Hogmanay 2009

How nice of nature to provide me with a topic for my final photo of 2009 - a partial lunar eclipse. I just caught the last few moments of this amazing phenomenon - happened to glance out of the kitchen window and saw the final shadows of the earth just clipping the disc of the moon at the four o'clock region.

Enjoy this one and keep watching in 2010 for a slightly different way of regular photo blogging.

Olympus E-500; ISO 100; f8; 1/250s; 150mm.

Monday 28/12

Icicle

Olympus E-3; ISO 400; f4; 1/250s; 60mm.

Boxing Day All Day Breakfast

After long lies all-round, George made an all day breakfast: bacon; sausage; fried eggs; fried mushrooms; fried potato scones; beans and tea. This mushroom found its way onto someone's plate after its photo-call!

Olympus E-3; ISO 100; f22; 1/250s; 24mm.

Christmas Day 2009

I always like this table decoration in the front room at home at Christmas. The red glass works well with the candle flame.

Olympus E-3; ISO 400; f2; 1/30s; 24mm.

Christmas Eve 2009

Snow

Out the back at my place this evening.

Olympus E-3; ISO 400; f3.2; 1/4s; 19mm.

Parascending

Christmas Cake

Christmas Sunday seemed an apt day to finish this year's Christmas Cake so here it is. Not quite up to my sister's standards but I think it looks OK for a once a year job - that I don't think I've actually done for about three years.

Olympus E-3; ISO 100; f16; 1/250s; 24mm.

Party Popper Aftermath

Obviously, the left half is the original image. I think the inverted/negative version on the right half looks better.

Olympus E-3; ISO 100; f11; 1/125s; 60mm.

Winter Squirrel

One of the squirrels from my garden.

Olympus E-500; ISO 400; f4.5; 1/125s; 150mm.

The Waverly at Ayr

Silhouette

River Irvine at Milton Mill

Arriving at Troon

Ailsa Craig

Traffic Diversion?

Swift Hands

Supporters

Tall Bike

This was one of a pair of rather unusual looking tall bicycles doing a tour of the UK.
The Tall Bikes website:-

www.tallbiketourbritain.com

says much more than I ever could about the bikes and the
tour.

Olympus SP500UZ; ISO 80; f4; 1/640s; 12mm.

Scottish Air Ambulance

A closely cropped shot of the the starboard side of the Scottish ambulance service's helicopter based at Glasgow. The other is based at Inverness. Both are Eurocopter EC135's. The service also has two King Air 200c fixed-wing aircraft based at Aberdeen and Glasgow. Between them these four aircraft oveer 3,000 missions every year.

Olympus SP500UZ; ISO 200; f3.7; 1/125s; 63mm.

Owl

A bird of prey at Rugby Park.

Olympus SP500UZ; ISO 80; f3.7; 1/320s; 63mm.

Pineapple

Olympus E-500; ISO 100; f14; 1/125s; 26mm.

Concept Saab

Total Lunar Eclipse

This is a series of images taken of the total lunar eclipse which occurred on 3 March 2007. At totality the moon takes on an amazing deep blood red colour......... before returning to its more familiar white as the earth's shadow passes by.

Macro Twist

Why? I don't know. Just liked it I suppose.

Olympus SP500UZ; ISO 80; f3.2; 1/100s; 11mm.

Safety Car

A wet day often means a busy shift for the safety cars at Knockhill.

Olympus E-500; ISO 200; f4.5; 1/500s; 150mm.

Pink Stretch Hummer

I saw this monster at the Limousine Show at Excel in London. Very weird......

Olympus E-500; ISO 1600; f4; 1/50s; 18mm.

Clydeside Dereliction

The remains of a building that no-doubt had a very important function in the life of the River Clyde in days gone by.

Olympus SP500UZ; ISO 200; f3.7; 1/50s; 63mm.

Upside-down World

Could a glass of water be used as a lens? Answers on a postcard please........

Olympus E-3; ISO 100; f16; 1/30s; 46mm.

