Nodule's photos

Treasure Hunt: I-spy something beginning with'Y', the alternative... Pollen... :-) Macro of a Camomilia flower with a 3 spot ladybird. the three spot is native to the UK and under threat from the seven spot invasion from the continent. this fellow I think is recovering from a moult and looks very 'new' as can be seen from the reflection of this photographer on his lovely shiny wing casing!!! :-) not something one generally expects to see when this close up!

10wpp. Under! (the Influence!) :-) Treasure Hunt:I-Spy, something beginning with 'Y'; It's a good job I know my poisons... It's a by-product of Yeast :-))

Treasure Hunt:Roman Numerals V & VII; A good job the number four wasn't asked for as it would have invited controversy !! :-) There are, at this moment, only two from ten images on this theme that are not clocks! Are we all being lazy on this one? :-))

Treasure Hunt: Grate; I have been hunting high and low for this old filter! it does not even fit any of my current lenses so I had to hold it over my phones camera! How does this fit the theme you ask...? The filter splits the light with precise lines scratched on to the optical surface of the glass and is known as a Diffraction Grating! This type of filter is used all over the place and you'd never notice. Does anyone have a Fresnel Lens to widen the view from the back window of the car or how about one of those adapters for the headlights that deflect the main beam for when you drive in countries, as I have just done, on the 'other' side of the road... all the same principle! you can even get them in the form of reading lenses for books, like a magnifying glass with a light! Photographically, these went through a massive 'in' phase but I bought mine, used it once and only got it out again today!! The only one I used regularly was an 8 point star filter which I used to give a nice soft focus effect with and avoided the starbursts where possible! :-)

Treasure Hunt:Square Format; Nothing 'Square' about this couple... caught them in full snog on the bridge and this is how they left us :-) They were 50+ going on sixteen! Absolutely Fabulous

Treasure Hunt: DeadEnd; As Dead ends go this is a pretty busy one! :-) It is located in Marble arch which is the junction of the Bayswater Road, Edgware Road, Oxford Street and Park Lane. The 'Tyburn Tree' is a euphemism for the gallows that served Newgate Prison and this saw a lot of work in its day. Among it's records there is a certain John Palmer... an alias for Dick Turpin no less! Such was the power of this site Oliver Cromwells body was exhumed and then hung here... just to be sure I guess! :-)

Treasure Hunt: Coloured Bottles; A dozen of my current favourite colours... yep we bought them all after a tasting, walked in, tasted and was carried out :-) Only way to go!

Treasure Hunt: Something pieced together... Glass lanterns (In a Market in Honfleur!)

Treasure Hunt: Wings SwallowTail from PeurtoRico in a Butterfly House in Honfleur! Taken with a 80-200 2.8 nikor zoom, not the best lens for macro work! :-)

Treasure Hunt: Greetings from... Honfleur, France.

Treasure Hunt: Light Painting; Long exposure of several seconds with a hand held, manually fired flashgun. Quayside Honfleur Marina.

Treasure Hunt: PP; Replacement Hair... Here I have replaced the models hair with an explosion of holi powder from a street party back in March, each colour was literally thrown by individual revellers during the 'Festival of Colour' I cropped the street party tightly to the cloud of dusty colour, copied a layer then applied a small amount of zoom blur to that layer and lowered it's opacity just to hint at some movement. then I copied the models image to another layer and masked out the bits I didn't want! Masking is better than 'erasing' because you can immediately repair any mistakes with ease.

Treasure Hunt: Eyes; Human... Just ?!

Left with the splash back from my session with the hair-dryer and the wax crayons it has been nagging at my mind for further fun and games... there is a spot of clean pristine black card where the red beaker stood and it suddenly occurred that this makes it a natural 'mask'. A quick visit to PS and here is the result. the Portrait is of my good friend Tatjana who was sat in the back seat of a car when I took her pic from the front seat with the flip up flash! Composited two layers with generous helping of layer masks and eraser tool with a soupçon of smudge!

This is a female Stag beetle that flew through the open patio and was resting on my kitchen floor... I hadn't seen her there and jumped out of my skin after she worriedly waved at me so that I wouldn't step on her :-) Our biggest beetle in the UK her jaws are tiny compared to the males. They don't have long at this stage of their lives, having lived as a larvae for many years chewing up rotten logs they pupate and emerge in this form to reproduce. They survive in this form only a few weeks. this one I believe is a 'Lesser stag beetle' as she is all black.

Treasure Hunt: The Good old days.... I don't ever recall having used the cast & die ever! The 'Egg whisk' drill was well used but got dumped in favour of a power drill which in turn fell out of use battery technology made started to make more sense :-) The little block planer is still hugely useful and actually lives in one of my tool bags.