Lake District 2

More pics from the north!  Taken over the next days, during a walk up Pike o'Stickle and a wander around Ambleside..

Sunset over Ambleside

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The most photographed row boats in the world (probably).

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Loft Crag and Langdale valley from the summit of Pike o' Stickle. The square crop on this photo really enhances composition (imho) with nice strong diagonal lead in and valley heading off to the horizon.

Pike o'Stickle is famous for it's neolithic stone axe "factory", where very hard volcanic greenstone was crafted into hand axes thousands of years ago. The same neolithic people would have built the stone circle at Castlerigg too.

New Links

Two new links added, both to the BBC website.  One to the brand new Wildlife Finder, a library of the BBC natural history units video collection from the last 30 years, searchable by animal, behaviour or eco-zone.   Currently hosting a collection picked out by Sir David Attenborough as his favourite clips.

The second link is to Earth Explorers, which reports breaking news stories straight from BBC wildlife film crews out on location all over the planet, including the ongoing filming of Frozen Planet, due for release late 2011.  Both truely amazing.

Lake District 1

Finally starting to sift through my holiday photos, no lens problems this time (touch wood) and 10 days of Sun to snap away in!  These are from the first couple of days, not too bad considering I was pretty ill with flu (just plain old normal flu thankfully).

One eyed robin, our neighbour for the stay.  A bit old, scruffy and with one dodgy eye he reminded me of Sir Patrick Moore!  :)

Langdale Pikes from the path to Blea Tarn

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Gods fingers shining over Crinkle Crags
Old Stone Gate Post
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Fly Agaric mushrooms!  Pretty rare in the UK, and to find these two together was brilliant.  Apparently Fly Agaric mushrooms were eaten by Siberian shamans who would then give their urine to the tribe to drink, enhancing the halucinagenic properties of the mushrooms poison while reducing the side effects.  Basically acting as a human filter!  Hmm, think I'll stick with red wine!

My point of view...

A productive photo weekend, considering I didn't make my usual pilgrimage to the Dorset Steam Rally. First off, 2 shots from a local car boot sale, broken pocket watches, now only measuring time in rust and decay rather than seconds and hours.



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Strong morning sun backlighting this flower adds punch and depth.

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The same strong side lighting put to good use with some native 8 legged critters.  Unusually static for macro subjects, I got to carefully position the camera on my tripod for nice controllable settings without having to hold my breath to avoid camera shake!

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Local church carvings: a nice low exposure pic (taken manual mode - more than -2ev), capturing the glancing light and texture of the wood grain.

Another wooden statue with sinister looking cracks and scars, adding another level to this already photogenic figure, taken with shallow depth of field (f/2.8) to emphasise the face.

News, Updates and Criminal TV

Canon are nearing the release of the new 7D DSLR towards the end of september.  Looking very nice, with handy built in digital spirit level tool, HD video, "environment proofing", -/+ 8 exposure compensation, 8 fps processing, a 100% 1.0x magnification viewfinder and attractive looking tech specs.  It's aimed at wildlife and sports photographers who have been drooling over the 5D mkII, but don't want to loose the extra zoom of an APS-C sensor.  It does indeed fit that spot very well and now provides a nice dilemma for photographers that want to shoot both wide landscapes and wildlife!!  

http://www.canon.co.uk/For_Home/Product_Finder/Cameras/Digital_SLR/EOS_7D/index.asp

Talking of kit, I have updated my old webpage with some of my new gadgets - or at least all the things I've added to my kit since I last updated it about 2 years ago!  Note that it's really only written for Internet Explorer using my limited experience of javascript, transparent PNG's and CSS z-index levels.  Firefox, Chrome, Opera and the like will more than likely mangle it...

http://www.marks-wasted-time.co.uk/mwt_kit.htm

.. hopefully I'll get the rest of the page updated one day too!

Lastly, a brief and envy fueled comment on the BBC's Wildest Dreams programme that ended wednesday... http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lw1ls. ...wilderbeast manure!  The wrong person won, and I shall be very very cross if this kind of mistake occurs in the next series and they deprive me of my rightful spot on the BBC Natural History unit!  :) 

Failures, ideas and missed opportunities

With another weekend approaching and hesitant promises of some sunny weather from the weatherman, hopefully I shall get some more chances to takes photos over the next couple of days.  Until then here are a few pics from the last few weeks that  I've not posted for a variety of reasons (besides not being up to scratch)...

Peeling paint, I liked the texture and shape of it, but just too boring on it's own.. had an idea to use it as a background sky to a staged skyline of miscellaneous items, but we'll see...

A wonky St Cyriacs church, Lacock.  I had a great chance to get up in the bell ringers messenine to take this shot, nice bright-cloudy light through the windows too, but managed to take the shot off-center.  Another lesson learned.. never rely on church archetecture being aligned precisely!  

