Macro Monday - Pussy Willow...

Monday 21 February 2011

For Macro Monday at Lisa's Chaos this week I couldn't resist photographing the beautiful silver grey pussy willow...

I never feel that Spring has arrived until I see these lovely fluffy bits of silver...

It was difficult to get the close ups in focus because they were quite high in the tree...

So Beautiful.

I loved this image with the blurry willow in the background...

Love the colours of the twigs...

SOOC Sunday - A Walk in the Waterworks

Sunday 20 February 2011

For Straight out of the Camera Sunday over at Murrieta365 

 I have chosen a few photographs that I took on a walk around the Waterworks Park in North Belfast.  

This park is beautiful with two lakes and a small river with waterfalls...

Often when I am on a walk I find myself looking and photographing close up images but on this walk I found myself looking at vistas beyond the park...  In this photo I have photographed Sampson and Goliath the two large cranes that were used to build the Titanic when Belfast used to have a ship yard.

This photograph was taken looking across the smaller lower lake where the swans love to congregate.  I had seen a woman and two children feeding the birds a few minutes before and the seagulls were still circling hopefully but the geese were moving away...

I really liked this image of the cityscape looking across the upper lake towards the Cavehill Road.

I particularly liked the reflections of the buildings in the water.

This cheerful looking scruffy dog was walking with his owner a little ahead of us and I couldn't resist taking a photograph of him.  He had such smiley face and the clearest blue eyes...

I couldn't decide whether I preferred the portrait or landscape composition of this image and in the end opted for the portrait.  I really loved the reflected bullrushes in the lake with the Cavehill and Napoleon's Nose in the back ground.

I liked this view of the the dip between Black Mountain and Divis with the little bridge in the foreground.  It is amazing to think that part of North Belfast and most of West Belfast lies beyond the trees between the park and the mountains.  Belfast is surrounded by mountains and hills.

This view shows the Cliftonville Football Stadium with its lights reflected in the lake.  

So many completely different vistas can be seen as I walk around the two lakes (which are on two different ground levels)

Macro Monday - Catkins

Monday 14th February 2011

Valentine's Day - Happy Birthday Mum

We went out for a wonderful walk yesterday along the Lagan Towpath.  I wouldn't call it peaceful as it was a little like trying to avoid being run over by the shoals of cyclists who expected walkers to jump onto the muddy verge to avoid being run over without giving even the warning sounds of a bell trilling to let us know they were almost on top of us.

Macro Monday at Lisa's Chaos

As we walked along, on what was actually a rather dull grey day, the sun suddenly came through a gap in the clouds and just lit up the hazel tree which was covered in beautiful new catkins or as I always think of them... lambs tails...

They were such beautiful golden green colours lit up against the greyish blue sky...

And just gave me the sense of Spring coming...

It is years since I have walked along the towpath.  Mum and I used to walk along here on a very regular basis and spent many happy hours thinking, talking and planning our lives...

A wonderful Day and it is great to be getting back to my blog...

SOOC Sunday - Reflections

Sunday 13 February 2011

Straight Out of the Camera Sunday  over at Murrieta 365

I have finally been out for a walk with the camera.  It feels like a long time ago that I was happily snapping away and working on my Sony laptop and Dell PC in much happy contentment.  

Then the unimaginable and I lost both in the same week.  

I am now trying to get used to using my new MacBook Pro and it has been a steep learning curve because everything works differently even little things like the shortcut commands that I have become so used to.  Also trying to get used to new software so I am not quite sure if the photograph has retained its clarity with reducing the size for the web.  

We went out for a lovely walk along the Lagan towpath today and this photograph was taken in the early afternoon.  I loved the sky reflected on what was actually very dull grey looking water.

Changes...

2 February 2011

Well, I have been pretty much offline, other than checking my email once a day, for the past couple of weeks.  It has been very strange and I actually think I had withdrawal symptoms.  

My computer died.  This was a horrible shock.  Particularly as my website was on it.  Yes I had an older version of my website backed up on my external hard drive which would be great if it had been possible to even get the external hard drive to allow me to put my password in to unlock it so that I could have tried to use it on Neil's laptop.  But no.  It wasn't going to allow this.  Still haven't been able to get access to it and as it contains 130 GB of my photographs this is rather upsetting to say the least.  

When I started to look at compatibility issues for the software I use with the new Windows 7 I realised that there was going to be a serious problem for my website as Frontpage is not compatible with Windows 7.  So I cannot rebuild my website in the same software.

At this point, as I spent time reading PC Adviser, Which Laptop, etc... and had almost reached the conclusion that it was a tie-break between a new Sony laptop and a Toshiba laptop... my sister said... "What about a Mac?"  "Be open minded" was her next comment... Food for thought.

On Sunday, Neil and I went into the PC World where we had seen a Toshiba that I had decided was definitely the one for me.  But it was gone.  Not getting anymore in.  End of a range. Hmph.

Neil wanted a strip of DDR2 ram as he still has hopes of being able to make the old PC (5 years old) work again.  I was of a different frame of mind.  

Having had many completely sleepless nights (I am not someone who suffers from insomnia... I am the type who is asleep the moment my head touches the pillow)... now I had found myself sorting out the untidy baskets in the bathroom at 4am as I had decided I may as well do something useful if I couldn't get to sleep... 

I realised that I was actually in the mood for a change...

We travelled to the Lisburn branch of PC World, for Neil to buy his DDR2 Ram and I was browsing the   laptops when a very helpful girl came over to me from the Apple Mac area.  "Did I know much about the MacBook's?" she enquired.  "What did I use my computer for mostly?"  "Photos, website, blogging" came my reply.  "Would I like her to show me what Apple computers could do?"  

I followed her over to the Apple area.  She started going through how the computer worked.  An hour and a bit later... I left with the price lists... names of software... and a new found enthusiasm...

I didn't want to rush into anything.  

By Tuesday morning, I had decided.  I went into the Apple Store at 9:15 am and said that I wanted to buy the 13" MacBook Pro.  So, the very capable young man, took me through the workings of the MacBook Pro again, gave me a tour of the shop, and I left at 12:30 pm with a new MacBook Pro laptop, a 3 year warranty, and one year of one-to-one training.  This is amazing.  I can book sessions to learn how to use my software properly.  Help with Rapid weaver as needed.  

Today, feeling a little like things were finally going right again... I bought a nice new Belkin Wireless system so I am now online again and I have a new hub to plug all the peripherals into.  

Great new External hard drive for the Mac (these are huge now... mine is 1 TB but they even come in 2TB sizes...)  So now... I am trying to find a way of cataloguing the photos on the external Hard Drive to make it easier to find specific ones when I am looking for them... and I need to try to find some type of access to my photographs... Should have had the back up backed up shouldn't I...  

And I have started planning my new Sasha Doll Style website... I printed out the website so I have a paper record... (400 pages spread between 2 ring folders)... I hadn't realised that the website had become quite so big...  Plenty of work ahead...