Category: Photography

News and views about photography, cameras, social media, as well as pointers to Dave Bradley’s photographic output. You can also find me on Imaging Storm, Instagram and Flickr as “sciencebase”

Cottenham Balloon Terror

A Virgin hot-air balloon was looming low over Cottenham, just North of Cambridge City on the evening of 22nd June. Drinkers enjoying the sun and the ale outside The Chequers pub were stunned to see the enormous inflatable bobbing low over houses opposite. The pilot seemed desperately trying to gain height and had the burner on full power.

virgin-balloon-cropped

The balloon eventually lifted up and floated a few metres above the sweetshop and Chinese takeaway opposite heading for the Community Centre and Co-op store on the dangerous dog leg in Cottenham’s long High Street. Fortunately, it was at an altitude of about 40 metres at this point, although it did not stay high for long.

With nowhere safe to land at this point in the village witnesses assumed that the pilot was desperately trying to navigate to a field or open country away from the houses.

“It literally skimmed a tree in my back garden! It was frighteningly low,” said Cottenham resident Sian Williams. “I could feel the heat from the flames in my bedroom. Is this allowed?” she asks.

sian-williams-balloon

“It was extremely low when it came over Rooks Street, another Cottenham resident and local businessman Chris Fryer said. “It cleared the houses but landed very shortly after. I’m no expert but it didn’t look deliberate.

The law is very strict on ballooning. Except with the written permission of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) an aircraft shall not be flown closer than 500 feet to any person, vessel vehicle or structure. “Virgin seems to have form in breaching the Air Navigation Order like this,” says Russ Swan who filmed a similar incident in 2010 that elicited an apology from Virgin on local BBC TV.

Experienced glider pilot David Allan told me that, “The only way they can get around this is in the case of an emergency landing (gliders and balloons have an exemption for field landings). If there was a problem the pilot should have set the ballon down before drifitng over a town – when there is nowhere to go.”

High Street balloon photo David Bradley. Balloon on Tree photo by Sian Williams

Bee orchid – Ophrys apifera

Apparently, we have a bee orchid, Ophrys apifera, growing on the margin of our front garden. This is, according to a neighbour, a rare(ish) wildflower. Aside from being rather pretty and having flowers that attract bees as pollenators, the chemistry of their pigments is intriguing. The flowers contain quercetin and kaempferol glycosides as acylated or as cinnamic acid derivatives, while the pink outer sepals contain anthocyanins.

bee-orchid

The specimen in our garden is in a bad way, it being effectively on the edge of the relatively busy pavement outside our house, and rather downtrodden, trampled underfoot in the words of Led Zeppelin (or is it?). So, what to do with it, should I lift it from the tarmac and soil and replant it somewhere safer in the garden, or just leave it and hope it has self-seeded and that we will find its offspring elsewhere on the border next year, rather than embedded in the pavement?

Incidentally, this is how it should look when it is not downtrodden and still in bloom

OphrysApifera

Intriguingly, lots of these flowers are growing in the grass verges at the Metro Centre in Gateshead, near my home town…

Idea for a song – Other side of the tracks

UPDATE: 23rd June – Well, I wrote a new song, it started off with some South American loops and I built up a new guitar part on my Tele, added some bass guitar, messed around with various percussion samples and ad libbed a melody with a few lyrics from my lyrics book, just to get a guide vocal in place. I expanded and fine tuned them but it was with thoughts of the following Italian tale that gave me the title and the allusion: Latin Class.

Back in my late teens, I went InterRailing around Europe with a friend having been dumped unceremoniously by a university girlfriend. I got robbed in France, got blind drunk on the train to Belgrade, was kicked awake by mounted police outside Amsterdam station, was almost strip searched on the journey home by customs…

None of my adventure, compares to the tale I heard of a great railway journey of the past…Chris King of The Trainhacker shared with me a few of his memories of his loves and travels back in the day, I’ve extrapolated his tweets with some poetic embellishment of my own into the background story for what might become a new song, it’s either going to be call “Well chuffed”, “The other side of the tracks” or “Matching collar and cuffs”, haven’t decided yet.

I fell in love with an Italian traffic cop in Vatican City…she had long, dark hair, a golden tan, the crispest, whitest uniform, matching collar and cuffs. She was smoking Marlboro Reds when to do so was still the height of fashion and passion. She had a gun and she shouted “Ciao, bella!” to the Vespa girls as they whizzed around her roundabout in their pretty frocks and bobby socks.

Fiat-Viterbo
I was kooky, I knew it. It was love and I’ve still got the grainy black and white photo from ’88 to prove it. Memories of a boozy haze of raffia-wrapped Chianti bottles mingled with the greenest of olives and she wrapped me round her little finger and told me to confess my sins. I didn’t talk back, being forte was not my forte, but for a few short weeks, I lived la vida loca all the way down la dolce vita.

I borrowed a friend’s 500 to reach the other side of the sun-scorched tracks, the heat-buckled rails. On the long journey home, I found a long dark hair entangled in the webbing of my rucksack…it made me weep and reminded me of the taste of salted caramel gelati and the smell of two-stroke…

Free photos for whatever

Phil Bradley [no relation] alerted me to a site called LibreStock which does a meta search of image sites and only returns those images that have a Creative Commons “zero” licence. A zero licence, as Phil points out with a quote from LibreStock site itself means “you can use these pictures freely for any legal purpose. This means that they are free to use, even commercially, you can modify, copy and distribute, and you don’t need to attribute.”

