Bokeh is a photographic terms for an object caught in a sharp focus and light, while the background is in soft focus. I was working to try and achieve that with this flower, the contrasting colours of the flower and background, and the strong, beautiful sunlight that day all helped.
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.
(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)
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.
(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).
(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)
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.
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.
My chum and I had a nice stroll along the annual Edinburgh Canal Festival the other weekend – after days of rainy showers, the sun came out, hot and strong that weekend. The festival itself felt smaller than previous years, not least because the Raft Race, which is what started the whole thing (existing before th festival grew around it) is now taking place on a different date, so it felt like crowds were smaller, there were less stands and fewer bands etc (and it all finished fairly early in the afternoon compared to previous years)
That said, we still had a great time, had some nice food and drinks (someone was making proper, fresh fruit-filled Pimms, a perfect summer sunny day drink!), enjoyed some of the bands and browsed the stalls, while taking pics (my friend wanted a go with the camera too).
Band entertaining the crowds around Lochrin Basin, where the canal now ends
Jazz band I have photographed at previous Canal Festivals was back, with some swinging tunes!
I was delighted to see our smiling mermaid was back again this year. We pointed her out to some small kids near us, and she waved to them – their faces lit up!
Even the barges became stages for entertainment!
Kayak fun!!
Ball right in the net!!!
I rarely appear in front of the camera, preferring to be behind the lens, but my chum wanted a go with the camera and took this shot of me, with a child apparently growing out of my head!
One of my swan chums decided to join me!!
Light waves reflecting off the sunny water onto the curved underside of the old, arched, stone bridge
And a slo-mo video of the same, because it was kind of gently mesmerising.
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.
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.
Walking home late on a summer evening, the sun reclining to its repose, dipping below the line of the old Dalry cemetery, turning the skies copper.
And a few moments after the sun had vanished below the horizon on a summer evening, the final light still glowing up, painting the clouds in an Impressionist mix of reds, blues, purples, oranges, the roofs and silhouettes of the old tenements outlined by the last moments of twilight.
Even by Scottish standards we have had an exceptionally long run of wet weather this spring and so far this summer. A few hot, sunny days interspersed with heavy rain and skies as grey as battleships, then often days where we get both, one after the other, changing all throughout the day, so you are carrying both sunglasses and a brolly.
I was walking through the Meadows recently, warm and dry, picked up some lunch from the van near the University Library and sat on a bench to enjoy it. Ten minutes after I finished and was walking away, it started to rain, then quickly turned up to torrential downpour. I sheltered under a friendly tree for a few moments – it passed pretty quickly and was back to dry soon enough – and decided while I waited I may as well grab some photos of the deluge.
Of course, it’s not all dreich weather, we’ve had days of sun and warmth too – I took this recent sunset across the city from the upper deck of a bus as it crossed North Bridge:
And a glorious summer evening at Holy Corner
Kayaker rowing along the Union Canal, and under the Walker Bridge at Polwarth. Spotted on my walk to work, so paused to grab a very brief video clip on the phone camera.
The last couple of months have seen the usual yearly increase in wildlife along the Union Canal, not far from my flat in Edinburgh. Ducks with fluffy wee ducklings, the Moorhens and their little chicks calling to them among the reeds, and of course our resident breeding mute swan couple who have been on this stretch for some years now, with their 2021 brood of cygnets, which have gone from smaller than my hand a few months ago to almost as big as Mama Swan now. As ever click the pics to see the larger sized versions on the Woolamaloo Flickr page.
It’s rather wonderful to have all this, right in the heart of a major city, we’re very, very fortunate to have it on our doorsteps, little slices of natural beauty in the middle of the urban jungle, a once polluted, dirty, industrial waterway now home to pleasure craft, houseboats and a great refuge for wildlife.
Of course, all this wildlife attracts the attention of the local apex predators!
And naturally it is a great place for Edinburgh citizens to enjoy a stroll by the water and to see the wildlife (always makes my day a little better to see the swans and ducks and their young). Some don’t even just stroll by the water – this chap stretched out in his canoe and let it idly drift while he snoozed happily in the warm sunshine!
Others prefer to walk, cycle, or run alongside the canal, or simply sit by it in the sunlight, or read. I like to walk along to the floating cafe-barge, The Watershed, and get a coffee and flapjack there, sit by their open air tables by the water with my latte and a book before walking home. Great stretch for a wee promenade.
I can teach you to skateboard!!! I love the look of joy on their faces.
Pause the walk for a rest and coffee and a read at The Watershed, the floating cafe-barge by the old Leamington Lift Bridge.
I shot these the day the clocks went forward to British Summer Time
Ah, nothing like being by the beach in British Summer Time, eh?!
Haar had come down, the sea mist meant you couldn’t see very far, and the wind was driving cold, grey waves to smash into the sea wall by the promenade at Portobello, splashing right up and over the prom – you had to time your walk past to avoid being drenched.
Some memories of last summer, found some pics from the summer months I hadn’t processed and uploaded yet and the dark nights of winter seemed like a good time to post up some images from the sunnier days (yes, we do get the odd sunny day even in Scotland). Here’s a very bright, sunny day on the busy promenade at Portobello (Edinburgh beach front area of town), serving up lovely, cold ice-cream on a hot day right by the beach:
Sailing off the coast of North Berwick last summer, just passing the harbour mouth:
Sailing past the islands of the Firth of Forth by North Berwick on a bright but breezy day:
Bright day, glowing sky, just a few, fluffy clouds over the estate at Penicuik House – the country house itself is slowly being renovated decades after a fire gutted it, this building is actually the remodelled stables the family moved to after the fire:
Colourful summer: foxgloves on the country walk through the estate to Penicuik House:
Nice, sunny afternoon, pal decided to get the hood down on his old MG and go for a run up the coast, we ended up in Burntisland in Fife for a short stop, wandered through the wee funfair, sudden rush of childhood memories – if we came back this way when I was a kid my mum and dad couldn’t get past here without me spotting it and a stop off would normally ensue. Nothing huge at it, but when you’re six it’s fun!:
From a distance we thought this was a helter-skelter, but when we got closer we realised it wasn’t a slide spiralling down the tower, it was a track and wee cars ran down it. How the heck did they get up to the top though? We watched and it turned out the cars went right up inside the tower – kids get in them, it enters then flips up so it is sitting on it’s backside and goes up vertically with the passengers lying on their back, then at the top it emerges, flips back to horizontal and starts its spiral downwards, looked fun.
and here’s a short video of the ride in action: