Christmas 2023: Infinity Card | Articles | Ant Smith

Rob (my Bro) gave us a 3D printer - which was always on my WANT list but I'd never got round to buying one as I already have hobbies that consume time and money; so I was absolutely delighted to be able to try such a thing out and the first thing I made was a vase for Christine as the ferrets have a habit of breaking all the ceramic and glass vases that enter the home...

I use the free software blender to create the models and this one started life as a pair of twisted hexagons that went through a variety of extrusion, rotation and scaling deformations until it looked suitably vase like to me. Then I scaled and squished it to fit the print area and painted it with humbrol enamels.

Having used the printer a lot more since then I have no idea how I managed to make this print work, but somehow I did. There'll be a new article on my website soon telling the full story of my sojourn with 3D print technology - TL;DR: I just can't cope with working with resin so my plan for next year is to return to creating 3D things out of actual wood... but huge thanks to Rob, it was a helluva thing to have a go at!

This is my first, and so far only, attempt at fretwork using a lovely saw Chris bought me last Christmas. I made it for Valentine's day having drawn the design in Photoshop and cut it from thin (3mm) plywood. The finish is pretty rough but I think it looks great on our wall, especially when casting it's shadow (the wings are set at angles to help the emergence of the shadow).

I had promised to try and make a Kantele (a Finish zither-type traditional instrument) for Chris yonks ago, I bought the wood for it (cherry and maple) back in early 2022 but I think the idea of making a musical instrument kind of paralysed me. Instruments are supposed to be beautiful, precise, solid and sonorous - and I really didn't think I had the skills, experience or tools to manage it. But it turned out nice and has a strip of silver in it to commemorate our jubilee!

A knitted tea cosy Christine made for a mate (you know who you are) - or I should say a very lucky mate, it's amazing! And to think everything had to be done 8 times (well apart from the head); if it were me I'd have made a hexapus...

Chris made this especially for Christmas and the infinity card - I think it is utterly gorgeous and I expect I will investigate print-on-demand fabrics as a possible birthday present... but shush, don't let Christine know!!!

This is probably the first bird shot I took. We thought it was a kestral but I now agree with my mate Rob that it's a buzzard - he was hanging out up the top end of the village enticing us to take walks up that-away all through last autumn. Not strictly a shot from the last 12 months but he set us on a path to find and shoot many more birds throughout 2023, so I included him here. Erm, if he is a him, I dunno really.

I like this shot because you can tell the bird is in captivity, and frankly it looks annoyed! It's not the kind of shot that would ever do well in a photo competition or such because it's clearly a captive animal - but I think that's distorted thinking that leads to a distorted view of the world. If we're going to lock these creatures up we should be honest in our depictions of them!

This was taken at the Thorpe Perrow Birds of Prey centre, which seemed like a decent enough set-up when we visited; but seems less so now we have seen a few other places. And why, really, do they need to have all those birds of prey in the middle of Yorkshire???

Also from our Thorpe Perrow visit, fly free little bird! This time the trailing bits of harness give the shot away as not being 'in the wild'.

I never did publish my full set of images from this visit on my website, so not many have seen these. We also went to Butterfly World this year - but I decided I wouldn't give them the oxygen of publicity either. It just seems wrong! (In fact Christine raised concerns with the appropriate agency, but of course we never heard anything back!)

You can also see the peregrine and turkey vulture from Thorpe Perrow in this montage on the card.

This chap lives at Kirkleatham Owl Sanctuary - although he isn't an owl...

A much better place to visit than Thorpe Perrow, with real effort to make the enclosures interesting and varied. In fact you can read a full recounting of our experience on my Kirkleatham Owl Centre page, if you like.

I saw this composition (dandelion and shadow) in our garden back in march while shooting some of our visiting birds. I thought it made a great image so grabbed the shot quickly. Then started hmming and ahhing over whether there was a better composition or not. There wasn't. Well, there might have been but the goddam sun kept trundling along its daily path and ruined everything by moving the shadow. The scene was only available for about 5 mins, so I was glad to get it, even up against our dirty wheelbarrow.

These are Christine's finger tips, as she painted them last April. Well, its a reflected shot, so there are more finger tips than Chris has fingers to be fair, but they are so much fun I thought doubling them up was the obvious thing to do!

A juvenile sat in our tree.

I had some lovely afternoons through spring and summer sat at the table Chris and I made in the garden^* shooting the birds that come to visit - it turns out they can devour a kilo or so of birdseed between them in around 1 to 2 nanoseconds, so's I gotta be a bit of a sharpshooter to capture the blighters!

^*at this point Chris will exclaim I made the table really, but she did help and I remember with great fondness the not cutting her own hands off with the mighty chop saw; so I wil always say we made it together! I'm pleased to say it still serves us well, even with it's annual breathing that curls one corner up quite alarmingly

This is the first 'birds in our garden' shot that I was really excited by. The details are great and it isn't just a brown thing! Although the brown things are lovely too, of course.

Another colourful little critter. Thanks to my latest camera (Nikon D850) and long lens these images all print up pretty big, over a foot across anyway. I was a mere 6 meters from this chap.

