Woo Hoo 1st Fractal Accepted

I submitted some of my fractals to Shutterstock in the hope of them being saleable - turns out one of them was :) Given that the current job market is so rubbish, I'm hoping that I can up my output on microstock to compensate a little so although I've still got a lot to learn about fractals, it's nice to know that even at this early stage, some will be acceptable.

Day2Day - week 8 - Butterflies

This week has been rather OK-ish weatherwise so my garden surprise visitor (the Buddleia) has been covered in all sorts of wildlife including some butterflies I hadn't seen before so here they are!

Day 1 - a Large White Butterfly - I think it's the pattern on the wing tips that decide whether it's a large or small white one!

Day 2 - It's my tatty neighbour again from a previous week but I called it a tortoiseshell and it's not. It's a Comma, I think. I had another this week that I had never seen before so I had to look it up on Google. I found a lovely Butterfly identification site here and while I was looking, I saw this one there so managed to find out exactly what it was.

Day 3 - A Painted Lady - I knew straight away that I would need to ID this one - haven't seen it since either so I was really lucky that it stayed where it was long enough for me to run upstairs, grab my camera, change to my zoom lens and get some shots!

Day 4 - A Small Heath butterfly - another I had to look up. This was was wandering round Mum's coneflowers and I knew I didn't have time to run for the zoom lens so this is my everyday lens and a tight crop :)

And Day 5 - My favourite British butterfly - a Peacock. When we decided to let the weed grow that is now an 8ft Buddleia, I was secretly hoping for a summer full of butterflies. We had a huge dark purple one in our garden when I was a child and I was always fascinated by these lovely delicate creatures. This beauty has visited for the first time today - just in time to make me smile in the sunshine and to fill slot number 5 in my day2day post :)

I can't believe I've managed to keep this up for 8 weeks already. It seems like only a couple of weeks since we started but I'm really enjoying it so here's to the next 8 weeks! I guess it's going to be a lot harder during the winter due to lack of light but I'll just have to get my thinking cap on for some interesting Still Life shots, won't I?

My Moo's have arrived!

Yaaayyyyyyy! I must admit, I was a bit disappointed with the sample mini Moos I received a couple of years ago. The odd size did not work well with my photos although the cardstock quality was very good so whilst everyone else has been raving about them, I was a bit 'meh!'

But fairly recently, they have launched the bigger, standard business card size so I dived in and they arrived yesterday morning. To say I am happy with them is a bit of an understatement - I love them! To have 50 different cards showing my best work is great, so now, when I hand out a business card, I can let the person choose one :)

I'm not sure they would be cost effective for your ordinary, everyday type business card - I wouldn't expect my accountant or pensions advisor to have glitzy, fancy business cards but in the arty, crafty, niche worlds they are perfect! My niece and nephew have already claimed a few for themselves - straight onto their bedroom walls with blu-tack so that gave me a little buzz too - whilst they know I take photographs, abstract flowers aren't really their thing after all!

Day2Day - Views From My Armchair

Just a quick post and run this week I'm afraid. I've had a day off work today for a rest but so much has happened, been done, got sorted out - I'm thinking perhaps I should have gone to work for a rest! LOL

Anyway, this week I have been lazy - I have taken all these shots from my old armchair on our verandah - sounds posh doesn't it? Well, it's not! It's basically a small deck area on the back of the house and we've put some posts up and roofed it in clear plastic panels - we needed somewhere out of the sun to dry our scuba kit and as the garden is north facing, we couldn't see the point of spending loads of money to put a proper conservatory out there. So I dug out my 300mm zoom lens and tried to make some pretty photos without getting up - yes, I've pulled some funny positions but my bum was on the chair for every shot!

Day 1 - the yellow osteospermum - home to the infamous green bug thing from previous posts! After several weeks, I'm sad to report, the green bug seems to have moved on :(Day 2 - Not sure what it's latin name is but we call it an iceplant - I have a pink and a red one and like everything else in the garden this year, this is going bananas!

Day 3 - my lovely purple and cream callas are fading now, slowly turning green and tightening up again. This was Wednesday, today (Friday) they have almost all flopped over so it's time to say a fond farewell and hope they do as well again next year.

