2023 Archives - Inedita

2023 April

I decided to dedicate this month’s Journal to the world of technology, and how it has impacted my/our lives, especially since the pandemic – though the changes started a while before with the move from Windows XP to Windows 10.
It has been a seismic shift for so many of us, and a shift that will be permanent, I think. The speed of change that has been forced on us has been hard to keep up with.

I considered myself quite ‘tech-savvy’ before Covid hit – I’d been running websites since the mid 1990s, both personal and about the developing hand-held computers … the forerunners of mobile phones. I was interested in the personal computer dimension more than the phone aspect, as I was disabled and housebound. So I bought the very first iPod Touch.

The operating system was the same as the first iPhone, which made life easier later on! Seen here with earbuds and several iPods, crammed with music.

By the time mobile phones really took off, several operating systems were familiar to me!

I’d also had a keen interest in the technology of CDs, DVDs and their tape-based forerunners. I’d been a Walkman user since the early 1980s, and a keen user of digital music ever since …. taking music with me wherever I went.

Music, podcasts and radio recordings were loaded onto my iPods, and played through speaker ‘docks’. Of course the ‘docks’ usually needed to be plugged into a wall socket – so not really portable!

So by 2019 I was well equipped with digital machines, and quite familiar with a range of home and online services and personal players. I’d even ditched my old Nokia phone, and moved to the iPhone, starting with the iPhone 5!
We had just bought our first smart TV, and our PCs and laptops were all hooked up to the internet. I’d been posting to the photographic website Flickr since 2012 – so I guess I was quite well prepared when Covid hit us as 2020 began!

Now the world changed in ways we weren’t expecting, and the pace of change accelerated. Shopping online was something we were used to – living remotely it was always an essential for us. So we had some existing accounts we could use. But with lockdown it became essential to order everything online, even the weekly grocery shopping trips were forbidden! We were all now prisoners in our own homes.
We were luckier than most, in having a good sized garden for a little exercise. But being in the ‘shielding’ group, at least initially, we couldn’t ‘stray’ further. And the links to the outside world by phone and mainly by Wi-Fi broadband became increasingly important.
Online banking, online shopping, emailing – all had been part of our lives before – but they became the only means of conducting our lives.

Perhaps the biggest technological ‘leap’ came with the development of the smartphone Apps. There is now an app for almost everything! I didn’t expect to be conducting banking business, or paying bills by smartphone. I was used to using the computer for financial transactions … but surely not my iPhone? But yes – it has become possibly the most essential piece of technology most of us need to function in 2023!

It has been an accelerating (and very expensive) journey through the Covid years! And now, in what we call our “post-covid” year(s) I find myself fully equipped with an iPhone that can ‘talk’ to the world, read the news, alert me to the next refuse collection, or local roadworks, pay bills and play music, listen to the radio or watch TV. A watch that can monitor my health as well as tell the time, tell me the weather and alert me to emails, iMessages and so much more. Airpods that can give me all the quality of sound reproduction I could get from a speaker dock, and silently so as not to disturb Mike.
All told, 2019 seems a long time ago, and another way of life!

And so on to May, and I turn my mind to summer
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Flickr holds Elisa’s online Photo Gallery
© 2023 Elisa Liddell

2023 February

It ‘s not often I give a nod towards celebrating Valentine’s Day …. the commercialisation that has developed around it is not to my taste. But this year we all seem to be feeling the fragility of life, and the importance of our close relationships. So I’ve been shooting some heart-shaped images. Here using the miniature bench I found recently.

There’s something haunting about this image that appeals to me. The bench, sitting in the sunshine surrounded by nothing but shadows is poignant. And my mind made a link with the current major news event – a massive earthquake in Turkey and Syria. The complete devastation of entire towns and cities – and the plight of those homeless ‘lucky’ survivors lost in a world of rubble.

February began here with wild storms, which brought back memories of last year, when we were recovering from Storm Arwen, and counting the cost in every way, especially health. Six days with no power left a long legacy – it took many months to recover, and feel warm again. This year we have got more emergency supplies in store, but are apprehensive about a bad winter.

