tlohde

windblown caneras

18:31 12/02/2025 511 words
contents

red alert

A few weeks ago, there was a storm. Living where I do, I got the emergency alert. And living where I do, was largely spared. S was due to fly just before the worst was forecast to hit, and, fortuitously[1] took off. Leaving me and the dog to get blown about the place.

Some observations from the few times I popped out onto to the beach:

  1. it was windy[2]
  2. little of note in the terms of swell[3]
  3. prodigious quantities of entrained sand[4]

A few local fence panels didn't make it.

cable (un)tie(d)

As I said, I recently went about the place lashing drinks-can pinhole cameras to lampposts[5] and trees. I visit them ~daily when walking the dog. Post-storm two showed signs of having been entrained, and were no longer pointing where they were supposed to be. One that was up a tree, another that had been tucked into a corner on a window ledge. I took them down, scanned them, inverted the colours, flipped them left-right, and put them just here and here

a blueish tinted image with the sihouette of a tree visible, and a few bright streaks across the bottom
Fig 1: the view from the tree
a blueish tinted image with the silhouette of a roofline with a few chimenys. the sihouette is repeated, more faintly above
Fig 2: from the window

Fig 2 is especially not that great, as the sun was yet to climb high enough to make any sort of impression, and I think it might have been moving a fair bit piror to the storm. The roofline is not as sharp as it should be. Fig 1 however, was just about to get good. The low arcs of the winter sun nicely picking out the tree in the foreground. I am surprised the the tree is as clear as it is.

lesson learnt

  1. If you're planning on leaving something outside for six months that ought not move: do a better job of securing it.
  2. maybe add a drainage hole to these pinhole caneras[6]. there was a week or so between taking them down and opening them, and they were still quite soggy
  3. more. always put up more.
  4. maybe don't stress too much about these things being in place from solstice to solstice.

footnotes

  1. from a not-having-your-flight-cancelled perspective, as opposed to the hoping-for-a-smooth-ride one ↩︎

  2. no sh!t ↩︎

  3. a function of the wind blowing offshore, i think. incoming waves appeared to be getting squashed flat ↩︎

  4. sediment transport is so awesome. three cheers for saltation ↩︎

  5. that double 'p' feels odd to type ↩︎

  6. a quite deliberate, windblown, typo ↩︎

#photography #creative #weather