2018 Picture A Day

20180101 New Year's Day

1 / 365 A blustery New Year's Day at Milford on Sea cliff.

20180102 Moon After Yule

2 / 365 The first of two full moons this month. This is the result of a series of handheld shots taken just after midnight, centred in PIPP and stacked in Autostakkert 3, with a little sharpening in Registax 6 and tidy-up/crop in Lightroom. As with my last full moon attempt back in July, Stellarium says this is only 99.9% illuminated, but that's close enough to full for me. ;) Getting some odd 'straight line' sensor noise on part of the frame that I've never had before. Hopefully it's not too noticeable at this resolution, but more investigation is required.

20180103 Into the Woods

3 / 365 Thought I'd have a stab at Lensbaby month. This is the Sweet 35 on my Sony but with a Zhongyi Lens Turbo II adaptor which definitely gives it more 'bend' (if that's the right word) on a crop sensor. I got a heady three shots before the heavens opened and I got 'peel your jeans off'-level drenched - and missed an Amazon delivery to boot. Not bad for a miserly twenty minute break out of the house.

20180104 Blue Hour Bokeh Boat

4 / 365 First Mayflower Park Thursday shot of the year. I was late for cake as I couldn't resist popping down to the water to see the ships in the blue hour light. Balancing the camera on a fence post is even harder with a Lensbaby Composer Pro on the end of it. ;)

20180105 Edge Prowl

5 / 365 Had a play with the Lensbaby Edge 80 today. I find the 80mm focal length a bit 'long' for me... so I tried it with a 1.5x teleconvertor. ;) I discovered the neighbour's fat cat was staring at me whilst I tried to work out how to focus it. He was obviously wildly unimpressed as he sauntered off almost immediately. I did manage to sort of get him in focus though - and with the focus slice along the path. Yay? There are a few more shots from my walk - and said cat looking unimpressed - over on Tumblr: http://humphreyhippo.tumblr.com/post/169349196429/20180105-edge-shots I so nearly posted the fern flare one, but I could get that shot most days. The cat... not so much. :)

20180106 Reynolds

6 / 365 Posting a bit late as I didn't have the enthusiasm to sort it out after the game last night. A dead rubber game in one of this season's "made up cup" competitions against Telford Tigers - I honestly couldn't tell you which one. Bison managed to pull it back in the third to win 5-3 - including scoring one of the most bizarre accidental goals I think I've ever seen - but the rumours are rife that the dilapidated rink is closing at the end of the season. When the best case scenario is your team moving another 35 miles further away (to a temporary home in Slough), it's never good. It would pretty much be the end of live hockey for us.

20180107 Deadman's Curve

7 / 365 Eight seconds balanced on the signpost for the entrance to Deadman Hill car park at blue hour. I think this spot is actually known as Deadman Corner (it's on Roger Penny Way aka the B3078), but that doesn't sound as dramatic. ;) The actual sunset slipped behind the only bit of cloud in the sky, but we were still treated to the most gorgeous orange graduation all the way home.

20180108 Discovery Badge

8 / 365 Messing around with fabric textures in Blender using Object ID maps to make one set of threads darker than the other. The badge is based on the new Star Trek Discovery Command badge. I'm pleased that I got the shape, the cutaway and the convexity, but I couldn't get a decent edge bevel without horrendous artefacts so it still doesn't like right. :(

Catkins

9 / 365 Rubbish flat light today - very dim and overcast. I went for a brief wander with the Lensbaby Double Glass Optic, but other than another startled cat and these catkins, there wasn't much to see.

20180110 Hearts in the Grass

10 / 365 A little play in the park with the Lensbaby Double Glass Optic and the Creative Aperture Kit. It was very muddy - I was literally sinking as I shot this. My jeans are now in the wash. Saw a fox in the park today for the first time ever. He legged it as soon as he saw me. :(

20180111 Sverchok Rose

11 / 365 This is a port of Marc Duiker’s Desert Rose StructureSynth Eisenscript into the Blender Sverchok Generative Art node: https://www.flickr.com/photos/marcduiker/14712656819/ Normally I'd want to adapt a script more than this (which is basically a straight copy) but I'm a bit under the weather and was concentrating on understanding how it was actually working. GA XML is here in the unlikely event anyone is interested: https://humphreyhippo.wordpress.com/2018/01/11/matrix-apply/

20180112 Lensbaby BIrthday Blur

12 / 365 Ha! Well this didn't work at all - but we've started eating the cake now. :) Had the day off for my better half's birthday. Still have this damn cold, but it's been nice to laze around and do sod all.

