Bills Posts

I went across to Portsmouth today. I had two reasons for going;

I wanted to go to the London Camera Exchange to see if they had the Sigma f2.8 105mm macro lens in stock. They had two; one brand new, one second hand. They gave the quality of the second hand lens as good, so I had a look at it. To be honest, I could see no difference between it and the brand new lens, I tried it on my camera, and everything worked fine. Given that I could detect no difference and that it was nearly £120 cheaper, I took the option for the 2nd hand lens, which does come with a 6 month warranty. I’m very pleased with the purchase. I did make one silly mistake, any lens that I buy, I automatically buy a UV skylight filter; not just to cut out UV. (which can introduce a distinct blue cast in pictures on a really sunny day especially) but it also acts as a protector of the front element – to which the chemicals in fingerprints are lethal to the quality of pictures. I didn’t buy one, which is why you aren’t seeing any pictures from the lens tonight, and won’t until the filter turns up from Amazon (hopefully tomorrow).

The second reason for going was for me to have a decent browse in a bookshop. This is why I love Cambridge, they have some superb bookshops there. The Waterstones in Portsmouth is pretty good, not as big I think as the one in cambridge but not bad. I had no particular books in mind, but i do have a bit of a routine. looking at the selection of books near the door, I avoided the Science Fiction section, I just don’t knowwaht to readd, although I have now got a copy of Alastair Reynolds Revelation Space on my Kindle, which is apparently a bit of a Space Opera, which is a genre I do like (think E.E Doc Smith, or Larry Niven’s Known Space series – brilliant). I looked with curiosty at the Self Help Section, but didn’t linger long there. There sev eral sections, including travel writing, science, photography, particularly looking for any books on videoing. There was one, but it was far more technical than I needed so I didn’t buy it. As much as I enjoy having a good browse, I generally leave feeling a bit frustrated that I didn’t find the perfect book that would answer all my questions. I’m beginning to think that the only way to find that book is to write it myself!

I bought a book today. It’s in the Images of England series, and it’s about Gosport. It covers the period from 1870, when photography was beginning to take off as a commercially viable concern through to around 1960 looking at life and activities through the town.

My thought was that I would quite like to go through the book and recreate some of the photographs, but in a 2022 setting although with the look and feel of an early photograph, I am playing with the settings in the various photo apps trying to reproduce that faded washed out, grainy look and I’m not quite there yet, so far I have come up with this;

Actually, looking at it, I can almost feel the Victorian character – I’d be interested to know what you think. Some of the photos of locations in the book will be impossible to recreate like the tower in Lee-on-the-Solent which no longer exists. But the site is still there, and what is happening there today is entirely relevant.

Now, I admit this is another “I’d like to do…” and to be honest I think it unlikely that I will get far with it. I will probably look through the book and see the odd one or two that I can recreate. For example early on in the books, there is a picture of the gardens in front of the Ferry Port, what are now the Falklands Gardens. The picture was probably taken either from the top floor or the roof of the building opposite the gardens. These are, I think, now flats. Can you imagine me ringing the door bell and trying to explain what I want to do? I wouldn’t be surprised if they give me very short shrift. You never know though – it’s one of those you don’t get if you don’t ask. Do I have the guts to ask? Probably not.

There are a collection of photos about the railway in. Only the shell of the station, the course of the railway, and a very small stretch of track between fencing (for a view of or a look at the track, the What three words reference strain.relax.upon will take you right to it). This was used by Queen Victoria to get to Clarence Yard for her trips across to the Isle of Wight and Osborne House. These will put a real contrast on the pictures from those times.

It’s an interesting book anyway, I shall enjoy looking through it.

I started the week by writing about which book I am reading at the moment, The Book of Gosport, just reading the first couple of chapters have given me ideas for a couple of videos, and I don’t doubt there will be more. Since Monday night, reading the book has not happened because the current issue of country walking arrived. I vowed that these four magazines that I subscribe to I would read cover to cover as quickly as possible after they have arrived. I expect the next magazine, B&W photography will turn up next week.

On Tuesday, I looked at the issue I have doing historical research, now really I am probably doing a level of research that would equate to at most an O’Level or GCSE (it’s nice to think I have an overseas reader, America apparently has no direct equivalent to GCSE, and it is not at Diploma level, which is more equivalent to A Level). The problem I have is that when I read about something, I want to know what or who caused that, so I go and read about that, which has its own trigger event. Where do I start/stop?

