Tag Archives: flowers

Flower Power

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This week I knew I had my (hopefully) final chemotherapy session (although I still have weeks on the horrible, toxic pills). On Monday the weather was gorgeous, so after going for the blood tests I have to do two days befor each chemo poison torture session, I went for a walk, got lunch, then walked more, and then more. All the way from Gorgie to Haymarket, to the West End of the New Town, then Saint Cuthbert’s and Princes Street Gardens (where I found to my delight the Nepali Scottish Mela was taking place), then round King’s Stables Road to the Grassmarket, West Port, then the Meadows and finally a well-earned seat in Cloisters for a rest, drink and read my book.

Ravishing Blooms Soaking In The Light 01
(Above: I was really pleaased with the way the focus turned out on this shot, the foreground sharp, the background in soft focus – this effect is called ‘bokeh’ – and the contrasting colours. There’s even a wee bee on a flower in the foreground. Below: another bokeh shot, the sharp flower in the foreground, the rearwards one in soft, blurred focus giving depth to the shot)

Ravishing Blooms Soaking In The Light 03

Of course the camera was also out for its stroll, and the light was so good (half the work done for taking a good pic is having the right light), and I took dozens of photos of everything, from street photography of people to architecture to flowers. Lots and lots of flowers, as it turned out.

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Ravishing Blooms Soaking In The Light 05
(wee bee nestling inside a flower on the lower right)

I make no apology, the light made the colurs so vibrant, I kept taking more photos, stopping frequently when I saw more. In among this long, waking nightmare of my cancer year, the beautiful light and the colours of the flowers and the buzzing of bees landing on them (you can see some wee busy bees in several pics), all combined to make me feel alive and make me smile and just drink it in (and, me being me, to capture that light and colour in a photograph and share it).

Ravishing Blooms Soaking In The Light 06
(For the obvious reasons, I normally shoot in colour for flower pics, but some simply work better in monochrome, especially when they have that strong contrast being partly in the sunlight, partly in shadows. I don’t grayscale in Photoshop, if you see my pic in B&W it means I choose to shoot in B&W, I think the effect works better; also I don’t like monkeying with my photos in Photoshop like a lot of people do these days, I am old-fashioned, I think a photographer should do most of their work through the lens, picking mode, angle, composition as they shoot. That’s what photography is about, capturing what you see, not altering it all afterwards)

Ravishing Blooms Soaking In The Light 013

I absolutely tired myself out – my battery charge is very limited as the chemo screws your basic biochemstistry, the thing your body relies on, but it was worth it for a good day when I got to smile, to marvel at the beauty of the world and not think about bloody cancer for a few hours.

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I’m not going to post all of them here – you can, as ever, check them all out on the Woolamaloo Fickr stream (now well north of 30, 000 pictures uploaded!), where you can also view the much larger versions, as well as my many other photos. Hope the flower images brightened up your day a little.

Spring blooms, but brings bad news

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So, after a particularly dismal winter – even by Scottish standards, we had so many back to back days of grey clouds and rain that even the brief winter daytime was dark – spring is starting to bloom here. Still cold in mornings and evenings, or in the shade, but when the golden light comes out, it’s gorgeous, it’s warm, and the colours of vibrant flowers glow in that light like life itself, such a welcome sight after the winter months.

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The Return Of Colour 05

The Return Of Colour 03

However, the great turning of the seasonal wheel has, for me at least, also brought some bads news. Actually pretty awful news. My doctor noticed some anomalies in recent blood tests and wanted to investigate, and set me up for some sample tests and the dreaded camera going where no camera has ever gone before. He suspected something like a bleeding ulcer causing blood and iron loss. It wasn’t. It was cancer.

That’s not something you want to hear a medical team tell you. I knew before they spoke, to be honest. After getting dressed I met the team who examined me in a room, and they all had their heads down looking at their papers, and I knew from the body language it was bad news, and so it was. Shock and fear does not begin to cover being told you have cancer, that your body’s own cells are betraying you right as you sit there hearing the news. Worse still, I had to tell my father this news, which felt almost as bad as being given the damned news. How do you tell the people you love that you have cancer? I would love to spare them the worry, but I can’t hide this, and they have a right to know, but it still felt awful, as if I was unloading this horror onto them.

