w International Shed

8th, April 2021
'The Whirlpool Galaxy'

I'm finding astrophotography amazing and extremely frustrating at the same time. The image across is the Whirlpool galaxy, you can find it near the top of the plough handle. I was pretty happy with this image I captured with my cheapo kids telescope, but trying to photograph it the next night with the same conditions and same gear, no chance, eveything went wrong, couldn't focus, gear didn't work and I couldn't for the life of me find the galaxy!

When the 'vibe' is good, things go well and you get good images, when things go wrong, everything goes wrong and you get nothing. There's definately a massive amount of luck involved.

Jim.


6th, April 2021
'Henry's Birthday'

Henry turned 9 today. He got lots of cool stuff. In fact what was interesting was that the stuff he got was very sciencey, so maybe he's gearing up for being a scientist, which is pretty cool. He's into geodes and stones, so I'm advising him to get into finding diamonds and make us rich!

Click on the image to see photos from his last birthday of being a single number.

Jim.


5th, March 2021
'Ursa Major'

Tricky conditions tonight. Broken cloud kept rolling in and didn't give me time to focus on anything. Talking of focus, didn't hit a thing with the Sony, all shots out of focus. The canon 6d wasn't too bad. It's an area I need to work on.

As the conditions were temperamental, I decided to concentrate on Ursa Major, probably my favourite constellation. The shot is soft, but makes the constellation stand out a bit.

Jim.


16th, February 2021
'The Orion Nebula'

I'm pretty pleased with my Orion Nebula shot, but I need more! To paraphrase Chief Brody from Jaws, "I'm gonna need a bigger lens"

Jim.


12th, February 2021
'Night Sky 1'

My star tracker works really well. I managed to get Andromeda, Pleiades and Mars as my first targets last night. Click on the image to see.

Jim.


9th, February 2021
'Snow'

Beast From The East 2 is here. It's pretty chilly out and we have a bit of snow. It's proper alpine snow too. Daisy and I took a walk around the block and took some pictures. Click on the image across to see.

Jim.


6th, February 2021
'Static or Nebula?'

No, this isn't a nebula from space. This is a static discharge from Henry's head. This morning, I noticed when getting out of bed that if I ran my hand down our duvet, the static discharge was pretty impressive, it looked like a plasma ball. Henry jumped into the bed and got a pretty big shock on his head, which he said hurt. The photo doesn't give the effect justice as it looked really cool.

In other news I pick up a equatorial star tracker, so hoping for a few clear nights to get some nice shots of the night sky.

Jim.


24th, January 2021
'Breaking Ice'

It's sooo cold at the moment and I don't think its going to get above freezing here today. I popped into the shed to stick some mudguards on the MTB and it felt like my fingers were going to fall off.

The kids had fun outside for a bit smashing up the thick ice with mallets. We tried to made a mini igloo with blocks of ice, but our hands got too cold and we headed inside. Click on the image across to see some photos.

Jim.


21st, January 2021
'Orion'

Being happy with my Andromeda photo, I thought I'd give the Orion Nebula a go, and again, I'm pretty pleased with the result. It's pretty exciting when you snap the shot and you zoom in on he camera and see the detail.

I need to get a telescope now.

Jim.


16th, January 2021
'Andromeda'

I managed to capture the Andromeda galaxy from the back garden this evening. Got to say, I'm pretty chuffed with the image. I only found it by accident. I was taking some night sky shots with the 50mm 1.2 and when hiking the exposure up super high, I noticed a blob at the top of the photo which looked odd, so used the Star Walk app to see what it was and it was Andromeda. I then chucked the 70-220 2.8 on and to get a bit closer and got the image across. I reckon with some photo stacking, which I know nothing about, I could get a pretty descent image of it.

If you look closely, you can see one of the spiral arms.

The light from the galaxy took 2.5 million years to reach my camera. Nuts eh!

Jim.


1st, January 2021
'No Longer European'

Well, the racists bigoted gammons won, we are no longer part of the European Union. It's such a depressing start to the year! The only good thing to come out of this mess is that it will only galvanise Scottish Independence.

I hope a year today, we are in a good position to leave the UK and are on our way to re-joining the EU.

Jim.


28th, December 2020
'Daisy's Birthday'

Quick on the heels of christmas is Daisy's birthday, she turned 10 today. I can't believe she's in double figures! It's scary how fast the last 10 years have flown, let hope the next 10 fly not to fast.

Click on the image to see pics of the day,

Jim.


25th, December 2020
'Christmas Day'

I always feel a bit relieved when christmas day comes as it seems to build up for about a quarter of the year, then once it's done you can chill out a bit. The kids have been so hyper this last week, so it's nice they've calmed down a bit. We got them iPads so probably won't see them for the next week or so. Click on each image to pics from the day.

