ll stay here a while, yes?
I had to ask my dad for help, too. I remembered the names of both of the streets I lived on before the age of six, but that was it. He kindly took some time to dig the addresses up for me, thanks pop!
So, today I thought I would see if I could find the houses on Google Earth. It’s odd, but neither road has Street View yet. Even my house here is on SV… but the satellite image is a big green blur. Anyhoo, the sat pics of both places are superb, and my sis helped me find one of the houses.
The first place did have Street View for about a block, but not where we lived. I ‘walked’ down there anyhow, and I found this odd capture:
I’m fascinated. She? He? is in a bathrobe and slippers hauling nasty old wood along the side of the road. There’s a whole story here.
Sure, it could be trash day, the day they pick up odds and ends perhaps. And he was caught by surprise upon hearing the truck in the distance, having to run out in his PJ’s to put out the rubbish.
But maybe not.
Maybe she’s smuggling civil war rifles, or baby crocodiles, or even unpasturized cheese in that pile of wood, and the shabby clothes are just a cover.
Maybe he’s part of a bizarre fund raising stunt: dragging scrap wood around the state for charity while dressed in his mom’s bathrobe.
Maybe she’s part of a cult, and due to some infraction (reading Harry Potter, perhaps) this is the punishment the elders have chosen for her.
We will never know. The mystery person does, but I bet they aren’t willing to talk.
Jan28
Goofing around with the iPad…
It’s a strange old night, I feel a bit at loose ends. I’m not able to settle and do anything productive. It seems I’m seeking the new…
So I opened one of the camera apps iDJ put on my iPad. Now, I’ve said a bunch of times that the camera on here is crap. My intentions were to take some random, abstract, crap pictures and mess around with their settings. Sort of like this one I took of my own face, which is my Facebook avatar:
I didn’t get very far before losing interest, though. I opened ‘camera boost’ to see what it does, and went straight to the night photography setting. Ooo, shiny smeary lights. These are of the fire I’m warming myself by:
Meh, right? I might screw with the colours and see what happens.
I also thought trying to get the dog in motion might be interesting.
The only reason I kept these two is that her curly tail turned into a full circle as she spun around.
I think this one is funny. She has four front legs… this is her game she plays with my feet. She slaps her legs on the floor and flops them around trying to catch me. That’s my green socked foot.
The first fire pic, mucked around with. It’s still ‘meh.’
Maybe I should read a book…
Jan22
Second darkness adventure
We tried again to see the aurora, and again we failed. Again due to cloud-cover.
iDJ is diligently perusing the net and twitter trying to find out the latest details and if anyone else has seen it. He gave up a while ago on our taking a third trip up the mountain and opened a bottle of wine.
When you see the pics I took of the road up the mountain, you’ll see why sobriety is a must if you want to drive up…
I was less nervous tonight, in my passenger seat. Perhaps because I’d been on that road twice the night before and survived, or maybe because I was looking through a camera instead of my own eyes. Without a doubt I have been a passenger when the road was worse than it is this year. I don’t know if I’d be brave enough to drive it myself. Well, I would, but only if guaranteed no one was coming down while I was going up, or vice-versa.
Now, before I start with the pics, please remember we were driving and it was bumpy. Therefore, they are blurry. And dark.
This is the only ‘good’ picture, because we were stopped. It was also at the bottom of the hill on the way back home. This is the good part of the road: it is flat, it isn’t rutted, it isn’t washed away by rain or full of holes from logging trucks or tractors. Good road. Really.
I edited this shot to brighten it up and make everything more visible. Going uphill, and curving. Only spinning the tires a little bit here…
Getting worse, and steeper…
This picture is both cropped and brightened. Notice the ditch on the left, and the wall of vegetation on the right? Did you forget another car could be coming down toward us around the blind corner at any moment? Just where are we meant to pull aside to make room?
Still going…
Hooray! At the top. That’s my little town, all lit up and looking so small from here.
We might have missed the aurora, but I enjoyed seeing my home like this at night.
Jan22
And another rosebud…
I was thinking about the post I just put up, and looked out back. I can’t imagine how I missed this one.
Jan22
The winter that wasn’t
I’ve not been spending much time outdoors of late. The job means I leave and return in the dark, or near enough. The constant rain keeps me in on the weekends, too.
Today, however, there have been little glimmers of sunshine now and again. So I got outside and cleaned up here and there – swept up chunks of moss that flew from the roof, picked up dog poo. I also took the last remaining branches off our Christmas tree, and hauled the trunk outside to saw into fireplace sized chunks. Then I swept again, which at first made me feel stupid for having to do it twice, but then I realised there was just as much new moss as there was before I had swept at all.
It’s sunny and dry, it doesn’t mean there is no wind!
Chores out of the way, I had a little walkabout to see what, if anything, was growing. What a surprise to see this out front:
Snowdrops! Of course, they are one of the earliest to show their heads in spring. But the last time I looked, there wasn’t even any greenery, much less flowers!
Also out front:
My scraggly tulips are well on their way. These are at least 8in (20cm) high already. Not good, really – I think it is way too soon for this much leaf. Hope it doesn’t frost or snow.
I got these for free two autumns ago:
Daffodils. I really don’t care for them that much, but hey, they were free and I just stuck them in the grass in the swampiest part of the back garden.
The big surprise, however, was finding this:
A rosebud, in January? Oh dear. The weather is certainly unusual this year!
Dec24
Embarrassing family pet portraits….
Hahaha, well, we did our best and have some pics of very unhappy cats in very warm Santa outfits.
I totally am in awe of you cat owners who can and have convinced your kitties that wearing clothing is acceptable. Spot doesn’t mind the coat, but hates the hat. Lokii hates both, but doesn’t try to take them off. He’s not smart enough to realise he can take them off. So, he blames the dog for his misery.