The NHS stepped into high gear, organising more scans as quickly as possible to get a better picture of what was happening inside me. The wait for results was nerve-wracking, as I literally had no idea how bad it could be until they told me. I found myself literally shaking just before my oncology appointment. I’ve been scared before, who hasn’t? But I have never had fear shakes, until now. I am cutting myself some slack as I think that was pretty understandable; I literally had no idea what they were going to tell me, was it curable or was I going to be condemned to a slow, horrible decline and death? You’re trying to stay positive, but your mind is thinking of all the worst case scenarios, and the dreadful fact is you simply don’t know until they have the results, you are in a limbo.

Long story short, they found it before it spread my organs, so it is treatable. I am going for major surgery imminently. They can’t be certain if that will be enough, or if I may require chemo later. I am praying not, because I have had people I love go through that, and it is brutal, and the idea of enduring major surgery just to find I need even more, harsher treatment is so unfair and scary I don’t know where to start. But it may not come to that, and one thing at a time.

I’ve had so much warm love and support from my family and my friends – my lovely wee bookshop family have been so protective of me. Pain and discomfort have been growing in the last couple of weeks, which is putting me in the “just get this over and fixed, please” zone, trumping the fear of surgery. But it is still damned scary, in fact it is bloody terrifyng. And this is a situation so many people will find themselves in. We all know people we love who have been through similar. Scary as it is, the main thing is they think this is treatable.

Princes Street Gardens, Spring Day 02
(walking Princes Street Gardens in spring light)

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(The Ross Fountain in full spray – frozen solid just a few weeks back, now back to delighting visitors)

So, before I go dark for a few days, I am taking some moments to post about this on here, but also to share some photos of my gorgeous Edinburgh in spring sunight, the Earth renewing itself for a new season, and I am taking that renewal of life as a good omen for me (and I need those right now), and because I wanted to post something beautiful against all the personal horror I’m enduring right now, and the collective horror our entire world seems to be going through right now, to remind us all there is still magic and beauty and we need to pause and drink it in and cherish it, and let that light fill us so the darkness never wins. Easier said than done, I know, but we have to.

I hope to be recovered enough in a few weeks in time for the cherry blossoms to come out so I can take more photos of them again. I will walk under that avenue of sakura in the Meadows with my friends with the blossoms falling around us. I will. And I will share those photos as I always do.

Spring Blooms 05

Spring Blooms 04



After The Rain

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After The Rain 01

A week of very mixed weather, bright, warm, summer sunlight and heavy showers and gusty winds, then back to sunshine. While unpredicatable, this weather does offer up one of the smallest but loveliest of simple pleasures: raindrops on flower petals. Sometimes something as simple and everyday, such as the stroll to work, yields such precious, little moments.

After The Rain 02

The older I get, the more important it feels to pause, even if only for a few seconds, to admire such things, when the world offers them up to us; they make our days more magical, and remind us, regardless of how full the news is of dreadful happenings, that we can still find little, magical moments, if we pause and look.

Slowly Unfurling Beauty

Signs of Spring

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As April trundles on, we’ve had the usual mix of weather in Scotland, from beautiful, warm (ish), sunny spring days to howling wind, grey skies, rain and temeperatures suddenly dropping back to feel like February. We do get a variety here… Regardless, nature carries on to her own timetable, and there have been welcome signs that, despite bursts of colder weather, spring is settling in, and bringing with it a rebirth of colour.

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I loved these white Daffies with the yellow centre, catching the evening light in the old boneyard of Dalry Cemetery

Blooming 01
Sakura Time 02
The cherry blossoms are coming out too – although it varies all over the city. Some have had petals blooming for a couple of weeks or more, others are barely starting to bud, others again are in almost full bloom. It’s remarkable how much it varies across the town.

Sakura Time 01

Spring Petals 02

Fallen Bloom

I found this fallen bloom on the pavement, fallen from a vine running along a garden wall, covered in raindrops, the soft, silken petals in stark contrast to the hard, dark of the asphalt paving.

Floral Sunburst

The Daffies, as ever, provide a wonderful burst of colour after the long, dark, winter months, like miniature, floral sunbursts

Last colours of summer

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The border areas along part of Harrison Park, close to the hedges, have been allowed to overgrow. The resulting long grasses have created a haven for a diverse number of colourful wildflowers, almost like a mini-Alpine meadow micro-enviroment.

Last Bursts of Summer's Colours 05

The result is a delightful, smile-inducing array for different and colourful blooms, nestled amid the long grass. A last burst of flowering colours before autumn slowly brings in the colder weather.

