Saturday Statuary - Creepy Peepee

C'est vrai … Ceci n'est pas une Pipe

Moonlighting

Determined to get my head around the last mystery of my Canon EOS60D (how to properly focus for astrophotography) I headed out yesterday evening into the wilds and soon found myself standing in a field somewhere north of Hemblington (try finding THAT on a map) in the teeth of a freezing gale.

You'd think it'd be easy … switch the lens to manual focus and simply turn the focusing ring around to infinity.
HA!
Lots of blobby blurs.

Apparently the trick is to use Live View (the screen thingie rather than the viewfinder).
First up, get a nice bright star in the centre of the screen.
Once you've done that, use the digital zoom (don't touch the lens as dslr zooms are not parfocal - zoom in and out and you have to refocus) to get the image as large as possible on screen.
Then focus manually to infinity and gradually bring the focusing ring back closer. Weirdly, stars come into focus about two-thirds of the way out.
Next up, realise you've forgotten to plug in the remote shutter gizmo and repeat the process all over again, grumbling and cursing as you go.
You want to start at around ISO 1600 and have the lens as wide open as possible to gather lots of light. Set the camera to BULB and try a few test shots.
It takes a little while to get it right and I need a lot more practice. The Moon is way too bright at the moment to get decent photos of the Milky Way arching across the heavens so I'm going to have to wait for a clear, moonless night to try it properly.

As it was, I gave up, found a nice tree branch and snapped the Moon with the Pleiades off to the left and Jupiter to the right. Just a straight 15 second exposure at ISO 400 and f5.6 (something you don't even need a dslr for - most point and click cameras will manage those settings with ease - including yours, Mum). You'll have to click on the pic to enlarge it if you want to see the faint blue nebulosity of the Pleiades, though for some reason Blogger won't let it blow up more than a third the size I posted.

Through my binoculars (Nikon ActionEX 10x50 … Woot!) I could see Jupiter's four main moons strung out in a line, which is a wonderful sight. It's so much easier to go out with binoculars than to drag out the telescope and all its associated gallimaufry, especially in a freezing gale. As it was I was so busy looking at stuff that I stayed out way too long and had to bring several body parts home in bags to reattach when they thawed out.

Anyhoo … enough of that. It's amazing how boring I can be talking about taking a picture. And indeed a whole lot of other subjects, too.

Boring Stuff About Bendy Old Houses

Here's an example of all the messing about that old houses can undergo over the centuries (see yesterday's comments box).
This one's much older than Anna Sewell's house and much of the structure still dates from the original 1380s great hall.
This would have been the hall of a local landowner grown rich from the wool trade. It sits opposite the church and would have originally been surrounded by the mud and dung-built hovels of the rest of us.
It would have been one big room, open to the roof, with a central open hearth, smoke holes in the gables and a maybe a small window or two, with real glazing, unlike the hovels. A timber panel to one end would have housed the solar, where the owners slept. Cooking and crapping was done outside.
Sometime in the 1500s the roof was raised and a second floor put in, together with a large brick chimney and much larger windows (the two vertical panels to the left would have been a window).
In the eighteenth century, the 'lord of the manor' who lived here moved out into his newly built, elegant brick house at the head of the market square on the other side of the church (it's still there, though now it houses a restaurant), and this house was split into three homes. Even later, it had Victorian casement windows inserted and the old windows filled in and a brick outshot was built on to the side.
And much more recently someone moved in who clearly has no colour sense whatsoever.
Very few old buildings look anything like they did when they were built.
Much like the rest of us, really …
Hey ho.

Cute House

 Surviving German bombing and the equally destructive 1960's "Let's rip the heart out of the mediæval town and fill it with 'modern, American-style' big roads and vast car parks and a one-way system that only a brain-damaged octopus could have designed" misguided planning authorities, this cute little house sits in Great Yarmouth, between - on the one side - St.Peter's Church, and on the other, a needless arterial road leading nowhere, a supermarket and acres of massive ugly car park.
Great Yarmouth does have its treasures but they are regrettably few and far between. Any fan of Dickens on a David Copperfield pilgrimage will do better to stay home and read the book unless they are also masochistically addicted to disappointment.