The other thread that runs through everything is the run-away inflation. Managing the running costs of our home, keeping warm and properly fed – these were not things we expected to be concerned about in the 21st century. But I find myself recalling my early childhood when rationing was a major part of daily life, and the everyday budget was always to the forefront of my mother’s mind!
13 years of Tory ‘austerity’ have cut the UK to the bone – there is no excess meat on the bone! Add in Brexit, and we were on our knees as a nation before Russia invaded Ukraine.
The best we can do is to keep a close eye on the finances, and try to keep a healthy and optimistic frame of mind! Plenty of rest, plenty of binge watching using our smart TV, and as much photography as possible!

Using my favourite old Helios 44-2 lens, shooting one of my newest miniature vases from Yuta Segawa with just a few wisps of last year’s hydrangeas. Set in the cool winter sunshine.

One of my fun ways to enjoy indoor (winter) shooting is to play with everyday things such as cutlery, and enjoy experimenting with their bright surfaces!

One thing that is a direct consequence of the pandemic is that I have lost touch with all my assorted cameras and lenses! I have collected so many lenses, and several makes of camera too over the 11+ years of photography. Lenses for all kinds of subjects, all kinds of weather, and all manner of optical effects.
As 2020 began we suddenly found ourselves in lockdown and ‘shielding’ too. Suddenly the extent of my photographic ‘canvas’ shrank to indoors. As the warmer weather came our favourite places to walk and shoot were closed. Activity, exercise, and photographic opportunities were virtually nil!
And over those 3+ years I have had cameras and lenses that have never (or only rarely) seen the light of day. I have begun to consciously choose a couple of ‘unused’ lenses to work with, but I am finding that it takes more than a week or two to re-familiarise with a lens! I need longer to be able to effortlessly get the kind of results I could pre-pandemic!
So my current lenses are Lensbaby optics (several optics on 2 NEX-6 bodies) and Helios 44-2 and 44-M on NEX-6 and NEX-7 bodies.

This is a Lensbaby Sweet 40 with added 8mm macro ring. Usually the Sweet 50 would be a ‘go to’ lens for walking around Leith Hall gardens or Fyvie Castle.

And this is my oldest Helios lens, a 44-2 that is frozen at F2. Here catching ice droplets on the Japanese plum tree by our gate. No buds yet, but I am beginning to get the lens outdoors once again!

The 3 cameras I have kept using all through the pandemic are my main macro camera, A Sony 77m2 with the 100mm tele-macro lens – an original Sony RX100 – a Sony RX10m3.
Yes – I am a Sony camera lover!
So the addition of the two specialised lenses has kept me busy since last Christmas. I’ve still got a lot more to explore, with the lenses and additional macro rings. But I feel I am making a start!

Here using the Lensbaby double glass optic for a landscape shot across the howe. The typical lensbaby focus and fly-away blur. Just walking along to the Kirk. Rendered in B+W.

And my ‘go to’ lens for shooting across the howe – the Sony RX10m3. Usually much used to shoot during trips up the coast, or at Leith Hall, where there are good distance shots to be had.

And my main way of recording the landscape as we drive along (mainly going shopping!) The RX100. In all kinds of weather, travelling at speed, it can capture such amazing images!

And so February has passed, with me trying to keep warm, cheerful and active. Avoiding the news is a significant positive step! There is little I can do to effect what goes on in the country or in the wider world. Luckily we have had no power cuts, so both Sky Box and smart TV streaming channels have kept us both entertained!

On to March – the indoor winter experience
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Flickr holds Elisa’s online Photo Gallery
© 2023 Elisa Liddell

2023 January

And so the new year begins …. and I have some new things to celebrate.
I have finally found the lightest spectacles I have ever seen. So light I hardly know I’m wearing them. Rimless and with thin titanium arms they have revolutionised the seeing experience for this reluctant late-comer to the world of varifocal specs. I just had to photograph them in celebration!

