Bills Posts

Photography

I come from an era that pre-dates digital. I’m not sure if those of you who have only ever known digital are at an advantage over me. My first experience with a camera was my sisters Kodak Brownie 127. I was only ever allowed to play with it when it had no film in it. Of course when I became interested in photography and acquired my first camera I immediately understood why. It was seriously expensive. I liked shooting kodachrome slides, even worse. What added to my sense of woe was the realisation that I was a rubbish photographer.

My first SLR was a Zenith EM. I was definitely a gadget freak then, as I wanted an off camera flash, which meant a bracket, and if there was one available for the zenith I would have tried to obtained a 250 exposure back. Heaven knows how I would have afforded that. Then I discovered monochrome, and found that it was easier and cheaper than colour to process, so I built my first darkroom. I’d joined the local camera club by then, that’s probably where I acquired my enlarger. Ken was a big member of the local camera club, and the local butcher, he seriously encouraged me. I only wish I’d worked on my photographic technique. I remember one photo I produced that I did like, it was a ploughed field, and minimalist in its own way. Sadly, my skills still hadn’t developed.

My first really proper camera was a Canon AE-1, bought because my friend Steve had one, not just to copy him, but because it was a seriously good camera. My skills? No. Having better kit doesn’t make you a better photographer. I can’t remember what happened to the AE-1, I must have lost interest, and possibly sold it. A few years later circumstances enabled me to buy very cheaply a comprehensive Praktica BX-20 and an assortment of lenses, including its monstrous 500mm . I sold that as well.

My next venture in to photography wasn’t until a few years later when I acquired my first digital camera. I think the sensor was 1/2 a megapixel, or something ridiculously small. Anyhow, my phone has a 12 megapixel camera, and I use that almost exclusively now, although I do have a reasonable entry level DSLR.

My photographic skills? Any photo that comes out of me, that anybody else classes as good, is almost entirely, but not completely down to luck.

The Cycle Track

If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll know that I don’t rant very oftren, and when I do, I’m fairly gentle about it.

I shall continue in that vein this evening.

On my route to work, a large part of my journey goes along the the cycle track. The track is easily wide enough to take a standard gauge railway, because that is exactly what it was. Nicely tarmacked, with a part of it recently refreshed taking away a quite bumpy section its a good ride.

But use? Oooh, that’s something different, where do I start;

The Rules of the road; other cyclists, especially those old enough to drive, and a gross assumption that they do drive; the rule is apply the same principles as on the road. But do they? Well, in fairness most do, but there are some who are of the “I don’t care if protocol says I move across for you, I’m not going to!”, then there are those who don’t know which side they want to ride, so invariably choose the wrong one.

Children; Well, I suppose they are mostly still gaining their road sense, although with the lack of lights being prevalent during darkness, I do wonder when we will see the first generation who refuse to turn on their car lights. Cycling four abreast, and not hearing the bell when you are coming up behind them – I broke a bell last week, where I was dinging it so much.

Adult pedestrians, there are a number of different types; plain pedestrians, pedestrians with children, pedestrians with dogs; all are sources of frustration, and of course, you can’t say anything because the pedestrian is always right. So you are coming up behind a person with a dog, the dog moves in to the middle of the track and stands there. The owner says “Rover, Rover, come on, come Rover” . and of course Rover completely ignores them, and they give you that look that says there wouldn’t have been a problem if you hadn’t been there – of course it’s the cyclists fault. Having said that, please don’t get me started on the arrogant cyclist.

Rant for the year over hopefully, back to the good stuff tomorrow.

The 2019 Rufus Ride

I have found something very frustrating with WordPress. There appears to be a key sequence involving the backslash and delete key, which when pressed together, deletes the content of the current draft post, completely, no recovery! I’d written two paragraphs about the Rufus Ride, and it all disappeared. Most frustrating.

Anyhow, today I was on another RAYNET task; The Rufus Ride. Rufus was the son of William the Conqueror’ it appears that Rufus was killed by an arrow and was either the victim of an accident, or an assassination. The spot of his demise is marked by a stone only a short distance from the M27. The association between the original Rufus and the Rufus Ride is the Forest (I believe) rather than the stone.