 People who enjoyed Black Beauty during their childhood can, on the other hand, find Anna Sewell's little house still standing. I suppose the only thing that can be said for the dreadful desolation around it is that at least visitors will find a place to park.
The house itself is part of a late 16th century range that has been considerably knocked around over the centuries; the mix of Georgian windows to either side and of later replacement leaded casements to the house itself, plus Victorian added porches makes quite a charming medley.
Behind the house on the left is what remains of the mediæval monastery attached to St.Peters, but the whole area had the shit bombed out of it so there's not much left.
Anna Sewell's little house still cheers me whenever I drive past.

WTF

No WTF Monday post this morning, I'm afraid.
I've sat here enjoying other people's blog posts and emails and not realised how the time was rushing by. Now I have to leave for the office.
Doh!
It's all your fault for being so interesting.

A Song For Sunday Evening

I'm doing bugger all today.
I drove over to Phil's for lunch and he cooked an amazingly good Thai dish that would have made a great cookery post if I had bothered to take my big girls' camera (but I didn't).
Now I'm just faffing, avoiding doing the ironing and snacking on sashimi tuna while I wait for the Earth to die screaming, or bedtime, whichever turns up first. I'll take either.

While I wait - and as it's the season for such things - I'll recommend my favourite non-Classical album of the year so you can ask Santa for your own copy.
This year it's "Arco Iris" by fabulous fado singer Amina Alaoui, on ECM (yay for Manfred Eicher). She's taken traditional Portuguese fado, folk songs from Andalusia, Arabic music from her native Morocco and a jazz mentality. She has put together an astonishing band and recorded the most wonderful album of 2011. Hypnotic, sensual bliss.

ECM 2180. Santa should have a few copies left. Here's a track to be going on with …

Enjoy.

Saturday Statuary - Suffragette City

"S" is for Saturday and Statuary and also for Suffragettes. This is a strange little statue tucked away in a damp corner of Westminster (the big girls' Suffragette memorial is in the gardens of Westminster Palace and will do for another day's post).

This one never ceases to rankle with me. Read it and see why. Even in erecting a monument to the struggle for women's suffrage the city authorities manage to put men before women.
Sheesh!

Happy Saturday, peeps.

No Mo' Mo

Whew! Thank goodness that's over. Movember can go back in its box for another eleven months.
This is the crappy photo that the press are using. That's my boss with the shears and poor Luke getting attacked as he had the best tache. Mercifully you can't make out my Santa White moustache as the photographer forced us all to twiddle with our face-fungus and I managed to stand right at the back.

Anyhoo, we made over a grand for a good cause so I can't complain too much. I'm saving my complaining for the upcoming "festive" season.

Lunchtime Fishing

Hokay, December and we're starting to feel the latitude now.
This was lunchtime yesterday and you can see from the shadow on the roof just how high the sun gets here at the end of November. By solstice it will hardly creep above the horizon.
By three fifteen yesterday afternoon the only sun I could see was reflected off the spire of the Cathedral and by three twenty-five it was gone. It'll soon be dark here at half three. I hate it.

Anyhoo … so much for Movember. The moustache is history. Down the drain. I'm all pink and shiny and clean and I can eat toast and marmalade without getting most of it stuck in hair. Woohoo!

The photographers from some architecture magazine turned up yesterday after lunch and dragged us into the car park for some corny comedy group shots. If I manage to get hold of one I'll post it, but sheesh … they gave the boss a pair of shears and made us all twiddle with our moustaches while he pretended to attack us. Magazine photographer must be almost as soul destroying and thankless a profession as wedding photographer.

So … here comes December. The chaos and misery of Christmas. I hope you're ready. I'm feeling grouchy and sweary already.