Snowed In – 2
Posted: Fri 8 January, 2010 Filed under: Weather 1 Comment »One of the coolest images from the current spate of cold and snowy weather has to be this satellite shot of the UK by NASA…
Click for the larger version
And for a much bigger version (at a scale of 250m instead of the 1km scale above) you can go here, but it’s a big image. (3Mb in size)
Snow
Posted: Thu 24 December, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Norfolk, Weather 1 Comment »I didn’t get round to posting this before, but this is indicative of the amount of snow we had in our part of Norfolk.
Snow Depth
And yes, I know, people in America and Canada (and anyone else who gets serious snow on a regular basis) is pissing themselves laughing right now at how little it takes for the UK to go to pot.
Crunch 2
Posted: Sat 19 December, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Travel, Weather 3 Comments »So – following on from yesterday’s post about crunching the car, this is what I did to it…
The result of my sliding into the fence
Fucked wheel, flat tyre, buggered headlamp and bumper, knackered plastic bodywork, and a bundle of crunched connections and wires.
I’ve still not had any news about how much the repairs will cost – I suspect that’ll be Monday’s news.
Crunch
Posted: Fri 18 December, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Driving, Norfolk, Travel, Weather 1 Comment »Last night, as may have come to people’s attention, it snowed in Norfolk. Quite heavily in fact, with a heavy wind that meant the snow was horizontal in places.
It was also effing cold – in snow? Who’d have thought? – which meant that the road was slippy.
Coming home, I started slipping at one crossroads, and slowed down as a result. I knew the next bit was dodgy at the best of times – seen the results of several accidents there already – so I was down to about 15mph. The car slid, and rather than turning went straight on, up the verge, and took out the fence of the house that’s on the corner. (Again, that fence has been taken out at least four times to my knowledge – so I’m the fifth) It slid along the fence, popping out the wooden fence panels, and hitting the concrete fence posts.
It wasn’t a hard impact – just inertia and momentum really – and didn’t even trigger the airbags. But the entire front quarter is stuffed, I’ve lost a headlamp, front nearside panel’s gone, and the bumper’s stuffed too. It’s going to take some work to fix.
The insurance company I use (Tesco) have been really good so far. The recovery truck was out within the hour they said, and today I’ve started the claim, and just about everything has run smoothly. There’s one exception to that, but that’s a separate post.
More mortifying was the fact that someone had called the police – I don’t know if it was one of the houseowners, or someone driving past, but still, up they pulled, blue lights and all. Probably for the best, as the corner was still dodgy and slippery (the police car came up at about 15-20mph too) but all the same, pretty mortifying. Still, it means that as well as having my first “proper” accident, I’ve also had my first breathalyser test – blowing an absolute zero, which wasn’t a surprise – and given all my details to them about the crash. An interesting experience, to be sure.
So the car’s stuffed – but thankfully it appears to be mainly the bodywork, not the chassis or anything. And it could’ve been so much worse. After all, I’m not hurt, no-one else got hurt, and really it’s just a car and a fence.
Thunderstorm
Posted: Fri 14 August, 2009 Filed under: Photography, Weather Leave a comment »This small video is absolutely fantastic – a thunderstorm in Toronto.
It’s taken by Sam Javanrouh from Daily Dose of Imagery, one of my favourite photographers. (There’s also an interview with Sam here, although that’s not related to the thunderstorm video)
All told, the video consists of 347 15-second shots, with two seconds between each shot. (I suspect he used his Pclix for it – he’s obviously better at programming it than I am with mine at the moment)
Well worth the effort, anyway.
Toronto Lightning Storm from Sam Javanrouh on Vimeo.
Night Photography
Posted: Sat 8 August, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Five Year Plan (now Ten), Photography, Weather Leave a comment »For the last two and a half years, I’ve had a mental image of a photograph I wanted to try and get – basically, haybales lit by moonlight, so they’d be silver rather than gold. I know, strange but true.
Over the last two summers, events have conspired against that plan – there’s been no full moon when the bales are available, and conversely no bales when the full moon’s around. And on the occasions when there was a full moon + bales, the nights have been too cloudy to do anything with it.
Last night, I finally got the perfect circumstances – lovely full moon, clear skies (OK, a tiny bit of cloud, but nothing important) and bales in the fields. So off I went.
And it’s been reasonably successful. I’m pleased with the results in general, except for one thing. They’re horrifically noisy as well as everything else. Now some of that’s my fault – the wrong ISO setting, for one thing – so I’m going to go out again tonight and see whether I get anything better while using a super-low ISO – 200 at most, but preferably 100. It’ll also probably mean I need to take even longer exposures, although the ones I got last night of about 2.5-3 minutes seemed to work OK.
Even at that point I think I’m still going to need to do some editing in Photoshop and/or Capture ONE in order to get the results I’m actually thinking of , as it turns out that my mental image is probably rather more “romantic” than the reality. Still, it’s fun to try.
Additionally, it also meant I finally got to use my PClix 100 properly for the first time since I bought it three years ago. It’s a nice bit of kit, but ’til now I haven’t really had the project and/or ideas that necessitated its use. Long exposures though are one of the areas it specialises in. Without the PClix, I wouldn’t have had any real chance of getting a decent exposure at all.