Twenty Five Years
of Island Images - June 2000 - 2024
    
    
    
    
    
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2/6/25
After starting off dull
and wet, the weather yesterday improved with sunshine and in the afternoon
I drove down to Port St Mary for a stroll around and take some pictures
to start off the new month for Island Images.
Panasonic TZ95 1/6/25
    
    
    
    
    
4/6/25
Late yesterday morning
I noticed from my ship tracking programs that the Steam Packet's 'Ben my
Chree' was at anchor in Laxey Bay, presumably after sheltering there during
last night's storm. She was still there after lunch so I headed up
there hoping to get some pictures of her from Clay Head with Laxey as a
backdrop.
It didn't quite go as
I'd hoped, but I still managed some reasonable pictures of her plus a few
others there and on the way back home.
Panasonic TZ95 3/6/25
    
  
 
6/6/25
Yesterday's photography
largely centred around boats and planes! I noticed that there were two
cruise ships visiting so decided to go out in the morning to try for some
pictures of them. The weather turned out not to be good with a continuous
line of heavy showers passing over the island so I ended up postponing
to the afternoon. I took a drone with me as I hoped that it would
help in getting the right angles for the shots. Aircraft pics following
later (tomorrow!)
Panasonic TZ95 &
DJI Air 2S 5/6/25
  
    
    
   
7/6/25
On Thursday evening
we had a display by the amazing RAF Red Arrows aerobatic display team for
the TT races visitors. Despite a cloudbase restricting the full display,
they put on their usual amazing display over Douglas Bay. As usual
we watched it from our great viewpoint at home. Enjoy the show!
Nikon D7100 5/6/25
    
    
    
    
    
    
Further to the pics
of the Read Arrows display at Douglas, I thought I'd share some historical
pictures from what might have been the last year that they based at Ronaldsway
fro their displays, in 2011. Traditionally they had stayed at Ronaldsway
for two days of displays on the island, at Peel, Ramsey and Douglas.
On this year I had arrived at work in the morning as Senior Controller
on Duty, to find an impossible parking plan left by management (not present
in any form!) of parking the Hawks on the main apron and their support
Hercules on the other side of the airport. Following a bit of consultation
with (I hope I remember correctly) Craig of the airport works department,
we agreed to close runway 21 for two days and park the jets and support
next to each other there. Sorry about the poor quality of the initial
pictures, which were taken through the tinted windows of the control tower.
On the second day I was able to get airside for some closer views.
Two day later we had
a display at Douglas
by the iconic Avro Vulcan!
Nikon Coolpix P100 7/6/11
& 8/6/11
   
     
8/6/25
I shot these aerial
pictures yesterday on what was intended as a test flight to try out the
new 'Free Panorama' feature on an update to the DJI 'Fly' app.
In the end it turned
out that this new feature isn't actually available on this drone, but I
used the flight to test out the 'Auto 180 degree' panorama feature.
DJI Mini 4 Pro
7/6/25
    
I would normally shoot
linear panoramas manually as a set of images to be stitched later on the
computer using PtGui, but decided to test out DJI's built in 180 degree
panorama feature. I shot three in total, the first was a disaster
as I hadn't understood how the app. would shoot the panorama and I haven't
included it here. The second one was a partial success and by the
third one I'd actually managed to fully understand how the process worked!
I've just left them 'as shot' with the only post processing being a crop
to cut out unnecessary sky and a re-size down to what I need for the web
pages.
 
For this interactive
360 degree panorama I had intended to use the 'Fly' stitched one, but it
didn't in fact do the stitching job correctly, so I reverted to my usual
method of using PtGui to stitch the images. Interestingly it also made
a stitching error, but I was able to correct it on the computer.
9/6/25
This morning I did another
test of the Mini 4 drone's 'Auto 180' panorama setting at Port Soderick.
I suspect the angle required might have been greater that 180 degrees as
despite trying different starting positions I couldn't get the full scene
required into one shot. In the end I shot it manually with eight
individual scenes and stitched them afterwards using PtGui. I also
shot some individual pictures and one 360 degree panorama, the latter again
stitched in PtGui.
DJI Mini 4 Pro 9/6/25
     
     
12/6/25
Yesterday it seemed
that summer had returned to the island, it was pleasantly warm in sunshine
and with light winds I decided to do some more aerial photography.
We had a couple of other commitments during the day, so I couldn't go too
far afield, so settled on two locations in the West Baldwin valley for
the first two flights.
DJI Mini 4 Pro 11/6/25
    
  
  
For my second flying
location in the morning, I headed further up the West Baldwin valley, to
Colden Plantation, not far from the top of the valley at Injebreck.
    
