Okay, I don't usually post about the gigs I go to, but Tesla finally came to the UK last night and they absolutely blew me away. Outstanding.
Watch the YouTube video on the right for a kind of muffled, distorted shakey taste of the action.
Friday, June 29, 2007
Friday, June 22, 2007
Rejects and leftovers
I'll be completely unproductive and feeding my alcohol addition this weekend so here's some I took earlier...
Brotherswater..
Ullswater..
Davaar Island lighthouse
Campbeltown cinema - the oldest, still running, purpose built cinema in Scotland! Unfortunately they were showing Spidey 3 which we'd already seen (and never got time to sit through again).
Brotherswater..
Ullswater..
Davaar Island lighthouse
Campbeltown cinema - the oldest, still running, purpose built cinema in Scotland! Unfortunately they were showing Spidey 3 which we'd already seen (and never got time to sit through again).Sunday, June 17, 2007
Scotland
Quick stop off in Glasgow..
panorama of our cottage for the week..
.. the first fews days were very hot and sunny..
.. the beautiful Loch Lussa
.. Campbeltown harbour at sunset.
The base of the Machrihanish radio tower from the early 20th century race to broadcast a voice message accross the Atlantic between Fessendale and Marconi. Read more here .. http://www.campbeltownloch.com/readarticle.php?article_id=1
Machrie Moor standing stones on Arran
Glenashdale waterfall ..
Skipness castle (13-17th century) 
Celtic cross gravestone of a young boy buried in the yard of Skipness Chapel
Not quite so sunny the last couple of days - I kept the dots of rain on the lens - I think it adds another layer to a nice rainy pic.
Chimneys in Campbeltown - note that's about 10 chimney-pots per TV aerial! and not a Sky dish in sight (well in this shot anyway)
Celtic cross gravestone of a young boy buried in the yard of Skipness Chapel
Not quite so sunny the last couple of days - I kept the dots of rain on the lens - I think it adds another layer to a nice rainy pic.
Chimneys in Campbeltown - note that's about 10 chimney-pots per TV aerial! and not a Sky dish in sight (well in this shot anyway) Scotland - Wildlife
The wildlife we saw in Scotland was amazing, seals and dolphins on the first evening, otters the next, it was our own live Springwatch right outside the cottage! (We stayed nr Campbeltown in Kintyre, not too far from Springwatch who were on Islay)..
Common seal sunbathing
Wild otter sat just a few metres from me outside the cottage! We saw him(?) most days either swimming past or checking through the seaweed. One morning we got to watch him catch and eat a fish which was by far the highlight of the holiday.
Wild deer on Gigha island - they were very relaxed though and you could get pretty close.
Peacock in the gardens on Gigha. We also saw peacock chicks.
No Golden Eagles, but lots of big buzzards in the hills. Also one or two Kestrels.
Truck loads of sea birds, gulls, Gannets, Cormorants, Herons, Eider ducks and Oyster Catchers too.
Common seal sunbathing
Wild otter sat just a few metres from me outside the cottage! We saw him(?) most days either swimming past or checking through the seaweed. One morning we got to watch him catch and eat a fish which was by far the highlight of the holiday.
Wild deer on Gigha island - they were very relaxed though and you could get pretty close.
Peacock in the gardens on Gigha. We also saw peacock chicks.
No Golden Eagles, but lots of big buzzards in the hills. Also one or two Kestrels.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Bristol Zoo 2
A return to Bristol zoo on saturday, impressed with all the changes that have been made since last year, with still more in progress. With the hot weather quite a few of the animals were being more elusive and lazy than last time, but at least this time I didn't mess up my camera settings!
Nice shot of a fruit bat, took loads both times, including mother and baby shots, but this one is probably the best I think.
Another bunch I never showed photos of last time, the Prairie dogs.This time with lots of just emerged young at feeding time.
We also went around Bristol docks, but had spent soo long at the zoo that we were too late to see any of the Festival of Nature event, which I was pretty gutted about. It was still really nice wandering around though, so nice I completely failed to get any good photos.
Colouring chameleons
Returning to the chameleons with a vengence after all my photos from the last trip came out poorly. I used ISO 400 to compensate for the darkness, but still could only use an aperature of f/5.0-5.6 to get a decent shutter speed of ~1/60s (with image stabiliser). This blurred the background pretty well but I think some of the photos could have done with f/6.3.
I shot using a custom white balance setting because none of the pre-sets matched the lighting well (flash setting was closest).
The glass didn't seem to cause as much problem as last time, although they were in a new tank, so maybe less reflections and refractions. There does seem to be some unusual distortions along some edges though.
Overall I think the images are a lot better than last time, but still plenty of flaws to iron out next time.
To process the images in photoshop I removed noise to reduce some of the speckles caused by using ISO 400. I still had to adjust the colour balance slightly, removing some green.
I like this shot, I think it has good eye contact, the eye is in focus, interesting arm shape, might have been nice to have a highlight in the eye.
This guy seemed to fail at adapting to his background. Distracting branch in the background but I like the texture and detail on the skin.
I like this one for it's composition, pose (mid stride stalking along the branch towards me) and expression on his face.
I like the curvy pose of this one too - the eye isn't in focus which is a shame, but with a wide aperture I just missed it. I think it's an interesting enough pose to go on here anyway.
I shot using a custom white balance setting because none of the pre-sets matched the lighting well (flash setting was closest).
The glass didn't seem to cause as much problem as last time, although they were in a new tank, so maybe less reflections and refractions. There does seem to be some unusual distortions along some edges though.
Overall I think the images are a lot better than last time, but still plenty of flaws to iron out next time.
To process the images in photoshop I removed noise to reduce some of the speckles caused by using ISO 400. I still had to adjust the colour balance slightly, removing some green.
I like this shot, I think it has good eye contact, the eye is in focus, interesting arm shape, might have been nice to have a highlight in the eye.
This guy seemed to fail at adapting to his background. Distracting branch in the background but I like the texture and detail on the skin.
I like this one for it's composition, pose (mid stride stalking along the branch towards me) and expression on his face.
I like the curvy pose of this one too - the eye isn't in focus which is a shame, but with a wide aperture I just missed it. I think it's an interesting enough pose to go on here anyway.
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