Bills Posts

Woke up early to the sound of pounding rain, and a massive clap of thunder. I got up when it was relatively quiet,to the point where I thought that it might not be raining. It was difficult to tell from the bedroom, so I went to the conservatory, a steady pounding there. I wasn’t going to go for a walk this morning.

I managed to get out at lunchtime. I needed to go to the post office, so it was a lunchtime walk in to town. I had another go at doing some street photography. I think this one is not too bad. There’s definitely something about it.

I did try it in B&W, but I think the colour version is the best.

I’ve now tried to start this paragraph three times. This last time I’m going to mention very briefly that I am now in the last week of a project that when I started, I had no idea how long it would go on for, except to hope that I would reach the end. I am now so close. For the last few days I have been thinking about what I want to do from 367/366 – Well, I’m not going to do it that way, but I have been thinking about enumerating my posts from next Saturday.

I might just do the date thing, or just start another year – not sure yet.

By 9AM it was absolutely chucking it down. A check of the forecast indicated 100% rain in Gosport between 9 & 1. There were a couple of times when the rain eased off almost to the point of stopping, I even had my shoes on at one point – the rain started again. I decided give up going out before 1PM.

The rain stopped and the sky cleared a little earlier than that. I decided to go at about 1230. I got as far as the Yellow Edge gallery, where I stopped to look at the pictures. The gallery is not big, it used to be a shop. There’s space for about a hundred pictures, very nicely presented. Featuring local artists. Some nice pictures. none that I’d want to buy.

When i came out of the gallery, it was more sunny than I expected. I didn’t want to carry on the walk without a hat and my sunglasses and a hat – I was probably about half a mile from home, so I decided I’d go back for them.

I haven’t done the iron bridge for a while, so I decided to go that way. Having got there, I thought I would carry on down and once I reached the Haslar turn it seemed a bit churlish to not go and spend ten minutes at the Sea Wall. There were quite a few people there, including several fishermen – they weren’t having much success, but seemed as happy as a pig in pooh. I sat at the ledge for 10 minutes, just soaking in the scene. It was really nice.

The road alongside Haslar hospital is one of the most soulless I have ever walked down. Bordered on both sides by brick walls either 10 or 15 feet tall for most of its length. This time of year it’s a heat trap. Add in a stiff wind blowing in the right direction and it becomes a wind tunnel.

There wasn’t much going on in the harbour, and the promenade had some people but wasn’t that busy. As I was walking past the low block of flats at the southern end of the promenade, I was thinking that they had a lovely view across the Marina, but like today, when there was a bit of breeze (actually, it was quite gusty) the wind was making the cables on the yachts clink & clank – a lot. I’m pretty sure it would drive me up the wall. The flats might visually be in a nice place, but audibly a nightmare – would you get used to it? I’ll probably never find out.

The high street wasn’t busy either. Strava is telling me that I walked just over 6 miles – Happy with that. Also, it was a very nice walk.

I spoke to the people who were sailing these last week. The captain of the Gosport Model Yacht Club Laser Class, Chris, he very kindly offered me use of the clubs demo model.

I turned up as agreed at 10 this morning. Now it had been raining very heavily not long before, and whilst the sky was starting to clear, there was still the chance of rain so I was wearing my raincoat – as it happened, I didn’t need it, but I was prepared.

The model took about 5 minutes to get seaworthy; Keel, battery, rudder. The models come with three main sails of different sizes, used depending on how windy it is. A slight adjustment to the middle sail as it was a bit windy. Chris then put it in the water, and gave me the control.

There are only two channels, one to control the rudder, and one for the sail. The chaps were shouting instructions to me, especially as at one point I had the boat jammed against the opposite bank. Luckily I managed to free it. The terminology was slightly confusing, there’s more than one word for the same thing relating to how the sail works. The sail needs to be adjusted dependent upon whether you are sailing with or against the wind.

Sailing with the wind is fairly straightforward. Sailing against the wind is lets just say, a tad more complex. I guess once you get the technique, it’ll get easier – hopefully.

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.