Your Today in Pictures...

[Graham Ritchie]

Local news

[Graham Ritchie]

Busy day at the "Ferrymead Heritage Park" running the 35mm, giving film strips away and giving the youngsters a go on the splicer, Lost track the number of times I threaded it, every time I thought that was it, more folk would come in and sit on those cinema seats, so you can't let folk down got to keep running it. The projector is going good nice to show folk some shorts on 35mm.

I am pretty much finished on the construction side of things ""thank goodness" and to be just getting back to being just film

[Phillip Campey]

Recently we took the grandkids on a camping trip to Holmfirth, Yorkshire. Managed to shoot some more super 8mm footage, a couple of shots seem to have a soft focus even though the lens was set correctly. It's a nice memento of a great weekend of fishing, boating and den building.
https://youtu.be/K-ugXXDfCoE

[Graham Ritchie]

Brilliant

[Douglas Meltzer]

Phillip,

Great footage of a terrific weekend!

[Phillip Campey]

A bit of northern lights action tonight.

[Dominique De Bast]

I stay in a hostel in London. The building is nice, but located in a parc (Holland parc, for those who know the city). That parc closes at night, and the only way to access the hostel is that narrow, creepy, desert path.



By the way, the hostel name is safestay! And I had the good surprise, tonight to find my locker open (padlock removed) and empty because I used a locker with a different number that the bed number (which everyone does in hostels). The rest of the day has been fantastic, starting with a delicious breakfast, and then films at the cinemamuseum.

[Steve Klare]

I had an adventure today:

I had Veterans Day off and decided to get in a little outdoors time while the weather was still friendly to it.

I found out about a pretty substantial lake about 40 miles to the East, in a part of Long Island I go to and through all the time, but this one's been hiding from me my whole life! Today I sought it out.

Laurel Lake is called a "kettlehole". This was the spot where some immense block of ice was imbedded in our sandy soil when the glaciers withdrew at the end of the last ice age. After the melt, groundwater filled it up level to the water table. We have a number of these lakes here, and at 60 acres this one isn't the biggest. What makes this one interesting is being that it is in a forested area and isolated from a lot of recreational use and agricultural runoff, it's considered to have the cleanest water of any Long Island lake.

The low recreational traffic is because the boat launch isn't next to the parking lot. You can boat there as much as you want, you just need to be willing to carry the thing down that 600 foot portage trail and leave that outboard motor back at the house! A cart isn't even an option: it's a pretty rough trail.
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A canoe is actually pretty amphibious. In ancient North America there very often weren't direct water routes between places but networks of rivers, lakes and portage trails. To get where you wanted to go, you paddled to the far shore, you got out, you picked the boat up and carried it. This went double for severe rapids and waterfalls. This often kept canoes small and light, but sometimes they got very big and then took a great many men to paddle and carry the boat and the load they were moving. There were literally millennia when trade here was accomplished in this way. It took steamboats and railroads to bring it to a close.
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I join the tradition by clamping a carry yoke between the gunwales and turning a 33 pound solo canoe into a backpack with the added benefit of shade on sunny days!

Shall we begin?
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Now, this was pretty impressive as local portage trails go! They are usually less than 100 Feet, but this is 600! The 600 feet doesn't even tell the whole story here, since this was down a pretty generous slope and there was actually a short flight of stairs at one point!

This forms kind of a barrier to entry, and while it is perfectly public access, you still need to make a decision that the lake is worth it and a commitment to hoist your craft down that hill and back up later.

-but hoist I did!
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When I was done, I put my boat back up on my car and motored back west. I stopped at a farm stand and got a cup of hot cider: basically an ideal Fall day-off by my standards.

The sun sets early this time of the year. I had to get the canoe and roof racks off the car and stow them in the garage before it got dark. I left everything in place that won't interfere with my commute tomorrow morning.

-and if they notice I have a canoe paddle in my back seat at Work, I'd say I'll have a pretty good story! (-with pictures!)

[Graham Ritchie]

One thing about the internet its a great way of catching up with folk you haven't seen in a long while, there is a Facebook page dedicated to HS748. I posted this old and it would be 30 years now of a quick bit of video I took at work one weekend long long ago. The person in it got back to me today, saying we we are a bit older since that was taken ha ha.... how time passes, my biggest regret was not taking a lot more video I was simply to busy of those times working on the flying brick. So there you have it, the importance of taking home movies either on film or video. Its later years when things and people have changed that they can be more important, and the internet has been a great way of getting those times across.

[Graham Ritchie]

Last night I saw a bright star so took a couple of hand held photos.

now with the zooooom

[John Burgess]

First sprinkling of the white stuff !!