A package from England

I have been tracking a package being carried by UPS from England to New Zealand and it is interesting the circuitous route it has taken according to the tracking UK-Germany-China-Singapore and finally Auckland where the message reads
THE DRIVER WAS UNABLE TO COLLECT FUNDS ON THE 1ST DELIVERY ATTEMPT. A 2ND DELIVERY ATTEMPT WILL BE MADE

GEEZ!  Dont they know Dunedin is at the other end of the country, about 1500km away, and Ravensbourne is not an Auckland suburb :-)

You have to smile at the cluelessness of some people ?

Mery Christmas to everybody except perhaps that guy ... does he/she deserve a greeting ?

EDIT actually as I found out it was simply the driver pressing the right buttons and we should blame whoever invented the crazy system he /she has to work to.

Socialised medicine

I follow the New York Times and Kiwiblog and often read the scribblings of right wing republican writers talking about the dreadful socialised medicine of the civilise world as opposed to the un civilised American and else where system where unless it is an emergency to suffer without treatment if you cannot afford it, or fortunate to have an employer paying for your heath insurance... assuming that the insurance companies don't weasle out of the deal.

Apparently I had a heart attack the other Saturday morning, it was the worse I have had and I was quite scared so I called the white taxi and was in a ward within a few hours with a cardiac specialist checking me.  Rest of saturday and sunday I survived by doing nothing but rest in bed and having a couple of morphine shots when I did something silly like walking across the ward to the toilet.  Come monday off to the Angio Theatre and had things poked up my arm to enlarge the solitary vein which has been keeping me alive for the past twenty five years or so.  Originally I had a quad bypass but three blocked up in a matter of a few years leaving a single vein.

Tuesday lunch I was home.  So really I think these folk who crit socialised medicine are foolish to put it mildly... long may we preserve our socialised medicine.  I am sure it has it problems but nothing on the scale of the American situation and similar set-ups.

New Zealand's Alcohol Problem

I read a pleading letter to the editor in the ODT today while I had a lovely mushroom soup and toast at the Gardens' Cafe next to New World.   Pleading for John Key to do something like raising the age to 20, ban supermarkets from selling alchohol and so forth, the usual stuff.


Really the only solution is for the so called adults in out society to stop abusing the stuff themselves and set an example to their children which would largely solve the problem.  The only hurt people would be the shareholders of the beer palaces and a few workers.

We I raised my son with the help of my wife, and pre-occupied with work it was largely her efforts, we rarely had any alcohol in the house.  We are not teetotal and away on ski-trips I usually put myself toe sleep in our camper van after a hard days ski-ing with a single can of beer.  I am sure our son had the occasional booze up when he left home  and treats the stuff with respect and moderation.   I, in retirement, started drinking regularly, one glass of red wine or a single stubbie each day, for medicinal reasons ... supposed or not supposed to be good for cardiac patients depending on what you read.

Raising the drink purchasing age to 20 will not affect me but banning supermarkets will make me very annoyed as I normally buy whatever beer is the loss leader and with a monopoly I'm sure the liquor stores will not follow this practice, probably the other measure will be some dam fool minimum price regime.

Wild Outdoors

My wild outdoors was a rather angry animal who was very annoyed at me even coming not that close to him, I was using the 280mm Angle of View end of my zoom.
Smails Beach about two miles long, it seemed very long and empty, with just myself and two of these animals on it.   As I edged closer he reared up and openned his mouth to reveal his not too clean teeth, probably covered with nasties to infect me if I survived the attack.

I have a one second review of the shot I have just taken and he must have started moving as I took the photo ... but it was not until one secopnd later that I saw him coming at me and beat a hastie retreat ... I guess I am here becuase he couldn't be bothered to follow through.  Anyway my shot .... "Say Arrrgh!"

I missed the meeting so I don't know what the judge thought of it or if his comments brought forth different results than the print competition mentioned earlier.  I hope so

Stripping banned in Iceland [2010]

Found this in my drafts from 2010 when I read a thread about the new Icelandic law which bans strip clubs ... no mention of prostitution apart from a suggesting that strip clubs are a front for it.

Seems to me that a woman should be able to use her talents in whatever way, that is legal, she wishes. We should be very careful of making things illegal. I'm proud to live in New Zealand where we have made prostitution legal for the basic point it gives women who work at it the protection of the law instead of being at the mercy of anybody likely to be 'shopping' her, and perhaps demanding her services for not doing so.

