Photography

A long time ago I was interested in photography.  I had a (cheap) SLR camera, and a selection of half-decent lenses and equipment to use with it, and I took a fair number of photos, some of which were reasonable quality.

Times moved on though, and I gradually fell out of the photography habit and stopped using the SLR, replacing it instead with a series of compact cameras and eventually with the advent of digital photography with a reasonable SLR-style Fuji S5700.

In July 2008 I took a photo of a fire in a scrapyard on the river Clyde, not all that far from where I live, and because I thought it might be newsworthy I emailed it to the BBC whereupon to my surprise they immediately published it on their news website.  Fame at last!

Yesterday I received a message via the photo sharing website Flickr asking me to contact someone direct by email as they wished to licence the use of one of my photos and pay me a reproduction fee for it.  I initially thought it was going to be a scam along the lines of "tell us your bank details and pay us a small fee and you'll get paid loads" but on searching online for the person who'd contacted me and confirmed that she does indeed work for who she said she worked for (which tied into the legitimate email address she had supplied) I emailed her and agreed that my photo could be used.

And so it came to pass that today on page 4 of the Scotland edition of The Times my photo of The Straw Locomotive hanging from the Finnieston Crane in Glasgow in 1987 was one of the small number of images used to illustrate an article on the 90th birthday of Scottish artist George Wyllie!

I'm still waiting for a form to be emailed to me at some point today so that I can arrange the reproduction fee to be paid, and it'll be a nice surprise because I don't know how much it'll be (although I expect it to be a VERY modest amount!).

Foxy

Foxy, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

About to head to work a few mornings ago, I glanced out my back window and saw what I initially thought was a dog jumping up onto a half-demolished outbuilding in our backyard, but on a second look it was clearly Mr Urban Fox here, accompanied by his feathered friend.

It's become more often recently that I've seen urban foxes, but rarely do I see them in broad daylight and this close up.

Apologies for the quality of the image, it was taken in a bit of a hurry through a glass window with raindrops on it.

Anzac Day

Tyne Cot cemetery, near Ypres, Belgium, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

The image is of Tyne Cot Cemetery, near Ypres in Belgium, which is a very moving place to visit, as I did three years ago when I took the photo.

Today is Anzac Day, national day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand originally for members of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps who fought and died at Gallipoli in Turkey during the Great War of 1914-18, but nowadays commemorating all those who died for those countries.

I note with some sadness that three members of the New Zealand Air Force died today when their helicopter crashed near Wellington when they were enroute to an Anzac Day memorial service.  The story is on the BBC Website.

They shall grow not old as we who are left grow old.  Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.  At the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.

Rest Eternal grant unto them O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon them.

On an unrelated matter, other than it's the same country, having left last night RE is currently in the air somewhere between the UK and New Zealand (via brief landings at Bangkok and Sydney) on her way to spend a month at home visiting her family and friends.  I know she'll have a great time, particularly after the stress leading up to an exam just three days before she flew, and the stress of less than a week ago not knowing whether flights would be at all possible from the UK and Europe after the eruption of the Volcano in the Eyjafjallajoekull glacier in Iceland.  There are some nice pictures on the BBC Website of the volcano, and Frikki, the Director of Music at St Mary's Cathedral in Glasgow who is Icelandic, has forwarded some REALLY spectacular ones from his brother who still lives there, but I don't want to post them because they aren't mine..

Master of all he surveyed

Donald Dewar, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

I was out for a wander in Glasgow city centre yesterday before meeting a friend for lunch, when I decided it was time to take a photo of the statue of the Right Honourable Donald Dewar, former First Minister of Scotland, who died suddenly in 2000.

The statue is outside Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, and he faces due south down Buchanan Street. Rather that take a normal view of it (oh, OK then, I took a couple of them too, including this one!) I decided to see what it'd look like from a different perspective, and this image is the result. I'm quite pleased with it, I have to say!

Titan in the sunset

Titan in the sunset, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

I quite like this photo, which I took yesterday when out for a walk instead of going to the gym like I'd told everyone I was going to do!

