A letter to my grandfather

My paternal grandfather worked around the River Thames and London Docks, though I’m not sure what he did there. Below is a letter of thanks he received after helping to capture and return one of the ravens that had escaped from the Tower of London. Superstition holds that “if the Tower of London ravens are lost or fly away, the Crown will fall and Britain with it.” See the Wikipedia page for more about these ravens.

New Dr. Who filmed in Cape Town

Watching the latest trailer for the new Dr. Who starring Jodie Whittaker, I noticed a familiar location.

The ruin pictured in the scenes below is a derelict beach pavilion in Macassar, near Cape Town, South Africa. (Google Maps)

Dr. Who trailer screenshots

I live not too far away and have visited it with other members of my local camera club. Sadly it is an area not safe to visit alone, with a chance of being mugged. Click on the image below to view an album of photos I took there.

beach_pavilion_album

Lightroom Merge to Panorama Error

I’ve been enjoying the new panorama merge feature in Lightroom CC and have found that it generally does a good job of merging. But I have just had it fail to merge correctly for the first time. I wanted to use Lightroom to redo a merge of eleven frames I took in 2008 and had previously merged with AutoStitch to create the panorama below.

Panorama from Kalk Bay harbour wall

When I merged the frames shown in the grid view below I didn’t get the result I expected.

frames

The frames are DNG files converted from Canon 30D raw files shot with a Sigma 18-125mm lens and the correct lens profile was applied before attempting the merge in Lightroom. Instead of something similar to the original merge, I ended up with this in the preview window, where it has taken frames from the left and tacked them on to the right.

Panorama Merge Preview (26)

I tried to merge the left and right sections independently to see what would happen and while merging the seven rightmost frames produced what I would expect, merging the five leftmost frames didn’t. If you compare the merge preview of the leftmost five frames shown below to the section of the original merge overlaid on it, you will notice that an entire hill/mountain has been excluded from the merge that Lightroom did.

Panorama Merge Preview (27)

After some searching for Lightroom merge errors I found a thread suggesting that a panorama exceeding 32000 wide pixels would fail with an error, but in my case I receive no error and the resulting panorama would be far below the 32000 pixel limit; Lightroom simply generated a different panorama than it should.

I would be interested to hear if others have experienced similar problems.

Summer Holidays

Umbreallas on an empty beach

It’s been far too long since I posted anything, so here is an image that I took a few days ago that describes the season nicely.

Surface Tension

Surface tension demonstrated by raindrops on an aloe leaf

Chicken curry with peppers & red beans, served with bulgur wheat

Here’s what I made for supper tonight.

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It was an experiment, not from a recipe but here is roughly what I did.

Chopped a red and a green pepper roughly and chucked them in the pot to soften with some chopped onion, stirred in a little cider vinegar and a teaspoon each of curry powder and masala. Added a can of chopped Italian tomatoes and left that to cook while I cubed the chicken. Once the chicken was in and had cooked for about five minutes I drained a can of red kidney beans and chucked them in before putting the lid on and leaving it to simmer on a low heat.

Eggs in a Window

A shop window displaying table lamps made from carved ostrich shells

Misty Morning Tree

A solitary tree beside a fence, seen through morning mist

Old and New

Wheel of Excellence, Bokaap, Signal Hill and Lion's Head

Under the Wheel

The Wheel of Excellence ferris wheel