Transform

Posted: Mon 23 February, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Creativity, Depression, Photography, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

via Chromasia, I found Zack Arias‘ piece called “Edit: Transform“.

It’s awesome.

There’s just no other word for it. Spend six minutes of your life watching the video. It’s worth it.

Photo Opportunities

Posted: Fri 20 February, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Driving, Photography | Leave a comment »

A few days ago, a friend made me aware of a burned-out van out in the wilds of Norfolk (and fortuitously close to where I’m currently working) which was of interest to me for some photo ideas.

I was going to go over there this weekend, but changed plans this morning, loaded the camera into the car along with the satnav (in order to find the bloody place at all) and took the opportunity while it was there – the local council usually being vaguely efficient when it comes to vehicle removal.

The road that it’s on is – interesting, I think it’s fair to say. Distinctly rural, single-track, and covered in mud for the first mile, deep ditches on either side – I’m just glad I wasn’t going with the initial evening/night-shots plan. (Now I know where it is, I might give that a go next week if it’s still there)

All told, I’m quite pleased with the photos I’ve managed to get – or at least, I’m pleased with how they looked through the lens, and on the screen on the back of the camera. I’ll only get the chance to see them on the big monitor tonight, and see what I think then.

Cooling Towers

Posted: Tue 10 February, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Green, News, Photography, Thoughts | 1 Comment »

Having lived near(ish) to Didcot when I grew up, and having worked a couple of times in the shadow of the towers themselves, I thought this BBC piece about Didcot power station and its cooling towers was really interesting.

It’s relevant to the entire energy, power, and pollution thing too, of course – but I can’t deny, it’s relevance to me was more about the location.

I’d love to go inside these towers one day and take photos – although from the sound of it, the photos would just be grey mist.

New Tripod

Posted: Mon 12 January, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: NCFE Course, Photography | Leave a comment »

Over the Festering Season, we discovered that my old camera tripod had expired – it had been left in the back of Herself’s car, and somewhere along the line had got cold enough that the plastic around the centre column had completely sheared, with no real chance of repair. (Anything approaching a decent repair would have cost more than the original tripod)

So I took the opportunity to upgrade it a bit, and I’ve now got a new tripod (a Manfrotto 055XDB, if anyone cares) which is a bit of a beast. It’s heavier than the old one, weighing in at just over 2Kg all told. That’s OK, as I rarely do a lot of photography where I’m lugging the tripod around as well. (although that may change during the next year or two) However, it’s also a fair bit bigger/wider, which means that the old tripod bag I had won’t hold the new tripod. Arse, as they say. (However, I have now ordered a new one)

Still, it’s a great tripod, and should last a fair while too (assuming I don’t leave it in the car all the time, of course) as there’s far less plastic in the entire thing. I’m planning on getting out with it at some point this week, particularly as ‘night shots’ is one of the assignments on the NCFE course that I never got round to completing to my satisfaction. That’ll be the real acid test, using the damn thing properly – but for the moment I’m pretty satisfied with it, and I think it’ll do the job well.

The ’09 Photography Project

Posted: Fri 2 January, 2009 | Author: | Filed under: Depression, Own Business, Photography, Thoughts, Work-related | Leave a comment »

As well as the plan to do more “proper” writing in 2009, I’m also planning to make a change to my photography site.

With the NCFE course, I’ve started taking more photos – which was one of the main goals of starting the course – and it’s provided me with some motivation. And while the course is still ongoing, I’m also going to be aiming to put at least one new photo per week up on the photography site as well.

Now I know that “one photo per week” doesn’t sound like much – but right now I’d rather have quality than quantity, and have one decent photo per week than five or six ropy ones I’m not entirely happy with if I were doing a “one photo per day” project. I’ve got the greatest respect for the Project365 people who do undertake that challenge, but with the amount of things I’m currently doing, for me it just wouldn’t be practical. Besides, I know that as I got further behind on a “photo per day” project, I’d get more and more demotivated. (which may or may not be grammatical, but you get the idea)

The aim with a “photo per week” is just to keep on going, keep on going out and taking photos, with the aim of putting them up on the site. Of course, I’ve got to add in a couple of bits of code on the site in order to handle it, but that’s what Christmas/New Year is for, right?

More Memory

Posted: Wed 3 December, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Customer Services, Photography, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

The other day, I noticed that Amazon had a 4Gb Compact Flash card for the price of £15.

I’ve been using 2Gb cards for a while, and that’s fine – but sometimes it’s nice to have the extra storage, and at that kind of price I just thought “Ah hell, might as well”.

Of course, for twice the price, I could’ve got a 16Gb card, but I don’t really need that much storage.

In fact, the 4Gb will do me fine, particularly with the two 2Gb cards I’ve also got now.

All the same, I do find it amazing the way the prices for digital storage just keeps on dropping.

The Girls

Posted: Sat 29 November, 2008 | Author: | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Green, Green Garden, Photography | 3 Comments »

When it snowed last weekend, I finally got round to taking photos of our hens. It’s taken a year, but I knew I’d get there in the end…

Gladys

Elsie

Flo

And that’s the girls.

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