7/12/22
Final installation of
the 'away' aerial pictures. These ones were
shot at the Chester canal basin on the final full day of our trip away.
Unfortunately, what had started off as a bright and sunny morning had turned
into a very misty day by the time I managed to fly.
DJI Mini 2 1/12/22
    
    
 
8/12/22
Yesterday afternoon
I set foot out of the house for the first time since we arrived back from
our Chester trip. Nothing serious, just a heavy cold I picked up
while we were away. I felt the need to get some fresh air so went
on a walk from home down to Molly Quirk's Glen, returning via Hillberry.
Panasonic FZ82 7/12/22
    
    
    
    
9/12/22
Yesterday afternoon,
the conditions looked good for some aerial photography, so I set off towards
the north of the island with a couple of locations in mind. On the
way I stopped at Guthrie's on the Mountain Road and took these pictures
of the amazing view from there..
Panasonic FZ82 8/12/22
  
My first chosen location
for the aerial photography was Kerroogarroo Fort (also known as Ballachurry),
near St Judes, constructed in the 1600s as the English Civil War (1642
- 1651) seemed imminent. It's a large earth structure, better seen
from above than at ground level and at this time of year the low sun angles
accentuate the structure. There's a descriptive article from Culture
Vannin available
here.
DJI Air 2S 8/12/22
    
  
10/12/22
After the flight at
Kerroogarroo I headed further to the north for another, this time to capture
the rolling Bride Hills, which I believe are a glacial feature. The
sun was setting behind the hills so I didn't have too long to capture these
pictures in some amazing golden lighting.
DJI Air 2S 8/12/22
    
 
 
11/12/22
I hadn't planned on
a trip out yesterday as It was a bit cloudy and very cold, but Georgie
fancied a ride out in the afternoon and as my first route choice of the
Mountain Road and then along to Brandywell was closed due to ice, we headed
up the east coast past Laxey and almost as far as Ramsey. First stopping
location was just outside Ballaragh, above the Dhoon Glen.
DJI Air 2S 10/12/22
    
 
 
12/12/22
Our second stop was
at Port Lewaige, just south of Ramsey. As the sun had set by then
I originally wasn't going to fly, but the light looked interesting and
after seeing the pictures resulting from the flight I was pleased that
I changed my mind.
DJI Air 2S 10/12/22
    
    
13/12/22
These panoramas were
really just part of a test shoot I did on Sunday afternoon after sunset.
I was really just trying to alter some of the parameters for shooting the
360 panoramas and hadn't intended putting them on the website, but I published
one on Facebook and people seemed to like it so here is a selection.
Unfortunately I failed to reselect 'AEB' on the shooting menu of the drone
after an earlier test, so the sky has tended to burn out a bit in places.
DJI Mini 2 11/12/22
 
14/12/22
Yesterday morning was
good for flying so I set out to look at three locations. The first
was near the old Cornelly Mines, on the edge of Archallagan Plantation,
mainly wanting to shoot some 360 panoramas, but I also took individual
pictures.
DJI Air 2S 13/12/22
    
   
  
15/12/22
Continuing to my second
and third flying sites, both close to Foxdale and to concentrate on two
reservoirs in the area, both now just ornamental but created to power industrial
machinery, the first at the Foxdale Mines, the second to power a sawmill.
DJI AIr 2S 13/12/22
  
   
 
   
 
16/12/22
With the cold but calm
weather continuing for the moment, I decided to make the most of it for
some more aerial photography, setting out after lunch with my first port
of call the picturesque Port Cornaa, on the east coast between Laxey and
Ramsey.
DJI Air 2S 15/1/22
    
    
17/12/22
My second stop on Thursday
afternoon was close to The Goosneck, on the Mountain Road. Not as
much sunlight as I would have liked and the shadow of North Barrule was
creeping northwards.
DJI Air 2S 15/12/22
 
    
The Mountain Road had
been closed for several days due to snow and ice accumulation, but had
re-opened earlier in the day. I was heading back home from The Gooseneck
and realized that there might be some good aerial shots available, so stopped
at Mountain Box for another flight
DJI Air 2S 15/12/22
    
  
18/12/22
I'd noticed a milestone
in my drone flying approaching, achieving 300 flying hours which is not
a lot by manned flying standards, but as my drone flight probably average
around 15 minutes for each flight, it's taken me eight years and 1,285
flights using five different drones to reach this point. I thought
that I would try to commemorate this by flying my very first drone, a DJI
Phantom 2 Vision Plus, for the 300th hour, but some control program issues
prevented this, so I settled for my second drone that I hadn't in fact
flown for 18 months.
DJI Phantom 4 Pro 16/12/22
    
    
    