Fire & Rescue

Don't worry, it's just a mock-up: a demonstration by the fire and rescue service of how they extricate casualties from crash damaged cars.

Olympus E-330; ISO 100; f8; 1/160s; 32mm.

Queen Mary 2 at Greenock

Olympus E-3; ISO 200; f22; 1/15s; 54mm.

Friday 30/10

I liked the pattern created in this gate by the twisted verticals at varying heights.

Olympus E-500; ISO 200; f5; 1/50s; 60mm.

Glasses

This image comes from a series shot to create one that will form the basis of an 'Alcohol Awareness' poster for a pre-festive period sensible eating and drinking campaign.

Olympus E-3; ISO 100; f4; 1/30s; 60mm.

Gull?

Not sure what type of bird this is. Presumably some kind of gull.

Olympus E-SP500UZ; ISO 80; f4; 1/640s; 63mm.

Moon over Dumbartonshire

A not quite full moon rising over Dumbartonshire.

Olympus E-3; ISO 100; f3.5; 18s; 200mm.

Johnnie Walker

One of several Johnnie Walkers who appeared at a recent rally in Kilmarnock protesting to Diageo over their proposed closure of the Johnnie Walker plant in Kilmarnock.

Olympus E-3; ISO 100; f5.6; 1/250s; 87mm.

Rosneath Sunset

Another sunset looking towards Rosneath Point - just out of shot.

Olympus E-3; ISO 400; f3.1; 1/60s; 83mm.

Whitelee Windfarm

This wildly over-exposed (but I quite like it) picture was taken looking up the tower of Turbine 25 at Whitelee Windfarm. This is one of 140 turbines on the site operated by Scottish Power Renewables which covers an area of 55 square kilometres and delivers up to 322MW of electrical power onto the national grid - enough to power about 150,000 average sized UK homes.

The turbine in the picture is about 90m tall, to the rotor hub and 135m to the tip of the uppermost vertical rotor. Each rotor arm is 45m in length and when the turbine is turning at its maximum speed the tip of each rotor is travelling at approximately 160kph.

Whitelee Windfarm took about three years to create and involved extensive work to preserve as much of the important local peat/moorland habitat as possible. Already, native grasses are well established and wildlife is living quite happily alongside the turbines. Indeed, over 90km of walking trails have been created across the site for the public to enjoy the natural beauty of this windy but interesting patch of land which sits about 400m above sea-level and catches winds directly off the Irish Sea.

You really should pay a visit.

Ropes and chains

I love how the ropes and chains in this image lead the eye into the picture from several points......

Centrifugal Force

Some would argue there is no such thing as "centrifugal force", but something is keeping those folk stuck to the wall of that spinning ride! I'm sure someone will enlighten us.

The Lock

This lock is on the Forth & Cyde canal as it passes through Falkirk.

Olympus E-3; ISO 100; f22; 1/2s; 42mm.

Subarus at Knockhill

The starting grid at Knockhill on a rainy day.

Olympus E-500; ISO 200; f4.5; 1/125s; 200mm.

Queen Mary 2

Cunard's flagship, Queen Mary 2, visited Greenock today. Unfortunately the weather wasn't kind to the people who came to see this huge vessel and even less kind to those of us who wanted to capture some of the essence of today's historic event on camera.

This image was taken from the quayside where the full size of QM2's 1132 feet length and 236 feet height can be appreciated.

The visit rounded-off with a short but rather good firework display.

Olympus E-500; ISO 200; f5.6 ; 1/125s.

An "actor"!

Olympus E-500; ISO 400; f5; 1/125s; 113mm.

Art or Rubbish?

Or maybe even "Rubbish Art"!

SUNDAY 27 SEPTEMBER 2009

This is a very uncharacteristic image of Charlie.

Overton House - Ceiling

This is the ceiling in one of the downstairs rooms at Overton House near Dumbarton, where I was born.

Coastal Patrol

Anyone for a sail?

This is the Waverly's destination/route board, photographed while berthed at Ayr.

Log Disc

Sunrise through the trees.