Production gimics

Way back when Television started it was felt that commercials should be separated by 'optical wipes' and somebody had organised hundreds of these things, little short wipes which were spliced in between commercials.   At the same time there was a French magazine programme called Image de France which used to insert proper optical where one picture wiped into the next ... but we ...TVNZ .. had to edit in these pure white and jet black strips of film ...I never heard from the technicians what effect it had on transmissions.  Cutting to a shot with a large amount of clear white sky would upset the electonics I'd been told when I used to shoot the odd newclip when our cameraman was already out on a job.   One time the Journo slung off at me for being 'artie' ...I orgaanised the branches of a tree across the sky above a building.
I did it to avoid bounce on transmission, he though I was trying to be clever :-).

So from all that you can guess I have an aversion to all the fancy wipes people insert in the videos and projected still programmes becuase it is what TV does so it must be good ... yuck!

So when I saw the British RPS show last year I was disgusted at the short 'shot length' which didn't give you a chance to appreciate the excellent photography ... I gave up after awhile and closed my eyes.   This year we had a programme from the same source and each shot was shown for more than enough time to appreciate it but also the duration of largely facile comments by some organiser guy ... trying to be humourous in many cases and falling flat IMO.

However the programme had been produced by some guy with two lots of letters after his name on his credit, the acceptances were only given one lot in the commentary, but sadly this two lettered guy inserted opticals between every shot ... some were very apt but most simply a interuption between images, themselves very competantly done [ if you like that sort of thing].  See my other post on that :-)

When I saw his production company[?] credit my thoughts were well I won't reccomend him for sure, he may know how to win letters with his photos BUT....

A recent occasion when I also closed my eyes was with a programme with fabulous shots of trees in various settings and lighting treatments .... it should have been highly enjoyable BUT ... the main picture occupied the centre of the screen, which was too small to give jusstice to the shots, and a derivative of that photo was used as a drop-edge background.   It was great to start with but very quickly I simply didn't know where to look for movement in the background attraction my eyes ... it was a horrible presentation of really top quality imagery.   The double picture effect used sparingly would have been good, but throughout the whole programme ... URRGH !

Well that is my beef for today :-)

A Video Editing programme

I am rather pleased, hence this post, that at long last I have found a programme to handle my MOV file which I shot two years ago when on holiday in the States and the UK shot with my Panasonic FZ50.

I bought at great expense Corel's X4 video ediiting programme and found it didn't handle MOV, wasted more money on some conversion programme which resulted in just the audio being heard ... so I was rather frustrated and simply left it subject alone.  As a retired Film-Video editor I am not sure I really want to bother with film or video anymore ... prefering the simpler still photography.

But it would be, and now is, nice to be able to edit together those MOV files and trim them and I am at the moment in the middle of doing a compilation .... Yippee.

Oh the programme you wonder? weill search for AVS4YOU and you will find what I'm using.

Enjoy ... I hope  :-)

In search of dress shorts in the off season

Yesterday afternoon I spent a fruitless search for shorts... there was one pair of dark blue for $99 at Bob Shepard .... the first place I checked. But I wanted a lighter colour shade after the fashion of the ones I had had but donated to the Sallies thinking to reduce the 'junk' around the place.  Shorts in Dunedin? a very rare occassion :-)  For me anyway.


Next Arthur Barnetts who had not had dress shorts for a season or so. He suggested Bowker

Nothing at Bowkers though he did suggest shortening a pair of longs.

Ever hopeful I continued to Farmers ... nix

Saw CRT on Cumberland as I was on my way to Alex Campbell's ... nix



Alex Campbell admonished me for coming to him last, I said I usually do come to him first. He checked his store from which my purchases usually come when one of the ladies serve me but again ...nix



Could get it from Auckland but a bit charry of ordering sight unseen as I did with a shirt from them which I was not really happy with ....



So FINALLY I remembered your suggestion of thrift stores ... this was after going to new world for supplies so back down to the Sally's and after going through their rack I finally found a pair of long trousers in a nice pale blue. Back to Spotlight for some cotton and this afternoon I cut the long legs off and after some trials and tribulations and discovering that bunched cotton underneath comes from lack of tension :-) The machines not me :-) it came right and I have my shorts YIPPEE!!!

I also found a matching shirt ... just like the ones I donated to them when I had my cleanout :-)


So 3.50 for the trous', reduced from $5 becuase it was a 'blue lable'. 3.50 for the shirt, $3 for the cotton and about half an hour with the machine and I'm ready. I am very pleased with the cotton match which is better that the factory did in Fiji where the trous came from.

