From the non-digital archive: Irish dancing 1995

Celtic designs on an Irish dancing dress

That great show Riverdance is in Cardiff this week, at St David’s Hall for a couple of days as part of a tour to celebrate 21 years since the first performance. By chance it is now 21 years since I took these pictures of young people dancing in the Irish style in Kinsale, County Cork, in the summer of 1995, before the Riverdance phenomenon began in earnest.

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From the non-digital archive: Yabusame 1991

A Japanese horseback archery contest took place in Cardiff in 1991

Occasionally I look back at the pictures I took in the days before digital cameras. This time the subject was a Japanese Yabusame (horseback archery) event in Cardiff’s Cooper’s Field, part of Bute Park, on Sunday, September 15, 1991. That was a particular boom time for industry links between Wales and Japan and we all loved anything Japanese.

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Trying out my new Cyber-shot camera…

Favourite shot so far with my new Sony HX50 camera – a scarlet lily beetle, Lilioceris lilii

All I want is a decent point-and-shoot compact camera that is good at taking pictures of birds from a great distance and flowers and insects in close-up. Plus general views, obviously.

I have great affection for my old Olympus Camedia C-765 Ultra Zoom, which has been with me since August 2004, a good five years before I started this blog. I had long been wondering what

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A childish fear of volcanoes…

The Indonesian volcano of Rinjani in 1994, by Oliver Spalt on Wikimedia Commons

STOP PRESS: Moments after I published this, reports came in of a volcano erupting in Sumatra – so best wishes to everyone struggling there…
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Did you have an irrational fear of something when you were a child? In my case, for a while at least, I was terrified of volcanoes. You might say that’s not so crazy. But as I lived in Wales, where an eruption would be pretty near impossible, I think it was.

So this post is all about what

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Institutional blue breaks through…

Institutional blue reappearing on a green-painted fence, March 2, 2013…

The above is an iPhone snapshot and this is just a short post to launch my 2013 gallery, which you can see here.

But it’s also to ask if anyone else out there recognises this turquoise colour as “institutional blue”. A couple of decades ago it seemed

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The view from my window – through a Photoshop filter

The view from my window – with Photoshop stained glass filter…

This post is just a bit of playing around with Photoshop, really. I’ve had Photoshop CS3 for years but still love messing about with the “filters” options. They are such an easy way of creating a special effect with no artistic talent whatsoever!

As the basis for these experiments I used this image of

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Blue skies, nothing but blue skies…

Blue skies over Penarth Pier – although this was a winter sky, in December 2009…

Blue skies, nothing but blue skies…
Since the jetstream moved north again a couple of weeks ago and summer arrived at last, I can’t get that song out of my head. Here’s the version by Frank Sinatra…

We had maybe a fortnight of dazzling blue skies and scorching sun here in Wales but now it’s turned changeable again. Which is the way I like it, as it

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