The Author – Bart Busschots
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Feb
21
This week I thought I’d share another one of my butterfly shots form last summer. This guy was nice enough to sit still for quite some time, and allow me to get low and close behind him so that I was able to be eye-level with him while he was back-lit by the soft evening sun. I think this species, the Green-veined White (Pieris napi), is particularly suited to being back-lit because it emphasises the green veins in the wings.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/640 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.6
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
Feb
15
Just a very simple recipe today – not sure it even counts as a recipe, more of a quick tip really. One of my favourite ways to cook salmon fillets, or indeed salmon steaks is to simply pan-fry them with the appropriate seasoning.
Feb
14
Photo of the Week 157 – Ennis Friary
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This is another one of the shots I took in the ruins of Ennis Friary when I visited Ennis for a friend’s wedding the summer before last. This is not the first shot from that visit to make my Photo of the Week series, see also Photo of the Week 77, Photo of the Week 87 & Photo of the Week 153. I chose to process this shot as a monochrome HDR to really bring out the fantastic textures in this tomb and the doorway next to it.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/125 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Processing: created by tonemapping a single RAW image with Photomatix Pro, then converting it to monochrome with the Channel Mixer brick in Aperture, and bringing out the texture even more using the Curves brick.
Feb
7
Red Lentil & Tomato Soup
Filed Under Cooking & Food | 8 Comments
This is a recipe I got from my mother, and what I love about it is how quick it is. All-in-all it doesn’t take much more than 30 minutes to go from a craving for soup, to tucking in, and most of that time is just to let it boil! You can easily make this soup while you are cooking the rest of the meal or doing some house work.
Below are the list of ingredients, you’ll get four good portions out of these amounts:
- 3 Cloves of Garlic (Mum only uses two, but I much prefer three)
- 1 Onion
- 170g of dried Red Lentils
- a 400g tin of chopped Tomatoes (I like to use organic)
- 850ml of Vegetable Stock (I use a gluten-free Vegetable Bouillon instead)
- Parsley (ideally fresh, but dried will do in a pinch)
- Salt & Black Pepper
Feb
6
It’s been a while since I shared a Dragonfly shot in this series, so here’s one from last summer. The reason this shot of a Four-spotted Chaser (Libellula quadrimaculata) stands out for me is that I was able to get a lovely smooth blue background by lining things up so that the entire background was filled with the reflection of a clear blue sky in the Canal I was shooting along (the Royal Canal).
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/500 sec
- Focal Length: 200mm
- Focal Ratio: f/8
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Aperture Priority
- Exposure Bias: -1.0ev
Jan
31
Photo of the Week 155 – Snowdrops
Filed Under Photography | 1 Comment
Because I’m still sick this shot is not from this year, but it seemed seasonally appropriate, and I did re-edit it for posting today – adding just a little more contrast than my original rendering had.
I just love these little flowers, they symbolise the end of winter for me like nothing else does. In case anyone cares, the latin name for Snowdrops is Galantus nivalis. I got this shot next to the ruins of an old church just outside Maynooth. Any yes, I was lying flat on my stomach in the dirt to get this shot 🙂
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 55-200mm
- Exposure: 1/500 sec
- Focal Length: 175mm
- Focal Ratio: f/5.6
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Full Manual
- Processing: Used Aperture 3’s brushes feature to dodge & burn a little
Jan
29
A Quick & Easy Oriental Salad
Filed Under Cooking & Food | 2 Comments
When I started this experiment with blogging food stuff, I said that cooking was all about sharing, no post better illustrates that than this one. This is my take on a recipe that I got from Bren Finan, which he got from a friend of his, who got it from her mother, who probably got it from hers, and so on back through the ages. Bren’s friend’s mum happens to be Japanese, hence, this is an oriental salad. I’ve made my own alterations to the original as Bren thought it to me, and goodness know how many other alterations there have been, so the chances are very little of the original is recognisable!
This is a wonderfully imprecise dish, and open to infinite variety, so please please please experiment. Just use this post as a starting point, not as an end point.