For the first time in a while, my walking was affected by weather. It rained all day, too heavy for me to go for a walk. That meant I lost my usual 5 miles of walking for the walk 1000 challenge, but it’s OK from a weekly goal, I’m there and still have Sat and Sun to go.

Thursday saw me rambling on about photography in particular the surprise picture of day is the I took of the shop window, which was a “what the heck” moment, but as usual, for some reason I like the admittedly slightly cropped end result.

And then there is tonight, my suggested topic for a Friday night, which was to write about…writing, which given that I had spent 5 minutes looking at the screen thinking about what to write. Not too bad.

As I write this, I’m watching a YouTube clip by Dr. Becky, she’s an astrophysicist, and is talking about doing Astro photography with your phone. I think its a clear sky – I might go and have ago.

I was walking through town this morning, looking for things to photograph, and I saw this shop window and just took a picture. I have cropped it quite a bit. I don’t even know why I took the picture, but when I looked at it on the iPad there was something about the picture that appealed to me, the colours and letters, perhaps its the confusion of the elements of the picture.

With the daylight starting come back (for a while, until the clocks go forward) signs of spring are starting to appear the Daffs are really coming out all over place.

The Cockle ponds were emptied earlier this week, by this morning, they were nearly full again. Apart from one small part of the ponds, the water in the ponds were really clear. I do hope that the recent filling includes Jelly Fish Larvae. People, especially the model yachters probably view them as pests but I think they are fascinating.

There was a bit of a mist developing, the very top of the Spinnaker was obscured by the low cloud. It was a very pleasant walk out.

The ship in the mid-range of the picture is the Blade Runner Two. Normally when I see this ship it is carrying a single wind turbine blade, and the cabin is toward the bow of the ship. This is the first time I have seen one of these without a blade and this time the bridge is at the stern of the ship, I’ve never seen this before.

I didn’t go for a walk this morning, it was raining quite heavily, unlike Monday when the rain was very lite and gentle. In a way, I was very glad as I hadn’t slept very well from 3AM onwards. It was nice to be able to go back to bed.

Of course, that has meant that I have clocked up no miles today, but I have still managed 6,000 steps, which is admittedly probably just more than a third of what I normally do. There is an argument that on my walks I do 3,000 – 3,500 steps per mile, so in theory I could log two miles, but that is not coherent walking.

Apparently rain is scheduled through the week, so let’s see how much of a disruption it is.

For all bar two years of my education history was a favourite subject. I won’t bother With the two years, they were an aberration. Now it gets interesting, because I wasn’t particularly academic at school so, a lot of what I was presented with didn’t sink in. I am on a learning curve.

What makes it difficult is that I’ll read something, for example there are two topics that are interesting me at the moment; The Jacobites and the English civil war. Now for each of these, the historical facts are clear (well, as I’m learning anyway).

But, as I look at a topic and learn a bit, I find that there is a trigger event or person that caused that moment or period in history, so I want to look at that, to understand why or who. It all takes time, time is a valuable resource, and I have some, but not a lot. I shall have to try and control the urge to delve back, deeper and deeper into the forever fascinating past.

I’m on page 36 of the book. It turns out that just in the first two chapters it’s an absolute mine of inspiration. I’m in the process of producing a video that features the role of Gosport in the Great Rebellion of 1642 – 1646. I went out this morning on my normal walk, but I rushed to the waterfront so that I would have a bit of time before the breakfastclub started to try the microphones, which worked very well, and also I wanted to do some videoing in a very public place, to get used to doing so.

Luckily there were very few people around, I was very self conscious, but I did it. I’m not going to publish this video. It really wasn’t very good, but it met my purpose.

Naturally, I’ve kept on reading and the next chapter is about the Gosport ferry, Now, there is a very interesting story about the whole process of transporting people from one side of the harbour to the other. Definitely a video there. Now, I am only on Chapter 2 of the book, so I don’t know if the other chapters will be as inspiring. I hope so, but we will have to see.

One of the authors of the book, Lesley Burton has written, or been involved in more than one book. I like the style of writing. It makes the book very readable.

I’m looking forward to reading the book. I think I will be able to produce at least two videos, and hopefully more.

