First endeavours

Rain, rain, go away, come again another day ....

It has now gone, hopefully for at least a day. It is now late on Thursday, and I started to put up anew blip, when the dreaded Red Cross icon appeared saying I had already posted today.

Well of course, I hadn't realised I hadn't set my camera back when the clocks changed in the autumn, so that the exif info was an hour out. I quickly emailed BlipCentral and within minutes they had remedied the problem and shifted my earlier blip back by a day! Impressive service, knowing they are still there for us late into the evening.

So here I am with my first test of the extension tubes which I was given last week. I tried reading a bit about the issues you might come up with and the warnings were appropriate. I wanted to use the small polished agate Malachite (thanks to CanCarrier), which I was given on a dreamwork course many years ago, as a subject.

I didn't have long to use the room where my tripod was going to be in the way of normal life. I only had a cheap domestic light source with two bulbs, so I couldn't be too adventurous. The Cox apple came out of the fridge and the small piece of wood is the bottom of the Christmas tree that I cut off to allow the trunk to take up water again when we brought it into the house in a receptacle. I bought the tree at the farm shop, and Ashley, the farmer, had cut the tree down himself that day in their field. He had invited me to go and select a tree that was still growing. Maybe next year.

I enjoyed playing with two of the three extension tubes and it bodes well for the future. Now I see the results, a little more care in the still life arrangement, the lighting, the camera techniques and my framing wouldn't go amiss.