 
19/12/22
After the '300th hour'
flight, I continued north along the Mountain Road for some more shots of
the snow on the hills. There had been a fresh fall overnight, but
the sun was already starting to melt it on south facing slopes.
DJI Air 2S 16/12/22
   
    
 
20/12/22
Some ground level pictures
for a change! These were taken late on Friday afternoon during a
visit to Ramsey. It was not long before 'official' sunset although
North Barrule had cast it's shadow over the town some time back.
Panasonic FZ82 16/12/22
    
    
22/12/22
Yesterday was the Winter
Solstice and here in the Isle of Man at 54 degrees North we had 7 hours
and 20 minutes between sunrise and sunset, with the sun reaching only just
over twelve degrees above the horizon at noon. Here are a few pictures
taken through the day.
Panasonic TZ200 &
FZ82 21/12/22
 
    
26/12/22
I hope you all had a
good Christmas day, in the afternoon I fancied a trip out and headed towards
Druidale, hoping the weather might be a bit better than on the east coast,
where it was dull, breezy and damp. It didn't look too promising
on the way as I was driving in the clouds along the first part of the Beinn-y-Phott
road, but it was considerably brighter as I dropped down into Druidale,
with quite large areas of blue sky showing, although no direct sun in the
valley.
Panasonic TZ200 25/12/22
    
    
    
   
27/12/22
The Sun and the Moon
Just a couple of random
pictures taken from home yesterday, the first one about half an hour after
sunrise when I noticed the sun peeking out from some cloud banks and producing
rays down towards the sea. The moon shot was taken twenty five minutes
after sunset, when there was still some light in the sky, although fast
moving clouds sweeping across the skinny crescent moon regularly.
Panasonic FZ82 26/12/22
 
28/12/22
I've recently been updating
the 'Screen Backgrounds' section of the website and this afternoon uploaded
101 new ones to the section, making a grand total of 444 available to download.
For anybody who hasn't seen them before, the are much larger aerial pictures
(1920 x 1080 size) that you can use on a desktop computer or tabled as
a background picture. The thumbnail pictures are arranged by month,
so if you want you can have an appropriate scene from the current month.
I started producing them a few years back just to use as background pictures
on my own computers, but the easiest way to catalogue them was to produce
a web page, which I then realized I might as well share with website visitors.
The thumbnails pics are a bit larger than usual, the ones below just link
to the main index.
  
30/12/22
We've been having a
spell of unsettled weather here in the Irish Sea recently, often with rain
and strong to gale force winds which has made it a bit unattractive for
photography and precluded any drone flying. After a lot of rain in
the morning, yesterday afternoon brought some sunny although still windy
conditions and I set off to Port St Mary for a walk around the town.
Based on the weather forecasts these look likely to be the last Island
Images pictures of the year, so I hope you have enjoyed my offerings through
2022 and I'm planning to continue the service for a couple more years,
but more of future ideas later!
Panasonic FZ82 29/12/22
    
    
    
    
31/12/22
As I'm typing this in
the late afternoon on New Year's eve (or Hogmanay, depending where you
come from!), it's time to take stock of what happened in Island Images
over 2022. The picture above was actually the first I took at the
start of the year, on January 1st at Fenella Beach.
A total of 2,794 new
'Scenic' pictures taken on the island were added, about average for the
last three years, plus 318 of our vintage railways. The aircraft
pictures fared less well, partially due to me loosing my security status
at the airport (fair enough, I haven't actually worked there for eight
years!) which has restricted my access to hanging around outside the fence
although lower traffic levels until recently made this a rather boring
occupation and only 96 pictures were added, some were 'away' ones and quite
a lot were of the Red Arrows Douglas display. I think that my highlight
of the aircraft ones were those of a retired RAF Boeing 'AWACS' aircraft
in a training
orbit over the island just before they were delivered to the Chilean
Air Force.
Next year I plan at
present to continue much as before, although I do feel that the tenure
of the present Island Images website is drawing to a close. Since
I started the present format I've just added more and more pictures each
year, the 'Locations' index makes it a little easier to find a particular
area, but it's getting a bit big and messy. In two years time the
site will have been running for a quarter of a century, and I (hopefully!)
will have passed the age of 70. So the plan at present is to try
and keep the site running until the end of 2024 and then stop updating
it, although keeping it available. I've no intentions of stopping
taking pictures of our amazing island, but I would like to make compiling
web pages a little less complicated than at present as I'm still using
the same program that I started experimenting with back in 1998, Netscape
Composer, so I need to learn something more modern and a new website design
might help that.
Anyway, for anybody
who's actually bothered to read all that waffle - best wishes for 2023
and I hope to keep the pictures coming!
|