Changing Photographic Styles

Last night I wasted quite a bit of time sitting through the Royal Photographic Society's Digital Show which comprised largely of blurred and fuzzy images.  As a group they have decided that this is todays photography and reward each other with acceptances and honours for regurgitating this sort of, most would say, rubbish.   It reminds me of how back in 1953 I visited the RPS exhibition in London along with fellow photographic students from Guildford School of Art and the theme then was soft portraiture and soft landscapes .... quite unlike the sharp and crisp commercial images we were being trained and helped to produce in our studies .... we collectively thought the RPS was rubbish and I guess my aversion to the RPS transfered itself to the NZPS or whatever it is called .... they have their style too.

Preceeding that show was our our monthly competition 'Wild Outdoors" and guess what we got?  Yes you guessed, it was in the style of the NZ camera club .... landscapes ... urrgh!  The judge in his openning remarks said he had hopes for humans doing wild things out of doors ... but no ... just landscapes although the winning photograph was steps above the rest with its beautiful capture of frost and the only photograph I remember twelve hours later out of all I saw last night, UK and local NZ.  The print quality of all the local images was of a very high level  .... BUT!

Two weeks time we will have projected images, I think I know what I will be entering but that will remain confidential until after the night :-)

The Naive Tourist

That is me!   It is a warning to watch yourself when abroad.   Was on my own with the car belonging to my then daughter-in-law driving up Phantom Canyon in Colorado when a couple of bobcats darted across in front of the car.   Being keen to get wild life shots I was out of the car in a flash along with my Panasonic FZ30 [ 8mp ] and stood on the edge of the road some ten/fifteen feet from the car.   I saw one of them across a field in a clump of trees watching me.  Even with x12 zoom [ 432mm Angle of View ] I thiought it was too small in the viewfinder but I carefully pressed the trigger.   Then I turned my back on it and walked back to the car.

Completely forgetting that there were two of them and afterwards I wondered .... was the mate sitting behind the bushes beside the road?   Gave me if not nightmares some queasy moments thinking about how silly I was to turn my back on such creatures.  particularly when I met up quite close to one in a wildlife park.   Even though he was behind wire netting I was very nervous walking away from him as he sat, head out of his den, watching me.

Full of enthusiasm for "Wild Life" I then ventured onto a long beach, quite close to home, and got too close to a grumpy old sealion.   He openned his mouth and I took my shot .... trouble was that I have a one second review for me to confirm I have the shot ...and I didn't see him lunging at me .... I beat a hasty retreat and he fortunately stopped chasing me ... I am sure he could have gone faster than I could run at 76yo then.

 

Firefly Abroad

They are re-building the road outside my house.  First they use a viscious grubbing machine to rip the old surface to pieces and then lay a nice new surface about two inches deep.   Here they are laying the final bit and with a two second exposure it is supprisingly sharp ...I was using a tripod ... but you will note the 'Firefly' .... well at least that's what my son suggested it could be ... LOL

The rig is continually moving forward.

A freindly fellow

Was upin one of the local cemetaries, an old and largely disused one I suspect, photographing the graves for reference for the local council website and had just finished the current part of the assignment when this freindly fellow decided to stay still long enough to enable me to get a shot of him.   No sooner had I pressed the trigger than FLIT he was off again .... so pure luck but  it was nice of him to help me .... near a decade since I had a similar chance and with my slow digital of those days I didn't get a shot.

Tone Mapping

Recently came across this term and not sure what is happening aprt from the obvious compression of tones to suit the limited range of the display buit tried it on the previosyu street photo and think it somewhat better than the previous treatment which took much longer :-( LOL

The Photographic Society

Last night was a monthly meeting and we started off with print of the month and first up were the ones which didn't get placed and the fist was interesting. Cannot show you here becuase not mine. The lower part of the screen was a vivid bed of flowers with an early eveing shot of a street behind. The judge commented that it was two picture becuase there was nothing to link the two 'halves' together. I am sure that there could have been a lampost or something to do this in the conventional way. But what struct me about the shot, and it might be my imagination, was the way the myriad of colours, tail lines of cars, neon signs, street lights had a similar colourful presence in the top halve similar to the bed of flowers ....so I am left with a feeling that there are more ways than one to connect elements of a photograph together.
As for my entry, not selected for a place, which I didn't expect but of course hoped :-), I found it interesting that the elements of the composition which act IMO as a frame around the [picture were slammed and were too dark, judge didn't like the black. See for yourself ....

Actually it was an accident, like often happens with me in editing, that the background was burnt out and I used the curved tool to try and fix. Brought the top right hand end of the line downwards with little or no effect until it reached the bottom and I liked, I think, what I saw :-)
You can see a bigger version on my website
http://jcuknz-photos.com/PHOTOS2012/PHOTOS_2012.html

nearly a year has gone by

Due to computer problems and other reasons I lost this page and access to it. Just found it and sadly the BOSS is no longer with us but some ashes in my rose box guarded by a beautiful and sleek white cat satuette.