Photography and Hamsters!

[Maz]

So my hobbies and interests have become rather lost in the past 3 years since the pandemic and life being hectic! And currently are really just

1) Hamsters
2) This forum!
3) To some minor degree, photography but I don't get much time for it.

I used to like: Baking, knitting and travel to visit friends and family. And quite a bit of diy at home. Life changes and sometimes we need to expand our horizons and find new hobbies. I don't bake that often now and not quite organised enough to start knitting again yet. Travel has been less since the pandemic and everything is very quiet still in our area. The diy at home still needs doing but again life is a bit too full up for it!

Anyway - I did do some photography this year after getting a new lens for my birthday. It's a long telephoto lens for wildlife. It was a cheap one as lenses go and not the best so not that easy to use (easy to get blurred results!) and it really needs a tripod as hard to keep it steady being handheld. The idea being that it would get me out more photographing wildlife. However I had some ill health a couple of times and - again it's time and organisation. But here are a few I took this year with the long telephoto zoom lens.

The quality is much reduced by shrinking the file sizes to post them up on here and then enlarging them. But the lens isn't that sharp either! I have a much better lens that isn't a telephoto zoom that is very sharp. However this one enables you to zoom in on small creatures from quite a distance. I haven't yet managed birds in flight (without a lot of blurry pictures!).

 

[Maz]

With other lenses:

A cricket

 

[Maz]

But mainly just the usual snapshots and nothing serious - and a lot of photos of hamsters

Newt and baby corn

 

[Maz]

And a few pictures of cakes! Not particularly good pictures but if I ever do make a cake I like to take a picture of it!

 

[RainbowBrite]

Wow, Maz these photographs are beautiful! Do you know what kind of bird that is in the first picture? It is lovely to hear about your interests. The cake looks delicious. I bet it was really enjoyed.

 

[Maz]

No idea ha ha! Anyone else? A wood sparrow maybe? I like the cricket. Looks like he's smiling.

 

[Tulsi]

That cake has me smiling!

Lovely pictures. The cricket one is amazing.

 

[Maz]

Thank you . It’s a shame I can’t post them in full file size - they looked much better.

 

[Member ID2]

Looks like a young sparrow to me. Very cute and beautiful photos.

 

[Maz]

That cake has me smiling!

Lovely pictures. The cricket one is amazing.

I use the same chocolate icing on most cakes on a special occasion. It’s easy and very nice! The icing recipe is from Nigella’s birthday custard sponge. It pours on and runs down the sides - it’s very chocolatey! Usually has a different type of cake or filling underneath each time. You can also dip strawberries or raspberries in the icing and leave it to set hard to make chocolate strawberries.