Bills Posts

I was walking down the high street when I saw these, shapes, lines and colours I thought that might be an interesting picture. So I stopped and grabbed it. Admittedly, I have done a little bit of cropping. I like the shapes and the colours, with even the bars being blue. I can’t tell you why I like it I just do.

On a scale of one to 1000, I would say that my knowledge of the rules of composition, understanding colour and light are probably at around 40-50. In other words not a lot. Therefore, any picture that I (that’s me, alone – no one else) would class as good, can only have been taken by chance. I didn’t apply any thought of composition, I saw balloons behind a security grid and grabbed the shot, I didn’t get down low to see if the angle is right. Chance, or luck?

How well would I improve my good to bad ratio, if I was better educated in respect of photography. Early on in the 366 series, I said that I was going to ignore photography books. That was not because of an arrogance in thinking that I knew everything, I know (knew) I didn’t. So, what do I do? an online course or a book? Actually, I have an idea – The Gosport Unofficial Camera Club – GUCC. It’s a Facebook group. I know exactly what I am going to do. I’m not going to tell you now, but I will work on it.

It is a bit ironic that even though I live in Gosport, one the pictures I most regularly take is of Portsmouth’s waterfront. This morning is a good example of that. As soon as I arrived at the waterfront, of of the features I look at is the sky, and what that does for the skyline. As you might expect, even when it is a clear blue sky, there is always something to make its appearance unique. Cloud formations are the best. You might see something similar, but you will never see that same sky in exactly the same way again.

The other thing that you can never tell is the shipping movements. Normally, I would expect to see a Brittany Ferry, one or two Wight Link ferries, and a wight link cat, and of course the Gosport Ferry. There are though a number of other ships that could come in; The Whitchampion or the Janey W are both bunkering (refuelling) ships – actually, that’s worth a brief diversion, why are they called bunkering ships? Well, it’s a hangover from the Steam Ship days that needed coal, which was stored in coal bunkers, hence bunkering.

Back to ship types; we get container ships quite often. Not big, and the containers are all refrigerated, bringing in produce; fresh fruit (especially bananas) and vegetables.

We did used to get the occasional fairly small cruise ships coming in. Since the channel and harbour were dredged to accommodate the Navy’s Aircraft Carriers we are seeing mid-sized cruise ships, recently, Virgin’s Scarlet Lady has been based here, and has been moving about a lot.

I had to go to the Dentist. After I came out I thought I would go for a bit of a lunchtime stroll. A difference between when I go for my Morning walk and lunchtime is there are a lot more people around. For example this chap was at the Falklands Gardens, he was feeding the pigeons and the starlings, there were a lot of them all chomping away. It was a real delight to see. The pigeons were very happy. The starlings slightly less so.

You also get to see things like this. This is HSL102, High Speed Launch 102 – RAF Rescue boat. In 1941 she rescued 38 downed RAF Aircrew. She is the only one of this type to survive. It was lovely to see her, and the first time that I have done so.

I swung past the cockle ponds.

It appeared that there was quite a large event going on – I don’t know if this was a normal weekday event, or part of the centenary celebrations. It seemed like a very relaxed event, there were people all around the edge guiding the boats. Thinking about it, I didn’t see anybody with radio control units and the yachts all had large vanes on the back making me think they were guided by the wind. I asked one of the participants what the class was, he responded “Alpha”. I just looked it up, it’s called the Vaned A Class. It seemed much more relaxed that the laser class on Saturday. The boats we’re much larger and grander, with scrubbed an polished decks.

It was a very pleasant walk.

Street Photography isn’t just about people, it is also about buildings and shadow. We don’t have buildings of the same grandeur as places like London, Paris or New York, but we do have buildings that are worthy in their own right.

I’m not going to say that Gosport is a boring town, it patently isn’t. But there are several channels on You Tube; Street Photography in a small town, or in a boring town. These give excellent tips on how to use your situation. I acknowledge that the header picture isn’t brilliant, but there is love, and light, shadow and colour. How is it in mono?

Actually, the picture works as well as the colour version. It works for me, I like both – but I would tend towards preferring the B&W version.

One thing I haven’t talked very much about for a while is digital photography. When I first became interested in photography, were were roughly two decades away from our (as in the family) having a functional digital camera. It wasn’t brilliant, and it was expensive, and you really couldn’t do much with it, the processing software wasn’t sophisticated. As time marched on phones gained cameras, that to be honest were a joke, we get closer to today and with my current phone, I have a camera which pretty much outperforms my DSLR, a Nikon.

Of course with the DSLR you have the advantage of changing lenses, and of course the glass of a DSLR has almost always beaten a phone. One has to ask how long that will be the case?

What this all boils down to is that I love digital photography. I love that the technology allows me to do things that would pretty much have been impossibly difficult for me in the analog era.

I’ve just checked and see that I did a post with exactly the same title. Ooops – but I’m not going to change anything. Edited.

If you can zoom in to the dogs eyes in this photo, you’ll see that it is giving me a very nervous look, almost wondering what I am up to.

