Uninspired

I should have stuck to trying to being more creative indoors like last week as its a poor selection of images this week. So poor I was struggling to pick three. That is the way it goes. Not for lack of getting out. I have managed 4 weeks now of walks of over seven miles. Maintaining them. That is what I wanted to do. First time in three years. I just have to keep doing it and if I can then look to slowly increase them.
Bloody sinus troubles though. Been blocked up this last week and after walking my nostrils were aflame. Then the left ear started to hurt followed by face pains/pressure here and there. All indicating either blocked sinus or a sinus infection. Retiring to bed two hours earlier than usual too and struggling to stay awake in the evenings. Its definitely not helping me get through the walks which are a chore more than anything now. But I am determined to keep them going.
The above was taken from one of them. I walked right through there for the first time in a while. Down towards the main street. As usual started to get panicky so turned back. Its a little expanding of the bubble though.



Weather not helping inside or out. Here there was a fall of sleet. Not much for a picture but to illustrate the fact. Not much attraction in going out, bloody freezing inside. No snow though yet. Sleet is the closest we have come. And the cold isn't helping with the way I am feeling. Feel really crappy. Don't think its all anxiety but there is obviously a lot of it on top.



With the daylight hours getting shorter a lot of walking is in the dark. That is not good for photography- handheld at least. Light is the most important ingredient for any camera. This one was down the down around the back of five. Trying to capture the Christmas lights without much success.

Getting creative

Something a bit different this week. I've lost my way a bit already. Creatively I mean. Been keeping up the walks but not much new to take photographs of. So I've tried to do something a little different. More about processing that photography.

Here I have used an idea from a magazine. It involves 3 images blended together to represent a girl looking out a rain soaked window at fireworks. An image of rain on a window was provided by the magazine, the fireworks and outside reflection were an old photo posted here from Firework night and the photo of the girl I took this week in keeping with the blog. It works OK. Could be better but OK.

Its just the hair that is a problem and that is mainly down to the fact its been about a year since I did any manipulating in Photoshop and its all a bit foreign now. Its a metaphor I suppose, the image. All the attractions are outside. The people are outside experiencing them. And I am at the other side of the glass watching, even though its not me in the photo- rather not use my mug. It might be something I do again with the only criteria being that I at least use a photo taken the week in it, preferably all photos from that week. Aside from the photo its been a shitty week. One of many. Nausea, anxiety and the usual.

Above the kids playing a game on their day off, a school holiday. A simple game with a blindfold. Forget the Wii. They had a great time and minimal crying which was good. The boy is just about to go looking for the girls and as you can see the youngest is cheating by hiding in the kitchen so he won't find her. Cheeky scamp.

Added a couple of textures to it. Mainly because indoors is lacking natural light and as such needs a higher ISO to compensate unless I am photographing something still. Higher ISO means more sensitivity producing more noise and grainier images. On my little camera ISO 100, 200 and to some extent 400 are pretty noise free. ISO 800 starts to get very visible grain, must worse at ISO 1600 which the camera's automatic function defaults to indoors like here. ISO 3200 is virtually unusable. This is to do with smaller cameras. On a DSLR with much bigger sensors the noise is managed much better and I would be able to get away with ISO 1600 no problem at all indoors. But also this is automatic. I'm a lazy sod. I have experimented in manual mode and managed to get a balance at a lower ISO but it depends how much movement there is. Here I could have done it. Catching the right moment there was not much movement.

Lastly just an image I wanted to do. I've seen this done lots of times. Again not as clear as I would like which is down to my camera but also because it was indoors- should have done it outdoors. Just an eye macro and then a colour change in Photoshop.

Aside from the photos some bad news this week. My wife got a text from my sister who had been trying to phone all day- tight bugger won't phone a mobile. My dad had been feeling unwell so went to the doctors who sent him in turn to the hospital for high blood pressure. He will be in until next week while they run tests. Worry and guilt. Worry for his health and guilt that I cannot go through to see him such is my agoraphobia.

Its been coming. He's one of many working his arse off and running himself into the ground in the process for fear of debt. He is 60 years old and I cannot remember a week where he did not work. And its harder now. Not just because of his age but because of the influx of foreign workers. He thinks he is lucky if he can find a week's work despite it being shitty work and for a fraction of what he used to earn before they opened the borders to all of Eastern Europe. Hard labour no 60 year old should be doing and the stress of finding work and the stress of my mum pressurising him to get work even though he couldn't try less harder. It all builds. He has been feeling ill for weeks but feels he cannot let that stop him working. This is the result. I just hope he is OK and slows down from the heavy lifting at least.

Old faces

This week I have again been walking to school and on Wednesday I managed to get 60% of the way there . Good stuff. Got a bit panicky though, more so since it was before nine in the morning when I am not at my best in general. The problem is though that there is nothing there to photograph.Mornings are not good for me so I have been doing well. There are two things. The earlier I rise the more I clock watch and get anxious about how long the day is- probably because it means more probability of panic and getting panicking earlier means I have a longer time to feel shit after. Also though its not just time. My body seems to need time to unwind. I get up very tense which makes activity of any kind harder and as the day goes on I seem to move more freely. That is why I used to prefer walking at night.

But despite that my furthest walk to the school came early in the day so maybe its all mental in that regard. Half the battle is not being swamped by the negative future thoughts and the other half is dealing with the day ahead if a walk that early does effect me badly. That though was one of four walks this week. I have managed seven and a half miles this week in total which is good going for me. Lots of positives. It is in fact the second week in a row of doing that. And looking back over the charts I keep two weeks in a row is the most I have ever managed in 3 years. The charts are all spikes. Now the challenge for the week ahead. I need consistency and to maintain that level for as long as I can.

A lot on my mind this week. Enough anxiety to be getting on with. The financial problems, the visit from my wife's friend and an ear infection to boot. The ear affects my balance and so my walking but that didn't stop me. Small steps. I walked to the skate park one day after saying goodbye to the family on their way to school. I looked at this wall and saw a "Rise Up" spray. In fact I've seen a few now. Given the turmoil at the moment across the land I can see it catching on. People are angry and devoid of hope while others sit on fat arses drinking champagne carefree pissing on the masses. Its going to turn, its in the air. And its going to be ugly. Apologies for the other graffiti.

On Armistice day, 11/11/11, my wife's friend came to stay the night. As always visitors give me a lot of anxiety. No escape. And it doesn't matter who the visitor is. Take my wife's friend. A really lovely lass and so easy to get on with. That kind of good company doesn't make a difference to my anxiety because my anxiety is all internal and about me and my perception of danger and worry over inability to escape when panic rears. So I get very mixed emotions. It was great to see her, I enjoyed her being there but also I hated the anxiety that came with it. As always I felt trashed after and in need of many hours of sleep which having a young family I didn't get.

Quiet festivities

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.