Jupiter Artland

All summer I waited for nice weather on one of my days off to go and see this place, and finally, in September, I got my wish.   I went off to Jupiter Artland (http://www.jupiterartland.org/) with my camera, naturally!   It's a plot of land with a collection of odd outdoor sculptures.   It's like nothing I've ever seen before.   The biggest and most famous one, Life Mounds, made me feel like I was in Super Mario Land.

This photoshoot was also my first attempt at HDR (high dynamic range) photography.  The way it works is that you take 3 shots of the same thing, but bracket the exposures so that you get one "normal" shot, one overexposed one and one underexposed one.   You then combine the three shots using clever software (Photomatix, in my case).   This lets you capture as much detail as possible.  Quite often with landscape photos you will expose the land perfectly, but find that you've lost all the drama in the sky.   The underexposed photo will capture the detail in the sky and let you put it back into your photo.   You can also make photos look very weird and cool!    Like so:

                                                                  Normal photo

                                                                   Overexposed

                                                                Underexposed

                                                                      HDR!


I was really surprised at how easy the software is to use, and how easy it is to get the photo looking good without too much time spent mucking about with it.  I also discovered that the technique is not nearly as forgiving as I would have liked.   If your "normal" photo isn't correctly exposed there's not really any way to rescue that in the HDR.   Bother.   I also discovered that there are many many different ways to edit an HDR photo and completely change its look.   You can create something very surreal and very obviously HDR, or you can use the technique very subtly so that you can hardly tell the photo is an HDR at all. 

I really enjoyed this shoot, and learning this new technique was really good fun.   Jupiter Artland was well worth the money (though sneaking in without paying would be the easiest thing in the world) and a really interesting place to photograph.   HDR is also definitely something I'll be trying again and hopefully I'll get better at it.  :)  Here are a few of favorite HDR pics from the day:

                                                                         Very HDR

                                                        Much more subtle HDR

And a couple of non HDR photos from the day:

Butter!

Tonight's project was to change my gear cable.   Tonight's project failed.   Couldn't get the screw undone.   So I thought I'd tell you about a project I did quite a while ago, but have repeated a couple of times since.   Home made butter!   This seemed to be a fairly unusual project.   Most people I know don't seem to have a clue how to make butter, and very few have tried it.   So I was quite surprised at how easy it was and how well it turned out.   All you need is cream and an electric whisk.

 I used 600ml of double cream, and just started whisking.   It whipped up pretty quickly.   I then carried on whisking for a quite a long time.   My cream started getting grainier and grainier and harder to whisk.   It turned into quite a messy project!   I got butter splats all in my hair and up the walls (the second time I did this I put the mixing bowl into a box first).   What fun!   Suddenly liquid started to appear in the bottom of the my mixing bowl.   Buttermilk!   I put the butter into a sieve and let the buttermilk drain off.   I filled the mixing bowl with cold water and kneaded the butter in the cold water to remove as much buttermilk as I could and to stick all the individual grains together.   Finally I kneaded half a tea spoon of salt into the butter to preserve it, and then shaped it, using a butter dish as a mould.   The home made butter was delicious!   So fresh and creamy.   Much nicer than any shop bought butter.   It kept pretty well too!   It was quite streaky though.   Clearly my whisk is not as good at removing buttermilk than industrial machines.   Ah well.   A future project will have to be to use home made butter in baking!

  

Books

And for your reading pleasure, reviews of some of the books I've read lately. 

To start with, Dracula, by Bram Stoker.   I quite enjoyed this, but I have to say I found it pretty heavy going.   It started off very well, with the section about Jonathan in Dracula's castle in Transylvania.   It was genuinely scary and exciting and the plot advanced at a good pace, and I liked the way it was done in journal form.   But then there seemed to a very long section where not much happened, concerning the girls in Whitby, and for me things didn't really pick up again until quite late in the book.   The story also seemed to have a few too many characters.   There were five men fighting Dracula at the end when I'm sure three would have been quite enough for the writer's purposes.   A couple of them seemed pretty redundant really.   One thing that surprised me was how religious the book was.   I don't really tend to associate horror and religion in my mind, but the characters were all asking God to have mercy on them every couple of lines.   It was also interesting to see that the grand tradition of the characters in horror stories being stupid started so long ago.   I couldn't believe how long it took them to work out that Mina was being bitten by Dracula.   It was also fascinating to see how the modern perception of Dracula is rather different from the original.   The book describes Dracula as having heavy eye brows and a big moustache.   Holywood clearly had something against facial hair.   And modern readers all know that Dracula can turn into a bat, but no one seems to know that he can also turn into other animals and also control wolves, rats etc.   And everyone knows he sleeps in a coffin, but Hollywood seems to have left out the bit about him needing special soil from home, which is a pretty big part of the plot, really.   And I learned a few things about the English language.   For example, apparently the phrase "to take no chances" is an americanism.   Who knew?   All in all, I enjoyed the book, but it was hard work sometimes.

