Spot the birdie!

Victorian photographers often used the expression "Watch the birdie" when taking portraits of children. The idea was to attract the child's attention to a stuffed bird held either above or to the right of the camera, thus getting the subject to inadvertently look into the camera's lense.

History lesson over. Here are a couple of images I grabbed with my Canon G9 X pocket camera this morning from inside my dining room.

This is a long tailed tit hanging upside down in one of the acers beside my pond. Can you spot him?

Long Tailed Tit

I have no idea what the little guy had found to pick at, but he was definitely busy grabbing some kind of bug from the tree.

I've always enjoyed watching our garden birds and am pleased to say the family of long tailed tits have become recent regular visitors. They have joined our resident blue tits and great tits and I'm hoping they will also become residents.

Spot the difference

Three images, one subject, two different cameras...

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Can you tell which of the images was shot with a DSLR and which with a compact camera?

Update: new look Usky

Had an appointment at the hospital again today; they removed the 'temporary' cast and dressing to check the wound, redressed the area and wrapped me in a new cast...

New Cast

Rather a fetching shade of blue don't you think? Sorry I couldn't actually show you my thumb, it was too hard to get it in shot since I was using it to help balance my new Canon G9 X.

So this is how I'll look for the next couple of weeks... well no, not exactly, I will of course be changing my shirt!

You shall not waste!

There are some wonderful flowers on our courgette plants this year...

Courgette Flowers

Courgette Flowers

Really must make more of an effort to use them instead of letting them go to waste. Never tried stuffing courgette flowers myself, but I think now might be a good time to start. 😉

Campanula revisited

I was having a look at the capabilities of my Canon PowerShot G9 X yesterday and was somewhat disappointed with the results... disappointed in my inabilities that is, not necessarily the camera's. Having had another play this morning I'd have to say I'm rather happier.

Campanula Flowers

There's still room for improvement of course and I will be practising more in the future, but right now I'm about to be glued to the TV to watch the All Blacks v Samoa game live from NZ. 😃

Rusty Usky - a blast from the past?

People who know me well will appreciate my love for all things rusty... I have have taken literally hundreds of photographs of rusty items over the years, but none recently until today.

I knew the vivid colour blow-out feature on my new Canon G9 X would be useful for something!

An example of a Rusty Usky

I may have to use this feature exclusively for Rusty Usky shots from now on. XD

I have a new toy

I'm going into hospital next Friday for surgery on my right hand; this will be the first of two sets of surgery to fix my thumbs. I could be incapacitated for months so I decided to give myself an incentive to speed my recovery... in the form a new pocket-sized camera. I'm certainly looking forward to the day when I can get a DSLR back in my hands, but until then I'll be using this:

This dinky little chap is a Canon G9 X. It's not the latest in Canon's stable by any means, but when it comes to pocket-cameras it is certainly one of the most versatile and best.

The various available modes will allow me to shoot in fully automatic, semi-automatic, programmed and fully manual modes, as well as shooting high-quality 1080p full HD video for those occasions when only moving images will do.

There's a lot of technology in this little package and I expect to have a lot of fun with it. 😉