Feeding the Seagulls
A woman feeding seagulls by the sea.
Feeding the Seagulls
A woman feeding seagulls by the sea.
Velux Fractal Season
When the conditions are just right fractals form on veluxes and they are beautiful. It requires the air to be cool enough for ice to form, but as thin layers, rather than thick. If the wind is just right then you end up with patterns such as the one below.
This morning all of the windows had a nice pattern so I photographed them twice. The first time when they were lit by indirect sunlight and the second time when they were. With direct sunlight you can see the structures more clearly.
If you wait too long though the patterns melt and disappear and you need to wait until the next time the conditions are just right.
This is the first frost of the season. We will have many more such sights in the days and weeks to come.
In the pattern above I like that it has a focus, and that the branches grow out of there to create a network of patterns as we see above. It’s entirely different to the other pattern I shared and just as interesting to look at.
The final pattern is another beautiful example of why good insulation is nice. With good insulation the windows are cool enough for ice to form, without freezing the people who are indoors. It also means that the heat from within the building is not escaping outwards and being wasted. This provides us with a good reason to have double or triple glazing.
And finally
It’s nice to see how different every window was. Every window is completely different from the next, so each pattern is interesting enough to study, to remark on the patterns and shapes that have formed.
Do you look at your windows and fractal patterns? Cars can provide us with the same pleasure.
A Frosty Morning
Yesterday we had rain and with that rain came a night cold enough for everything to be covered in ice. As I came out of the train station in Nyon I could feel my feet slip frequently. In the process walking was treacherous for those who are not experienced with the pleasure of walking on ice. For others it is an opportunity to look for possible pictures.
On a minivan I saw this pattern on the windowscreen. Water seems to have been blown by the wind at just the right speed to create this fun little pattern. It’s the type of pattern we should look for right before defrosting a car. This isn’t my car so I was just looking to see whether it was a boring sheet or more. In this case it looks like pine needles from a pine tree so it’s nice to look at. Nature finds elegant solutions.
The second pattern of interest I saw was on this pond. When the wind is calm during morning hours the building reflects in the pond. Today the reflection includes a pattern of ice, to add character.
Tuesday should be a good day to hunt for possible images. The air temperature is meant to go down to -6c in the morning. It only lasts for one day so it’s not ideal for proper ice pictures but if there is enough wind then the lakeside could look as it did two or three years ago.
Replacing Instagram With Eyeem and a Blog
Replacing Instagram with Eyeem and a blog makes sense. When Instagram was new, before it was bought by Facebook it was a network of people who liked to take pictures sharing with friends and family. As it grew and as more people used it people followed less discerningly and so it became more of a popularity contest than a photo-sharing website.
Today Instagram shows an advert every four images and whilst this may not sound like much it is. This means that as you skim through the timeline you see an advert almost all the time. In some cases, you see the same advert a few times in a single session. For now, you can block advertiser accounts not to see their adverts again but this takes time.
Simultaneously you think “If I wanted to see adverts I’d browse a magazine or I’d visit other websites.” You also think “Why am I putting up with these adverts and “Why am I providing Facebook with people’s attention from content that I generated?”
That’s where websites like Eyeem make sense. Such websites allow you to share your pictures to a community of photographers. It also allows you to attempt to monetise your images. For now, 55 of my images have been accepted into the market program and 33 are in the partner program. With persistence and time, people may show interest in these images.
I also have a photo-sharing blog because I want a place to share pictures for which I do not have enough inspiration to write a blog post and they are not good enough to share on Eyeem. I like the idea of having a blog where a picture a day is posted. I’ve posted over four thousand to Instagram and it takes about 3 gigabytes. Wordpress allows us to share content via a decentralised content management system.
With Wordpress or other platforms, we can use their services for free until we establish a big enough audience for it to be worthwhile to monetise our content eventually.
An Ingress Photo Walk Before The Rain
Today I went for an Ingress Photo Walk before the rain and I eventually did have to go home because the phone was starting to get wet and there was no urgency to continue playing the game and walking.
I did spot a few things that were slightly out of the ordinary. The first thing was the mushroom beneath. I have spotted a few of these but this one did not have a bite taken out of it. They’re large and flat and you can see the corrugation, or whatever the correct term is, beneath. They have had enough moisture to grow over the last few days.
The next unusual site was this burned-out house. It appears to be fresh. I could see a ladder going to the first-floor window.
The next unusual sighting was fountains with the sign “fountain stopped due to lack of water. You don’t often see this type of sign but due to the lack of rain of this summer, this might not be surprising. It might also be due to a lot of water being used to extinguish the fire, but I have not checked.
The final and most interesting sight is this one. It takes us back in time to when rural meant agricultural. We see nice wooden doors, aged with time and reflecting a different age. We also see plenty of fresh firewood above as well as the small boxes below. I don’t know whether these were for charcoal or tools.
Without Ingress, I have cycled, walked and driven through this village plenty of times without exploring the small side streets. This time I did and I spotted some unusual sights. What is also of interest is that despite this village being quite small it has a lot of portals.
Initially, I thought of posting these pictures to Instagram but chose not too because I’d rather provide you with the images and their context. We need to go back to writing blog posts and sharing content from our own websites.
Plane Watching
Yesterday I went to Geneva airport for an event but found that there were no spaces in any of the parkings so I went to Decathlon and Mediamarkt before deciding to go and watch planes land instead. I watched nine planes land.
During this plane watching session I was on the Meyrin side standing underneath the flight path and then slightly to the right as I stood and to the left from the plane’s perspective.
I was using flightradar to see which plane was landing and how long I would have to wait for the next one and the iPhone 8 plus with the “zoom” lens to photograph the planes just as they were at their biggest in frame. It’s a shame that I was taking pictures at that time of day because the light was almost from behind. If I had tried in the morning the light would have been better. If I had tried at dawn or dusk then it could have made for some nice pictures.
I’d like to go back with a different camera with a proper lens and stand slightly more to the side and take pictures at a slightly more interesting moment. It’s nice to see planes from below, and the KLM shot is really nice but I’d like the planes to be framed better.