       



Next up, Vile Bodies, by Evelyn Waugh.   I picked this up in a charity shop because I loved Brideshead Revisited.   I must say it was rather different.  It lacked the poetry and melancholy of Brideshead.   It was much more light-hearted and trivial.   There also seemed to be a lack of any sort of plot, and there were about a million characters and I had no idea at all who most of them were.   In fact, there seemed to be no point whatsoever to this book.   I enjoyed it immensely.   It was well written, satirical and silly, with some very amusing episodes.   Very readable indeed.
 

And finally, Bridge to Terabithia, by Katherine Paterson.   I occasionally like to re-read an old childhood favorite and remember how good it was.   This is another book I'm sure a lot of people have read, but for those who haven't, it's about a young boy called Jess growing up with four sisters in rural America in the 70s.   He becomes best friends with his new neighbour Leslie, a girl from a very different background.   Together they invent Terabithia, their own magical kingdom.   At the end of the book Leslie drowns in the creek, while crossing it, trying to go to Terabithia.   Even at age 26 this book still made cry like a baby.   What's special about this book is the richness of the description of Jess's everyday life; the hardships he endures, and the special things that make his life worth living.   Though speaking personally, I would like to see the same sort of richness in the parts concerning Terabithia and the childrens' imaginations.   For me that would make the book complete.

        

Fireworks!

At the end of the Fringe in Edinburgh there is a fireworks display, set to music, from the Castle.   I very much enjoyed this year's performance.   The Castle was beautifully lit and I preferred this year's music to last year's.   Less obscure.   More relevent.   The fireworks themselves were good too, though not hugely different to last year's.   I, of course, took my camera, tripod and remote release along to capture the action.   Sadly the people I was with had chosen to stand somewhere that wasn't ideal for photography, but nevermind.

I'd never really photographed fireworks before and wasn't quite sure how to go about it.   I really just pointed the camera at a random patch of sky, set the focus to infinity and hoped for the best!  It went ok, though most of my photos came out looking pretty smoky.   I think this was more to do with the wind than with anything I'd done.   I also found the long lens to be unnecessary.   They weren't that high up really!  

There was only really one photo I was really happy with.   For your viewing pleasure:

I also discovered that I want a new camera!   My flat mate's newer camera had an autofocus that could cope with the lighting conditions.   Jealous!  

Films!

Just thought I'd write a quick review of some of the films I've been watching.   Firstly, Planet of the Apes.  The original one.   Just another one of those films that I really should have seen, but never quite got round to watching.   So I thought it was about time I filled the gap in my education.   And I have to say I really enjoyed it.   It was very compelling.   I'm not quite sure why, but the style reminded quite a lot of 2001 Space Odyssey.   Of course, I knew the story already, it being rather a famous film, so the twist at the end came as no surpirse.   I imagine to a naive audience it would have been gripping stuff.   I enjoyed the harsh landscapes and Charlton Heston's cynical, world-weary performance.   And all the topless men, of course.   Although it has mostly aged very well, with the make-up and special effects still being pretty impressive, there are bits of it that are pretty dated.   The attitude to the women in the film is a prime example.   At one point one of the apes remarks: I didn't know man could be monogamous.   Charlton Heston casually replies: On this planet, it's easy.    Good old-fashioned casual sexism!

     



Next up, Kill Bill, Volumes 1 and 2.   Not being a Tarantino fan, I didn't really expect to enjoy these.   Just another gap in my education to be filled.   But I have to say, they were great!   Unusual and interesting.   The storyline wasn't really that original, being a fairly typical tale of revenge, but the way it was done made these pretty unique films!   There is probably an awful lot that can be said about the filmography by clever people who know about that sort of thing.   There's the way the heroine's name is beeped out right up until the end, and the random switches into black and white at certain points, the lady with the eye patch, the bright yellow outfit, the way a lot of the important conversations in the film are in Japanese with no subtitles so that we don't understand what's going on, the very unrealistic and old fashioned way of showing bleeding, and the unrealistic portrayal of Japan as being all sushi and katanas and kimonos and getta...   I have to say that I don't really understand the reasons behind most of those things, but i loved it all the same!   It interested me.   Being a Tarantino film there was obviously a lot of gratuitous gore and blood, but somehow it wasn't as offensive as I usually find it.   No picking bits of skull off the backseat of a car in this.   I very much enjoyed the soundtrack as well, and the performances.   I especially liked David Carradine as Bill.   The other little touch that I liked was how these hard, deadly women could instantly be tamed by the appearance of a child.   I'd like to believe that's the truth.