Last Bursts of Summer's Colours 04

As ever, click on the pics to see the larger versions on the Woolamaloo Flickr page (now north of 24, 000 photos on there!)

Last Bursts of Summer's Colours 02

Blossoming

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The cherry blossoms have been late this spring, after the unseasonable bursts of late winter weather a few weeks ago, but finally it warmed up, the sun shone, they came out, and now they’ve mostly gone already – for a few days the branches hang low and heavy with the petals, then with each breeze they flutter down, a soft rain of silk, carpeting the pavement below, and then they are gone again for another year. Naturally I snapped a few photos before the vanished…

spring petals 01

spring petals 02

spring petals 03

Spring has sprung

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Out walking along the nearby Union Canal a few days ago, the first properly spring weekend of the year – we’ve had nice, bright days but usually still cold, this was sunny and also warm for the first time in the year. Beautiful light and the welcome return of colour to the world after the long, dark winter. It happens every year and yet each year it still seems like some wonderful magic as the dullness of winter suddenly gives way to a riot of vibrant colours:

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spring has sprung 01

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I have always found the way light reflects from water to be entrancing, and as I walked under one of the canal bridges the bright spring sunshine was bouncing off the water and creating a flickering, rippling dancing pattern of changing light on the stonework. I had taken a photo then thought it would be better in video mode, just to capture the quality of the patterns and movement. In still photo mode it looked better in monochrome (I’m not a fan of altering my pics in PhotoShop, so when you see a black and white photo from me, it means I shot it in B&W, not colour then change in PhotoShop. I know I could do it that way, but it feels better to me to shoot in B&W if a scene feels like it works better in mono, rather than just greyscale it afterwards in an editor), and fortunately the video mode in the new camera allows me to shoot in mono as well as colour, so I took a few seconds:

water under the bridge vid

Ephemeral

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Every now and then I post a photo to my Flickr and it the viewing figures leap up for no reason that I know of – even with the pro version of Flickr the stats page is annoyingly vague, often lists a percentage of links from “unknown source” or not at all. In the case of this photo of dandelion seeds read to blow away for some reason I got over 1600 views in less than 20 hours, just for that one pic. To put that in perspective, three of four years ago I got around 600-800 views a day on average for my whole Flickr, on a good day maybe 1000, 1200, 1500 if the pic had been shared somewhere prominent. These days I get 3000 to 6000 on average a day, some days north of 10,000 though. I suppose some of it may be sheer weight of numbers, given I have well over 10,000 images on there now if even in in 5 gets a single viewing each day in one of the groups I shared it in on Flickr it will mount up, along with larger views for newly posted items. But getting 1600 views in less than 20 hours for one pic? No obvious links posting to it, perhaps it featured on Flickr’s front page for a few hours and folk just liked it. Not complaining, nice to get the views, just wonder sometimes why some leap up all of a sudden:

Autumn

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autumn colours

It’s Scotland and it’s autumn, pretty much my favourite season here – the sunlight (when we get it!) from a much lower lying sun now bathes the land in a more stretched out coppery-golden hue, a beautiful quality of light, the low height of the autumn sun meaning we get good light but also many shadows, making it perfect for photography (and painting). And then there are the riot of colours as still verdantly green leaves mix with some already turning yellow, gold and russet, lit by the warm bronze tones of the low autumnal sun.

backlit leaves

As I was out snapping some autumnal shots on Sunday I was briefly joined by this charming little fella, scooting rapidly between the old tombstones of Saint Cuthbert’s kirkyard, in the shadow of the Castle:

cemetery squirrel

Amazingly even as September ticked over to October there were still some flowers to enjoy – clearly now on the wane and yet still boasting some vibrant colours:

the last buzzing of the flowers 01

And remarkably given the time of year and the chill wind (which was a contrast to the warm, copper sun), the flowers were still awash with numerous insects busily buzzing around for the last of the nectar before winter sinks its claws into our northern kingdom:

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Even the less flamboyant flowers were attracting attention from the insects scurrying around for their last hurrah of the season:

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The autumn light is great for taking pictures of buildings too, such as the fine 18th century Pear Tree, quick snap from its huge, walled beer garden as chum and I refreshed ourselves (will that be the last proper outdoor beer of the year? Sure we can have more outside, but I mean proper one where you can sit without the coat and gloves on and enjoy a pint) in the autumn light in between visiting some of the annual Doors Open venues:

Pear Tree, autumn afternoon 01