3/12/23
1st of the month sunrise
from home at 08:10
Panasonic FZ82 1/12/23
 
After lunch we had a
fairly quick visit to the Wildlife Park. We only had an hour until
it closed at 4 pm but took a walk on the path through the Curragh.
Due to the hills just south of the park, the sun hardly touches it at this
time of year, so the overnight frost still covered the area.
DJI Osmo Pocket 3 1/12/23
    
    
   
After leaving the Wildlife
Park, we had a stop in Ramsey on the way home.
DJI Osmo Pocket 3
1/12/23
    
4/12/23
There are thirty new
Railway pictures taken at the 'Little Festival Shedanigans' on the Manx
electric Railway over the weekend.
Railways
2023 Pt 3 or click on the first thumbnail here to see them all.
DJI Osmo Pocket 3 &
DJI Mini 2 2/12/23 & 3/12/23
    
I shot two videos, the
first one was on the Saturday event and from ground level. The second
was on Sunday and just an aerial view of the two trams passing near the
line summit above Bulgham Bay. There's no sound on the second one
unfortunately, as I forgot to turn on the separate audio recorder!
Click a button to view
either video.
 
5/12/23
Although the drone flights
on Sunday afternoon were primarily to photograph and take video of the
tram operations, I also did a few more general pictures and shot two 360
degree panoramas. Lighting conditions weren't great as it was around
sunset with a heavy cloud overcast.
DJI Mini 2 3/12/23
   
 
It was almost dark when
I left Dhoon Glen, but I had a stop in old Laxey on the way home to give
the Osmo a test under very low light conditions.
DJI Osmo Pocket 3 3/12/23
    
    
6/12/23
Some night photography
in Douglas. I was dropping Georgie off down in town for an evening
out and thought that rather than just driving straight home I'd have a
wander around testing out the Osmo in low light again. For the technical,
it has a fixed aperture of f2.0 and I left it on 'Auto' exposure settings
but with a cap of
ISO 1600. I'll
put the exposure settings on individual pictures. Most were handheld
but I did use the mini tripod to steady some.
DJI Osmo Pocket 3 5/12/23
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
 
9/12/23
A bit of playing on
the computer in Paint Shop Pro on a wet and windy afternoon - Some Christmas
baubles!
11/12/23
Just a couple of 'out
of the window' shots this morning, with the 'Manxman' departing to Heysham
and the sky around 50 minutes later.
Panasonic FZ82 11/12/23
 
24/12/23
There are seven new
Railway pictures and a video in Railways
2023 Pt 3. Following the 10:00 'Polar Express' from Douglas to
Santon and the return
journey on the last
day of its December 2023 operation.
   
25/12/23
26/12/23
Yesterday afternoon
I felt in need of a little exercise and as it was around sunset decided
that Douglas Head might be a good location. I just took the DJI Osmo
camera with me, for two reasons. The first was that I'm still very much
enjoying using it, but the second was that it is very good in low light
situations.
DJI Osmo Pocket 3 25/12/23
    
    
    
   
27/12/23
Yesterday the weather
improved enough for it to be possible to carry out some aerial photography
with a drone and I set out to Druidale late morning.
It was quite sunny for
the first flight but had clouded over by the time I did the second one.
I finished off with some ground level photography whilst walking back through
the woodland area. Hi to the hiking family and the picnicking young
ladies if you see this!
DJI Mini 2 & DJI
Osmo Pocket 3 26/12/23
    
 
Onwards to the second
flying location, on the hillside above the woodland.
    
 
Some ground level photography
on the way back to the car.
    
    
   
30/12/23
On Thursday afternoon
I went out with the intention of shooting some video for the website.
The first location I went to was Castletown, hoping to get some footage
of impressive waves breaking at the harbour entrance. In the event
the waves weren't that impressive and although I shot some more general
video, I wasn't that pleased with the results so it may not surface for
public viewing! After Castletown I went on to Glen Maye, looking
at the waterfall and then walking down to the beach. It was a very
windy day and despite using the DJI Mic2 with it's wind muff, there is
quite a lot of wind noise on some parts of the video.
DJI Osmo Pocket 3
28/12/23
    
For the YouTube video
at Glen Maye, click the button below. The video is sixteen and a
half minutes long.
31/12/23
A last picture uploaded
for 2023, taken at Fenella Beach this afternoon.
I do hope that 2023
has been good for you, I enjoyed most of it anyway! I've had a lot
of fun taking all of the pictures and producing the web pages to show them
and hope that you've enjoyed viewing them either on the main website or
via Facebook (but the website is better!) For sheer numbers of pictures
I didn't do quite as well as last year, with only 2,210 new 'scenic' ones
uploaded, the lowest since 2019, but still not too bad. I've continued
producing the 360 degree aerial views, which are my favourite part of the
site, there were 217 new ones for 2023, which is just a few less than 2022.
Railway pictures did OK with 304 new ones in the year, but the aircraft
pictures really went downhill, with only 56 and none since June.
The reason has been that since the airport declined to renew my security
clearance back in 2021 I have been a bit reluctant to hang around outside
a rather quiet airport just in case something interesting might turn up!
Air Traffic Control there seems to exist in an ongoing crisis situation
regarding staffing with regular closure periods and lack of radar cover
as there just aren't enough trained controllers. When I retired from
there in 2014 I could see that they were going to be short staffed but
it's just got worse rather than better.
The new venture starting
in December was producing videos for the website. I'm still very
new to video editing so I'm still very much on the learning curve.
They each take quite a time to edit together, so what are your thoughts,
do you like them or would you rather I just stuck to still photography?
Don't forget that you can always get in touch with me and let me know your
views, probably the easiest way is through the Island Images Facebook page,
but otherwise email.
At the end of 2022 I
said that 2024 would likely see the end of Island Images as it presently
exists. By the end of that year I will have been producing it for
a quarter of a century in its present form and reach the ripe old age of
70 myself. I'm still thinking along those lines although I'd like
to keep sharing pictures with you, but in a slightly less labour intensive
way - sometimes I can find myself spending whole days processing pictures/videos
and making web pages. So far I haven't come up with a solution, Facebook
seemed good but I have some faithful followers who will have nothing to
to with it, so that's a non starter.
Anyway, best wishes
to all visitors for 2024, hopefully there will be a good flow of pictures
for you for at least the next twelve months!
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