Brief post today. Computer equipment is all overheating (its topping 100F in office again), so I'm struggling to process shots from the wedding. It was a great success and I'm pleased with my results. Off to London for 36 hours shooting tomorrow, so I ain't gonna get the rest processed until later in the week. Going to see the Street & Studio exhibition at the Tate Modern, and roam the streets  . Not got any themes in mind just yet, time for that later, but really looking forward to it!
Off topic: My Ipod (5th Gen) video not so long ago decided it wasn't going to play any more video podcasts, which I've found quite annoying as I watch Photoshop User TV & Matt Kloskowski's Lightroom podcasts on there. Just tried a complete reset and resync but that hasn't worked either. I reckon its probably an Apple update that's killed it, but unfortunately no more time to investigate. Had planned on loading it up for the train journey down, will have to do withouth. Apple Grrrrrrr
Now don't get me wrong, I love the warm sunny weather, but its topping 32 degrees in my office at the moment, and not only is it causing my Belkin 4 port USB hubs a bit of grief it's also playing havoc with my brain. So if this post goes a bit wayward, blame the weather!
My prints from SmugMug arrived this morning, and I'm really pleased. The quality of print is fantastic, and considering they've come from Atlanta, 7 days really isn't bad going at all. I think that's finally sold it for me, and I'll be moving my galleries over pronto.
Another trip into Manchester this morning, and I now reckon I have sufficient new stuff to update the calendar. Will be spending the rest of this afternoon and Monday morning prepping them, and then will get them sent off to the printers. Hopefully they'll have everything done by the time I get back from my hols.
I paid a visit to the chaps at Pro Film Direct on my way back to the ranch. I've got my first wedding tomorrow (ok it's my brother in law, but hey I wanna do it right don't I?) and I wanted to quiz them about off-camera flash set ups. I've seen Scott Kelby and others mention the Westcott setups amongst other kit, but it's all based State-side and shipping that kinda gear all the way over here won't be cheap. Calumet seem to be really quite pricey on the lower end stuff, but Rick at PFD came up trumps. As usual a quick visit to PFD never happens... we had a brew, played with a D700 (their first stock D700 arrived whilst I was there), and then got down to business with lighting. I've rented a Manfrotto light stand, a Bowens silver & white dual purpose umbrella and an umbrella adapter to mount the speedlight and pop the brollie through, all for the meagre price of 20 sovs. Rick and Steve even gave me a quick demo inside the store and outside in the sun. I also managed to get an ND10,000 77mm filter for an absolute song. I've been after one of these for a while - it'll knock off 13stops!! They really are a tremendous bunch there, and if you're ever in need of any kit, film or digital, used or new, try them first - 0161 273 3003 - Unit 1 Cariocca Business Park, Hellidai Close, Manchester. M12 4AH.
Made it into Manchester yesterday evening in order to try and get some more shots for the calendar as it looked to be a nice evening. Was a bit miffed when just as I was parking, the sun decided it would disappear behind some clouds only to reappear for about 5 minutes before it decided to set. I grabbed a few of the town hall (which I've yet to process), but all in all it was a bit of a wasted trip. Ho hum. 
I had a late start this morning, again, as I had to run some errands and do a spot of re-cycling (I wish they'd take plastic and cardboard from our doorstep along with the paper and cans that they already do). I remembered from a while ago, that there was a rusty burnt out old Ford Ka near the re-cycling centre, so I thought I'd investigate it again. Foolishly, I had shorts and trainers on! The car was about 1/4 mile down a very overgrown wet path riddled with nettles. I made it through pretty much unscathed, though it did take me a while. But when I got there, the car was pretty much engulfed by vegetation. I got a few frames off, and then headed back the same way.... slowly! Don't really feel that I got anything great though. The above is what I found when I got there! I'm trialling the Nik Software Silver Efex Pro and I thought I'd process this with it - interesting & pleasing results. It's not cheap, but from everything I've read about it, it's well worth the $$. We'll see.... TTFN
It's gonna be one of dem days! Late start this morning as I had to drop my car off at Audi for them to repair the Gearbox ECU. Fortunately, even though the car is 12 months outside its warranty Audi are going to throw the part in for free, which helps as its about £1500!! But it meant a late start and sitting around waiting for the loner car to be sorted out etc etc. Then when I do finally get into the office, I see that I've got some major disk problems on my primary desktop. The drive on which I store Lightroom galleries and RAW files is reporting no free space, and the drive on which I have 250GB of music appears to have lost half of its contents. For some bizarre reason its not showing anything in Windows Explorer after the letter I, though if I type in the folder name (eg The Police) it'll browse to it no probs. The music is still showing up in iTunes, but its a bit concerning! Its a 250GB Maxtor and I'm wondering if its on its way out. I do have duplicates, but copying that much data is no mean feat. 