Anyhow, when I make this salad I use the following:
- A family pack of mixed leaves (i.e. a 100g bag with pre-washed lettuce of different colours in it)
- One Apple
- Half a block of mature red cheddar cheese, i.e. about 100g (bet this bit isn’t traditionally Japanese!)
- A quarter of a cucumber (I like to get organic)
- A handful of Cherry Tomatoes (I always get Organic, especially for a salad)
- Some Mixed chopped nuts (I just use a small sprinkling, and you can use whole nuts too)
- Olive Oil
- Balsamic Vinegar
- Soy Sauce
- Freshly ground black pepper & salt
Jan
26
I’m annoyed today. Very annoyed. I think we’re witnessing the demise of the country which I am proud to be a citizen of – Belgium. There’s no doubt that it is, and always has been, a strange place. It was a purely made up country that had nothing on common apart from a shared Catholic faith, and the newly appointed king. I don’t know of any other country where there is no common national language. The struggles between the Wallonians and the Flemish has been long and complicated. Despite being a physically tiny nation, Belgium has become a Federal State, with a national federal government in Brussels, and local ‘state’ governments in Brussels, Flanders, and Wallonia. The local governments are all working just fine, they have administrations in place, and are getting on with the job of running their respective parts of the country. The problem lies with the national federal government. We have had a string of unstable governments for years now, often with very long gaps between elections and the eventual formation of short-lived and turbulent administrations. When the previous government collapsed last spring, elections were called and held in June. Since then, there have been on-going negotiations to form a government, and they have not gone smoothly. Today, for what feels like the millionth time, talks collapsed, and the King’s mediator has handed his resignation to the King. If you’re wondering why there have to be negotiations, the reason is that there are no nation-wide parties in the Belgium. There are Flemish parties and Wallonian parties, and although there is a Flemish Green Party and a Wallonian one, they are not the same party, and don’t work together. The constitution sets this division in stone mandating that governments consist of coalitions of Flemish and Wallonian parties.
Jan
24
This all started with a really childish and really stupid comment on Flickr by a young American rail fan:
Probably because the cabs on American locomotives aren’t ugly as the atrocious things that pass for locomotives in Europe.
The sheer childishness of it all put me off replying, but it did start me thinking, apart from the very obvious difference in style, what are the real differences between our locomotives?
Jan
23
Photo of the Week 154 – Evening Excursion
Filed Under Photography | 1 Comment
This is the last shot I took before my current illness really got serious, and stopped me shooting. I was very much in two minds about whether or not to venture outside to capture this, but, when I realised that the sun would be setting just as the train was coming thought, and that it would be setting in just the right place to light the near-side of the train, I figured I couldn’t miss this rare opportunity.
This shot was taken just outside Maynooth, as a Railway Preservation Society of Ireland (RPSI) special was making it’s way back home to Dublin. The train was pulled by Irish Rail Class 071 diesel electric locomotive number 073. This class of locomotive were built by General Motors in the late 1970s, and originally introduced as mainline express locomotives. After the introduction of the 201 class of locomotives in the mid 1990s the 071s were relegated to less prestigious lines, including the one through Maynooth form Dublin to Sligo. In recent years these less prestigious intercity services have all switched to class 22000 rail cars, so all that’s left now for the 071s is freight duties and the occasional special. A decade ago, 071s came though Maynooth many times every day, now, since there is no freight service on the Dublin to Sligo line, seeing an 071 here is a real event. This particular 071 has been recently re-painted in Irish Rail’s new freight livery. Originally the 071s carried Irish Rail’s old tan and black livery. The carriages on this special were the RPSI’s heritage set.
- Camera: Nikon D40
- Lens: Nikon DX AFS 18-55mm (D40 kit lens)
- Exposure: 1/320 sec
- Focal Length: 18mm
- Focal Ratio: f/4
- ISO: 400
- Camera Mode: Full Manual
- Processing: created by tonemapping a single RAW image with Photomatix Pro, and tweaking the result with Aperture’s built-in Dodge & Burn plugin