That’s useful to know. I often need to grab a quick image to illustrate a throwaway blog post, Facebook update or tweet, but don’t always have a camera to hand nor the object I’d photograph with which to illustrate the update.

I gave it a quick try first search for apples and getting loads of computer and phone shots. A search for bananas was more on point

bananas

Another search for “Ford Mustang” brought up just 5 shots, a search for “guitars” brought up some nice photos although some of them were of saxophones. Ten snaps for a search on robots one of which was of the Mars Rover and another of R2D2. A search for “garbage” and then “rubbish” brought up some odd results, a perfectly good skateboard and some leaves for instance, although other pictures included a pile of broken phones, a plastic bag caught on a tree and some wheely bins.

It looks like a useful and potentially inspiring source and the problematic results it returns may be an artefact of incorrect tagging of the photos by the original sites.

Nacreous cloud spotting

UPDATE: These definitely are nacreous clouds, so-called because they look like nacre (mother-of-pearl). Lots of people posting photos all over twitter right now.

Just after the sun set over our village north of Cambridge, England, a whisp of white cloud caught my eye as I was staring out of my office window. Next to it there was a patch of rainbow-like fringes. Needless, to say I grabbed a camera and dangled myself out of the window to get a shot. Straggly shoots from the beech tree in our garden caught the attention of the camera’s autofocus, so it’s not a pin sharp shot of this meteorological phenomenon.

cloud-rainbow

At first, I assumed it was an actual rainbow being formed by the light from the already set sun coming from that white whisp, but my buddy James over on Facebook mentioned that nacreous clouds have been spotted over Dublin today. Now, Dublin is quite some distance from here, but given that nacreous clouds are usually only seen at the poles, this could be them…if this meteorological phenomenon has somehow headed south.

Shaking off the flies, head for Mars

Having mused on the possibility of our escaping to the stars, I began wondering whether we might not just hop over to Mars and carry out a terraforming program there to give us a new home. There was a NASA video showing what Mars might have been like 4 billion years ago. It perhaps blue skies and oceans. So, I downloaded that, did a video time reversal, rolled the credits and overdubbed my recent ambient funk rock track to add some aural atmosphere. Maybe this will be a new home for some of us in the year 3113.

The video also gives some meaning to the ad libbed lyrics I sang on that largely instrumental track. Maybe the shaking off of flies is a metaphor for leaving behind the death and decay we are creating here on Earth…

Meanwhile, more of my music is available for high-quality download from my BandCamp page or here.

Shake off Flies

High on illusion
Safe in your delusion
A state of confusion
Running on empty diffusion

Time flies…miles and miles

On a trip, slip, lose your grip
Make it click with a trick, don’t fail

When they’re broken they can tell you who to fade
Fix focus on the grip
Time and tide will show you how how to change your mind

How to change the time. Shake off flies
Who to change. Shake off flies
For miles and miles

Guitars, vocals, drum and synth loop mixing – Dave Bradley
Recorded and mixed at ScienceBass Studios

The original NASA video is here showing how 4-billion years ago Mars was more Earthly than we imagine and lost its blue skies and oceans as the aeons passed.

Wishful Thinking

An eclectic mix of electric, acrostic acoustic indie rock from the man Dek Ham calls “The Geordie Glenn Tilbrook”. Tracks remastered for high-quality download via BandCamp.

Winter Warmer – Taking the road to redemption: “An awesome tune”, “Very cool song. I love the guitar work and the ambient background sounds”

Love’s Offline – A tale of long-distance love in the age of the Internet: “Lovely song. Loved the vocal melodies and arrangement”, “Had tears whelling up in my eyes”

Security High – They’re watching you, watching them, watching you: “Nice song. A bit of classic REM in there”, “Very cool vibe, production and musicianship!”

Collateral Damage – War and peace and its post-traumatic harm: “Really great structure and breaks. Totally dig the harmonies and the vocals.”

“Creative structure throughout, hot licks and tasty riffs, a sweet bass line, and more potent words from your serious-songwriting mind delivered by your amazing voice,” “Standing ovation dude! This is great… lyrics, vocals, fiery guitars all work together wonderfully”

Golden Light – Life’s journey takes many turns, seek out the light: “Amazing…epic”, “Insanely good”, “Frightening music and lyrics, but really good!”

Wishful Thinking – My head’s in the clouds, but my feet are on the ground: “I really dig it. The lyrics are very good…and those guitars sound fantastic. Great production as well”, “I love the song…. I stayed completely enthralled with the song from start to finish”

Cut and Pasted – Down and out on Fleet Street: “Unique changes are paired with very accessible melodies”, “One of the sweetest and coolest bass lines I’ve heard in a long, long time. Kudos.”

Dawn Chorus (Bonus Track) – Imagine the morning after Get Lucky: “Steely Dan meets Jamiroquai meets Chic”…”with a splash of Phil Collins or maybe Glenn Tilbrook”, “This is a sophisticated piece of music”, “Great groove”

All songs by Dave Bradley. Acoustic and electric guitars, bass guitar percussion DB. Except: Winter Warmer – synths by Derek “MonoStone” Ham and Dawn Chorus – Groove and inspiration by Adrian “Don’t Look, Listen” Hillier.

Also now available work in progress here.