The Squeeze Box Man

On our Douro River cruise, back in June, one of our fellow passengers was an American, a rather eccentic and very affable retired doctor, who played a piano accordion aka a squeeze box. He played it well although the piano accordion is far from being my personal favorite musical instrument.  He sat in a corner of the deck and played it for his own pleasure and was very willing to let me take his photo. 

Leica Q3 43 photos
 

 

Holly-the big baby.

 Yes, another cat photo. I love cats of all shapes and sizes and I loved my really special marmalade cat, Marvel, who kept me sane and smiling through the difficult 12 months of covid lockdowns after the death of Val. 

Sadly Marvel died last year from a genetic heart condition. It was way too early, she was only 5.  I still miss her.

Now I have a new baby, Holly. Well not exactly a baby-more like a small(ish) bear. She's been part of our household for 11 months after we had adopted her from a sanctuary where she had been for 6 months. She's taken a long time to settle in but we are getting there. She still has a difficult relationship with the other cat in the house, Smudge, and she can still be very nervous. But she is big and she is beautiful.

Photo taken this morning with the Leica SL2 using the APO Summicron-SL 1:2/50 ASPH lens. 

Ellie and Phoebe

 Here's something completely different-one I shot earlier. Thirteen years earlier. 

It's a cold, wet winter's afternoon here today and I've been doing 'housekeeping' on my Lightroom Photos library. I found this photo taken in March 2012 of grandaugher, Ellie and our beautiful Himalayan cat, Phoebe.

The photo has not previously seen the light of day. It was taken with my Leica X1 and I converted the original jpeg file to monochrome using Silver EFX Pro2 software. 

Leica X1 photo 

 

Fruiteria Candido González

 Colourful scene in Barcelona Central Market. 

A cold sunrise

 Whilst Europe has been experiencing really hot weather south eastern parts of Australia are experiencing unusually cold weather. Today a bitter wind is adding wind chill into the mix. There have been significant snow falls in the Snowy Mountains for the start of the ski season which is great as it is the winter school holidays. 

I was out in the very cold morning air with my now vintage Leica X1 to catch the sun just about to appear over the horizon at the Haven, Terrigal.

With the sea so calm conditions were ideal for spotting whales as they migrate north in their thousands to warmer waters. I saw a few blows yesterday morning but today it was too cold to linger and look for them. 

Leica X1 photo 

Porto Panorama

A panorama of Porto taken from the deck of the ship on our last afternoon in Portugal. 

This is a composite of 5 DNG files merged in Lightroom Classic. It was taken with the Leica Q3 43 at ISO100 - 1/400th sec at f5.0 The final full size file is 94.4MB in size and is 24699 x 7849 pixels.

The river was very busy with small boats so I waited until there were none as objects moving across frames confuse panorama merging tools.You cannot succesfully correct them even using AI object removal tools. Boats are particularly tricky because of their wakes.

The extraordinary resolving capability of the lens/sensor combination of the Q3 43 is shown in the bottom photo. This is a big enlargement of a very small part of the panorama-the section of the river bank around the two boarding jetty ramps. The words Turkish Airlines are clearly legible on the sign on the tram.

Bear in mind that the images on the blog are compressed -the originals are noticeably better.