NICE AFTERNOON. (24/04/13)

It was raining on our walk first thing so we all got wet. I went for a shower and came back to find Alfie dryish, I’d given them a desultory rub with a towel but should have spent more time. I now have a damp duvet but a dry dog.

I went into Leith for a quick chat and returned….the beauty of cities is that you can get around on busses. I usually get on the wrong bus so find that the £3.55p all day ticket works out cheaper. I excelled myself this morning and actually caught a bus going in the wrong direction………I really will have to investigate carers…..I blame one way traffic systems.

This afternoon I went macroing in the woods. I saw a Tree Creeper so returned the few hundred yards for Bertha. Tree Creepers don’t as a rule move far. I never saw it again, despite sitting in the sunshine for the best part of an hour.

I went back to macro and as spring is springing took a few snaps.

 I think this is a Beech leaf.

          These are Ivy flowers or flower buds…..strange plant is Ivy.

           This is Hawthorn. Hawthorn and Blackthorn look very similar to me in winter. It is only in spring, summer and autumn I can tell them apart. Hawthorn has leaves then flowers and Blackthorn visa versa. I don’t know why.

            I took several of this but couldn’t avoid a bit of blow out. I thought at the time it was a Horse Chestnut but now I’m inclined to pop it into the I don’t Knows. It looks more like one of the Acers. All these will enlarge with a click they are 1:1 Macro.

I wonder if anyone can help?

I am now using Bridge and CS6 Extended. The work flow I have developed is to download into Bridge…dump the rubbish, not that there are many truly bad shots I hope you realise. Then I pop the keepers into Collections and open the Collection select the ones to edit and pop them through the RAW converter and PS. After I’ve got them perfect or near enough I save them as TIFF or JPEG depending on what they will be used for. They don’t always appear back in Bridge Collections so I have to go to favourites> find the file date> and drop the relevant files across. I think I have the Meta Data all set up but maybe not. It also asks when I close PS editor if I want to save the PDS file….I say forget it but do I really mean it? There are so many choices. It reminds me of a song by Harry Nielson About pointless forests. “All the trees have points and all the leaves have points but a point in every direction is the same as no point at all.”

Last night the laptop threw a right paddy….it’s toys were out of the van never mind it’s cot. I was playing with 3D and trying to get letters to spiral away in video animation. I then got ambitious and added a shadow. I never realised how cross a computer can get……I’ll be glad when the new one arrives. The processor is i7, 16GB of ram two SSD hard drives and a middle of the range Graphics card. The latter was quite pricy. The company I picked seem great. I’ll give them a plug when it arrives. It was much cheaper than PC World and I can talk to a bloke who knows what’s what. Wish I did. It will not come loaded with no end of crap either. I can load crap on my own. I have started hunting down all my verification codes and just dread loading the software. It takes forever whilst all I’m wanting to do is forever play.

Have fun, tomorrow I’m away to Kinross for a long weekend with my sister and then I’ll go scenery hunting on the edge of the Trossachs… I’m sure I’ve spelt that wrong. Then back to Kinross to pick up the new laptop with Artic Paste cooling….that cost a pound or two more. He who knows sold it me but saved me a fortune on Graphics Cards. Apparently the really posh ones are for Gamers….and I’m only a Player.

PS I Notice that Dutch Nik’s blog only accepts comments from subscribers to Google+. it may be his decision but I don’t Facebook, Bimbo. Tweet or Google+. I hope that Google are not being naughty again.