Week Nineteen
Halloween passes without much ado once more here. Such a shame. It was a big thing when I was a kid so I feel the kids are missing out. In all the years I have stayed here there has been not one knock on the door, some sense of community. So the school provides their party but not on Halloween itself. This year for a change my wife decided to break with tradition and got a melon instead of a pumpkin. We just hollow out the pumpkin and throw out the innards. Who really eats pumpkin? So instead we all had some lovely juicy melon as well as a replacement pumpkin. My oldest daughter drew the face and my wife carved. I took the photo which I was struggling with. Just couldn't get it looking right. So eventually I settled on a long exposure and used a torch to illuminate the face while the shutter was open for 5 seconds. It worked better than expected. So much so that I decided not to touch it at all so this is straight out the camera- well I cropped it and resized it but apart from that its out the camera. We did have dooking for apples and pears plus pizza. Very unconventional but the kids enjoyed it.
And as well as Halloween we also had Fireworks night, Bonfire Night, Guy Fawkes night or whatever the proper term is. Extremely foggy that night but the fog cleared again in time for my wife and kids to shoot off East for a night of fireworks, bouncy castles and hot dogs with my mum, sister and her family. I stayed at home, of course. Despite how cold it was I sat at the window with it open on a stool with a beer and my camera on a tripod trying to take photographs of fireworks. Lots tonight, previous years have been poor. Very difficult for me owning just a little compact. The problem is that there is no manual focus, just auto focus. So there is no infinity. Its pot luck how the focus goes. I must have taken about 100 shots. I could have taken several hundred more and it wouldn't have mattered. Two OK ones, one above. Nothing great. Not what I wanted but better than previous years. One day I hope to have the technology to do it properly. I've left this one out of the camera. Pointless trying to process night shots as it rarely works.
I started the week going for walks to school again. Didn't keep it going though. Its not the walks. They stopped one morning about an hour after I got home and another adrenaline rush out the blue. Then another and so on. Miserable. Its annoying that one day I can cope and the next I cannot. Its the same understanding yet one day it is so clear in my head, others it is not. I don't know if its related to how tired I am or how much panic I have had before it. I don't know in general. Bad habits are hard to break. Because you go 24 hours clean doesn't mean the next day will be any easier. Its all urges. The urge to panic. The ability to cope with fear.
But as I said I did however push myself out a couple of times. The photo above is from the park. I've taken down there before so thought I would try something a little different with the processing. Not sure it works. All I know is its different and not really like a photo at all.
