Solitary Bathroom Pleasures

I've been spending a lot of time in the bathroom lately. Nope, not too many ferret tikka masalas nor even a a new conditioner to try (have you noticed how all the different gunks sold to bung on hair these days are all given the generic term "product"? I find it ridiculous that terms from TV adverts are adopted by intelligent human beings and I want nothing to do with it - simples). Anyway, I'm sure you're all agog vis a vis my solitary toilet moments so I shall endeavour to explain.

This building used to be a riverside inn with the whole first floor being used as overnight accommodation for the itinerant population of sailors, travellers and other sundry ne'er do wells until it eventually languished into disuse. The building was bought by a local estate agent and the first floor converted into one big flat which is now Chez Bassett although I do have a house as well (but that's another story!). Anyway, one of the few drawbacks here is that the windows are all quite small and don't really look over anywhere that has a changing scenery like a garden. Sadly, the river is quite boring and doesn't provide much in the way of photographic opportunity until I go further down the road to the harbour. And that is the key to tonight's offering - photography.

The bathroom window overlooks a flat roof which is ideal for attracting the local bird population and it's the only place where I can leave food for them. I can set up my tripod and click away quite happily hence the plethora of "bird on flat roof" pictures" This is a picture of the set-up which might be considered a bit pervy. However, the only people I can spy on are those waiting at the bus stop over the road and even I haven't quite discovered any perverted pleasure associated with that.

Since I started doing this a week or 2 ago it's been a constant battle of wills with my ornithological opponents. I see them out of the kitchen window, pecking away at the feasts I leave and sidle quietly into the bathroom to capture their souls on my G1. The ringed dove seems to have a built-in sensor system and takes off immediately I move a muscle, the magpies tempt me by posing until the moment I am ready to press the shutter and the seagulls basically don't give a toss! That's all the birdlife there is around here apart from the pigeons. No chaffinches, pied wagtails, starlings or jays and I've seen more tits in a catwalk show changing room.

The magpies, presumably a pair, live in a tree about 20 yards away and spend a lot of time strutting around on the grass and chattering away. They've been christened Max and Madeleine and I have to say I've got quite possessive about them. The gulls of course are everywhere and tend to just barge in and fight each other for every last crumb of bread although the babies seem to rule the roost.

I'm hoping that autumn will see a few more visitors as well as give me more visibility as the leaves tumble. Certainly, the wild bird food seems to be largely ignored and I spent ages in the pet shop trying to decide what to buy. Having just researched what magpies eat however, it seems to range from nuts and berries to small rabbits and mammals! I suppose staking out voles for a good camera shot might not go down too well with the neighbours but it's worth considering - teehee.

It's a real bugger not having a proper garden when you have a long lens and time to spare. Yesterday I got a phone call from my best buddy Jimmy saying come round for a cuppa and he looked on with his usual expression of bemused acceptance at my behaviour as I hurtled round his garden taking photos galore.

It certainly beat the solitary pleasures of the bathroom. Having said that, I think I've found Max & Maddie's nesting area so I'm going to need another tripod at one of the kitchen windows now!

I'm not quite dead yet!

Gosh but it's been a long time since I even dared click on my blog page, let alone attempt to write anything.

The summer is slipping away and today apparently Harrods, Selfridges and Fortnums have opened their Christmas departments complete with Santa, songs and, no doubt, sweaty little elves. Footie season has started and the Reds won 4-0 tonight so life ain't too bad

Still not sure what I am writing but it's good to feel I needed to. Is it good though? Perhaps I need the therapy of writing? Hmmmmm.

After my attempts at photo manipulation ,I started looking at proper grown-up cameras as well as my Sony compact and somehow, one found its way into Bassett Towers! As a consequence, I've been doing a fair bit of photography lately...... well, taking pictures and letting a camera with a brain the size of a planet make all the decisions regarding the arcane arts of exposure, shutter speed etc. For those interested , it's the Panasonic Lumix G1 with both 14-45mm and 45-200mm lenses.


I've always enjoyed taking pictures but have got back into it lately and occasionally get something I am pleased with. Of course, digital cameras have changed things so much with their "throw-away" capability rather than careful harvesting of the roll of Fuji 400 and the associated "I'll worry about the processing cost on payday". These days I can happily take 100+ shots in an hour or 2 with no problem whatsoever.

Mind you, considering it's all "instant" technology, it's all a lot slower these days.

Old days: Buy film, take shots, send off to BonusPrint and then hope there is one that is recognisable. Total time: 7-10 days.

Now:

1. Pack camera bag with lenses, spare camera, spare memory card, spare battery, filters., mini tripod, spare batteries for spare camera etc. Get in car.
2. Get back out of car after realising you forgot the actual camera in amongst all the other stuff.
3. Go to wherever and take pictures.
4. Get home, look for memory card thingy. Find it in cutlery drawer (!)
5. Decide which of the 38 download/viewing choices you want. Windows Photo Player? Adobe Bridge? Photoshop Elements? CS4? Finally click on entirely the wrong one and find you have bluetoothed them to the lady in the shop over the road's mobile phone.
6. Retrieve them and finally get them on the PC.

Then there is the agonising choice of what to do with them?

I start off with Definite Keep and Definite Lose and then find I have kept everything but the totally blurred ones of my finger "just in case". I tell myself to be strong and cull them some more and finally get left with , say, 75%. Then it's a case of selecting those which I feel sure enough about to allow people to see (usually 4 or 5).

Of course it's not just a case of uploading them as I still don't feel they're good enough so I start playing with PhotoShop. Approximately 3 hours later I have totally f*cked the picture so end up just uploading the original. I still keep the rest and have inflicted yet more agonies on myself vis a vis storage. It took me 3 weeks to decide on a format (simple - just keep 'em in date order) but then I started thinking of storage. 3 hard drives on PC so plenty of disk space but what if that particular drive fries? NO probs - I have external drive back-up running permanently. Most people would be content with that but not Loony Lugs, oh no. What if the back-up failed AND the drive failed? There are now several high capacity memory sticks en route from deepest Hong Kong!

Total time taken? Who knows? I still have hundreds of photos to sort! Never, I expect.

So, my faithful old Olympus OM10 sits moribund in a small camera bag whilst the flat is littered with the accoutrements of the new technological age. Photographic gadgets, gizmos and bits everywhere - and there was me thinking I was just buying a camera!

I suppose I really wrote this blog because people have been kind enough to say some nice things about my photos. Some are hobby photographers and some are not but I am still astonished that they take the trouble (oh, and before anybody says anything nice, you know I am shite at accepting compliments and pleasantries so let's just take that as read shall we and move on?). Certainly the offerings of my three photographically-inclined friends on Flickr fill me with awe at their skill in both seeing and executing a shot. If you enjoy photographs, might I recommend www.flickr.com and do a member search for Lily-Wren, Kitty W and Gemo52. It's well worth a browse!

My worst frustration, especially with a love of macro photography is a pair of unsteady hands. I've always had a tremor but it had got to such a stage recently that I couldn't even carry a mug of tea so photography was a bit iffy to say the least. Fortunately it transpires that some tablets I was taking were mostly responsible although I have the delights of an MRI scan shortly, just to make sure. It's still a bugger though, especially with a long lense and I have a plethora of almost perfectly sharp photos to prove it. However, tripods and remote shutters are handy for some stuff so all is not lost.

To paraphrase Robert Brault, I take amateur photographs of Nature and Nature makes my photographs look professional. I see my surroundings in a different way now I am actually looking at everything and the thrill of capturing a moment forever is one of the sweetest there is.