Dust, Aperture

Posted April 21, 2008, under code, photography
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Following recent trips, my camera optics have acquired an assortment of dust and marks. Changing lenses in (considerably) less than sterile environments doesn’t help. Most annoyingly, near the start of the Egypt trip, I acquired a mark on my sensor ((okay, technically on the low-pass filter, pedants)) – at least I assume that’s where it is, though when I lock up the mirror I can’t see anything. I need to buy some proper cleaning implements and spend some time giving everything a once over.

In the meantime, I have many nice shots that have a dark smudge near the top-left corner; it’s only visible on areas of flat colour, which basically means sky. I hoped these would be easy to re-touch (I’ve done similar things in iPhoto in the past), but couldn’t immediately find how to in Aperture. A few minutes exploring turned up the ‘retouch’ adjustment:

Without changing any of the settings (but looking rather sceptically at the ‘automatically choose source’ checkbox), I waved the brush over the mark, and, well, voila:

Whatever the source selection criteria are, they work well, even when the mark is close to a feature. And there was much rejoicing.

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Skye

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Went walking on Skye on Saturday, and was fortunate to have the most amazing weather, with blue skies and sunshine. There was still some cloud, and plenty of wind, but you couldn’t ask for much better weather in the north of Scotland, in April. The Cuillins still had a decent amount of snow (above a certain altitude), so there were many stunning views. Pictures to follow.

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London Midland Scottish

Posted April 20, 2008, under films
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Watched Little Miss Sunshine, which many people have recommended. It’s an entertaining film, but I wasn’t quite as taken with it as I thought I might be. Not to say it’s bad – there’s a great cast playing some superbly written parts, and it manages to be compassionate without being remotely sentimental. Paul Dano and Steve Carrell have a wonderful on-screen interaction, and there’s many moments that made me laugh, but at the end I felt I’d watched a good film, not an outstanding one, and for whatever reason I was expecting slightly more.

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Flowers

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Yellow, originally uploaded by Zakalawe.

Full zoom and maximum aperture on the Sigma 50-150, quite pleased with the result. The background didn’t seem so nicely blue without the depth of field.

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More Pointy

Posted April 16, 2008, under history, travel
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A final day of exploration and history – I’m getting pretty saturated on museums and piles of stone at this point, but today was worth it:

First up, Saqqara, and the funerary complex and step-pyramid of Zoser. This was the world’s first pyramid, and indeed possibly the first large stone construction ever. It’s currently under renovation / conservation, and of course has lost its outer limestone casing, but is still an impressive sight. After this, an excellent noble tomb (great frescoes, much less focus on religious scenes than the royal tombs) with all kinds of scenes depicted – fishing, hunting, construction. Beside the tomb is what appears to be a small mound but is actually the soft core of the pyramid of Teti. The interior is accessible, and includes early examples of the pyramid texts inscribed on the walls, and with the familiar star motif on the ceiling -the evolution towards the New Kingdom tombs is pretty clear. One un-nerving aspect is that several of the huge angled roof slabs of the chambers have dropped dramatically (pictures to follow). They’re not braced or bolted back, hopefully someone has checked that the odds of another ‘drop’ is low.

Then it was on to Dashur for the ‘Red’ pyramid, which has a number of things to recommend it: it was the first true, stable pyramid; it has an impressive, accessible interior, and best of all, is avoided by most tour groups. The entrance is high up the north face, with a long descent inside into two tall galleries. You ascend the second gallery via a wooden staircase to enter the burial chamber. The whole experience is simple but breath-taking in scale – there’s a pyramid, you can go in it, and look around, and do so without anyone trying to sell you tat.

South of the Red pyramid, is Sneferu’s first (actually, current academic opinion says second) attempt at a ‘proper’ pyramid; the bent pyramid. About half-way through construction, the builders switched from the 52-degree incline used at Meidum (and all the Giza pyramids) to a more conservative 43 degrees, possibly because of the structural failure of Meidum pyramid.

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Priorities.

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Unimportant thing: arguing with your partner. Important thing: oncoming large metal object. Also, how do you even end up having an argument there in the first place?

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Alexandria

Posted April 15, 2008, under books, history, travel
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On the advice of various people, I took a long day trip to Alexandria, by train. The ‘turbo’ train was sadly booked out, but first class on an ‘express’ train is spacious and ridiculously cheap. Only problem was the train didn’t quite make it to the Alexandria station – we came to a halt just before it, and sat there (next to another train) for some time. After a while I became bored, and followed the locals in opening the door, jumping down, and walking the last five hundred metres to the station myself.