If I was going to be wanky about it I'd say the juxtaposition of the setting sun and the Titan Crane, the last remnant of the world famous and world class John Brown shipyard, was a metaphor for the industrial heritage of the river Clyde in general and Clydebank in particular. But I'm not going to be wanky so I won't!

Oh, and I went to the gym tonight instead!

Trip to Tighnabruaich

Trip to Tighnabruaich, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

A brief stop off at Tarsan Dam during a 150 mile round trip across the ferry from Gourock to Dunoon, around to Tighnabruaich, and up round to Strachur then back to Glasgow on Sunday morning.

The judicious use of a fence post and the self timer allowed this rare photo of me with the bike, rather than just the bike!

I really must get round to doing more trips this summer. After all, what makes riding the bike all year round worth it, is the extra enjoyment of riding in good dry weather for a brief period in the Scottish summer!

If you follow the link by clicking on the photo, I think it should take you to my Flickr site, and from there you can see a few other images from Argyll at the weekend. It really is such spectacular scenery, that it makes me slightly less jealous of a former school friend, AS, who now lives in Tucson Arizona and with her husband enjoys long motorcycle rides in the desert (as well as an host of other outdoor activities). She sent me some stunning photos recently. Glad she's doing well.

Choir Tour Tee Shirt

St Mary's Choir Tour 1990 - Tee Shirt Back Detail, originally uploaded by gordonrasmith.

I sincerely trust that gordonrasmith will not object that I've Blogged one of his photos from Flickr.

This is the detail from one of the tee-shirts from the 1990 St Mary's Cathedral Choir tour of Scotland which I wrote about recently. The printing on the tee shirts was exactly the same as on the red sweatshirts we were all wearing in the photo I posted. The black and white photo that is. So you'll just need to trust me that they were red!

In the post from a few days ago you can see one person, DW, centre row furthest left, wearing his sweatshirt back to front to show the map, which as you can see above contains times, locations and types of service in each cathedral.

Oh, and there's a cunning plan to do it all again in the 20th anniversary year. Next year that would be. A plan hatched in the pub after Evensong last Sunday.

So there's now a Facebook group as well as a Flickr group relating to the aforementioned cunning plan.

All we need to do now is organise it, so does anyone want to help ...............!

More history

St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow, circa 1994, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

Here's another historic one of the choir of St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow, taken around 1994 by an elderly gentleman called Monty who was forever taking such photos around the cathedral on an ancient camera. Thanks to gordonrasmith for reminding me of his name, which I had forgotten.

There are some of the same people in this one as were in the one on my earlier post relating to the tour of Scotland of 1990, and some new people too. All friends though.

Happy days.

Choir tour 1990

St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow, choir tour 1990, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

Just been doing some admin on Flickr, and came across this, one of my favourite photos. Favourite because this was a good time in my life. A very good time indeed!

In this choir tour of 1990, to aid the cathedral restoration fund, we visited all seven Scottish mainland Episcopal (Anglican) cathedrals in one day, and sang a full unaccompanied choral service in each with completely different music each time.

What a day!

And it all started from an idea mooted in the pub after Evensong. La Taverna it was, now called The Lansdowne, not that it matters!

It was the idea of Frkenny I seem to remember, or if it wasn't his direct idea then he was intrinsic to the whole plan. He's the one holding the teddy bear in the front row. I identify him only because in his own Blog he seems happy enough to have his photo published.

There are others in the photo who have an online presence these days, either by their Blogs, like ChickPea, or on Flickr, like gordonrasmith, or suchlike, but they, like me, choose relative anonymity so I shall not identify where they are in the photo, or indeed where I am. Several of them in the photo are also my friends on Facebook, which as an aside I have found to be a really good method of re-contacting old friends, and keeping up to date with what they're up to.

From memory, we started with Mattins in Oban at around 6am, having travelled there the night before, then an exciting (!) coach ride (with some nursing hangovers) up to Inverness for more Mattins, then Aberdeen for Eucharist, Dundee for Evensong, Perth for probably Evensong again, Edinburgh for more Evensong, and back to Glasgow for Compline at something like 10pm.

