As my birthday approaches yet again…
And the space between years left becomes ever smaller…
I have decided to put my website into a state of chrysalis; temporarily frozen.
A new, streamlined website will appear in its place in time.
salut
Author: Pixietoria
Preserve your memories; they’re all that’s left you…
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edit: CSI: Miami
“This is a test caption”
“This is a test caption”
Tinkerbell after adjustments
Prime numbers
Having taken my battered old 135mm lens out for a dragonfly hunt recently, I’ve since kept it on my lovely Pentax K3 for weeks now. It’s not the most expensive or “best quality” lens I own – far from it! – but it has such a soft painterly quality that I just love.
Here be dragons
Took my old 135mm manual lens for a dragonfly hunt just for fun. Not as futile a mission as I would have guessed.
In restless walks she’ll prowl the night
A long, lazy and hot month of June brought forth some gorgeous photo fun.
The Fallen Leaves
My cabin boy used to play the drums for the wonderful Fallen Leaves and he stepped in for a gig with them again last Saturday. Brilliant fun.
The Guild of Musicians & Singers 25th anniversary general meeting
I was asked back again by the Guild of Musicians & Singers to photograph their 25th anniversary general meeting. The were an extraordinary number of certificates handed out at this one and I have a long edit ahead…!
Beautiful light in All Hallows by the Tower, as ever.
of Arrowe Hill
Snowboating
At sixes and sevens
A New Year’s Day walk with a ridiculously big film camera.
Kodak Portra 400 120 film that had been kept in the worst place possible for two and a half years… in the kitchen cupboard above the cooker. Oops. Varying temperatures ahoy! I think it survived rather marvellously.
Film developing and medium resolution scans by the fabulous Ag Photographic. Posted off on a Saturday evening and returned to me on the Wednesday.
It’s the first time in many years that I’ve ordered prints along with the developing and scans. They look gorgeous and it was such a joy to see new photos for the first time in that more tangible way again.
Through the looking glass
It’s been a while since I got my Pentax 6×7 out to play. I had completely forgotten that I had an adapter to use my massive 105mm 6×7 lens on my regular DSLR (Pentax K3).
I love the quality of this lens. Attached to my K3 it does look ridiculous and it’s heavier than the camera itself. Old film camera lenses retain a lot of their character in digital format. This one gives a fair amount of chromatic aberation, as lenses designed for film often do, but that’s easily rectifiable manually in Lightroom. It’s an exrtremely soft lens and wide open, regardless of the cropped sensor on the K3, it just has a really expansive feel to it.
I intend to drag out the 6×7 for some more film fun soon, and this has certainly whetted my appetite.
The Guild of Musicians & Singers 48th general meeting
I was back in the gorgeous surroundings of All Hallows by the Tower last month
to document the 48th general meeting of The Guild of Musicians & Singers.
Here are some of my favourite pictures from the occasion.
Hunted by Red October
Hurricane Ophelia carried a very spooky sky to the UK two weeks ago. Everything looked orange and the sun turned red in the middle of the day. After ascertaining that it wasn’t in fact the sun dying (that really was my first thought, not that anyone could accuse me of being dramatic…), I thought I should probably take some pictures.
The sunset that evening was also rather beautiful.
Midlife oasis
I turn forty years old on Wednesday. I’m not having any difficulty processing that at all.
I’m definitely still having fun with one of the most fun photo apps. (HappoCam)
For my first present my mother booked two tickets for myself and my gorgeous friend G to a most wonderful exhibition of photographs of Queen by Denis O’Regan. And a Q & A with the man himself. Top time.
Cabin boy
Always nice to have a willing helper. This one takes a decent picture too.
cabin boy
me
Sky diving
Mother and child reunion
My eldest brother has lived in Taiwan for about 15 years now. He came over to see us this year, and a hugely orchestrated secret ambush on my mother ensued…
Heron… hair off…
Me with not much hair left
The Guild of Musicians & Singers
I was asked by the treasurer of The Guild of Musicians & Singers to document their 47th general meeting.
Here are my favourite pictures from the occasion.
They’ve asked me to be their official photographer too which is delightful and lovely so of course I affirmed my willing.
Face to face
Some recent portraits of just some of my nearest and dearest friends.