    
 
13/6/25
My third and final flying
location on Wednesday was selected as Georgie had an eye clinic appointment
at Noble's Hospital in the afternoon! These can take some time so
after dropping her off I went to the Millennium Oakwood which adjoins the
hospital site and carried out a flight from there looking at the wood and
surrounding area.
This was in fact my
1,600th drone flight since starting back in November 2014.
DJI Mini 4 Pro 11/6/25
    
    
    
 
15/6/25
Yesterday's weather
was 'interesting'! In the morning we had a thunderstorm pass over
the island, together with torrential rain for a while. Approaching lunchtime
the storm had passed and I went down to the Sea Terminal to renew our Railcards
for another year. Whilst I was out I took some pictures, of course!
On the way back home I had a short stop at Derby Castle to take some photo's
of the trams there.
Panasonic TZ95 14/6/25
    
    
   
With the forecast for
more rain in the afternoon, you might have thought that I'd just have stayed
at home, but no, I went out again for some more photos, heading initially
towards the Baldwin valleys for some ground level photography. I
the end I just use the excellent cameras on my phone for these pictures.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
14/6/25
    
    
    
   
17/6/25
A train trip yesterday
with friends from across who are currently visiting the island. We travelled
from Douglas to Port Erin for lunch and a stroll around before returning.
Panasonic TZ95 &
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 16/6/25
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
19/6/35
On Wednesday our visiting
friends decided on a trip up to Ramsey. We dropped them off at Derby
Castle to get the Manx Electric tram up and arranged to meet them on arrival,
but also managed to overtake them to wave as they passed through Laxey!
Panasonic TZ95 &
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 18/6/25
     
     
     
     
I took this picture
from just outside Tesco's in Onchan, looking out to sea past the spire
of St Peter's Church as the 'Manxman' heads into Douglas.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
18/6/25
22/6/25
The Plains of Heaven
(Part 1)
Many years ago when
I was living and working in London, I saw a painting in the Tate Gallery
that really impressed me. It was one of a triptych of huge paintings with
a religious theme (not my thing at all but I loved the painting!). It was
called 'The
Plains of Heaven' and by artist John
Martin and painted in the 1850s. At that time I had no idea that
he had lived in the Isle of Man or that I would someday be living here
myself, but apparently he was inspired by the view across the central valley
to the mountains. I've tried to capture the scene many times from different
viewpoints, but decided to try using the drone for a different perspective,
flying from several locations to change the scene. These pictures
were from the first of these, at Lherghy Cripperty, on the south side of
Union Mills.
DJI Mini 4 Pro 19/6/25
    
 
  
23/6/25
The Plains of Heaven
(Part 2)
The day after I did
the Lherghy Cripperty flight I tried a second location, this time closer
to the hills to try and make up for the wide angle fixed focal length lens
on the drone. I also switched to the Air 2S as it has a higher resolution
sensor than the mini drone and I also have more control over panoramas
as I use 'Litchi' as the control program. My flying location was to the
north of Crosby, by the hill called Cronk ny Moghlane, or Cronk ny Mucaillyn
on the 1870 OS map.
DJI Air 2S 20/6/25
    
    
360 degree interactive
panoramas.
   
24/6/25
On Saturday I took our
visiting friends to a few locations that they wanted to visit on the east
coast of the island. First stop was down at the beach in Laxey, and
I took the opportunity for a quick flight with the mini drone for some
aerial shots.
DJI Mini 4 Pro
21/6/25
    
After an excellent fish
and chips lunch at The Shore Hotel, we headed up to 'new' Laxey, although
as a heavy rainshower arrived we continued up the hill to Agneash first
before coming back down for a stroll around near the Laxey Wheel before
continuing to the village where I shot a few Manx Electric and Sneafell
Mountain Railway tram pictures and we visited the Great Laxey Mine Railway.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
21/6/25
   
     
    
    
25/6/25
The final destination
of our trip out last Saturday was Maughold Church, which probably dates
back to early Christian times on the island and was most likely built on
the site of a monastery, which later moved across the water to England.
I've included a couple of aerial pictures from 2022 to show the location.
I took a more extensive
series of photos around and inside the church in February, they can be
found here,
scroll down to 11/2/25
DJI Air 2S & Samsung
S24 Ultra 21/6/25
 