Now that I type that it doesn't seem right. The cathedrals and the order we visited them is right, but I'm not sure if the type of service I've quoted for each is correct, there seem like too many Evensongs! Perhaps someone can correct me, or reassure me that I'm right?

Update 1845hrs: Thanks to Pencefn for correcting me. Edinburgh was Compline, not Evensong.

According to AutoRoute, it's about 392 miles, and if you click the map you can see the route in a little more detail. We went clockwise.

The final Compline back at a packed St Mary's cathedral in Glasgow was very moving, and there were few of us who could actually sing the words of the hymn "The day Thou gavest, Lord, is ended" through the lumps in our throats and tears in our eyes. Or was that just me? No, I suspect not!

A recording still exists, I have one, but it was never meant for public distribution, since the quality is rather erratic, because due to the time scales involved we pretty much robed on the coach as we approached each cathedral, ran off and into the building where we processed straight into the service and sang it, processed out again and climbed straight back onto the coach. This left very little time for PH, and DW who are professional, no make that VERY professional, sound engineers to rush in and set up the recording equipment as we arrived and dismantle it afterwards before rushing back onto the coach. Oh, and they sang in the choir too! And I don't mean to suggest it's only the recording which was sometimes erratic, it was sometimes the singing too!

Many of the people in the photo above remain my closest friends, although for some we don't see each other terribly often. At the time though they seemed much more than friends, we were a family. Well, that's how it felt to me anyway.

Now that I look closer in fact, I can see that in the photo are my two best friends and three others who I consider amongst my very closest friends, one ex wife (still friends), one significant ex girlfriend (still friends), the man who generously and selflessly allowed me to live rent free in his flat (which he was rarely in) when my first marriage broke up and I was going through an extremely dark period in my life, the man who first introduced me to choral singing in the mid 1970's when he persuaded my brother and me to join the local church choir and who later persuaded me along to St Mary's cathedral choir, and the two men from whom I learned what little I do know about choral singing from 1983 when I joined the cathedral choir.

As well as that, if that weren't enough, there are people with whom I've shared some of the best days of my life (so far) with, some I've shared various levels of, shall we say, kisses and cuddles with (females, that is), and some who've supported me through the worst days of my life.

Occasionally the question is raised "in your mind, what age do you feel you are?" and there are various answers to that, usually round about the 18-21 mark. My answer is always "around 27-28" and I think that's because that's when I felt really happy, felt like I was starting to achieve something and thought things would remain exactly as they were. This photo was taken in 1990. I was 28.

This photo is a microcosm of a very significant part of my life.

And that's why it's a favourite.

Stuff your friend

Stuff your friend, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

I realise that it's been a while now since I was in San Diego, and it seems almost like a distant memory, but I haven't forgotten that I still have a few days of travel log to catch up with (or should that be "up with which to catch"?). I have the bare bones of it saved as a draft post and I'll get to it as soon as I can.

In the meantime, the image above is of a small billboard in San Diego Zoo. I think it's connected with a teddy bear manufacturing retail outlet.

Or is it?

You decide!

On a slightly related note, but only slightly, earlier in the year I was in Marseilles for a very enjoyable long weekend of socialising and singing with Glasgow Chamber Choir, while we were visiting our twin choir La Maîtrise Gabriel Fauré and during the early part of the weekend we were treated to a reception by the French choir.

During the socialising I noticed a poster advertising some sort of ice lolly, for licking, obviously, which I couldn't resist photographing, and which is reproduced on the right.

I make no further comment apart from the observation that it might sell well if it were available in the UK!

Hi tech stuff

It's a little after 3pm on Saturday 25th October. So what have I been up to here in still very sunny and unseasonably hot San Diego since my previous post on Wednesday afternoon?

On Thursday my brother, D, took me for a whistlestop tour of the place he works, Solar Turbines, in the centre of San Diego right next to the airport. What struck me most in the assembly area was, considering this is engineering on a big scale, it was really really clean. I'm not an engineer myself, and my previous limited experience of it was a week of work experience in my last years at school, probably around 1978, which I spent at the Terex earth moving equipment manufacturer near my hometown, and various short visits to collect my dad from his work when that was at a steelworks. All very noisy, dirty environments. But not Solar, it was all very clean, very hi-tech, pretty quiet, and very impressive.

