Lovely morning for just sitting quietly in the sun waiting for the birds. And what a difference a bit of sun makes, because these were shot at 1/2000, which certainly helps.

There are absolutely, definitely nestlings present, but I have not heard a single chirp, nor do I want to spoil things b...

Until recently, the Mangalitza, or Mangalitsa, or Mangalica pig was the stuff of stories for me. This woolly pig, first selected in Hungary, has been raved about as a very tasty pig indeed, a breed whose salvation lay in being eaten more widely. On a couple of trips to Hungary I did keep half an eye open for it, but at least on my sketchy investigations it appeared to be without honour in its own country.

I've moaned publicly and to anyone who'll listen about how much I hate the way Instagram now shows me photos from the people I follow. Hating's not enough, though. You have to do something about it.

Things had got a bit out of hand with the iPhone as camera. Two things, actually. First, it is so great having a camera with me all the time that I had taken loads of photographs. Secondly, for lots of other reasons, I hadn't managed to do anything much with them, except post a few to Instagram. By do things, I mean keyword and tag and generally organise. ¹ So a couple of weeks ago I decided to bite the bullet and import all the phone pictures into Aperture and start working on them. It was a long process. And then, about a third of the way through, I came across a really interesting article: Culling Your Photos: Learn To Sort Your Photos Like A Pro.

This morning I went for a dawdling walk to play with my new toy: an adapter that lets me put my old, manual Minolta lenses on my shiny, automatic Sony camera. (There's a set on Flickr, completely unprocessed, if you want to see more). It was fun, for all sorts of reasons. Like, having to fiddle with aperture, shutter speed and focus. The camera does a brilliant job automatically, but it is also gratifying to make decisions.