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Archive digging again, it's so fun to look through your old stuff to see something you might have missed...
Not just any dictionary - my Samuel Johnson 2nd edition 1750 dictionary. Taken for Macro Mondays theme begins with the letter D. (72_133)
A corner of the dictionary that has been on my desk for at least 40 years.
Taken for Macro Mondays "Wear and Tear"
Macro Monday - Oldest Object
I found this little pocket dictionary in a second-hand bookshop many years ago and picked it up for mere dollars. While I haven't been able to date it exactly some of it's content indicates that it was produced during the Victorian era.
This is a very experimental shot!
I removed the lens from my old broken Prinz Saturn 35mm film camera and managed to mount it on my Panasonic GM1 digital body - not very well and held on with rubber bands!
There is no aperture adjustment so this is the result of the lens 'wide open' - probably much more so than for what the lens was designed.
It's an 'in house' shot - the eating end of the kitchen.
Converted to B&W and sepia toned. It does look an old photo from the 1930s now!
Actually it's very difficult to find in English some word, which is interesting for my Dictionary, begins by letter X. So... X-ray...
X-ray (noun).
1. X-rays is a band of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths between gamma rays and ultraviolet radiation, produced by the bombardment of a substance (usually one of the heavy metals) by a stream of electrons moving at great velocity, as in a vacuum tube: X-rays are capable of penetrating opaque or solid substances, ionizing gases and body tissues through which they pass or, by extended exposure, destroying tissue, and affecting photographic plates and fluorescent screens: they are widely used in medicine for study, diagnosis, and treatment of certain organic disorders, esp. of internal structures of the body, also used for security purposes.
In many languages, X-radiation called Roentgen radiation, after Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen, who is generally credited as their discoverer, and who had named them X-rays to signify an unknown type of radiation...
Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (1845 – 1923) was a German physicist, who, on 8 November 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range today known as X-rays or Röntgen rays, an achievement that earned him the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901...
Although the new rays would eventually come to bear his name in many languages where they became known as Röntgen Rays, he always preferred the term X-rays. Nearly two weeks after his discovery, he took the very first picture using x-rays of his wife's hand, Anna Bertha. When she saw her skeleton she exclaimed "I have seen my death!"...
Because of X-rays, our privacy is broken and any person with x-ray machine can see what’s inside of your lagage, what you had for dinner but fortunately can’t read your spirits, so... you can be happy.
Much better viewed large View On Black
Taken with Bronica ETRS SLR, 75mm, Shanghai GP3 100 film, hand processed and scanned using Canon 9000f
Mist. Dictionary definition: "Something you'd see a lot more of if you didn't have the capacity to sleep through a modestly sized apocalyptic event as if nothing were happening. Try getting out of bed early one morning and you might see what you're missing."
Ok, that's not quite what the dictionary says - not the one on my bookshelf anyway. But it would help if I wasn't so lamentably bad in the mornings. If uninterrupted sleep is available then I tend to remain oblivious to the world until getting out of bed is compulsory. On every working day of my life, breakfast is always taken at my desk as I stare sullenly at my emails and pray nobody asks me any difficult questions until at least 10:30. There are studies that suggest I'm not lazy - it's just that my body cycle is out of kilter with the conventions of the world around me. Really I'm just lazy. I know it, even if the clever bods who work on these studies look to excuse my morose glare at anyone who tries to enter my office before I've brewed my first coffee.
So because of this inability to fit in with the rest of society, I don't get to see mist very often, because it generally appears in the morning. I might see it when I'm making the 4 mile journey to work, but by then the opportunity to stand and stare at the silhouettes of distant trees in the gloom has passed. But over the last couple of evenings the air has been still and the mist has returned at the close of the day, and yesterday I resolved to seize the opportunity.
I almost missed my chance though. As I arrived home the mist appeared to be clearing, and I found myself gazing out into the garden feeling undecided, reaching for the remote and "Richard Osman's House of Games" on BBC2. Those of you who aren't in Britain or the Irish Republic, or those of you with interesting lives who do inhabit these countries will have little idea what I'm talking about here. Suffice to say it's a gentle tea time quiz show presented by a genial and gentle humoured giant of a host with no great riches at stake. Within minutes I was fast asleep. Half and hour later consciousness returned along with the gathering mist, and so out I went for an entire half mile in the car - well daylight time was running out you see, and we've already established that I'm lazy.
And this is how I found myself at Unity Woods, a handful of acres of scrub oak with twisting trunks and a maze of secret paths. To add to the sense of eeriness the place is riddled with old mineshafts, a legacy of the tin mining history which once made the area I live in the richest on earth. Ironic that now it's one of the poorest regions in Europe. A number of mineshafts are capped, but there are warnings at each entry to the woods to stay on the paths, lest the unwary visitor inadvertently stumble into another one and disappear 400ft into the bowels of the earth.
What's delightful about this place is the absolute silence you can find. Only the odd mountain biker, dog walker or horse rider passes through this way, or me and my friends when it's my turn to host the Sunday morning pre-breakfast trail run. Last night I saw only 3 people - all of them mountain bikers, although the third one managed to pass by when after not seeing a single soul for more than 45 minutes I decided that the call of nature wasn't going to wait until I went home. Why does that always seem to happen?
Eventually I found myself at the clearing above the local cycle trail, looking down on the lone tree that I always notice when I'm below it on my own mountain bike. The stillness was absolute. A murder of unseen crows broke the silence in the mist somewhere overhead as they made for their nests in the approaching darkness. It was about as perfect as these moments can be. The sort of evening you know you're going to remember the sensation of being there for a long time, made the more delightful by it being right on your home turf. Just wonderful.
And then I realised I needed to get back to the car, through the mysterious twisted wood in the darkness. On my own. Carrying a bag full of expensive camera gear. Accompanied by unexplained and invisible rustling in the undergrowth around me. Probably squirrels or a badger, or maybe even a deer. The fact that I look like the missing Mitchell brother didn't completely dispel the sense of unease either and I was relieved to emerge from the canopy without a band of brigands at my heels. Of course the small car park had two vehicles in addition to my own - one empty and the other occupied by a furtive looking couple, but then again those of you who read my comet tales in July will testify that I'm getting used to this sort of thing. Nobody can see you blushing in the darkness in any case.
Happiness is a cup of coffee and a good book on a dreary Saturday morning.
Inspired by this song.
For Cliche Saturday
Also for TRP: Musically Inclined