Tiny little chick that sits in the hedge outside of my studio, I'm about as close as I can get to the graden birds in this shot (5m)

Having caught lots of brids sitting in trees I started to look at getting some more active images - but birds on the wing are incredibly difficult to shoot. You have to be further away to have any hope of getting them in frame, and they are damn fast, crossing the field of view before you even realise you saw them! So I started by shooting take-offs... Will try for more in-flight shots come the spring.

Technically this is a horrible image - but I love the moment of it, just as it launched from a branch.

Starling with worm heads home, with another little bird in the corner thinking "damn, wish I was earlier"...

We spent an afternoon at Flambrough and came up on a host of pebble shaded seals on the beach. We decided not to mention exactly where they were when we talked about it online so as not to inadvertently cause a stampede of crazed seal lovers; so you are very lucky to discover now that Flamborough has excellent seal action!

A macro image of frost on our window pane last winter (February) - I like how it looks like a forest of Christmas trees. Unlike my student days, here the frost was on the outside.

I thought that the little pop-up stars added a real sweet moment to the experience of the infinity card, but they are quite delicate and you may find they tear themselves to pieces as you play with the card; I shoulda done more to toughen them up but with 50 pieces making up each card I kind of ran out of time! Enjoy them while they last...

The second popup star shows a clip from my XYZ bubble chart showing the exposure settings I used in 3,000 images taken over the last 20 years. A little side-project while I was rewriting the software that creates my website. You can read more about that in my photography article

aka Bobbles, brother to Vic, a pair of champagne ferrets that were abondonded on the streets of loftus to fend for themseleves; we think because brother Vic has glaucoma the owners didn't want to face vet bills... ah humanity! Here he is in our home enjoying a tutu of his own, which is all he ever dreamed about on the mean cold streets.

Daisy was one of the first two ferrets that moved in with us (alng with Dan). She is by far both the smallest and most ferocious of them - the only one who in fact remains not face safe. You see her here licking her lips after biting biting both of our faces off. She is adorable and wears a different colour coat every single day (total fashion victim)

Arrived with Daisy and caused us abject fear for about a month until he decided to be our friend. He's definiately top-dog (even though we have no dogs) and will chase all of the ferals out of the cottage every morning before settling to his breakfast. Here he's checking how well we have weeded our garden planters.

A gang of 5 black cats, 4 children to the mother Beryl. They moved in as soon as they were born and have stayed every since... we still call them feral. 'Beryl' is short for 'Beryllium' due to her brittle nature... actually that's not true, Chris named her. And named her, and named her... no name would stick; she was clearly offended at most names but seems to put up with being called Beryl.

Oh yes, and when you remove the satellite card you will see the first in Christine's collection of chinese lucky cats - I say collection, she only has the one so far, but is quite determnined that it will be a collection in due course!

And oh yes! The satellite card - we added that as it seems like the infinity card is a bit big (well it is infinite) for a mantlepiece...

aka Vic, aka Cpt. Gargoyle - such an ugly abomination he's the cutest train-wreck of an animal I have ever seen. There, I said it!

An oldish picture of Kicky helping me with one of my early woodworking builds (the bookcase). He's mostly an outdoor cat (less so in the winter) and clearly delights in our presence whenever he finds us in the garden where he likes to chase the birds I'm trying to photograph away.

A fiercely independant young lady. She refuses to sleep with the rabble and has free roam around the cottage 24/7. I fear everyday I will wake up to find that the ferals have eaten her, but she normally shares their breakfast. She is extremely fluffy.

Kati and Matti (aka The Dishcloths) were the first animals to move in with us when we retired up north (Kicky came with us from London, and we wanted company for him). Matti is an upside-down cat, I don't think he ever really learned what legs are for, he goes everywhere on his back. Kati is like a microdot, she has been zoomed in here by a factor of about 1,000,000x.

Chris bought me a telescope for my 55th birthday which I absolutely love. It hasn't been out very much this year, but to be fair, back in the spring I had no idea what an awful year it was going to be weatherwise.

However, back in March I did get this shot of the full (flower) moon. I think it's as good as I can get through the 'scope as it stands but soon I'll buy a chroma converter^* for it and try again before moving on to trying to shoot some nebulae - so maybe you'll see more next year!

^*I nearly bought one this year but then Adobe made my graphics card obsolete so I had to buy a new one of those instead - damned subscription service software!!!

A tiny little parrot who decided to spend the day on Christine's head when we visited Morndyke parrot sanctuary.

An african grey, closely related to the Norwegian Blue. Very used to people, let me get to within 50cm for her close-up

One of the friendliest, and biggest, parrots at Morndyke, Chris had him eating from the palm of her hand.

A sun canure, super colourful birds.

Just a pretty view to give you an idea of what the land is like round here...

This is a super-magnified focus-stacked macro shot of a tulp petal, 100 seperate images blended into a single, sharp focus, picture.

Chris stopped off in Amsterdam after a minibreak in Helsinki (we can't travel away together as long as we have vicous ferrets to feed!) and brought back some tulip bulbs (quite rightly). We plannted them and then after they bloomed I collected up all of the petals to make Christine's birthday card last year - pausing to create this image along the way. It's part of my 'Sprung' collection (beautiful dead blooms) the rest of which you can puruse here, if you like