Thursday evening saw us eating at the Fish Market at Del Mar/Solano Beach. An interesting if unsurprisingly fishy menu full of things of which I'd never heard before, let alone tried! And some beer too. Wouldn't necessarily recommend you try it, but it was OK.

On Friday we set off slightly north of the city, and finding the beach near Carlsbad we followed the coast south again, largely on the historic Route 101, aka the Pacific Highway, seeing groups of surfers on the way. Through a mixture of towns like Encinitas, Solana Beach, Del Mar and La Jolla (pronounced Hoya apparently), which varied from what looked like not much more than beach huts perhaps occupied by people who moved to California in the 1960's and never left (the area or the 60's for that matter!) and huge multi million dollar properties, probably occupied for a small percentage of the year by film stars and other such celebs.

We'll go back to that area next week though, to explore a bit more when RE gets here. On Friday we were headed somewhere specific, not just Pacific. Our destination was the rather large and exceptionally impressive USS Midway, a decommissioned aircraft carrier berthed in San Diego Bay just along from the Maritime Museum we visited earlier in the week. When she was launched in 1945 and for the following ten years, Midway was the largest ship in the world, and she is big! Lots to see, and one refreshing thing was that many of the aircraft on the flight deck have bits sticking out of them at body or head height (edges of wings and suchlike) yet there are very few roped off or protected areas so it would be easy to walk into something slightly painful. The authorities who run the ship as a museum have obviously trusted the intelligence of their visitors enough not to have felt the need to over protect them. I genuinely thought that was a nice touch, and perhaps all the more surprising in the notoriously litigious USA.

After leaving the Midway, we visited Beverages and More, which if it were in Glasgow would be a very regular haunt for me. I got some Gordons Gin and some Pastis, and D got various Belgian and UK beers and some wine. Great store!

So that was us all set for Tapas type starters followed by Jambalaya, sitting outside in the still warm evening, with large glasses of Pastis for me, and red wine for everyone else (except my niece J, who had Sprite!). A good evening, yet again, of good food and drink and company.

This morning, Saturday, and my sister in law and niece, C and J, available to join us since it's the weekend, we all set off to San Diego Wild Animal Park, a few miles north of San Diego. Something like 1800 acres of wilderness tamed and filled with a variety of exotic animals and boutiques selling the usual touristy tat. It's part of San Diego Zoo, which is in Balboa Park in the city and which we'll visit next week, and by all accounts it isn't quite as good as the zoo itself.

Now it's chill out time, because it's too hot to wander about outside, so I've copied all the photos I've taken so far from my camera onto a flash drive pen, just in case. I'd post more of the images here, but I've got the camera settings such that my images are roughly 3Mb each, and while if I was at home I'd use the Microsoft PowerToys image resizer to easily and quickly make small copies with just a right click of the mouse, D's laptop runs Windows Vista and the resizer only works with XP, so I don't want to upload too many big images. I'll upload smaller ones to my Flickr account after I return home, and provide a link to them from this Blog, in the unlikely event anyone wants to see them.

Ernie 4

Ernie, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

Guess who?

This is young Ernie just after returning home from his week long stay at the vet. He's still very weak, but as you can see he's trying to eat and drink, and he's doing his best to fight, so please keep those positive vibes coming his way!

And apologies for the orangeness of the image, I don't know what happened, and I can't be bothered to Photoshop it better!

Fyer Fyer!

Fyer Fyer!, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

My first attempt at playing with spot colour in Photoshop Elements. I think I'm quite pleased with the result, and now that I know how to do it, I think I'll be looking out for suitable scenes to photograph with the specific intent of doing something similar.

The image was taken months ago from my front window.

Facial hair

World Pipe Band Championships 2008, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

Taken at the World Pipe Band Championship last Saturday at Glasgow Green, coincidentally I saw this Pakistani Gentleman in Glasgow city centre either last year or the year before. His hair as well as his moustache were red then, but he's now grey on top. Still a fantastic moustache though!