Spring is springing
A few new additions to the kitchen garden this year including peas, marshmallow, and a dwarf pomegranate tree. Faring well amongst the others so far.
Round, like a circle in a spiral…
I’ve been experimenting recently with some basic iPhone apps to mess around with images. The apps I have mostly been using are Circular and Tiny Planets.
I’ve mostly been using these two apps combined together to create images and videos, sometimes running an image through an editing process more than once in order to create greater or lesser abstracted images.
The thing I like most about these apps is that you don’t really need a great quality image to start with to create something visually interesting.
Here is a small selection of the videos I’ve made. Playing around with images like this can be incredibly addictive! And if I hadn’t recently lost my phone during the creation of this post, I’d have a majorly larger library of these videos by now.
Of course, I’ve also been building an album of the still images on Flickr.
The ice end of nowhere
There’s a fog along the horizon…
Take 2: Visibility: Coal Force 5
I took a two and a half hour cruise on my boat this weekend. With my engine newly serviced, and the sun shining, it was a staggeringly beautiful day out on the canals.
This time of year when the sun is so low it can be a bit blinding out there at times. Especially when heading West in the afternoon.
I like to take pictures into the sun. I love the way the light scatters and the possibilities with silhouettes, shadows, and lens flares.
With this picture I wanted to turn it isn’t something it wasn’t. I didn’t want the deep shadows. I wanted the picture to show me what I could have seen had I not been staring into the sun for hours. I wanted to try to create an image that expressed how I felt about the day. The air was still and chilly, but the warm Autumn colours were still out in force. I don’t normally apply such extreme adjustments to an image.
before
after
These are the main edits I made using Lightroom:
- I took the contrast all the way down to flatten out the image and give it a painterly, slightly hazy quality
- I brought the shadows all the way up to bring out as much detail in the background as possible
- I took the highlights down to bring out a bit of detail in the sky
- I pulled the tone curve into a gentle S shape, with the lights and shadows brought up and then highlights and darks very slightly down just to give a bit of definition
- I very slightly warmed up the white balance
Colours:
- I raised the orange and yellow saturation and luminance
- I raised the red saturation slightly
- I took the green luminance up to give a bit of life to the background
- I raised the blue saturation slightly and also lowered the luminance to bring out more detail in the sky and balance the warmth a little
Punk Rock Auction in aid of The National Autistic Society
A good friend of mine is holding a fabulous auction on 6th November at The Fiddler’s Elbow in Camden in aid of the National Autistic Society.
He asked me to take pictures of just some of the fantastic items up for grabs, so here’s a little splash of what’s on offer…
I Love Limehouse
After having been roaming the canals around London for a year now, I’ve seen parts of London I’d never even heard of before. The city looks infinitely fascinating from the water and my journey North East from Slough has been beautiful, horrible, and all things in between. But it’s never too noisy. The roads are never too close. The towpaths come alive in some places and are neglected in others.
Limehouse so far is my favourite spot to moor. It’s not especially pretty, or quiet. [Although it does benefit from being beautifully soundtracked with the quarter hourly chimes of St. Anne’s.] It has a character about it that beckons. I felt instantly at home here.
This is a little ode to Limehouse.
Berthdayversary
I have been incredibly lapse at keeping my photography, and by extension, this blog going this past year. I liken this to having a newborn. I’ve had to tend to my “boatbaby”, as my good friend Mary would term it.
Consider this a photo diary of sorts for the past few months dedicated to my new addition.
Happy birthday, Endeavour, etc, and now can I get on with life again please? 🙂
Forest Gate Festival 2016
The sun was hammering down for this year’s Forest Gate Festival. An absolute cracker of a day out.
Ahoy, Savoy!
I was asked to take photographs at Roger’s 70th birthday bash a few weeks ago and how could I refuse with such a glamourous setting and glamourous guests? Absolutely smashing evening all round.
The icing on the cake* was my ex boyfriend trusting me to borrow the absolutely amazing new Pentax full frame K1 camera from him for the task. Beautiful camera.
Happy birthday, Roger! Hip hip!
*The icing on the cake actually said “Happy Birthday”.
Victoria’s Kitchen Garden
The Garden is in bloom again…
Susanne takes you down to her place near the river…
It was my gorgeous mummy’s birthday last week so I invited her aboard this weekend for a little drive. It was a beautiful day and the cruise went sooooooooo smoothly. She’s an excellent driver. Cheers!