It’s been a sunny Sunday. Even with a little bit of a bite to any breeze the might be about. Too nice a day to stay indoors. For the last few days I had a route in mind that I wanted to follow. I didn’t quite make it fully, having to cut it back by about a mile, I still managed just over 4 1/2 miles. If I had completed the full walk, I think it would have been nearer 5.5 miles, possibly six, but I’m happy with what I did. The route was;

• After leaving home;
• West on Stokes Road, up to Gosport Memorial Hospital
• Along Anns Hill (where I took the head picture), pausing and the old part of Anns Hill Cemetary
• Briefly along Brockhurst Road to Avery Lane.
• Along Avery Lane (See Note 1)
• Along San Diego Road in to Mill Lane
• Back on to Forton Road
• Right on to Clarence Road
• Briefly on to the High Street, right past Morrisons
• Back on Stokes Road, then home.

(Note 1): At this point in my walk I had to make a decision, turn left to head towards Priddy’s Hard & the explosion museum, or the shorter route back towards home. I needed to be in a position to go home in short order should the need arise, meaning that I would cut the walk short. Whilst I had to cut the walk short , I wanted to exceed my daily Walk1000 requirement, taking in to consideration that yesterday I only managed 2.3 instead of 2.79 miles, meaning I had to do at least 3.2 miles. Today’s total of 5.6 miles easily meets that (admittedly, that includes a quick trip to Tesco Express).

I wanted to see what old buildings I could find on my walk. An obvious one is the Gosport Memorial Hospital, here’s a picture that places the construction of the present hospital building (I’m not sure if there was a building before this one, a quick search didn’t reveal one).

I saw another building that had a plaque with a very faded date on Anns Hill, which I think also said 1921. Those two were the only ones I spotted.

The header picture was taken looking up the cycle track heading up towards Fareham. This is the route of the railway and is an excellent cycle route, which I use a lot.

The book I’m reading at the moment is The Book of Gosport. As you might expect it covers the history of the town. The chapter I am reading at the moment is the role of Gosport in the English civil war (1642 – 1651) between Parliamentarians (Roundheads) and Royalists (Cavaliers).

It turns out that Gosport was Parliamentarian and Portsmouth Royalist. The confrontation between the two resulted in bombardment by cannon especially from Gosport. The fight between the two town lasted only a few days and luckily whilst there was some damage, there were only one immediate casualty, and a subsequent execution, very limited loss of life.

The book provides an almost event by event description of the siege by the Gosport Parliamentarians of the Portsmouth Royalists.

I thought it would be fun to go to the Falklands Gardens, the site of some of the cannons used to bombard Portsmouth and do a “Breathless” recounting the events in a dramatic way.

Now, it’s easy enough to produce a “script” of the things I want to cover. The main thing will be to actually go and film it. That means me exposing my behaviour to the public. There will be people about regardless of the time of day seeing me acting in an unusual way.

Now, I’ve pretty much managed to cure myself of worrying about what people think of me when I taking a picture from an unusual angle. It’s a whole other matter to create a video which will involve quite a bit of action. Now I really want to do this. I just need to get over my nervesnous of that.

Sorry about going on about Vlogging. Watch this, it’s crap. No, seriously it is. But, it was fun doing it. I hope I get better; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJjfaUYFX_U

I’m writing this at 2330. I started doing a piece much earlier this evening, but I deleted it as I wasn’t happy about it. Almost suffering from a bit of block. But then I got involved in trying to do some video editing in iMovie. Now I’m not going to say it’s easy, but it’s fiddly.

There are things I can do to make it easier, using a virtual clapperboard for example, so there are a few points where I do the umm thing, or lose my words completely. When I am videoing and that happens I need to do something like put my hand in front of the lens to signify the edit point.

Using iMovie will obviously take a little bit of getting used to but I shall practice. I’ve watched a number of videos about beginning a YouTube channel and the one piece of advice they give is produce, recorded to get used to being in front of the camera to get the confidence, learn How to use the tech and so on.

Actually, when you have enough knowledge to know what you want to talk about it can be quite fun. And what makes it easier is that my knowledge is very basic. So it does become entertaining. I shall keep practicing.

The header picture was one of those which I took thinking who put the glove up there, but when I looked at it, I think it’s a slightly unusual angle almost giving it the look of a flower – Well, I think that. You might think it’s just a glove.

Is’m sorry that last nights piece was so short. This one isn’t that much longer, but there is a bit more.