   
    
  
26/6/25
The weather yesterday
afternoon looked nice so I decided to do a walk in Tholt-y-Will Plantation,
starting from the Druidale Road and visiting a couple of the tholtans hiding
in the trees. The weather turned out to be a bit changeable though!
Panasonic TZ95 25/6/25
    
    
    
    
27/6/25
Something a bit different
this morning! Some of you may have found 'Sharon's Gallery' on the
website. It's pictures of the island painted by my friend Sharon Wilkie,
who lives in the USA but used to travel regularly to the Isle of Man as
she loved it here. When she was at home she enjoyed painting, and used
several of my pictures as inspiration for her works and she gave me quite
a few of them. One of them was taken at the bottom of Druidale, looking
along the little river towards Snaefell. Imagine my surprise when
a couple of weeks ago I was in a charity shop and came across an almost
identical view in a little framed oil painting. The artist was Edith
Job and it's dated to 1979, eleven years before I first set foot on the
island! Now including my original picture taken in October 2000.
Sharon's Gallery is here.
28/6/25
I was wanting to do
some tests with my new (to me) TZ95 compact camera and after some very
changeable weather over a couple of days, the sun decided to shine on Thursday
afternoon and I decided to pop down to Old Onchan to shoot the test pictures
at Molly Carrooin's Cottage there. After I'd done the test pictures,
I had a wander around the nearby Onchan Wetlands area before heading up
to St Peter's Church for some final pictures there.
Panasonic TZ95 26/6/25
    
  
   
   
30/6/25
On Friday we were out
shopping for a couple of items and ended up at Tynwald Mills in St John's.
Whilst Georgie did some clothes shopping I walked up to the wildflower
garden that is behind the former mill building and took a few pictures.
The weather was really strange, dull and misty for most of the way there
and back and with the cloud sitting on the hills around, but it was bright
and sunny actually in St John's.
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra
27/6/25
    
    
   
1/7/25
Despite not great weather
on Saturday, in the afternoon I decided to go for a walk and chose to head
up the glen from Glen Maye village. Despite the village name it's only
Glen Maye if you head downstream, the glen upstream is Glen Mooar which
then becomes Glen Rushen when it turns south!
Panasonic TZ95
28/6/25
    
    
    
    
    
On Sunday morning the
weather was good for some aerial photography with the mini drone and I
ended up flying from four different locations. The first was at Braddan
where a huge new housing estate is going to be constructed on what was
until recently agricultural land.
DJI Mini 4 Pro 29/6/25
    
    
  
2/7/25
Aerial and ground level
pictures from my second to fourth flying locations on Sunday morning.
Unfortunately a layer of cloud had covered the sun by the time I reached
the second and subsequent sites, which muted the colours somewhat.
I wasn't going to include any pictures from the second spot, at the top
of the Garth Road, as I didn't think they were interesting enough, but
in the end decided to share a single 360 degree panorama, taken from over
the rounded Slieau Chiarn, near Braaid.
DJI Mini 4 Pro 29/6/25
After the generally
unsuccessful flight at the top of the Garth Road, I decided to head down
to Marown Old Church to see if I could get any reasonable aerial shots
there. After the flight I took a few interior shots of this fascinating
old building.
DJI Mini 4 Pro &
Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 29/6/25
    
   
     
   
Around a kilometre south
of Marown Old Church is another historical site known as 'St Patrick's
Chair'. It's historical accuracy has been doubted, but tradition has it
that St Patrick sat here to bless the people of the island. The is another
'St Patrick's Chair' site to the north on the slopes of Greeba and another
story says that the stones photographed here were in fact placed by a local
eccentric farmer, but then recorded on the early Ordnance Survey maps and
thus immortalized! I first visited the site when I took a visitor
there, walking along an overgrown and very muddy green lane. On Sunday
I flew the drone there from the side of the nearby road!
DJI Mini 4 Pro 29/6/25
  
I haven't done much
aircraft photography since Ronaldsway declined to renew my airside security
clearance a few years back, but we were having a coffee with a friend before
dropping her off at the terminal and I shot these pictures of an RAF Atland
on a training approach. The USAF Learjet later was a bonus!
Panasonic TZ95 30/6/25
   
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