The city feels much fresher than Cairo (the sea breeze helps), but it was a hot day; I wandered around the site of the Pharos (now occupied by a fort), trying to dodge all the flirting young couples, who seem to like the place. The fort itself is a tribute to the art of defensive architecture, with all manner of features to efficiently maim and slaughter would-be attackers, and a vaulted underground cistern for good measure, so tough to besiege.

After that, I visited the library, which is a big room full of books. That might sound obvious, but you should understand that it’s a really big room, containing a lot of books. It’s an amazing space, a giant cylinder tilted at an angle – internally the eleven floors form giant steps / balconies, with shelves extending back underneath each floor above. The roof is supported by slender concrete columns, and contains a regular pattern of skylights – taken as a whole, the sense of light, height and peace is wonderful.

I returned home on the 7pm train, which turned out to be one of the elusive turbinis. The ride and accomodation was pretty much the same as the ‘express’ (average to poor, but on jointed track, not bad) but the train is actually composed as a push-pull formation, with power cars that look positively European. At one point on the (non-stop) return journey we hit the awesome speed of 140 km/h. ScotRail take note.

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Art in Cairo

Posted April 14, 2008, under art
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Visited the utterly deserted museum of Mr Mohammed Mahmoud Khalil, which contains all the pieces he collected over his lifetime, displayed in his former residence. I knew in advance it contained eighteenth- and nineteenth-century works, but was rather taken aback by the collection – it has pieces by all the ‘core’ Impressionists, and assorted hangers-on: there’s a handful of Rodin bronzes, a couple of Degas pastels (one indifferent, one good), several Monets, Gaugins and a Van Gogh. Oh, and an excellent Mary Cassatt piece. 

Highlights – Monet’s depiction of Westminster and Cleopatra’s Needle on the Embankment, Mary Cassat’s pastel of a young girl, Monet’s daliahs. I’m not a huge fan of the later Gaugins, especially ‘Life & Death’ which is given pride of place, but there’s a good breadth of work without being so large as to cause overload. If the museum was in a major European city, it’d be heaving with people (and have some decent security) – as it is, I was the only visitor.

As an aside, I’d link to the pieces, but there doesn’t seem to be an ‘IMDB for art’ on teh intarweb. If I’ve missed such a thing, please let me know.

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Pointy

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The Pyramids are impressive. Best bits include the restored solar barge, the quite moderate levels of hassle, and most especially going inside the pyramid of Khufu (Cheops). The great gallery is truly breath-taking, the sensation of height and space being the more impressive after the narrow entrance tunnel. It’s always remarked upon, but the quality of the stonework is amazing, far superior to almost everything that has followed (some South American sites excepted). Sadly the lower chambers aren’t open (but the access would be pretty dangerous), and from inside the King’s chamber the roof vaulting isn’t visible, but the overall experience is still special. At one point I had the entire place to myself – just me, a sarcophagus, and a zillion tons of stone.

Photography is verboten, but it’s no loss – trying to convey the sense of the place would be futile, I think.

The restored funerary boat (‘solar barge’) is amazing on several levels. For one thing, it was found in a pit about five metres beside the pyramid of Khufu, which demonstrates that pretty much anything could still be lurking under the sand, no matter how visited a site is. The most impressive aspect for me, however, is the boat’s construction – it’s all held together with ropes; where a regular ship would have ribs, knees and rowlocks, the Egyptians just used (lots of) rope. I imagine this makes for a very forgiving, ‘plastic’ vessel, good for use in river of unpredictable draught, and certain kinds of repair will be simpler, but a rebuild might be required at regular intervals.

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Horses

Posted April 13, 2008, under travel
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Went for a ride in the desert, great fun. Increased the total amount of time I’ve spent riding by a large factor (let’s say  tripled), and had the novel experience of turning up at a place, being handed a ‘prepared’ horse and being able to head off – no grooming / messing with tack required. No doubt many parts of my anatomy will ache tomorrow, but being able to go fairly fast on the sand was terrific. Having a horse that was actually prepared to canter was good, though on the way back home he was raring to go the whole time, and since I didn’t want to get lost heading in the direction of Libya or Sudan, had to keep reigning him in.

Riding back to the stables watching the sun set over the pyramids was pretty awesome, I’d have taken photos but was too busy concentrating on not falling off. You’ll have to imagine rolling dunes, wind blowing sand from the endless desert, soft blue sky, a glowing orange sun sinking over the horizon and three mountains of stone in the distance. Woo.

Oh, and being able to hand back the crazy creature at the end of the ride and not deal with all the tedious stuff is great, though it made me feel like a bit of a rotten colonial. I haven’t started flogging the natives yet.

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