Single In Single in January (SiJ) 2021 - day 8

William, it's excellent. I would normally have a pint or two with a pub meal, but that hasn't happened for about nine months. Non the less I've been getting it from the supplier in 20 litre boxes, about 35 UK pints, so I haven't gone short of my cider :drinks:

Barrie
This warms my heart. I'd love to try the ciders on the other side of the pond, American ciders may be indeed one of the most American drinks if you want to look back at what our rabble-rousing founding fathers drank.
 
Something a little different today. Metal hiding in trees? I wonder if that's suppose to make it less noticeable?
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This warms my heart. I'd love to try the ciders on the other side of the pond, American ciders may be indeed one of the most American drinks if you want to look back at what our rabble-rousing founding fathers drank.
Graham, my landlord grew up on the farm where I rent a cottage and used to farm it until a few years ago. He has an old cider orchard which still has a few of the old trees in it. Sadly he doesn't know the names of the varieties. He gave me a copy of the farm diaries a few weeks ago, they go back to 1930 and detail how many tons of apples were harvested from the orchard every year, the difference between a bad year and a good year can be quite startling, between 2 tons and 14 tons. Graham has planted many new trees, 29 varieties for which I produced him a map recently, he has another 15 trees on order to complete the replanting. I've become quite fascinated by the whole subject of old orchards. There has been quite a resurgence of interest in what might be called "proper cider" in recent years, the village of East Charleton was a stronghold of cider apple growing up until the 1940's, sadly there are now only two old orchards remaining.

Barrie
 
That kind of thing is right up my alley. Though I'm not a farmer myself, I grew up on a small farm in southern California, my father carved out ten acres of dry land on my grandparents' old ranch and by the time we left it, in addition to about five acres of organic garden vegetables, he'd planted 60 low-chill apple trees, over 80 guava trees, a dozen citrus and many other fruit-bearing trees. My dad was (and is) the sort of person who's kept detailed rainfall records in notebooks with his rain gauge for as long as I've been alive, and could tell you just how little rain fell on the worst drought year as well as how much he measured during the rainiest year since we moved up to the Pacific Northwest. Basically wherever he goes, agriculture follows.
 
Thanks Andrew. I’m not a lens snob and sharpness is not what I primarily look for in a lens but the thing is, pretty much every image from my copy of the 35-70mm requires some lengthy PP, it really does. Every image I’ve posted so far on the challenge has had to be subject to some time consuming sharpening, masking, clarity, noise reduction saturation and fringing correction, I’ve really had to boost these files as much as I can. And this is when the iso is at 100(!?). Shooting at night, even at slow shutter speeds, is a no-no.

And what does this have to do whether one likes an image or not? Nothing of course. But when you’re used to lenses from whatever brand that render fine out of the box and don’t need that level of PP, then getting the most out of the 35-70 is indeed a challenge.

I must say, though: whatever work you have put in on the post-processing of your image, today... was worth it. It's a striking image, and the processing enhances it.
 
Was sitting at my desk trying to do some writing when a knock came at the door - a gentleman had pulled his vehicle over and wanted to know if the birds running around in the street in front of my house belonged to me? I told him they did not - but when I went outside to check, I realized that the small tribe (is that the right word?) of guinea hens (aka guinea fowl) which the neighbor recently acquired - and which make a continual, nonstop honking which sounds like maddened geese in one of Dante's circles of Hell - had decided to wander over toward my house, to see if they could find anything worth scrounging up or eating here.

I called the neighbor who came over and we more or less herded them (another story) back towards her house - but in the interim period, I grabbed a camera and took a few quick shots. Not the most artistic images - but I was really attempting to document the proceedings, more than anything.

Here they are charging around the front of the house (unfortunately, I didn't record an audio file of their crazed vocalizations)---

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I'm posting two more images of the delinquent birds in today's outtakes ;)
 
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