She doesn’t mind wearing clothes! So do we have anything at all for her? Of course not. And she sat in front of the tree and waited patiently there for every shot we took. Without even being asked to. Ignoring the screams of protest from Lokii. She surprises me sometimes…
So anyhow, here’s the shot of the family, complete with tacky faded oval border for maximum cheesiness.
And even though it’s just me and Lokes in this shot, I love it. iDJ and Spot are cut out as Spottie Pants was a blur of ‘get this thing off meeee!’
Dec21
Playing Holiday catch up
I bounced out of bed this morning with every intention of writing a blog post first thing. Ya see how well I did at that! I did send my Irish holiday cards out, having sent the US ones last week. They will probably all be late, or get lost. Oh well, I did my least. Not best – not even close – which is a shame.
I used to seek out family members to send cards to. Aunties, cousins, friends I’d not seen in years… I had great fun. I always wanted to draw on the envelopes and have good handwriting (HA!), include a personal message, and get them sent out in plenty of time. I even wanted to start the week after the *holidays and save them up for the next year. I wanted to draw my own card in Brushes this year, and have ‘real’ cards! I didn’t do any of that, obviously. I scrawled a short everyone-gets-the-same-thing message and gave one shit not about my horrible penmanship.
*As an atheist I know about as much about Judaism as I do about Catholicism or paganism – not very much about any, but more than some. Members of my family are in all three groups and there are also ‘meh’ people like me; so when I say ‘holidays’ I’m covering all the bases. Wish me whatever suits you, I won’t be offended by any or all of the above. Christmahanukwanzica works, too! It’s the happy feelings and keeping in touch that matters most to me. That, and Deth Nog.
Oh oh oh! The Twelve Days of Kwanzaa is on SomaFM! I love this one. I seem to like the twelve days parodies best: Kwanzaa, Gay, Redneck…
Anyhow, I’m getting way off topic as usual. I had a story to tell (I did tell a funny story about Hanukkah in the comments on another blog), but instead I’m rattling on about the holidays. Funny how that works. Hubby is still working on his Internet radio23.org Christmas special – he looooves doing it. He even posted on FB tonight how the songs make him ‘well up.’ Awww. Nice to hear, when we have nothing but hugs to give each other this year.
Except for that little package that fell out of the tree yesterday. It has my name on it, and I recognize the wrapping paper. Dammit.
Oh! He gave me his old iPhone, and it came with the Hipstamatic application. I’ve not played with it much, but tonight we had a gorgeous sunset and I thought I might catch the Christmas tree with the sunset behind it on some groovy retro film. It didn’t work, but I got a couple good close up pics:
Then I went upstairs so I could see the sunset properly without a huge tree in the way.
See how different they are? Same phone, taken about 1 minute apart…but the funky film and different ‘flash’ options make a big difference. I can see why people go a bit nuts with the Hipstamatic app. It’s great fun if you have an eye at all for mentally seeing how it might look old, scratchy, the wrong color, etc.
This was taken with our proper camera, only a few minutes later. Super zoomed in, but not filtered or played with in any way. A big difference!
Hahah, ‘I Came Upon a Roadkill Deer’! I love SomaFM. ‘Be careful of those gravel bits, they really get stuck in your teeth.’ OH! ‘Walkin’ Round in Women’s Underwear’!!!
I think I’m back in the holiday spirit 🙂
Dec3
Must not kill.
I am so angry and sickened I could spit, bite someone, and spit again.
Last week we went to Harvey Norman and had 3 prints made on photo paper, to test their quality. It was perfect, and each 8×10 was €2. Good deal, we were happy with that.
We went back today to print another 15 for sale at the show tomorrow. We did our thing at the kiosk and ordered the prints, I took the receipt to Bottled Shite (she was as-thick-as), waited 10 mins, got our prints. I took a look before we left to go pay… and they were all gloss, not matte. Looked like utter shit. They looked like cheap cartoons.
Me: Why are these gloss? We ordered matte.
Her: Oh they didn’t bring us matte paper this week, we only have gloss.
Thanks for fuckin telling me when I ordered them, and thanks for telling me again when you handed me the closed envelope with my prints, you useless twit.
We spent another 10 minutes ringing people for advice, trying find another place, and/or deciding to keep the horrible pics. We ended up giving them back, which pissed me off – who’s to say that dimbulb doesn’t steal my work, even if it did look crappy? We went to another place, and the kiosk there read at least two of my drawings completely wrong – the color was off, and there were lines that must have come from my drawing’s several layers, but they didn’t show anywhere else! Not on my iPad, not the Mac, not in Photoshop even at best resolution and the maximum Dpi…So those two were unprintable. Then they wanted €6.50 EACH (remember, they were €2 in HN?!?) and four flipping hours to print. And we live over 30 mins away.
Well, when I heard €6.50 I started to almost-cry. Too much frustration and running around and now the money we do not have to spend is being more than tripled? I went outside the shop to cool off.
Hubby got them to lower the price to €4 each. Still; double the budget, and I am so disappointed. We put a lot of time and organisation into this part. Now my plan has to change, my day has been wasted, and one of my favorite drawings now cannot be shown on good photo paper.
Screw you, Harvey Norman, and your stupid, useless worker who doesn’t have the sense god gave a rock. I couldn’t even tell her how upset I was: she clearly didn’t understand the problem or didn’t care, and what was she going to do about it at that point anyway? I didn’t want prints that look terrible, even at half price for screwing them up…not that she offered.
A sorry would have been nice, an offer of some sort of solution would have been nicer, but best of all would have been to tell me that what I needed was not available.
heretherebespiders 