Jim.


2nd, December 2020
'Moon And Mars'

The moon was super bright the other night as was Mars. I'm pretty pleased with the pics I managed to get. Click on each image to enlarge.

Jim.


29th, November 2020
'Christmas....again?'

This year has melted away. I cant believe Christmas is here already, only feels like a couple of months ago I posted one of these photos. Anyhoo, we popped the tree up yesterdays, click the image across to see the now ritualistic time-lapse of it's ascension.

Jim.


20th, November 2020
'School Photo'

Because of stupid covid, the School are not doing pupil photos this year. So it was up to me to get the pic. I'm pretty pleased with it, but it was a bit of a trauma getting it. Click on the image to see more.

Jim.


13th, November 2020
'New Ride'

This is my new winter bike. Cost nothing from ebay and is as equally as good as my Cervelo (summer bike).

Jim.


25th, September 2020
'Uh oh!'

It has begun.

Daisy and her friends have a WhatsApp group.

I’m preparing to say goodbye to my little girl and now awaiting the arrival of my teenage daughter. This morning at breakfast her phone was pinging constantly, until I turned it on to silent, then it continued to annoy with a buzz every two seconds. It’s going to be an interesting time from now until high school, which is less than two years away.

Jim.


14th, August 2020
'Life 2.5'

When the kids came along, life started again. I called it life 2.0.

I've now started life 2.5

We've made a pretty big change at work, we are now working a rota where there is only 2 of us in the studio rather than 3 at any one time. It's a stroke of genius and for me means I'll get 27 hours (time the kids are at school when I'm off) a months of time to myself. This is life changing. I can hang out with Carol, ride bikes guilt free and potter about in the shed.

It is a VERY exciting time.

Jim.


20th, July 2020
'Comet'

I'm pretty chuffed with my comet hunting. Comet Neowise is supposed to be visible with the naked eye, but it's been pretty tricky to spot. Had it arrived in the winter, it would be super bright. Once the comet leaves our solar system, it won't be seen again by humans for 7000 years.

Jim.


11th, July 2020
'Inverness'

Jesus! I keep saying this, I must keep on top of the shed's updates! The whole month of June is missing.

In my defense, we were in lock-down so not a lot was happening, now that we are heading out of LD, a lot is happening. Last week we had our 1st holiday and went to visit mum in Inverness, click on the image to view pics of the trip. We said goodbye to the wendy house, which was a little bit sad as it means that the kids are getting older and no longer wanted to play in it, also, it was rotten and was on it's last legs. And we now have a new smaller shed which now contains the wendy house contents. The resulting organisation has given us a bigger garden.

With lock-down ending and other things going on, it feels nice at the moment, there's change in the air and a sense of opportunity.

Jim.


17th, May 2020
'Henry Brazil 20'

I was hoping to stay on top of the 'Henry Brazil' photo project, but somehow I missed out last year. The years the photos were taken are 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2020. Looking at the images, there isn't that much of a change in the 2018 and 2020 images. Click on the image to enlarge.

Other than been stuck in this ridiculous lock-down (stupid idea to lock up healthy people if you ask me) there's not a lot going on. What I have been doing is spending a lot of time with the kids which has been brilliant. If the lock-down had never happened, I don't think I would have ever spent this much time with the children...ever! So as ridiculous as it is, the time I'm having with the family at the moment is priceless.

Oh, and we have a bumble bee hive in our loft again. I can hear them buzzing in the wall. I feel lucky they have made their home in mine again.

Jim.


8th, April 2020
'Henry's Birthday'

Yeah, something to celebrate, Henry's birthday. He turned 8 and is growing up so fast he's going to be as tall as Carol in a couple of years. Click on the image across to see pics of his birthday.

It's been ages since my last post. The start of the year was awful as it was cold, rainy and windy for about 2 sold months, and after that C19 dug it's heels in and everyone knows about that. Looking forward to all this craziness being over and a bit of normality restored.

Jim.


16th, February 2020
'Sunday Walk'

A few photos of our adventure to the top of Costorphine Hill. Click on the image to see.

Jim.


8th, January 2020
'Getting Shed Lazy Again'

I always try and make an effort to post to the shed at least 1 a month, even if the post are dead boring and nothings happened. But I'm getting a bit lazy about it. I love going back I've the shed posts, it's now essentially a diary for me. I have a million photos to sort out from the Christmas holidays, so I will post again with an upload of pics soon...I promise.

Jim.

News Archive

Travel back in time with the shed