Bedrock

Watched a decent and original sci-fi movie “FAST COLOR” tonight while earlier today we saw a great example of Spanish driving: Maureen and I were enjoying Cafe Con Leche in a little park in Huescar this morning when along came a supermarket delivery truck. Determined to get through the very narrow road, he ploughed across the pavement and into a road sign, damaging the sign and no doubt his side-mirror in the process. I’d be surprised if his vehicle side escaped unscathed. This is not untypical behaviour but it did raise a nervous laugh or two. When done, the driver just continued on as if nothing had happened..

After that, we popped by an office building and just happened to notice the most beautiful wall tiles you see in the photo above. As always I had my phone handy to take the odd pic while out and about. See church below – also in Huescar, a town which has more than it’s fair share of Kodak moments and I can never resist, especially when the sun is out.

Next, Maureen found a new (to us) Chinese store to buy some embellishment for at least one of her dresses. The results I’ve seen so far look good.

We also had a reminder of just how treacherous our little approach road can be to someone not familiar with it. Our neighbours were getting a large delivery and Dave and I were guiding the driver from the village and to his cave. We’ve been doing this for so many years it is second nature but the delivery guy seemed absolutely mortified at the idea of driving down a road only marginally wider than his rather large vehicle. As you might imagine we found that incredibly funny.

This evening, I went with Dave who was taking the dog for a walk and I took my wanna-be dogs with me. Simba and Ruffy (our cats) both enjoy going for walks with us, something denied to them for so long in the past when we had inconsiderate dog owners for neighbours – unlike the current situation where the dogs are all well behaved, lovely animals with responsible owners. Today our corner of Galera is generally very peaceful though we did have a scare as 2 women came by with 5 barking dogs NOT on leashes, which scared the cats – there are laws about keeping dogs on leashes, sadly not too well policed and even if they were, the laws don’t seem to cover the noise aspect of unruly dogs. Thankfully in this case no harm was done as the cats were quick to find hiding places then re-joined us when the danger passed. Perhaps next time the owners may be more considerate – one can only hope.

Finally, for technical readers I’ve discovered a relatively new web browser today (always something new) called “Brave” – got it running on the PC and Android phone and it is looking very promising. Also found several new watch faces for (IMHO) one of the best watches in the world, my Samsung Gear Classic – the experience is almost like getting a new watch every day and most of the watch faces are free – I keep several dozen on the watch at any time.

Here we are, despite recent setbacks – including the (hopefully first and last) epileptic fit I had last week and the washing machine back in Wark on Tyne giving up the ghost (exactly, what can go wrong, machines like that are so simple? – sadly so are the people who deliver new ones, so simple in fact that they could not fit a mains plug – sad doesn’t begin to describe that situation as a result of which we had to get our own guy to organise getting the new washing machine running), despite all that and given some helpful weather, we’re here in Andalusia, making the best of retirement and have joined the local yoga group and I’ve joined the local photographic club. I’m not about to attempt a demo of yoga so here instead are some photos taken over the last few days.

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We just happened to be wandering through the nearby town of Huescar this weekend on our way to the fair and I got a sudden urge to take some snaps at the park on the way. Got to make the best of this weather.

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We took a short drive out yesterday with friends to Orce, mainly to cool off in the spring-fed pool just out of town – and while there I took a few photos… well, you never know, it might rain for the rest of the year (probably not).

Amazing how you can visit a place year after year and not spot its best features….

The photo you see above, I took while wandering around the hills, just up from our cave. This is typical of the nearby scenery. One of our neighbours, a Scottish couple, live in a cave even higher up than our own and have a marvellous roundabout in the middle of their garden.

As the weather picks up generally, we’ve had several days recently peaking at 30C. There are a few clouds this morning but this is now very much the exception – still, gives me a little time to update the blog… I’ve also been checking in on the home automation back in the UK to verify that all is well. From what I can tell, it is starting to warm up back in Wark, too.