Note that this was taken handheld using ISO 800, so was fairly grainy in the dark areas, I used a tool called Neat Image to remove the noise, you need to buy a license for it, but it works really well.  There are some free noise reduction tools, but I haven't used them, so can't really say if it's worth it though.

Black cat waiting to be let in..  it's an okay shot, I like the lighting and colours, the pose is okay, but I missed the best shot of him/her sat looking up at the door because I had put my camera back in the bag.  Yet another lesson to keep my camera ready and show a little more patience!  (and to take no notice of people around me thinking I'm weird, taking cat photos across a fairly busy town center street with my huge "look at me I'm a pro" grey 100-400 lens!)

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Lastly a wheelbarrow sat at the end of a country garden path.  A fairly rustic, but simple shot with depth of field and the path line to lead the eye.  Just thought I'd post this one as it's been floating around in my "maybe" folder a few weeks.

Landscape Photography Tool

With my landscape photography waning and my sunrise attempts non-existant lately I have stumbled across a tool which look quite handy...

http://stephentrainor.com/tools

.. showing sunrise/sunset times, but also exact sunset/sunrise directions too, for a given location and date as well as google maps topography data.  It's nice and slick to use and hopefully with a bit of co-operation with the weather I hope to get some more landscape photos done fairly soon, with sunrise times creeping towards 7am through september (yes it's september already can you believe it!?), it'll soon be nice and easy to get out of bed for them! 

September Filler

With a 2 week gap in posts I thought I'd better post some pics from the last few weekends!  

Photo based TV and movies...

Watched the movie One Hour Photo again the other day.  Very interesting movie with some great little photography snippets... (slightly de-americanised)

"I'm sure my customers never think about it...

but these snapshots are their little stands against the flow of time.

The shutter is clicked...

the flash goes off and they've stopped time.

If just for the blink of an eye.

And if these pictures have anything important to say to future generations, it's this...

I was here.

I existed.

I was young. 

I was happy and someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture.

Most people don't take snapshots of the little things...

the used plaster...

the guy at the petrol station...

the wasp on the jelly...

but these are the things that make up the true picture of our lives.

People don't take pictures of these things."

I'm also very much enjoying Wildest Dreams on BBC iPlayer at the moment.. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lvz1n/Wildest_Dreams_Episode_1/

.. right up my alley!  .. and if they need contestants for next years series I shall be applying!!  

Harvest, wildlife and pegs...

Farmers hard at work in the summer sun reaping Rape Seed and ploughing the Wiltshire landscape.

Brizzol Balloon Fiesta in triplets

A triplet of Red Arrow photos during their awesome display...







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A triplet of panaromic format photos..

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A triplet of colourful balloons in a variety of poses.

Birthday creation

A recent birthday photoshop creation with a dark and twisted influence. Note: the frame had frayed strings hanging down from the top as cut ropes and was heavily decorated with all manner of gubbins and brik-a-brac!

Photo tripping

A weird bunch of photos this post, taken on a rainy tour of a local town..

first off, an impulsive capture of light, shade, reflection and generally confusing weirdness.
Knitting gubbins in a shop window, reflection minimised by my polariser, hoorah!
A nice shadey alleyway leading off up the hill, all very photogenic with perfect weather of mono pictures!
Frome or Milan?!  A vintage Vespa scooter rusting in the rain next to some colonnades.  I really like this pic, so gave it a polish in photoshop to make it extra special.  
Finally an old Kodak ad painted on a wall near a Kodak shop.  With the world famous Kodachrome film ceasing production are they soon to become extinct?It will be a shame, even though I never use film now, I grew up taking photos using their film.  

A vision of the view

I quick waffle about a photo I took recently in Bradford on Avon.  Things I like and just highlighting the reasons why I like it...

It was taken after sunset on a rainy night from a bridge over the lines.  A 13 second exposure with the camera balanced on the edge of the bridge.  ISO 100 to minimise noise, f/10 aperture to both slow the shutter speed down and get the required depth of field.  Auto white balance adjusted at raw processing stage.

For me it has great colours, a stark contrast between the cool blues of the cloudy sky and the warm lighting of the platform.  Detail and interest is good, lots of patterns in the paving, small architectural touchs, the light reflecting from the rails and sleepers.   It has a human presense with the woman on the bench that stayed still for most of the 13 seconds! (thank you)  and a few blurred ghosts of passengers unboarding.

Some inperfections that I like too, the spot of rain causing a halo on the horizon, I like as it is another hint that it is still raining (along with blurred rain streaming past the left side lamp).  Also the star bursts from the light points caused by the relatively narrow aperture, technically a flaw, but again I like them as they're fairly subtle.

Then there is the symetry, overall pleasantly symetrical but on further inspection interestingly impefect.  

The far bridge helps disect the image into parts and helps block the viewers gaze from following all those leading lines away from the interest and into the horizon.

Another happy snap on the blog!

Wild Summer Life

Thistles and butterflies enjoying some rather rarer sunshine.
Nice weather for snails!

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Duck in rain.  (photoshopped)