Driving on the Wrong Side

Today we were picked up at the hotel and taken to the rental agency to picked up the car, which is a BMW X3. After going through the rental stuff, Jim had to figure out how to drive on the the left side of the road. I highly believe rental car agencies in the UK need a practice course for continental drivers so they can get used to the car and the the feel of being on the wrong side of the road and the wrong side of the car. But Jim did well getting out of the airport area onto the motorway/freeway to get us to St. Andrews.

We made it to St. Andrews in one piece and only clipped the mirror of one car parked on the side of the road. Yay us. Once we made it to St. Andrews we went to the abbey ruins and cemetery. In the abbey area we climb the 160 spiral stairs of the remaining tower to see the view of the city of St. Andrews. It was a very nice view. From there we wandered over to the St. Andrews castle ruins. The castle was rather small, but interesting. From there we went to have a late lunch at a small Italian place. By that time we were done with lunch it was almost 3:00 and it was supposed to take three hours to get to the hotel.

The drive to the hotel was interesting. While some of the roads were main roads, some were back country roads and were only one lane. However the drive did take longer then three hours. So we did not get to the hotel till 6:45 PM with an 8:15 PM dinner time.

So today we did not do a lot of sightseeing due to the large amount of driving. Tomorrow should be a more full sightseeing day.

Comments

2025 Year in Review and Looking Forward to 2026

This year was a bit interesting especially since during the day, I’m a government employee, which resulted in a lot of stress and a 42-day furlough. I didn’t attend as many cosplay events with the D.C Cosplay group, now Costume and Camera, as I normally would have, due to schedule conflicts. However, I traveled up to Poughkeepsie, New York for two photo events, one of which I was a featured photographer. I attended two conventions, one of which didn’t turn out as expected and the other just confirmed my decision to take a break from it. Though happily I did a lot of studio work this year, which I enjoyed. But on the other hand, I lost my dear “studio supervisor”, my dog Teddy. He liked to great clients and then “supervise” while lying/sleeping in his bed. I also started to work on the business side of my photography work, by investing in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) site to manage bookings, schedules, and payments. No more trying to juggle...

Cyber Blue

On October 11 th , I worked with Dayvon on a cyber concept shoot. This shoot was designed around a pair of contact lens with a circuit board pattern. This inspired me to think about things like “Blade Runner”, “Tron” and cyber punk in general. For this shoot I used: Canon 80D 2 Speed lights 2 Phottix strobes 2 Phottix Rectangular Softboxes with a grid 2 C-stands Blue gels Silver garage insulation Backdrop stand Black backdrop Connectable foam workout mats For this shoot I started out using four lights. The first two were small speed lights with blue gels attached placed on the floor aimed at the backdrop. The backdrop was silver garage insulation, which looks like silver bubble wrap. The backdrop reflected the blue light forward providing a bit of rim light. My main two lights were the strobes is rectangular soft boxes with grids attached. For this shoot I kept the lighting very low key, styled along that of a photo of Ryan Gosling i...

Return to the National Portrait Gallery

On February 28th, I attended the Costume & Camera (previously DC Cosplay Photoshoots) event at the National Portrait Gallery in DC. I have a love/hate relationship with shooting at the National Portrait Gallery; it is a beautiful location due to its architecture, especially on the third floor, and I’m thankful that you are allowed to do portrait photography there as long as you don’t use flash. What I get frustrated with is the varying colors of light throughout the building and the need to use natural or continuous light. (I’m a flash girly.) For this event, I used: Canon R6 24 - 105mm lens Neewer 12-inch LED light Assistant Camera Settings: This shoot was inside the Portrait Gallery, which has a no flash policy, thus I was using a mix of natural and continuous lighting, which affects settings. My ISO ranged from 100 ISO to 3200 ISO with the most common ISO being ISO 1000. My aperture stayed between F4 and F5, with the most c...

The Munchkin's Notebook

Search This Blog