A veritable photographic feast!
May 29, 2008
Just returned from having spent a satisfying few days in the county of Derbyshire. And whilst there seized the opportunity to take a day out and explore the city of Derby itself with a couple of photography mates.
Well, though I say “explore the city” the fact is that we really only managed to get to a couple of locations… simply because there was so much at those places that captivated out interest we just ran out of time.
The history-rich city of Derby has so much to offer (to the photo enthusiast anyway) that it’d be impossible to get around to all the fascinating places in just a few days.
So where’ve I been then?
May 29, 2008
Certain persons that shall remain nameless (and who should know better!) have been querying the recent interruption to the seeming regularity of my posts.
Hmm. Obviously I’m posting far too frequently in that case!
However, just to set everyone’s minds at rest, I shall reveal all…
Wandering the Derbyshire countryside, that’s where!
For all the gory details you’ll need to read this article, but meanwhile here’s a few pics to whet your appetite…
And just as a hint, its all about open-cast mining and the dastardly attempts of UK Coal to ravage yet more of England’s beautiful countryside in the unending quest for fuel to feed the consumerist lifestyle!
You can find the full photoset here!
Flowers galore!
May 22, 2008
Made another quick visit to Bedford Park yesterday, and flowers seemed to be the centre of my attention.
Plus the fact that wherever else I tried pointing my lens there appeared to be loads of schoolkids playing. And I’m a bit wary about taking pics (even “by chance” ones) of kids!
Sad comment really on the state of photography today… or rather, the perception of photographers in the eyes of interfering do-gooders and our “politically correct” society.
And an inadvertent black & white one (almost)…
An addendum to my last post…
May 22, 2008
I suppose really these pics should have been included in the Bedford High Street batch I uploaded to Flickr the other day (see this post)… and they would have been, had they been taken then. But they weren’t!
I did in fact take some pics of this shop during that session but they were… well… not to put too fine a point on it, absolute crap.
These, however, are a different matter entirely.
The shop in question (or in the viewfinder) is Harrison & Simmonds, a one-time specialist tobacconists along Bedford’s High Street, and it also happens to be one of my favourite town centre shops. Not least because of the superb and friendly service there.
I’ve been one of their customers ever since I’ve lived in the area (since about 1990) and not once have I ever found fault with them… and I can be a fairly awkward customer if I put my mind to it!
Its certainly not the cheapest tobacconist in town but then I really don’t mind paying a few pennies more when the service is so superlative.
Anyway, yesterday (21st May) was apparently the shop’s 80th anniversary, and it just happened to coincide with my weekly shopping trip into town. Which meant of course that I had to stock up on smoking supplies.
And this particular set of pics came about as the result of a sort of semi-invitation (on their part) and semi-suggestion (on mine).
Of course, with the massive anti-smoking campaign that’s been conducted over perhaps the past couple of decades (here in the UK at least), H&S have found it increasingly difficult to survive and thus have had to diversify somewhat… consequently their current tobacco-related products probably constitute less than a quarter of their stock lines.
Shame, really.
Nearly… but not quite
May 20, 2008
The theme for this little set was suggested to me by a comment left on one of my pics by a Flickr contact.
Basically it entailed little more than strolling down the High Street of my nearest town. Ok, I did set myself a few rules to follow, but nothing too arduous. Dead easy.
Not so!
The full tale is recounted in all its sorry detail in this post. Be it sufficient to say here that I’ve come so close to simply scrubbing all the pics from that session so many times its really quite amazing they’ve managed to survive.
But this evening, having done all my self-imposed chores (move the dust from one place to another, look at the washing-up and decide it can wait, check the bin bag and calculate I can squeeze another coupla cans in there… phew, I’m getting worn out!) and completed various essential computer-related tasks (bit of filing, check email, surf a few of my favourite sites, check email again, start getting bored), I found myself with a coupla hours or so to spare.
Hmm. Twiddle thumbs. Hmm. Scratch head. Hmm. Make a mug of coffee (or three).
Then I recollect that bunch of absolutely disastrous pics still lurking around somewhere. “I wonder if its possible to salvage just a couple from the fiasco” thinks I. Mull the possibility over a bit more whilst I have another mug or three of coffee, and decide its probably worth giving them a final once-over before binning them for good.
Well, returning for a fresh look at them after this length of time it seems to me that, ok, maybe they’re not brilliant… but neither are they totally unacceptable (some of them, anyway).
So really this little set (a total of 17 pics) represents the results of the rescue attempt.
Almost right place, wrong time, wrong camera
May 19, 2008
Could have got some really spectacular shots last night/this morning. But I didn’t!
A fire in a derelict factory! But I was in the wrong place… the other side of a railway track. And a couple of fences. And some waste ground. And it was the wrong time… night, and there was nowhere convenient nearby that I could rest the camera on, and no tripod with me. Hence, loadsa camera-shake.
And I only had the point & shoot with me. No guarantee of course that I would have fared any better with the other cameras… but I can kid myself can’t I (at least I might have managed to get a bit less noise in the night shots)?
The full set is here.
More tinkering with white balance
May 17, 2008
Having had a bit of fun tinkering with the manual adjustment of white balance on the GX10 (see this post), was feeling a bit adventurous so thought I’d see if anything similar were possible with my point & shoot, a Konica Minolta DiMAGE z6.
And it is! And in a very similar manner, although the manual recommends the use of a white card (not grey, as with the GX10).
Clearly the obvious place for the experimentation was my favourite “weird lighting haunt”, inside The Bear pub in Bedford.
Overall the results were reasonably satisfactory although on reflection what I think I should have done, because there are varying light sources at the location, was to have reset the white balance for each separate light source. Something to remember when I’m doing it “for real”.
A very minor achievement maybe, but I’m inordinately pleased that I’ve finally got my head around this little tweak. All sorts of possibilities are now suggesting themselves to me!