The question this relates to is that I have found a way of using street photography, that is pretty. Much as intrusive as I need to be, and I will only be confronted if people realise what I am doing. I’m not at this stage going to tell you how I did it, but I feel entirely comfortable with it. That said, obviously, there are the usual pictures that I will stay away from.

I have to confess that it was fun walking down the street looking for images. I will definitely do it again, but the question I am trying to answer in my mind is how ethical is it? But, if I get the picture I am after, which is the more important?

I am a bit later than usual posting tonight. I was distracted doing something else, and it was only saw I started to close down that I realised that I hadn’t posted. Hence this is a bit rushed and shorter that I would normally like. Sorry about that.

Tomorrow, the 1st of August, is the centenary of the turning of the Gosport Cockle Ponds from being just Cockle Ponds, in to being the racing home of the Gosport Model Yacht Club. Turning the ponds from the muddy edged place into the ponds as they are today with the hard standing all the way around, making it much more practical to use for the club members.

I wondered if there would be an event on. The clubs website acknowledges the anniversary, and there are a week of races scheduled by the look of it, but no big party. The group that was there today were just one of the clubs groups, racing lasers (I think 1/6 scale – they aren’t big boats), any how, they have a demo model that they let anybody have a go with. The captain of the laser class, Chris, gave me his card, and I have emailed him saying that I’d like to have a go. And I do. The trouble is though that most of them make it look easy, although there was one chap who was having a bit of a problem getting his boat to behave.

I watched the one race and then moved on to the promenade. The Janey W was doing a u-turn in the channel, she was very high in the water, so almost empty. But she can pretty much turn on a sixpence, almost, so impressive to watch.

One of my regrets is the lack of a good bookshop in Gosport, but you Can guarantee that even if we had the largest Waterstone’s in Hampshire I would still leave there frustrated.

Running entirely in parallel to my blog for most of the past year I’ve been a member of this site; https://365project.org/ I log in every day and see what photos have been uploaded, and write a comment on some of them. I haven’t rally explored the site perhaps as much as I should have done. Until recently that is. I’ve found out that 365project is a much deeper community than just uploading a picture every day. I found that they run competitions.

Two that I would definitely be interested in are street photography and eye of the beholder (pictures taken from unusual angles). I used to be a member of a physical (as opposed to a virtual club, such as the Gosport Unofficial Camera Club on Facebook). I used to really enjoy that, but then we moved. I did go to the Gosport Camera Club, but for some reason I can’t explain I felt uncomfortable (well before covid).

I’ve said in previous posts that I am conservative (small ‘c’). Over the last few days I have really begun to conquer that – mainly in the area of taking pictures of things that I would previously have hesitated in taking – especially if there was somebody around. The 365project competitions have given both impetus and the inclination to overcome my reluctance to embarrass myself – and not even think of it as embarrassment.

I know that there are other aspects of 365 that I haven’t explored. I shall take the time to do so.

Three things you should know; I know the picture is nothing whatsoever to do with fishing. This piece has nothing whatsoever to do with fishing, any fishing featured is incidental. I have absolutely no interest in fishing.

The Marks in the title isn’t the name of a person; it’s Local Marks, places to go fishing.

Quite a few months ago now, I was on one of my morning walks, and got to the end of the Haslar Marina Pier Wall.. There was a young chap there with a fair bit of fishing kit, clearly set up for a long session. He also had a battery attached to a camera for long duration filming. At first I thought he was doing a facebook live. Turns out he was live on you tube. We had quite a good chat, and I asked him what his YouTube channel was called. He replied “Local Marks Fishing”.

For quite a while I assumed his name was Mark, but then I watched one of his shows, and he said something that suddenly made me realise that his name wasn’t Mark. So, the next time I saw him, I asked. His name is John.

Earlier on, I said I have no interest in fishing, so why on earth am I watching a programme about fishing? Well, actually, he’s quite entertaining, and I can have it on in the background (no offence intended John, keep doing it).

Anyhow. You might have experience the storm that happened in the early hours of Tuesday Morning. John was out in it. Here’s his video. It’s over two hours long. For the piece about the storm, you need to scroll forward to about one hour 20 minutes – or you could watch the whole thing. I will only give one warning; The language can be a bit ripe. it just adds to the effect. Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXMdPHJTXeg

It seems hardly credible, but here we are with only just over two weeks to go until my 366 project comes to an end. I can almost feel the dawn of the next phase heading towards me. I said the to deliberately put a positive spin on it, because I really don’t see it as an ending, but moving to the next stage of my blog.

I know that I don’t want to stop writing. Even with the periods of writers block (I wonder how many of those there have been over the last 50 weeks) I’ve managed to keep going, and I feel that I have quite a range of potential topics. I’m sure I will be able to come up with something.

I’ve talked a fair bit in my posts about Vlogging, but nothing about podcasts. I tried to do some Audio recording this morning, I wanted to try the voice memo application. It was a bit breezy, and that certainly showed up on the replay, the wind noise over the iPhone’s built in microphone was unacceptable.

I went for another walk at lunchtime. Only a quick one, but this time I took with me a lapel mike. Now the only problem with that was when I tried to use it, it just did not work. The app kept on suspending the recording, so I guess that one is broken. Luckily, I have another – I will try that one tomorrow.