I think this is the first time that my photo of the month isn’t one from my daily photo blog (jdjhiston.tumblr.com) Not sure why this one of number 1 grand daughter Amelia didn’t make that cut but for me it’s just about perfect. I like the back lighting and succeeded in exposing properly for the face.
It was taken with my Sony alpha 77 II f5.6 and 1/125th with a 70mm setting on the telephoto.
February can be a bit of a challenge for photography unless you’re in a place which is blessed with halfway decent weather and the photo on the left is a point and shoot with my phone at the church in Keyston.
The photo in the right is the result of accepting my phone’s offer of post processing without my involvement. I just gave it a light crop.
Not a bad result.
Taken with my Sony Xperia XZ1, f2 at 1/160th. I guess it’s always f2 but why is there such a generous depth of field?
A six o’clock start, sub-zero temperatures with a little added wind chill and an appointment with a maxillofacial surgeon who’s going to re-engineer my mouth. Not a great start to a Friday and the subsequent weekend.
To be fair it’s not exactly a big op, it’s neither open heart nor brain surgery, but it’s the biggest op I’ve had since my hip replacement in 1992 and the way it was described to me it involves some excavation in order to access and remove an ectopic tooth. As I headed off to the hospital, conveniently within our community, I wouldn’t say I was scared but I was certainly apprehensive. I wasn’t exactly relaxed.
Fair does it all went very well. I ‘checked-in’ and was shown to my day room where I was visited consecutively by staff nurse Carol Owen, the Anaesthetist Helen Smith and the surgeon himself Malcolm Cameron. Carol told me what to do to get ready how to operate the TV and took my order for lunch. Most important though she checked my vital signs and noted that my systolic blood pressure was higher than would be expected. Note the comment above about not being relaxed.
Helen explained how she works. She told me that she does lots of work with children and they prefer to take it slow and that’s how she does it with adults now. Malcolm of course just want to check that we were agreed about what he was going to do.
Soon after 0900 Angus Sutherland came to wheel me into theatre. He told me he would be assisting Helen but his profile suggests he’s a little more qualified so I’m not sure what his role was. However we chatted and it seems he’s a bit of a runner and that both he Helen will be running the Cambridge Half Marathon this weekend. Whilst this was going on Helen had installed a cannula, I felt a little dizzy and I was gone. This was before we went into the operating theatre. All very low key.
Shortly after 0930 I woke up in the recovery room with no recollection of the previous half hour. I was now looked after by Carla Garcia Reyes, surprisingly the only ‘foreigner’ in my team. She got me sipping some water before I was deemed awake enough to go back to my room. I was very surprised how quickly I did seem to recover. I’d heard that general anaesthetics knock you out and that you feel pretty miserable for some hours. But no., not me today anyway.
Back in my room it’s a matter of monitoring my vital signs, systolic now OK, watching the TV, reading the paper and snoozing. Lunch came at 1200 and then I was visited again by Helen and Malcolm before Carol brought in my drugs and said I could go at 1400.
So everything went well and, by the way, I was not a burden on the NHS. I am a BUPA member so I went private. I keep that membership for the day I need a second hip operation and it was handy to be able to use it for this one so that I could chose the date and location of my op.
Maybe the bad news was that it is plastic free Friday and there’s no way healthcare can operate to the high standard it does without plastics: from the disposable gloves, Carol reckoned she gets through over 20 every shift, through the tubing for connecting the body to necessary sources of drugs to the housing of the increasingly sophisticated equipment. So plastic free Friday it was not for me and my view on this whole plastics debate is that we’ve got to be selective and keep repeating the reduce, reuse, recycle, recover mantra. It’s a matter of horses for courses.
It seems to have been a rather humdrum month for photos. Plenty of worthy photos related to activity during the month but nothing exceptional from a photographic standpoint so this is the best of a perhaps average bunch.
The photo is of fish and chips at the Red Lion. It’s a feature of the Wednesday lunchtime menu and it’s a treat. This was taken with my Sony Xperia XZ1, f2 at 1/50th. No post processing, perhaps I should have lightened it a tad, not even a crop.
I guess I’m of an era. I read a newspaper. In fact I’ve got one on subscription and if I haven’t bought one all day I’ll still go along to the newsagent at 10pm and pick one up. I just like to read a newspaper. Continue reading
I got a new phone towards the end of last year and I’m really pleased with the photos I’m getting with it. You’ve still got the disadvantage of a single fixed focus lens of course but as long as you’re looking for a shot with a dominant foreground or one that asks for a good depth of focus it does a great job.
This is one of the first photos I took with it and it’s a classic point and shoot to capture the moment. It was early morning after a snowfall and I had to hang around a bit whilst the Co-Op cooked another batch of croissants. Serendipity again.
My new phone’s a Sony Xperia and this shot was taken at 1/50th f2. You can almost feel how cold the morning was …
I’m not saying that recent years have not been good, they’ve all been good or even excellent, just that 2017 seems to have been exceptionally so. Anyway this is my 5th year end review and I’ll change the format.
It’s been a year of three thirds (aren’t they all?).
The first third of the year (Jan-Apr) was dominated by politics, specifically my campaign to be reelected for the third time to the County Council. With hindsight it wasn’t a big ask but I left nothing to chance and worked very hard just to make sure. As it was I secured just 55% of the vote and, as the Cambridge Evening News said, crushed the opposition.
The middle third (May -Aug) was quieter. We had a week in Portugal (https://flic.kr/s/aHskVpVnC9) to wind down from the election and a short break in Southwold (https://flic.kr/s/aHsm3V3Df9) then I had a Charles Rennie Mackintosh weekend in Glasgow (https://flic.kr/s/aHsm1EPJss). I had a reunion lunch with three friends from infants school days and was fortunate to pick up a little extra work in Spain. But generally it was a quiet middle of the year.
The final third (Sep-Dec) started with my birthday, the big 7 (see picture above), and then extended through an epic holiday trip to Hong Kong (https://flic.kr/s/aHsm9pTuvQ) and Australia (https://flic.kr/s/aHsma53xXU), the birth of grandson number 1 in November, and a wedding which involved us staying in Gladstone’s Library (https://flic.kr/s/aHsktRq3cQ) in Hawarden in December.
Looking back at the year in total I am surprised again that my generation seems to be surviving. I attended the funeral of neighbour Jean Davidson in January and read of the death in 2016 of Colin Sprakes, a contemporary at Churchill, but otherwise it seems that we just soldier on. For that I am truly thankful.
On a personal level I’ve not managed to shake off the kilo I put on during Xmas 2016 and have exercised less but nonetheless find myself in good enough shape and comfortable running longer distances. My only problem at the moment is an ectopic tooth which looks likely to need surgery early in 2018.
Juni and I have continued to enjoy meals in excellent restaurants including Costume Bistro in Porto, Realmente in Queluz and Churrasqueira in Braga (all in Portugal), the Sibton White Horse in Sibton, Suffolk and Number 16 in Glasgow and Petition, Sauma and the Boatshed in Perth (WA). We’ve also stayed in several super hotels including three Pousadas in Portugal and the Lindrum in Melbourne.
And finally … this is how I signed off 2015 and 2016.
‘It has been a very good year and I feel blessed. With so much trouble and uncertainty in the world I seem to have found a place which is especially rewarding. I can but hope that my life continues that way’
Don’t see any reason to say anything different again this year.