20180113 Building Blocks

13 / 365 This is the product of my first original Generative Art script. I wrote the original eisenscript in Structure Synth and then ported it to the XML format which the Generative Art node in Sverchok can interpret. This is all generated from either a square or a bar and each building is a 10 x 10 block of these components. The assignment of a square, an empty square or grill of bars is entirely random within a defined ratio. Similarly, the height of each building, and whether it skews left or right is random too. I did a couple of different renders of this: http://humphreyhippo.tumblr.com/post/169668447014/20180113-building-blocks

20180114 Blue Hour Sign

14 / 365 Desperate times call for desperate measures... Didn't find anything remotely photogenic in the dull afternoon light, but I did like how the red and yellow Shell sign popped against the fading blue of the sky when we stopped for petrol on the way home.

20180115 For the Birds

15 / 365 I guess if you're not failing, then you're not trying. ;) Lensbaby Double Glass + Creative Aperture Kit + Extension Tubes + Cafetiere.

20180116 Nemesis in Pink

16 / 365 I think this falls into two categories: - "if it's worth doing, then it's worth overdoing" - "you may regret posting this" Lensbaby Double Glass + Infrared Camera

20180117 The Vase on the Floor

17 / 365 Not much inspiration or enthusiasm today, so had a quick play with the screw modifier in blender to make a vase.

20180118 Lightboxes

18 / 365 A quick snap of the lightbox seats they have dotted around the West Quay esplanade.

20180119 Lensbaby Rainbow

19 / 365 Things you shouldn't try focus on with a Lensbaby #427... It was sunny before I left. It was sunny when I got home. In the middle it rained on me, but I guess there was an upside.

20180120 Window Shopping

20 / 365 Lensbaby Trio 28 + shopping centre. I can never quite nail that 'Beachradish' blurism style.

20180121 Giants at the Spectrum

21 / 365 Went up to the Spectrum to see the Belfast Giants take on the Guildford Flames. Giants won 3-2. I remain unconvinced by Elite League hockey. Maybe it's because I don't have a dog in the fight, but after seeing four different teams at Guildford, I still find it all rather dull.

20180122 Sverchok Forest

22 / 365 A forest of trees generated by another Sverchok Generative Art/Structure Synth script. I created a few rows of trees in Sverchok and then added a floor and some snow for good measure.

20180123 Frozen Bubble

23 / 365 It never gets cold enough here to try the ubiquitous 'frozen bubble' shots, so I had a go at rendering one in Blender. This picture took an absurd 4 hours to render at only 2000 samples - probably because of the quantity of transparency bounces required for my attempt at frost.

20180124 Silver Tree

24 / 365 Needed something quick today and as it's still utterly miserable outdoors, I had a play with one of the example eisenscripts in Structure Synth. This is a variation of the 'Spiral' example - ported into the Sverchok Generative Art node in Blender. I really enjoy making the generated shapes with Structure Synth/Sverchok - but I'm still not entirely sure what to do with them once I've got them. They're definitely a compositional challenge.

20180125 Nemesis Overhead

25 / 365 I took the superzoom out for my walk today as I could hear a heli hovering nearby. The heli sound persisted but I never actually saw it. I did spot this little guy though - and actually guessed which way he was going for once so I could get focus. He paused briefly to see if I was still there, and dashed off.

20180126 Roman vs the Pirates

26 / 365 Unusual Friday night game for the first semi-final of the "Make Up Extra Games This Year" Cup* against Hull Pirates. They used to be an EPL team, but we haven't seen them since the league collapsed as they went into the NIHL North division and Basingstoke dropped into the Southern one. It was an odd game with some very bizarre non-calls (is cross-checking ok now???), and quite a few "some one's been watching too much NHL" face-off violations from the linos. Bison won 4-3. *Might not be its official name.

20180128 Dandelion Droplet

28 / 365 Depressingly dull light again today so I made another instalment for my "shots I'll never get to take or was really bad at" project. ;) I've tried this a couple of times in my project with varying degrees of success: https://365project.org/humphreyhippo/2013/2013-06-24 https://365project.org/humphreyhippo/2016/2016-05-11 This one is a Blender creation using a particle system to create the hairs (for want of a better word - Google has failed me on finding the technical term for them).