Twenty Five Years
of Island Images - June 2000 - 2024
    
    
    
    
    
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22/6/25
The Plains of Heaven
(Part 1)
Many years ago when
I was living and working in London, I saw a painting in the Tate Gallery
that really impressed me. It was one of a triptych of huge paintings with
a religious theme (not my thing at all but I loved the painting!). It was
called 'The
Plains of Heaven' and by artist John
Martin and painted in the 1850s. At that time I had no idea that
he had lived in the Isle of Man or that I would someday be living here
myself, but apparently he was inspired by the view across the central valley
to the mountains. I've tried to capture the scene many times from different
viewpoints, but decided to try using the drone for a different perspective,
flying from several locations to change the scene. These pictures
were from the first of these, at Lherghy Cripperty, on the south side of
Union Mills.
DJI Mini 4 Pro 19/6/25
    
 
  
19/6/35
On Wednesday our visiting
friends decided on a trip up to Ramsey. We dropped them off at Derby
Castle to get the Manx Electric tram up and arranged to meet them on arrival,
but also managed to overtake them to wave as they passed through Laxey!
Panasonic TZ95 &
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 18/6/25
     
     
     
     
I took this picture
from just outside Tesco's in Onchan, looking out to sea past the spire
of St Peter's Church as the 'Manxman' heads into Douglas.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
18/6/25
17/6/25
A train trip yesterday
with friends from across who are currently visiting the island. We travelled
from Douglas to Port Erin for lunch and a stroll around before returning.
Panasonic TZ95 &
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 16/6/25
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
15/6/25
Yesterday's weather
was 'interesting'! In the morning we had a thunderstorm pass over
the island, together with torrential rain for a while. Approaching lunchtime
the storm had passed and I went down to the Sea Terminal to renew our Railcards
for another year. Whilst I was out I took some pictures, of course!
On the way back home I had a short stop at Derby Castle to take some photo's
of the trams there.
Panasonic TZ95 14/6/25
    
    
   
With the forecast for
more rain in the afternoon, you might have thought that I'd just have stayed
at home, but no, I went out again for some more photos, heading initially
towards the Baldwin valleys for some ground level photography. I
the end I just use the excellent cameras on my phone for these pictures.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
14/6/25
    
    
    
   
13/6/25
My third and final flying
location on Wednesday was selected as Georgie had an eye clinic appointment
at Noble's Hospital in the afternoon! These can take some time so
after dropping her off I went to the Millennium Oakwood which adjoins the
hospital site and carried out a flight from there looking at the wood and
surrounding area.
This was in fact my
1,600th drone flight since starting back in November 2014.
DJI Mini 4 Pro 11/6/25
    
    
    
 
12/6/25
Yesterday it seemed
that summer had returned to the island, it was pleasantly warm in sunshine
and with light winds I decided to do some more aerial photography.
We had a couple of other commitments during the day, so I couldn't go too
far afield, so settled on two locations in the West Baldwin valley for
the first two flights.
DJI Mini 4 Pro 11/6/25
    
  
  
For my second flying
location in the morning, I headed further up the West Baldwin valley, to
Colden Plantation, not far from the top of the valley at Injebreck.
    
    
 
9/6/25
This morning I did another
test of the Mini 4 drone's 'Auto 180' panorama setting at Port Soderick.
I suspect the angle required might have been greater that 180 degrees as
despite trying different starting positions I couldn't get the full scene
required into one shot. In the end I shot it manually with eight
individual scenes and stitched them afterwards using PtGui. I also
shot some individual pictures and one 360 degree panorama, the latter again
stitched in PtGui.
DJI Mini 4 Pro 9/6/25
     
     
8/6/25
I shot these aerial
pictures yesterday on what was intended as a test flight to try out the
new 'Free Panorama' feature on an update to the DJI 'Fly' app.
In the end it turned
out that this new feature isn't actually available on this drone, but I
used the flight to test out the 'Auto 180 degree' panorama feature.
DJI Mini 4 Pro
7/6/25
    
I would normally shoot
linear panoramas manually as a set of images to be stitched later on the
computer using PtGui, but decided to test out DJI's built in 180 degree
panorama feature. I shot three in total, the first was a disaster
as I hadn't understood how the app. would shoot the panorama and I haven't
included it here. The second one was a partial success and by the
third one I'd actually managed to fully understand how the process worked!
I've just left them 'as shot' with the only post processing being a crop
to cut out unnecessary sky and a re-size down to what I need for the web
pages.
 
For this interactive
360 degree panorama I had intended to use the 'Fly' stitched one, but it
didn't in fact do the stitching job correctly, so I reverted to my usual
method of using PtGui to stitch the images. Interestingly it also made
a stitching error, but I was able to correct it on the computer.
7/6/25
On Thursday evening
we had a display by the amazing RAF Red Arrows aerobatic display team for
the TT races visitors. Despite a cloudbase restricting the full display,
they put on their usual amazing display over Douglas Bay. As usual
we watched it from our great viewpoint at home. Enjoy the show!
Nikon D7100 5/6/25
    
    
    
    
    
    
Further to the pics
of the Read Arrows display at Douglas, I thought I'd share some historical
pictures from what might have been the last year that they based at Ronaldsway
fro their displays, in 2011. Traditionally they had stayed at Ronaldsway
for two days of displays on the island, at Peel, Ramsey and Douglas.
On this year I had arrived at work in the morning as Senior Controller
on Duty, to find an impossible parking plan left by management (not present
in any form!) of parking the Hawks on the main apron and their support
Hercules on the other side of the airport. Following a bit of consultation
with (I hope I remember correctly) Craig of the airport works department,
we agreed to close runway 21 for two days and park the jets and support
next to each other there. Sorry about the poor quality of the initial
pictures, which were taken through the tinted windows of the control tower.
On the second day I was able to get airside for some closer views.
Two day later we had
a display at Douglas
by the iconic Avro Vulcan!
Nikon Coolpix P100 7/6/11
& 8/6/11
   
     
6/6/25
Yesterday's photography
largely centred around boats and planes! I noticed that there were two
cruise ships visiting so decided to go out in the morning to try for some
pictures of them. The weather turned out not to be good with a continuous
line of heavy showers passing over the island so I ended up postponing
to the afternoon. I took a drone with me as I hoped that it would
help in getting the right angles for the shots. Aircraft pics following
later (tomorrow!)
Panasonic TZ95 &
DJI Air 2S 5/6/25
  
    
    
   
4/6/25
Late yesterday morning
I noticed from my ship tracking programs that the Steam Packet's 'Ben my
Chree' was at anchor in Laxey Bay, presumably after sheltering there during
last night's storm. She was still there after lunch so I headed up
there hoping to get some pictures of her from Clay Head with Laxey as a
backdrop.
It didn't quite go as
I'd hoped, but I still managed some reasonable pictures of her plus a few
others there and on the way back home.
Panasonic TZ95 3/6/25
    
  
 
2/6/25
After starting off dull
and wet, the weather yesterday improved with sunshine and in the afternoon
I drove down to Port St Mary for a stroll around and take some pictures
to start off the new month for Island Images.
Panasonic TZ95 1/6/25
    
    
    
    
    
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