Weekend Break
Posted: Sun 3 April, 2005 Filed under: Animals, Photography, Thoughts, Travel 4 Comments »Well, we’re back. The weekend was fantastic, although it was altogether far too short. Then again, weekends always are.
We stayed in West Quantoxhead (also known as St. Audries, for reasons unknown to me) close to Minehead. But not too close – probably 10-15 miles away from Minehead, which is just fine with me. I used to go to north Somerset with my family years ago, to the same kind of area, but we worked out that I hadn’t actually been back for at least twenty years. And it’s amazing how little has actually changed.
Saturday dawned – for me – bloody early. In fact, at dawn. The site had a pheasant that insisted on squawking it’s way through the morning loudly. So by half six I was dressed and awake. As The Hound was also awake and perky, we went down to the beach, leaving Herself to sleep more. Besides, I’d got my camera, which has been woefully underused so far this year, so it’s time to recitfy that. Sixty photos later, yeah, it’s back to being well used. I’ve got some thoughts on cameras and so on which I’ll probably write up for tomorrow, but for now it’s safe to say that some of the stuff was stunning – including finally figuring out for myself how to take successful shots of waterfalls with that shutter speed that makes the water look like mist. It’s a photographic cliché, I know – but it was a shot I’d tried to take on several occasions before, and failed abysmally. But now I’ve got a few – OK, I’ve got a lot – but they work, and I’m well pleased with them as a result.
For most of the day we went over Porlock Hill and Countisbury Hill to Lynton and Lynmouth, which was fantastic. We spent a large proportion of time knackering The Hound, spending at least two hours on the beach playing catch, and getting her to dive into rockpools in order to retrieve the tennis ball. For some reason this also gained us a bit of an audience, but there we go. We also travelled up to Lynton on the funicular railway, a water counter-balanced system which is ace, if rickety as hell.
Travelling back, we then ended up spending another hour on the beach, wandering along and getting yet more photos I’m really pleased with, and a couple that are going to get printed out at A4 size and mounted/framed properly, we’re so chuffed with them.
Today has involved a trip to Watchet, which is still nothing special, and driving home. Knackered – utterly, utterly knackered. But also ultimately happy – it’s been lovely to have a truly relaxing weekend, even if it has involved about 120 photos, all told. But it’s been great.
Well Deserved
Posted: Thu 31 March, 2005 Filed under: News, Photography Leave a comment »Just a quick post to say congratulations to Chromasia for winning in the “Best European / British / Irish Photoblog” category of the 2005 Photobloggies Awards. Chromasia’s been an inspiration many times over the last year, and has made me think “Oh, I wonder if I can do something like that with my camera?” more times than I care to think about.
Also, congratulations to Daily Dose of Imagery for winning three categories in the same awards, including Photoblog of the year. On a personal preference, I enjoy far more of Chromasia’s shots than DDOI’s, but they’re still both excellent, and truly deserving of the awards.
D-SLRs
Posted: Mon 7 March, 2005 Filed under: Photography, Thoughts 2 Comments »As referred to in the post below, I’m looking at upgrading this year to a Digital-SLR camera. Really there are two in the running for it – well, three now that the Canon EOS350D has been released. However, the two that I’ve been primarily considering are the Canon EOS20D and the Fuji S3.
I’ve been impressed with the Canon results, up to a point – and Chromasia has done a lot to show me what the 20D is capable of doing. I was less impressed with the 300D when I played with that a while back, although I suspect a lot of that was down to the owner/user not really knowing what he was up to. And in honesty, I was pretty sure that the 20D was the way to go, until I saw about Fuji releasing the S3. I’ve used Fuji cameras all the way through my digital camera series so far, and I’m still very happy with the S5000 that I currently use, and have had for about 15 months now. Quite honestly, for anyone wanting a semi-pro camera, and particularly one that comes in at under £300 now, I’d recommend it and the upgraded S5500 without any hesitation at all.
What the S5000 does lack though is the creative controls. Sometimes I just can’t get the shot or effect I want with the camera, which is frustrating, to say the least. So I know that a DSLR is the way to go – it’s just which one to choose. I’ve a lot of loyalty for Fuji, so I suspect what I really need to do is see if I can find a decent photography club and get my mitts on both for a while. I don’t think the odds are high on that one, so I’ll just have to think more, and see which one I want to go for in the end. Unfortunately, at the current moment I don’t even know quite what the deciding characteristics will be. I’m sure I’ll write more about it soon though.
Photography
Posted: Sun 6 March, 2005 Filed under: Geeky, Photography 6 Comments »Well, I did get quite a lot of photos over the weekend – some of which I’m really pleased with. A trip to Windsor to see the castle (the joys of friends with children) got some really good bits, and lots of portrait-type stuff which has worked out really well, although a lot of it won’t be publicised here due to certain issues with photos of kids, and the internet. Joy.
What I do find though – and I’m sure I’m not the only one who does this – is that I take a lot of photos in “portrait” orientation, instead of landscape. It’s not something I think about a lot while taking photos, it’s just a natural camera positioning, but when it comes to Photoshop afterward, I probably have to re-orient about 2/3s of the shots, which can be a pain in the arse.
Of course, once a digital SLR is in my possession then it becomes less of an issue, as both of the main ones I’m considering come with the ability to automagically reorient themselves so that picture rotation becomes a thing of the past. But for now I’m stuck with using a Rotate function somewhere along the line. No big thing really, just an extra thing to do/ remember.
So – which format do you prefer for photos? And why?
Assembling the Proof
Posted: Sun 30 January, 2005 Filed under: Photography, Resolutions 1 Comment »I’ve spent a large part of today sorting through some of my photo collection (a rather worrying 3,750 images, or 4.5GB) to build up a selection that I can build up a bit of a portfolio from. Thankfully, today’s work has involved just one section, the flowers and macro shots I’ve taken. Mind you, even that worked out initially at just over 100 photos, although I’ve since whittled it down to a mere 69.
I’m getting them printed by my normal place, so I’ll have them here for Tuesday, or at latest Wednesday. Once that’s done, I’m going to look at how best I can crop some of them, get them reprinted, and then start work on assembling them into some kind of comprehensive grouping.
There’s a reason for all this. Not only was it part of my resolutions to myself this year, but I want to test the water and see what the reactions are. I’ve got a couple of companies lined up that I’d like to see printing up these photos, but well, we’ll have to see how it all goes, and what they say.
Catching Up
Posted: Fri 28 January, 2005 Filed under: Photography, Resolutions Leave a comment »Over the last few weeks – really since before Christmas – one thing I haven’t done much of has been photography. What with one thing and another, it’s just taken a bit of a back seat. Partly because there’s been a slight lack of inspiration, partly I’ve just been hugely busy with other stuff.
Still, on that score it’s not been an inspiring start to the year. I’m hoping to get back on track with it over the next couple of weeks though – and I also intend to go and see what Bracknell Camera Club is like next week (particularly as they’re doing something about flower photos, which are a subject I’m quite into)
I’m also going to go through the process of putting together some of my photos, then braving the vagaries of Amateur Photographer’s critics. Oh, and also submitting a few others to a couple of greetings card manufacturers who specialise in the type of shots that I enjoy, and seem to be pretty good with. So we’ll see how it all works out…