Last night we had a special treat, imported spiced pork from our friend Antonio (Mr Shark) in Italy.

Last night was my first visit of the year to the (very friendly) Galera Photo club – and what a pleasant evening.

Some time ago I received a request via email to take and submit photos on the subject of “A Walk in the Park” for the next meeting. Simple enough, I thought. Though I’d read enough to realise that the park in question was in nearby Baza, I had no idea which park in particular they were talking about.

Despite missing the organised park tour thanks to my rubbish memory, I took it upon myself to trundle along to Alameda park in Baza before the Monday judging meeting last night, armed with phone and camera and came back with a shed-load of photos only to then realise that I had no idea what the judging criteria were. In the end i only liked one of my many photos and while reasonably well exposed, it wasn’t that hot on one of the declared criteria – a subject. Who would have thought I’d wander into a popular park mid-day to find no people, no dogs, nothing of any great interest.  As it happens, had I been more on the ball, I could have made something of the various kids rides etc. but that never occurred to me at the time.

Luckily, despite having decided to keep a low-profile at the meeting, when I arrived (early), the very first thing that happened was that I was cornered and asked to be the judge for the night. Just as well I wasn’t itching to show off a photo.. and so much for the “low profile”.

I’m wary about judging the photographic work of others… with only one winner, the judge is guaranteed to annoy everyone BUT the winner. Happily, they’re a cheerful and forgiving lot down at the club (the meeting was held in the excellent Hotel Galera with owner Jack providing coffee). My choice of winning photo scored (imho) on a combination of techniques they’d been learning about in previous meeting (composition, focus, exposure) and a sudden urge to reward hard-to-repeat photos. While there were many decent entries which included static items such as the tree in my own (above) un-submitted photo, the winner had chosen a bunch of elderly gentlemen and one lady in a unique park-bench opportunity.  At that point I was glad I’d left my photo out of the mix.

I’m fanatical about photo exposure and hence I have a tendency to concentrate on techniques such as HDR (high dynamic range)  which, though commendable, has not yet been covered at the club and hence could not be factored into  the judging. As it happens, another popular trick in photography, “rule of thirds” wasn’t discussed until last night so that might’ve been another reason to keep my pictures out of the mix had I thought of it, In short, a good night, excellent weather, great, friendly company and of course some of us ended up at “La Posa” bar to finish off the night.

If anyone is even remotely interested, I started my photographic journey some 54 years ago with an inexpensive camera and a friendly local chemist where I could buy all the chemicals I needed to do the whole DIY processing thing (imagine that today, firstly “high street pharmacies” don’t supply chemicals and imagine the “terrorist” implications of buying highly flammable, basic tools of the photo-lab” toolbox) all of which gave me a great start so long ago.

I went from DIY low-budget photo-snapping and processing through several expensive cameras plus decent enlarger to a complete void until the dawn of the digital camera camera age and then onto the smartphone age. Recently I sold my Nikon P900 83x zoom SLR and today my phone is, largely, my camera of choice, boasting a decent camera and tools to do all of the tricks I used to spend hours on in the lab (otherwise known as my dad’s garage) and far more besides. All that is missing is a decent telephoto lens and I have a small Panasonic camera for that. 

Despite owning Photoshop and several other PC-based photo packages, my tool of choice has for some time been the free Google-developed “Snapseed” app which I transfer from one Android phone to another. Insanely powerful, this package gives me everything I need to brighten up otherwise dull photos. On the odd occasion I get the urge to “cartoon-ify” a photo, another favourite app is “Prisma”.   Of course, depending on your needs, there are many photo apps for both Android and IOS, some are excellent, few of note are free, some are utter rubbish even after upgrading to the paid versions, hence my choices.

I’m looking forward to other photo-opportunities this summer as the weather picks up and hopefully meeting up with other members of the local photo club. With luck I might even convince Maureen to join in on the odd occasion.