 

And Finally, A Nightmare on Elm Street.   Not really a fan of this, but I can definitely understand why it's so famous.   It doesn't hold back, and it's pretty damn scary for a horror film of its age.   There's some pretty iconic imagery in it, like Freddy Krueger's red and green jumper and metal claws.   I can see why these memorable images turned the film into a franchise.     I did enjoy the way the boundary between dreams and reality were blurred and I would have liked to see a little bit more of this to be honest.   I also enjoyed watching an early performance of Johnny Depp's as well.   It's always interesting to go back and watch really big stars when they were just starting out.     

Curtains!

The biggest project I've done lately has been my home made curtains.   A couple of years ago I made curtains for my bedroom at home with a LOT of help from Mum.   And apart from doing a couple of squares for a patchwork quilt for Mum when I was little, that's pretty much all the sewing machine experience I have.   So I was a little surprised when I got given a sewing machine a couple of Christmases ago.   Quite frankly I didn't think I'd even be able to get it here.   But in the Autumn Mum drove it up here for me, and bought me some fabric to make curtains for this room too, as the curtains I had were old, faded, cheap Ikea ones that were unbelievably thin and didn't close properly.   I was surprised at how much the fabric cost.   Over 300 pounds for the fabric, thermal lining, curtain tape and thread.  

                                                               Sewing machine

                                                                       Fabric

                                                                  Thermal Lining


So the first challenge was setting the sewing machine up.   This was done with the help of youtube.   The instruction manual was all in Italian, and while my Italian is pretty good, names of sewing machine parts is not my strong point.   Insert the something into the something and then do....something to something else.   Hmmmm.   Ok, so sewing machine all set up and ready to go.   The next step was cutting the fabric.   I had vague instructions from my mother about where to cut, but seeing as I am prone to brain farts I had a friend check it for me before I picked up the scissors.   She pointed out that I was Doing It Wrong.   Good thing I checked.  

So, with my fabric and lining cut, I just decided to crack on with my very limited experience, and see what happened.   First I pinned and sewed the widths of fabric together and sewed them.   so far so good.   Then I did the same for the lining.   The next step was sewing the fabric to the lining and hemming the sides.   Again, no disasters.   Next came sewing the curtain tape to the tops of the curtains and hemming them.   Well, this stuff was like no curtain tape i'd ever seen.   Youtube to the rescue again.   Before I could hang these curtains I bought a new curtain rail, and then got thoroughly confused by it and couldn't work out how to put it up.   Another friend to the rescue.   I owe him one!

I then inserted curtain hooks into the curtain tape and hung the curtains.   They were about a foot too long.   Being very lazy it took me a while to get round to ripping the excess fabric off the bottoms of the curtains and pinning them to hem.   Mum told me to hand sew the bottom hems, but I got bored very quickly and took the curtains down again to machine sew.  

                                                                The finished product!


What I learned from this project: 

- I am very bad at choosing curtain fabric.   They don't look at all like I thought they would.
- I hate sewing, whether by hand, or by machine.   I ended up doing this in stages over many days so that I didn't get too bored and grumpy.
- How to change a sewing machine needle (I broke four).
- I don't understand my sewing machine.   It keeps throwing tantrums at an alarming frequency.
- Curtains are much more complicated than they look!
- I can make curtains!   :)

I have to say it is very nice to finally have decent looking curtains that keep my room nice and warm.  

                

France

So back in August I had a lovely holiday in France.   Being in the middle of nowhere the photo oppurtunities could have been really good but sadly the weather was not on my side.   It was lovely and warm, but often hazy as is so often the case in the height of summer.   Still, I got a few good shots out of it.   Here are a few favorites:

                                                          

                                                                French countryside

                                                                   Thistle Macro

                                                 And a couple of night sky pictures


I took advantage of being in the middle of nowhere to take a few night shots.   Obviously for photos like this a tripod is a necessity and not an optional extra.   A remote release is good too, to minimise camera shake.  Seeing as stars move, it's possible to use a long exposure and capture their paths across the sky.   The above photo had an exposure of about 15 minutes.   For a stationary night sky shot it's a bit of a fine balance between freezing the stars and getting them to look bright.   I find that as long as the stars are frozen you can brighten them up a fair amount in photoshop afterwards.  The biggest problem with getting shots like these (especially with an older camera like mine) is noise.   Long exposures mean that the sensor heats up and you get hot pixels.   There are also problems with night pollution creeping in, hence the rather drastic crops of both these photos.   Still, overall I'm pretty happy with both of them.   :)