The ride is an Endurance GB equestrian event. My post was Checkpoint 4 (CP4), the last check station in the ride, which meant I was there until the end. I was only about 3KM from the finish and wouldn’t be stood down until the last rider finished.

If you know the app What 3 Words, I can tell you to a high degree of accuracy exactly where I was; born.scored.defrost. W3W is brilliant.

It really was a secluded part of the forest! The end of s private road, with only a few residences. I always attract the attention of the locals in places like this, and had an interesting conversation with a lady, who asked me if the Forestry Commission had given me permission to park exactly where I was. Of course, I said that I parked where I felt was most appropriate for the event, but trying to be careful not to cause any offence, and that my permission was from the New Forest Council, as relayed through the event organisers. She seemed satisfied with that.

I was also introduced to “Dragons Teeth” these are the segments of trees inserted into the ground and designed to stop cars being parked on verges – there were some that had recently been inserted and were a point of controversy for the lady. She was absolutely fine with me, and it is things like this that I enjoy about these activities.

It rained for the morning, stopping about 1pm, pretty much in line with the forecasters, it greyed over until about 1630, when blue sky appeared.

The event went well, and as usual I saw some New Forest Ponies, and a log which reminded me of a dogs head, does it to you?

Saturday

Weekends tend to be a bit difficult for doing posts. The Monday-Friday routine is well established, the weekend’s less so in order that we can do what we want, within reason of course.

Today for example, we had a pleasant wander around and in to town and then we drove to a garden centre just outside Havant for lunch, then we came back and spent most of the rest of the day doing the ironing.

During the week. Taking pictures is part of the routine. Unless I’m on a specific Locality related activity, or some other activity I tend not to take pictures. I think this is a routine and a habit that I am going to have too modify.

Tomorrow should be a better day for posts.

In the meantime, here are some random pictures.

Facebook

I have a Facebook account. I send this to my Facebook page Gosport as I see it. Inevitably, there will be some duplication, if you see both posts sorry about that.

I looked out the window at 0540, my usual time it had been raining but didn’t look as though it was. By the time had dressed and got down stairs, it had started raining. For a couple of minutes it was fairly intense. Being up and dressed I’d rather go for a walk than not. So I wait. As soon as it looks as though it’s easing, I’m off.

As the nights get longer, I’m very aware that my walk photos become quite boring so I rely upon the cats to entertain my FB readers. I am looking for opportunities outside my normal scope of photography, giving rise to this one;

I also like B&W. I took this one at the Antony Gormley exhibition;

And this one of St Paul’s;

I like minimalist photos, but am not very good at finding those – need to practice

More to follow.

IoWRS TNN

The Isle of Wight Radio Society, Thursday Night me runs from 2000-2100 every Thursday. Evening, This is an activity I do, because I enjoy it. Hosted through GB3IW.

We either try and talk about a different activity every week, sometimes we have topic, or we have “natter night” where topics can a bit of a free for all.

This weeks topic was Projects. I took a broad view of this and ultimately I decided to discuss my Project; Locality. I cal, it an admin project, integrating my hobbies of photography, amateur radio and love of exploring the local area.

The nets almost invariably go well, although l have had a couple where the topic has dried up, but amateur radio enthusiasts are not one to let a dried up topic stop them from talking so they they usually flow pretty well.

Living in Gosport, I’m interested in shipping. I operate ad a node for MarineTraffic.com, Station 3554, I really ca see what is going on in and around the Solent shipping wise.

Ships of course feature heavily in my tweets and posts about Locality, mostly on Facebook, but this blog obviously opens up an opportunity to have a wider reach.

Locality – I am going to…

I think I’m what they call a beginner or starter I like starting things, but then I have difficulty continuing or finishing. To give you some examples;

We bought a book, do the South Downs way in 20 walks. We’ll do that we both said. One walk a month, it’ll take time, but it’ll be good. We did one walk, probably about a year ago.

We joined the National trust. That’s good I said, we can do a visit a month, there are lots of places to go and see. We went to Mottisfont, April I think it was. Nothing since.

