St Pauls at dusk.

At this time, twelve months ago, I was visiting the UK with a few days in London. One evening I met friends at a restaurant in Borough Market, Southwark and after dinner we walked back along the Thames and crossing over to the St Pauls underground station.

I did not take my camera with me that evening so had to make do with my iPhone to take these 'London at dusk' shots.

I know many rave about iPhone photos but to me they always look 'digitised' and obviously phone not camera photos. 

Here are two from that pleasant walk. I wish that I had taken more- but with a camera

 

 

A special cat photo.

 

Because I love cats, and Rosie loves cats, I take many cat photos. Most are just 'happy snaps' but from time to time I take one which is special.

My beautiful Marvel was very pretty and photogenic and I have quite a few great photos of her which remind me of what a very special cat she was.

Last weekend I visited my daughter and family. They are also cat people and have two rescue cats.

When I visit my children/grandchildren I always take a camera but rarely come away with any worthwhile photos- of people or cats. Often, I don't even manage to take one photo. However the latest visit was different. I took a beautiful photo of Myles, one of their cats. 

To me this photo really captures the character of Myles, who is very friendly and affectionate. It was taken with my Q3 43 and is probably the first photo I have taken with the new camera where I've thought "wow that lens really is special". It's not the sharpness which is outstanding, which you would expect, it's the total rendering and the gentle transition from pin sharp to out of focus. The fact that the light was just right also helped.

The photo is a crop from a DNG(Raw)- file shot at 1/80th f2.8.  ISO 640. It is best viewed on a desktop or laptop computer or a tablet.Viewing it on a phone does not do it justice.

 

Golden Oldies-Part 2

 More photos from that wonderful trip to India 25 years ago. All taken on Fuji Velvia slide film. As mentioned in the previous post I used my Leica M6 with either a 90mm Elmarit or 35mm Summilux lens to take these photos.

I still find analogue photos special but I'm not tempted to try it again.

Golden oldies

 I visited northern India and Mumbai in 2000. I took my Leica M6, a 35mm Summilux and 90mm Elmar and a few rolls of Fuji Velvia. I came back with a some worthwhile photos. 

Last week I found a few of them and sent them to a Leica user friend in India. He suggested that I share them up on the blog so here they are. All taken with the f1.4mm 35mm Summilux lens on Velvia slide film using my Leica M6.

 

Storm approaching

 I had intended to take my Leica X1 with me on my early morning walk yesterday morning but as I stood outside the house I decided that a storm was likely.

The X1 has survived 15 years of hard use but it has never got wet and as Leica make no claims as to its weatherproofing, yet alone waterproofing, I decided not to risk it and set out with just my iPhone. Which is a pity as there was a magnificent and very bright rainbow waiting to be photographed whilst I was on the walk. And in the end the storm missed Terrigal.

Here's the rainbow taken with the iPhone.

 

A soft morning

 

A much softer and autumnal morning at The Haven, Terrigal. Really nice light. Again taken with my Leica X1. The little camera which keeps on giving.

It's a beautiful day....

It's a beautiful day in more ways than one. Firstly. after an overnight shower, a clear, sunny and warm day dawned. I took my vintage Leica X1 with me on my early morning walk and came back with two pleasing photos as the sun rose. And when I got back home there was my beautiful big girl, Holly, sunning herself.

Despite having a collection of much newer and advanced Leicas the quality of the photos from the 15 year old X1 continues to amaze me.

 

 The second and even more pleasing reason that it is a beautiful day is that we are still celebrating the extraordinary outcome of the Australian Federal Election held last Saturday. 

For the benefit of overseas readers of the blog Australia has compolsury voting, no weird electoral college votes, the electoral boundaries are set by an independent body-no gerrymandering here-and elections are held on Saturdays to make it easier to vote. We have a preferential voting system . We vote for individual candidates in our local constituencies. 

 There are two major political forces- the Labor Party-a centre left leaning party- and the Liberal National Coalition-LNP- the centre right leaning Liberal Party combined with the rural orientated National Party. 

There are also the Greens and a rag tag collection of fringe parties and a growing band of Independent candidates. 

Labor has formed the government for the past three years. The polls and most of the media were expecting them to lose to the LNP or, at best, just scrape back with just enough seats in parliament to form a minority government with support from the Greens and/or independents.

The LNP leader, Peter Dutton took the coalition leadership after the previous election. He is hard right and a very unappealing, dour, negative and humourless individual who enthusiastically adopted the Trump playbook with a suite of Trumpist policies- denigrating the Labor leader, extolling anti woke-anti DEI--slashing the public service etc, etc, policies. 

 The LNP fought a shambolic campaign. They were ill prepared. They had few properly costed policies to announce. 

In contrast the Labor team under Anthony Albanese ran a very tight, well disciplined campaign.

The wheels really fell off the LNP campaign when Elon Musk appeared with his chainsaw in our news bulletins and then the appalling Trump/Vance/Zelensky meeting followed by Independence Day and the ill conceived tariffs.

As in Canada, a week previously it all backfired. The Australian electorate overwhelmingly rejected the LNP and Trumpism. It was a bloodbath. The biggest loss of the primary vote by the LNP in Australian electoral history. Literally dozens of LNP members of parliament lost their seats. And the cherry on the cake was that the LNP leader, Peter Dutton, lost his own seat so he is out of Parliament after 23 years.

Labor now have a huge majority. The polls were completely wrong.The media were completely wrong. 

And as Rosie and I spent last Saturday handing out how to vote cards for our local Labor candidate at the local polling place we were doubly pleased.

And to make a beautiful day even better Australian Formula One driver, Oscar Piastri, won the Miami F1 Grand Prix early morning our local time. He has now won three races in succesion and is now leading the F1 World Championship. 

Days don't come much better.

+