Where's the red?

Where's the red?, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

On a recent trip to Pittenweem I was intrigued by the flag flown by the fishing boat in the harbour. Almost, but not quite a Union Flag.

Anyone any idea why there's no red in it?

Callander Highland Games

Callander Highland Games, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

Let's be honest, you wouldn't argue with the guy on the right would you? If he insisted that you tattoo his head you would just do it, no questions asked.

The photo was taken last weekend at Callander World Highland Games. The group, sorry, I can't remember what they were called, consisted of approximately 6 big hairy blokes and 1 fierce looking lady. I don't mean that disparagingly, she only looked fierce in the context of being amongst her colleagues. The instrumental mix was one set of bagpipes, and the rest were drums. Lovely drums. There's something about the primaeval beat of drums which resonates deep within your soul. I love drums me. OK I may be biased, being an ex drummer (in my late childhood) but I still maintain there's something very stirring about them.

But I digress.

The group were bloody fantastic. Traditional Scottish celtic folky type tunes, all to the surging, strong, exciting beat of the drummers. A great find.

So why the hell was I at a Highland Games? Surely they are more suited to photos on the top of tins of shortbread? Or for members of the royal family to attend when they're on holiday (from what!) in Jockland? Yes, all of that. But a couple of friends of RE from New Zealand were visiting, and we had gone to Loch Katrine for a short sail on a boat in the early afternoon, and afterwards found ourselves travelling via Callander back homewards, so stopped off to catch the last hour or so of the games. I was cynical beforehand. Why would anyone choose to go to such a tartan travesty? But I was very pleasantly surprised. The glorious weather helped of course.

The other main find of the weekend for me was a visit to The Lighthouse in Glasgow city centre. If you get a chance, go and have a look. Go on a Saturday because entry is free. And go to both the observation platform and the viewing area at the top of the spiral staircase. The views from each are great!

It's been a while since I've blogged, but as ever real life is getting in the way of virtual life. This weekend, tomorrow morning in fact, I'm off for the inaugural residential rehearsal weekend of the Royal School of Church Music (RSCM) Scottish Voices choir. Should be enjoyable, and no doubt I'll eventually blog about the experience!

Txt spk is crp

Txt spk is crp, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

Well I suppose I should be thankful they didn't call it the Yoof Centre!

If we pull the shutter half down no one will see the cigarettes!

If we pull the shutter half down no one will see us smoking!, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

I couldn't resist taking this last night on the way to the pub to celebrate RE's birthday with friends.

It just looked so strange, three people standing in a doorway, with the door behind them closed, and the shutter pulled down, in an apparent attempt at hiding the smoking! Well OK that probably wasn't what they were actually trying to do, but that was what it looked like to me!

It's also a rather interesting selection of footwear.

St George

Statue of St George, on St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

I like this image. It's one of the statues at the top of the tower, which is the bottom of the spire, of St Mary's Cathedral in Glasgow's Great Western Rd. It looks roughly north west I think.

The chance to go up the tower arose unexpectedly the other week when a friend, who happens to be a bellringer, was going up to do some maintenance work, so RE and I, and another two, went up with him, and then continued up past the ringing chamber, up past the bellchamber, and out onto the parapet. Quite a view from up there!

Unfortunately I only had my old wee Olympus Mju camera with me and not my new Finepix one, but I think I managed one or two reasonable shots, of which this is probably my favourite.

The Straw Locomotive

The Straw Locomotive, originally uploaded by Lay Clerk.

I've just discovered that I can post to my Blog directly from Flickr, so this post is really just to try that out, although it does happen to be a favourite photo of mine. I took it around 1989, just before moving away from Glasgow to live and work in the north east of England for a while.

The straw locomotive was an art installation to celebrate Glasgow's history in relation to train building. It was a locomotive, funnily enough, built of straw, funnily enough, and was hanging from the Finnieston crane which is about the sole surviving crane of its type on this part of the river Clyde, and used to load the real thing onto ships for export all over the world.