I was going to do a Locality related activity every month. Well, partial success there, I go for walks most weeks. I’m involved with RAYNET (I’ll explain what that is in another post).

I’d love to be more astronomical, but I just don’t put the effort in to it.

There are times when I’m almost desperate to write, well I do have my journal, lovely almost A5 sized, moleskin notebooks. I’m not very good with that, but I do write something most weeks. Even now I’m still working on my handwriting which is pretty rubbish. Then there are my Facebook posts family and friends only there, and now my blog. I’m going to do a Mr. Ratner here (google him if you don’t know) although why anybody would want to read what I write, I really don’t know. What I do know is that I enjoy doing all of this, even though I’m not very good at it.

Thank you for sticking with me.

Locality

Many years ago, a dear friend and I explored the possibility of becoming licensed radio hams, we were in our teens. It worked out that we couldn’t afford it, so it got shelved. Leap forward to 2016 we had now lived in Gosport for two years. I decided that I wanted a wireless scanner and that is when I discovered GB3IW, the Isle Of Wights repeater. This reactivated my interest leading me to explore the possibility of becoming licensed again. On 09 July I sat and passed the foundation exam and gained the callsigns M6BBB. Easy to remember, I promptly became “Big Bad Bill” to friends.

I now had a problem, because my interests had burgeoned, photography, the local community, armchair astronomy.

Early May 2015, I find it strange that it was so long ago, I came up with my concept of Locality. Primarily, I treat Locality as a “Framework” , it was a thought about integrating my love of photography, amateur radio and the local area. I know it sounds a bit ridiculous, but that’s how my brain works. So, the purpose of this post has been to introduce you to the concept of Locality, and why I post about the topics I enjoy. More to follow. In the meantime, here are some pictures I took on this mornings walk.

The Shard

After our experience with Antony Gormley, we went across London for our appointments with Shard. Taking two lifts to get us to the observation deck at 801 feet. Being prepared, I had binoculars with me so we could enjoy the wonderful views of London. We enjoyed a glass of champagne, as you do and I partook of the virtual reality roller coaster which was pretty good.

The views were stunning. We were lucky that although it was cloudy they were high and didn’t disrupt our views at all.

We enjoyed a good couple of hours taking in the sights of the city before coming back down to earth.

From the base of the Shard we headed towards St Paul’s we had an evening meal booked in a restaurant near the cathedral. On our way there we passed through Borough Market. It was, to put it mildly, absolutely heaving. We had trouble navigating our way through, such was the crush. We had a stroll over the millennium bridge toward St Paul’s, where we spent a bit of time wandering round before heading off to dinner.

We said goodbye to Helen & Mark and set off for a pleasant stroll back to Waterloo for the train home. A lovely end to a wonderful day.

The Weekend & Monday

Saturday and Sunday were days of contrasts. I think I’ll have to split this over a couple of posts.

Saturday Morning

The train journey up to london went very well, except I disrupted Elaynes plans for the tube journey from Waterloo to Piccadilly, from where we were going to walk down to the Royal Academy such that we ended up going to Green Park, which I thought was closer any way (bearing in mind I’ve never been to the RA before). Any how, we arrived and met up with Helen and Mark and embarked on an exploration of the works of Antony Gormley. AG is probably most well known for two works; the Angel of the North and the metal figures on Crosby Beach in Liverpool. I’ve also seen those figures elsewhere, like Oxford. They seem to pop up.

Mr. Gormley is obviously a very deep thinker about his position in the universe and I think he tries to express that in his forms. There were two things I especially liked about about the exhibition; absolutely no restrictions about photography, and unless something was obviously delicate no prohibition on touching, indeed, several pieces demanded interaction.

The one with the bands contained 8km of aluminium tubing, which you could either walk around or through, which a lot of people did! Of course there were quite a few off AG’s metal men, in a room at all angles on floor, wall and ceiling. What are you supposed to think at things like this, it reminded me of an Escher drawing, and strangely a sequence in 2001 A Space Odyssey (the waitress transitioning from vertical to horizontal during Floyd’s Earth-Moon transfer).

It was a very interesting morning.