Tea Cups and Rainbow Cake

"Large streams from little fountains flow, Mighty oaks from little acorns grow" - 14th Century Proverb.

@florenceandgeorge (Instagram) is starting an afternoon tea and cake service and asked me if I would take some photographs for her website, and if I would help with the testing of the products! How could I say no? I am known for having more of a savoury tooth than a sweet tooth, but I never pass the chance up to take some pictures and learn some new techniques in the process. I thought I would upload my favorites from the first shoot onto the website.  I have put a gallery up here.

I am always inspired by people who 'break out' to do something they love instead of something that just pays the bills. I need to think carefully about this idea over the next few months. My mind wrestles a lot, of late, about this year I have taken out of my career to dip back into academic learning. I was hoping the time would also give me a chance to see what was really important in my life and what I really wanted out of it. I am yet to draw any conclusions which I find frustrating. I am usually more decisive.

Of course, it's a first world problem wondering what to do with life while in many regions of the world, at best, you either work or go hungry. I am thankful that those are not the choices that I have to make. But everyone, whether in a privileged position or not, have to make choices. I am no exception to this rule.

 

Forgotten Images

I was recently nominated by someone on Facebook to post landscape photographs for five days. My immediate thought was to post some from my Project 365 that I completed in 2013, but I decided to go through older photographs that I hadn't looked at for while.  

I was amazed at how many photographs were stored on my network drive that I hadn't even thought about for years. It took quite some time just to sift through them, even though they were fairly well organized, into years, months and location. It brought back some good memories of places that I had been and would like to revisit.

I was reminded of how much I like to travel and how it has been a while since I have been someplace that I could spend time just taking photographs and not needing to worry about anything else. Spending time doing fieldwork in Greenland was very much like that, everyday was similar but different. Four weeks at the margin of the ice sheet and all that I had to think about was glaciers, sample collection and what was going to be cooked for dinner that night. Good times. Images below are of the Leverett Glacier in Greenland. Not to be confused with the Leverett Glacier in Antarctica.

 

Story Map

Update below...

I was recently tasked with an assignment as part of my Geovisualisation course taught by William Mackaness. The course highlights the need for effective visualisation in the analysis and display of geographic information. As part of the assessment of the course the class members have been asked to create a story map, through the ESRI story map web application. I have finally (is anything ever final?) got my story map to a point where I can share it online.

My story is of four different photography tours of The Hague, a city that I used to live in.  The photographs are all my own, mostly taken in 2013 when I was doing a 365 day photography project.

You can visit my story map at this link.

UPADTE 30/1/2016: It was pointed out to me that the link above was not shared publicly so here is the updated link that anyone can see :-) Photography tour of The Hague

Walk around town

I managed to get some time to walk around parts of Edinburgh when the rain stopped for the first time this year. It was also perfectly cold with frost on the grass and the smaller puddles frozen. It was nice to get some fresh air and to think about something that I find relaxing for a morning. I posted the photographs in the Edinburgh gallery.

I also got conned this week. I actually fell for an Ebay scammer, offering way above the price for an iPad that I am selling. I am not sure why this din't set alarm bells of in my head... I had actually dropped the package off at the post office, such was my delight at selling the iPad. It wasn't until I checked the the (fake Paypal) email later that I realised that I had been 'had' so to speak. I am usually very careful and often worry about people close to me falling for this kind of thing, but to have it happen to myself was very humiliating. I am not sure who I was more angry at, myself or the scammer.

Thankfully, I managed to run to the post office that I posted the package from and the guys that worked in there were very understanding and actually gave me the package back. Had I been ten minutes later it would have been gone with the post. So, good news, I have an iPad for sale if anybody is interested. :-)

 

Kindrogan and Christmas

A few days out of the city. Normally this would turn out to be a time to recharge batteries and catch up on reading. This trip turned out to be a coffee fuelled marathon of data collection, processing and presenting. A "fun" coffee fuelled marathon of data collection processing and presenting.

Time has marched on in my education and the first block of classes went past faster than I could possibly imagine. The distant memory of being told that we would be going away for a long weekend 'at the end of October' suddenly appeared. As I start the second set of classes I would like to think that I have a better handle on time management and organisation but I think I may be kidding myself on.

The excitement of Object Orientated Programming, Distrubuted GIS and Remote Sensing is driving me for the next five weeks into the exams and the potential of a Christmas Break.  I think this is the earliest I have ever thought of Christmas.

The trip to Kindrogan was for project management. It was to see how we would cope under a certain amount of pressure which would be directly linked to how organised we were before the trip and how our strategies held up under real life situations.

I didn't get to take as many photographs as I would have liked when I was away, but that wasn't really the point of the trip. I did get a few candid and posed photographs though. I am open to captions for some of these :-)