I have added a new ‘small world’ to my photo prop collection. Inspired by a fellow Flickr-ite I discovered Minimum World where they make miniature furniture and more. All hand-made and beautiful.

So I am beginning to explore the ways in which I can combine my love of macro photography with all the possibilities of story telling that these new finds can offer.

In the dark days of winter I have been shooting indoors, and I love to play with prisms, glass and light ….

Add a brightly coloured scarf as a backdrop, and there are so many surprises for the camera lens – and for me too! Not quite an abstract, but it is difficult to discern the elements.

Take the same elements of prisms and glass surfaces and shine LED lights of several colours at them, and more mysterious abstracts appear. Move the lights or the prisms a little and the image changes…

Another way to use the photographic potential of the winter months, is the low winter sun. The sun is late to rise, and never reaches the heights of the Spring or summer months. So catching the moments when the sun does shine, there are long shadows to be captured.

Catching that low winter sun shining through the window. The shadows are not deeply strong and dark … but they can seem to stretch on forever!

Position the subject just right, and at ‘high noon’ the sun has enough intensity to give multiple shadows. There is so much fun to be had with just 2 forks!

But January wouldn’t be complete without recording the latest venture into the world of technology. Yes … time to upgrade the technology we all depend on more and more as so much of daily life moves online. So, a new iPhone was added to our tech. store.
I was fortunate enough (if that is the right word) to fall down the rabbit hole into the world of Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome when the first developments of what would become today’s smartphones were happening. And I got into the cutting edge tech of the time back in the 1990s, while running a website called FoxPop. On the website I could follow and review the latest gadgets from Psion and Geofox in the UK.
“The Geofox One was a sub-notebook styled PDA that used Psion’s EPOC32 OS in 1997.”
And later we added the Blackberry, and other handheld organisers. Developments in miniaturisation led to handheld organisers and small laptops coming closer and closer in size and power… until we have a smartphone today that is many times more sophisticated and powerful than a large laptop of 2000!
The years I spent running the FoxPop website gave me a head start in understanding the technological revolution that has swept the 21st century world into the online, connected, digital world it is today.
So – despite being in the age-range of those who struggle with modern smartphones – I enjoy the ever changing and ever challenging world of personal technology.

On to February …… and re-awakening some dormant cameras!
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2023 Vision

And so 2023 begins.
This it the third year of my online Journal, and each year has confounded my thoughts as I sat and looked into the possible shape of the coming months. Maybe weaving plans and expectations for the year ahead is not really a wise move!
But it’s a natural, human thing to do … to make shapes of the future, and to make stories of our past. Maybe all journals should be written only in retrospect.
I confess that I have fewer ideas about what lies ahead in 2023 – fewer than I expected I’d have. The last 3 years have completely shaken up all our plans and expectations. I guess that is the nature of a pandemic – a global event that reshapes the world. All I can do is describe where I am now, where the UK is now, and where the wider world is now … as seen from this small corner of the Scottish highlands.

Personally we (Mike and I) still treat the pandemic as active, along with ‘flu and several other winter infections. So we live a quiet life of ‘shielding’ and wear masks when shopping etc. This is unusual now, as most people try to act as if the pandemic is over. But cases are still fluctuating, and the advice in Scotland has changed to mask wearing in crowded public places – ventilation and social distancing.
There is no functioning NHS. Under-funded and overstretched for 13 years it is collapsing around us. Indeed all public services are collapsing: teachers, local government workers, train drivers, social care workers … so many are striking after 13 years of ‘austerity’ which meant pay freezes all round.
The tipping point came in the final months of last year, as rocketing inflation has driven more workers to need Food Banks to even eat minimally. The UK government is doing nothing, waiting for ‘public opinion’ to turn against the strikers, and the strikers to be starved back to work.
It sounds Dickensian, doesn’t it …. and it feels Dickensian too, living through it!

January …and the journey begins with some new delights.
February …… and re-awakening some dormant cameras!
March ….. and the indoor winter experience
April …. and a look at how Covid had changed our tech. lives

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