My latest article is about Edwin Rixon who lived in Hook Norton for a time before settling in Banbury. He was a well regarded citizen of the town in later years.
Edwin Tom Rixon MM
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Category Archives: Hobbies
Hook Norton Community Smallholding
Our pigs that we have been raising have now been slaughtered and the meat distributed. It was the longest we had kept our pigs, these were Berkshires x Gloucester Old Spots and were slow growing. However, there was little fat on them when they were butchered so we must have been doing something right.
Hook Norton Community Smallholding
A group of villagers got together a number years ago to raise pigs on a small plot off and rented to us by a village landowner.
Over the years it has gone from strength to strength. As with everything Covid-19 put paid to our activities in 2020 but we were able to source some weaners last year and they have been growing over the past few months. The batch we had this time around were Berkshires crossed with Gloucester Old Spots. Berkshires are a slow growing breed and we have had these pigs for longer than we anticipated. Normally we send them to slaughter in late autumn but as we got them later in the year we have had to keep them over the winter. However, they seem to be ready to go.
Photoshop’s Sky Replacement Tool
Adobe’s Photoshop software continues to evolve with more additions being added all the time. One recent new feature is Sky Replacement. Some sample skies are included to get you started. You can, of course, add your own and use them which is a great asset if you are “creating” new images and uploading them to library websites. At least then the complete copyright rests with me as the photographer and so I do not need to worry unduly on this score.
I have played around with it using examples of aircraft images shot during a visit I paid to Turweston airfield in June 2021. Here is one of my reworked images.
Nikon Z6 – First Impressions
1600ISO 1/320 f6.3
6400ISO 1/60 f8
I recently treated myself to a mirrorless SLR. Having used Nikons for as long as I can remember I went for a Z6, I couldn’t justify the cost of a Z7, and purchased the 24-200mm lens rather than the “kit” one usually offered with it.
So far I am extremely impressed with the quality of the images even when I have pushed the “film speed” ISO. In the past with my D800 I tended to shoot at as low an ISO as possible – 100ISO in order to achieve the quality I was used to when I shot slides in my pre digital days.
I thought I would experiment with a higher ISO and these are two of the results.
New articles
I enjoy writing articles about items I have researched. Most of them are linked to my family history research. A recent one about William McGill, born William Nelson, can be found under the Genealogy section on this site.
One of the picture libraries I submitted images to suggested I write about some of the subjects I had photographed. They say that if you can produce words and pictures then you have a greater chance of making sales. I wrote several articles and submitted them to the library but they never saw the light of day. I did submit them independently to magazines with better success and two such articles can be found under the Articles – Fact section. They are Child Farm Workers and Window Tax. Admittedly they were written a number of years ago and hopefully my style has improved in recent years.
Woodworking – a new skill
I’ve already made two planters for the garden. Having found an unused set of wheels for my tool chest I thought I would make another that can be wheeled around. It is large enough to accommodate a grow bag if we decide not to fill it with plants.
I’ve been setting up my “workshop” before I make anything else. YouTube is great for getting ideas. In recent weeks I’ve made a table so that I can use my jigsaw inverted. As I bought a trim router table from the US my table can be used as a base for it too. Using battens and thumbscrews it makes a solid base. A circular saw track has also come out of the workshop. Now to look at YouTube again to see what I can make – a bird box is on the cards…
