Tag: cats

First blogpost of 2021

So here we are again at the start of a new year. I hope if you are reading this that this year will be a better one for you all. 

This year so far – Resolutions made and broken. No surprise there as I’m still in procrastination mode and chasing my latest shiny new idea.

It never ceases to amaze me just how easily distracted I can be. I’m beginning to wonder if I was a cat in a previous life.

Picture of a maine coon cat

Anyway, my current stack of projects includes:

  • Photography
  • Poetry
  • Learning Welsh
  • Finishing Open University level 1 study

Learning Welsh – The move to online learning is certainly helping with my attendance at Welsh class. As someone who suffers from chronic illness, I have found attending face to face classes regularly to be problematic at best and at worst – downright impossible. So the move to online has been a positive one for me despite the problems with broadband in rural Wales.

I really do hope that learnwelsh.cymru will keep an online option for all levels of their courses once things return to some semblance of normal rather than restricting the opportunity to learn Welsh to those who can attend a physical classroom.

Art/Writing – I’m spending a lot of time sorting through my photography archive. I’m hoping that some of my older images will provide a suitable basis for my mixed media work. I’m also intending to use some of my photography/poetry in the creation of mixed media artists books.

Open University – Just finishing level 1 study this year. French this time. I have no idea why I am so obsessed with it as I was just supposed to be taking a couple of standalone courses, but what can you do. 

So overall on paper 2021 looks like being a busy year on the study/ creative side if things go to plan. However I have found that very few things ever go exactly as planned. Life gets in the way and I can be extreme in guilt tripping myself when things go wrong.

So, for 2021 most of all I am hoping not to dwell on what goes wrong, especially things that are outside my control.

Black and white semi-feral cat

There have been several semi-feral cats that have visited us over the time that we have lived in our current home. All of them have been either completely black or black and white, and all of them have had a very well-defined sense of personal space.

I usually see them at a distance while carrying water or feed to the ponies, or when I’m doing other work around the place. Showing any kind of interest in them, even just looking too long in their direction, results in a quick disappearance.

More recently there has only been one regular visitor and on his last visit I happened to get this lucky shot as was outside with the camera just as he decided to pop up in the long grass in the ‘front garden’.

Black and white cat seen through a fence

This was taken using the Lumix GX8 and the m.zuiko 75-300mm lens. It was only the fact that I was using a long lens that meant that I captured this particular image through the gap in the fence, without encroaching on his personal space. The result is one of my favourite cat images.

Moving from Nikon to Lumix

Well I have finally done it. I have just swapped my Nikon D300s for the Panasonic Lumix GX8. I wanted something smaller and lighter to carry around with me as I have been finding the Nikon increasingly difficult to use due to some of my long-term health issues.

The guys at Carmarthen Cameras were extremely helpful and spent ages with me discussing all the available micro four-third options. Overall I preferred the feel and the weight of the GX8 in my hand and so went for that with the 12-60mm kit lens.

There will be quite a learning curve in making the switch over as the two systems are very different. Time will tell as to whether or not I made the right choice.

But for the moment here is the first picture taken with my new Lumix. I will keep you updated as to how it all goes.