Category: flickr

Day 21 – Mildly delayed

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I have been trying to get these daily posts out at 8am, but this one is slightly late.
I’m pretty sure that no-one will notice – is there really anyone frantically hitting refresh at 7:59, like they’re hoping to be the first in line for concert tickets on some underprepared concert ticket website that will then crash 10 seconds later?

Remember going to concerts?
That was fun, wasn’t it?

Anyway. I digress. Often.

Yesterday was a flat, dull, calm, grey day. Horrible for photography, but great for taking the drone up for the first time in ages and having a quick spin out of the back garden. It needs some work on the camera (the drone, not the back garden): the lens plate is slightly damaged, but apparently fixing that is not an essential service, so it’s not going to happen for a while yet. So I was left having to do a  little bit of fiddling in Lightroom, which did at least give me a different image for my photo-a-day Lockdown album on Flickr.

And then, after a quick rain shower, and just as it seemed that all hope of any colour was lost, a watery peach sunset, which I togged from the top of the braai chimney while the braai was in use.

I would not advise this approach.

This photo really is nothing special, but as a symbol of hope and optimism after a miserable grey day, it’s still nothing special.

Today is also grey. Hold tight for the sunset.

Day 12 – Still ‘togging

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In case you had forgotten, I’m still sharing a photo each day of the lockdown.

You can see them here.

Today’s image is from an impromptu sesh yesterday afternoon, once the kids had finished their schoolwork and I had done the washing and cleaned the house.
I’m writing this post yesterday evening, and I’ve set it to publish a couple of hours later than usual today so that I can upload the image to Flickr tomorrow this morning so that you can see it when you’re reading this. (The Flickr one is different to the one below.)

We (the kids and I) played with some oil and water photography: a flat-bottomed dish suspended by some books (and a couple of cartons of UHT milk) above an iPad with some bright images on it. I reckon I got three half decent(ish) shots, post-editing, one of which I’ll pop into the album linked to above, and the other two I’ll at least stick onto Flickr if only to see how much better I get when (if) I try this sort of thing again.

All in all, it was a reasonable success: and another hour of lockdown boredom killed before some Minecraft (the boy wonder), a class Zoom call (the girl wonder) and some exercise in the drizzle for me.

As far as entertainment goes, it was completely immiscible.

Day 4 – A challenge?

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Incoming from a regular reader:

Going to be interesting to see what creative blog worthy stuff you come up with over the next few weeks. Not much happening…

This email was surprising for a number of reasons. First and foremost was that a regular reader would expect anything creative or blogworthy on here at any time, let alone during a lockdown. Secondly, the fact that he mentioned the word “interesting” while referring to the blog.

Have I really got people fooled?

The email also came with a suggestion of some content which I think was meant as a joke, but given that we’re just 4 days into (at least) 21 of full lockdown and the bottom of the barrel is already being scraped (I mean, look at this post for example), I’m certainly not going to rule anything out just yet.

There’s always the internet to rely on if I need more stuff to put on here. That’s still working (just). What is proving slightly more taxing at the moment is my One Photo Each Day Super Duper Lockdown Challenge. I have some sorted until the end of week 1, but after that, my tap is looking a little dry. Hopefully, inspiration will strike from somewhere…

Day 2 – Cabin fever?

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Not for me (yet), although there have been some worrying developments.

Firstly, this one:

which is not great when everyone is stuck at home and needs to use the internet. It also almost crashed the blog, which would really not have been good. Although 6000.co.za is hosted locally, when I tried to update a plugin  – a process that usually takes a few seconds – it went to get the update from overseas, got stuck and for a while, I was only able to see:

Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.

on any blog page or post I tried to access. For several or more minutes.

Fortunately, the blog obviously realised that something wasn’t quite right and reset itself before I went to work with a large virtual hammer in the the back end (careful now).

Phew.

The update will now wait until there is a decent connection to America (or wherever) again.

Then: the neighbourhood group has been alive with fake news on the current situation. Was that Whatsapp voicenote real (no, it wasn’t), should we clean our bin handles (yes, we should), is that man allowed to walk his dog on the school field (no, he’s not). And then in the middle of it all, this gem:

I have just microwaved our newspaper. ( Saturday one is only one we haven’t cancelled because of poor quality even though quality of Sat is not good either)

(Genuinely, I promise)

wut?!?!

For the record, microwaving may or may not kill coronavirus. It may or may not burn your house down as well. Do not microwave your newspaper. Just no.

Finally (for the moment, at least): As promised, I have set up an album called The Lockdown Diaries on Flickr. One photo a day during the lockdown. Don’t expect magnificence: this is just giving me something to do while I’m stuck at home, and I’m not going to get images of mountain ranges, racing cars or herds of wildebees being stalked by lions. My scope is a bit limited, which is why it will be a challenge.

Weekend images

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Some photos from the weekend: Ormonde wines and Llandudno beach are now available on Flickr.

Nothing hugely spectacular to be honest, but some decent images if – say for example – you were presenting a wine from said winery at your local wine club meeting later this week.

Also a couple of snaps that you could pop on your phone screen for a nice tranquil background. Just click the download button and help yourself.