Day 4 - I turned my lens slightly skyward for this one - my neighbour has this beautiful pink rose climbing over an arch over her gate. The bluetits and wren love this rosebush and can be seen bug hunting regularly. Watching the baby starlings trying to land on some of the long shoots can be very funny too.

Day 5 - The end of another busy week and this lone pigeon sits cooing on Mum's tv aerial. The clouds were so pretty as a backdrop and I don't do many silhouettes so I thought it was worth a few clicks.

Day2Day - Week 4 Mix It Up!

Well this week was another hectic week at work so I wasn't really concentrating or even thinking about my Day2Day so it's a bit of a mix this week.

Day 1, Monday, dawned with blue skies and fluffy little clouds - just in time to go back to work after a wet weekend.

Day 2, Tuesday, was a lovely hot day but then some really heavy showers and a bit of thunder in the evening. The skies cleared around sunset just in time to colour the clouds around the moon rising.Day 3, Wednesday - can't really remember what sort of day it was, just a really, really busy one. The sun did break through around teatime, just long enough for me to water Mum's pots and get a shot of her new Clematis.
Day 4, Thursday - another grey day all day but no rain. Had to boost this one a little in photoshop but you get the idea :) Gigantic allium heads hanging up to dry and making themselves irrestible to my macro lens :)
And last but not least, Day 5, Friday (Yay!!) playing with abstracts again - this time one of Mum's alstromerias - also known as a Peruvian Lily or Lily of the Incas. I like the colours in this one but perhaps the markings should be more in focus? Hmmm not sure.

I hope you've had a good week. Schools are breaking up for the summer this weekend and that usually means less traffic for me. This year, that also means more evening sunlight to shoot in so I'm looking forward to it too.

Astrantia - in all their Glory

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I finally found out what this flower is called! It's an Astrantia and I've seen it in deep wine colours through to pale green/almost white. It spreads pretty well and looks after itself aapparently which is probably why it's also called Hens & Chicks (not to be confused with the Sempervivum's). Not much to blather about today so just enjoy the piccies :)

Happy Holiday, Rotten Weather

Well we left the UK in sweltering sunshine and arrived in Menorca to rain and more rain. We weren't too bothered though - we'd been there several times before and really just wanted a change of scenery and time to relax. On the other hand, we hadn't really counted on 4 days of rain and grey skies!


The wonderful thing about this holiday was the memory lane trip - we stayed at this exact hostel exactly 20 years ago on our very first holiday together, just 6 weeks into our relationship. We arrived to check-in and a lady came out to greet us - she took one look and started rabbiting on in rapid spanish. We recognised her easily from our first trip but it turns out - she remembered us too!

The sun did come out for the last 3 days though - we jumped on a local bus into Mahon the capital, not realising it was market day. What a lovely bonus that was. Spent a few hours wandering round the stalls but a lot of them were basic typical market stalls (not much interest for holidaymakers) and most of the others were pure tourist targetted. There were a few unique stalls in there but we ran out of time to really get down to serious shopping. Lucky really - I could easily have spent a months' wages on one stall in particular!

The following day, we hired a jeep-style vehicle and went exploring some of the smaller roads that we'd found on our last trip. This lighthouse was an old friend from 20 years ago when we were taken to a beach nearby (via a dried-up riverbed type track) but we'd not managed to find the actual lighthouse - until now. It was a wonderfully wild and desolate spot - shale/slate beds on one side of the headland and a sandstone sort of terraced/stepped landscape on the other.


We also found some lovely little beaches and coves - mostly deserted this early in the season and of course, the weather wasn't helping. I love empty beaches though so I was perfectly happy just to mooch along, take some photos and do a bit of beachcombing. This perfect little cove is near a place called Binidali and the water was this amazing blue - I'm not sure the camera has caught the vibrancy of the day but you get the idea :-)

Obviously, being a bit of a photo-nut, I've got quite a few more but I won't overdo it - I know how boring other peoples holiday photos can be (My mum often comes home with 1000+!!) so maybe I'll show you some more tomorrow. I did get some interesting abstact rock ones so if the are any rockhounds out there, maybe you can put me straight :-)