This blog is here for my family and friends. I'm hopeless at
writing letters. I promise to keep in touch but seldom do. So, since
much of my life is spent sitting at my keyboard I decided to create
a diary that those who were interested could stop by now and again
to find out what I was up to. If you just happened upon it you're
welcome to stay. I'm not inviting comments, after all this is my
blog and who cares what you have to say... get your own blog
(hahaha!). But messages are welcome (hint to family and friends!)
and I'll do my best to reply.
Last September I celebrated my 60th birthday by
treating myself to a camcorder. Many years ago I
dabbled in movies with what was even then an
old-fashioned Bolex Standard 8 movie camera. The
film got difficult to find and there were other
things to do so the movie camera eventually got
consigned to the attic (along with the rest of my
9-day wonder projects). But I had been bitten by the
movie bug. Since then I've often thought about
buying another movie camera but I have been put off
by the quality all those blurred and shaky efforts
you see on TV shows. But along came YouTube and
suddenly people seemed to be making clear, sharp,
quality movies. After some research on the interweb
I bought a lovely camcorder, a Panasonic
HDC-SD60. It takes HD movies in 1920x1080 format,
the same as my HD TV, and produces results of better
quality that much of the news footage on TV filmed
on hardware that probably cost ten times as much!
Of course, I started filming right away and soon
realised that my PC's was going to need tome extra
storage space so the first "accessory" was an
external hard drive - 2 terabytes should keep me
going for a while! Next came the obligatory film
editing software. I'm trying Serif MoviePlus X3 and
Magix Movie Edit Pro 17. And now I'm beginning to
think I need a more powerful PC!
So here's an early effort:
Our Boxing Day walk took us to Belhus Woods, a
local country park. A week after the end of the
December snows it was still cold and most of the
lakes and streams were still frozen over. Unable to
feed, most of the wildfowl had left in search of
open water. The big lake was iced up save for a
small area where those that remained congregated,
mostly Mallard Shoveler which didn't seem too
bothered by the conditions and were content to roost
on the frozen surface of the lake. Then we spotted
this unusual bird which was clearly perplexed by the
ice.