Endeavour, and ever, and ever…
The past five or six weeks have been a srange and busy time. Mostly spent on dry land having various urgent attentions spent on my lovely boat. It felt almost neverending at one stage. It was truly a strange experience to be onboard the same boat with absolutely no movement and climbing a ladder to get in. It’s a slow and tentative sigh of relief to be afloat again now.
I got everything done and fixed that I needed to, except that I haven’t got around to putting the name back on her yet. I’m procrastinating a little over that… But bit by bit, she’s starting to look quite smart.
Flat bottomed girl
I’ve had to put my photography on the back burner for the past few months, whilst attending to issues with my Marvellous new home. But of course there’s always room for both.
I’ve dealt with no running water at all on far too many occasions since moving aboard, had to hand pump gallons of water from leaky plumbing every other evening, but now I’ve seen my boat fly…
I wouldn’t exchange life on the water for anything, and yet I’ve had to be taken onto land in order to get back out there. Some jobs just require it.
Her hull is the most important thing and whilst currently out of the water to have her hull blacked, I’ve finally been in a position to confidently sort my disastrous plumbing situation. Maintenance and sprucing up are well underway now.
Exciting and terrifying times. And more to come. Wonderful.
The air that I breathe
Yesterday I completed the mammoth undertaking of cleaning five of these monsters up. It wasn’t even on the to do list.
The gift of Sound and Vision
On 5th February I went ice skating at Alexandra Palace with my mother, one of my brothers, and a wonderful colleague for a David Bowie soundtracked evening of skidding about and falling over, hosted by Feeling Gloomy.
I don’t know anyone who wasn’t saddened by Bowie’s passing, and what better way to blow off the cobwebs than such a ridiculous and fun tribute.
I took my Pentax K-S1 and intended to get lots of fun shots of the inevitably Bowie-emblazoned skaters, but admittedly I spent the vast majority of the time enjoying the skating. It’s over 20 years since I’ve purposefully stepped onto ice and I loved every single minute of it.
My brother looked utterly fabulous in his golden spacesuit and I at least managed to capture this for prosperity. He drew much adoring attention both on the ice and during the journey there and back. Even the lovely staff at Pizza Express didn’t seem to mind us applying our face painted lightning bolts at the dinner table beforehand.
Farewell, Starman.
Be my Valentine…
I took my true love for a Valentine’s Day drink. I had a thermos of mocha, and she had her usual tap water.
Whither shall I wander?
Taking a gander at the geese.
A glide and a whistle and a snowy white back
Another year over…
Another year ends.
May we all stretch our wings, make a splash, and dive into the new year ahead.
The Floater
It’s been a really busy month for me moving onto my handsome narrowboat. I’ve not had much time for photography. But I still somehow found myself volunteering to take pictures for a free online magazine for the boating community called The Floater.
I contributed these two pictures to go with an article about Winter moorings, the first of which I was delighted to see made it onto page one. You can read the December 2015 issue by clicking here.
Floatography
I have recently acquired a narrowboat which is soon to be my new home. She’s a beautiful vessel and we’re getting to know each other very well.
It’s wonderful to see so much of London from such a different perspective. Here are some of my favourite boat’s eye view pictures so far. As ever, I have more in an album over on Flickr which promises to grow and grow…
Postcards from the edge of the laptop
I have almost accidentally found myself constructing a series of black and white self portraits with my laptop camera. People who know me well will know that I don’t usually have a problem expressing myself verbally, but recently I’ve found this ability somewhat ripped from me. I always try and infuse my pictures with as much emotion as possible, but rarely turn the camera on myself for this purpose. The low quality images seem to create a barrier behind which (conversely) I can comfortably express more of myself.
I’m editing the photographs in Lightroom and I’ve found that another result of the image quality being so poor, is that it is really freeing up my creativity in other elements of the pictures. It’s turning out to be a really interesting way to experiment with and explore and express different visual ideas, a bit like a sketchbook. I think I’ll continue with this from time to time.
The amount of grain in the images has added interesting textures. They could almost be pen and ink, pencil, charcoal, or spray painted images. The huge depth of field and wide angle view bizarrely reminds me of my pinhole images which I find fascinating considering the ridiculous difference in equipment involved.