So while I fart about with my desktop and try and get it back up to speed again, I've been working on an Amazon store for the website on my trusty laptop. Any extra way of brining in a little more revenue isn't to be sniffed at, and Amazon's A-Store is a rather nifty set up. Ok, the commission rates aren't great, but hey it's taken me like a couple of hours, and I'm up and running. Check it out here, and PLEASE get your wallet out 
Well you just wouldn't Adam & Eve it - for the first time in what feels like weeks the forecast last night for this morning was one of dry and bright, not warm but who cares! No rain and no grey skies! So I was up at half 3, out the door by 4 and in Manchester by half 4 - 30 minutes before sunrise. I shot for about 4-5 hours pausing briefly for a black coffee and a croissant in Starbucks with all the poor business types off to their daily slog around 8am. I had a blast! It feels like ages since I've put in such a concerted effort in what was pretty decent light. I whacked all 3 Baldelli mix albums on the iPod on repeat and I reckon I got at least half a dozen new shots for the Manchester Calendar. The shot above taken just round the corner from the Printworks was shot at F4.5 @ 1/100 sec. 200 ISO. I like it a lot, but its probably not a calendar image. The ones below are however. The first one is the tower of Manchester Cathedral, and yes that is the moon next to it (The moon was in the sky 'till gone 8am) shot at F8 for 1/100 sec and then "Selenium toned" in Lightroom. I like the feeling this toning gives the image, combined with the sunlight and the shadows gives quite a surreal effect. 
This next shot features the corner of the M&S / Selfridges building and a tower from the Royal Exchange. Shot at F4.5 and 1/25 sec.  I've still more processing to do and these are just quick Lightroom exports.I reckon if the weather holds this week, then I should be able to get the updates finished 
On a side note, I popped into the shop I got the D300 from whilst I was out to find out why the wireless remote (ML-L3) I bought for my D70s would not appear to work with the D300. It turns out that the D300 has no infra-red capability and that I need to give Nikon another 150 notes for another piece of kit (the ML-3). I nearly fell off my chair (or I would have done had I been sitting on one). How can they build a camera as cool as this packed with more features than you can shake a stick at, and not include Infra-red! Once I got back to the ranch, I did some trawling on t'internet and found a product called a Phottix Cleon wireless transmitter for D200/D300 & D3 that will work over a 10 times greater distance than the Nikon option and has a 2 second delay for use on the Bulb setting for the vast sum of.... £17.50! Ok, so it's not quite as pretty as the Nikon option, but hey that's like over £100 less! I'll let you know how well it works when it arrives from Hong Kong - I hope its better than the last piece of cheap junk I got (a wireless flash remote for the D70 that worked once and then never again!) And finally (I nearly forgot to mention) after 12 sessions with my personal trainer, umpteen visits to the gym, a complete change of diet and no booze over the last 4 weeks I've finally started to shed some poundage! 5 and a half last week to be precise. Apparently the result of sitting behind a desk all day for the last decade or so, and generally being a complete lardass has resulted in my metabolism slowing to the rate of a giant snail... with very large boots on. But finally it appears to have ditched the boots in favour of some trendy sandals and it's actually on the move again! WooHoo!! Only another 20 pounds to lose.
Surprise Surprise. Son pleuvoir! Still, a little water never hurt anyone, did it??? Shot in Asda's car park in Stockport. F5.6 @ 1/13sec using the Sigma 10-20mm F5.6 at its widest. 
This second one was shot facing the M60 which is why you can see the blurred truck in the background. Shot using the 18-200mm VR at F22 & 1/20 sec so I could get the blur. Quite a challenge to find anything inspiring in this weather, but I think the top one does it for me. I like the sense of tension the black and white conversion adds. Off topic: Another utility I happened across yesterday was a little program called Digsby. It allows me to combine my MSN accounts, gmail, Facebook and Twitter all into one pretty smart looking application. Previously I had to use a hack for Live Messenger in order to have 2 separate instances running which I was never really all that keen on. This new find just rocks and is sooooo easy to use. Also Kodak's T-Max 400 has been voted as the Best Film in Europe 2008 by the Technical Image Press Association. The award recognises the fast ISO, sharpness and fine grain offered to photographers. Read more here That's it for the week now. Have a good weekend all.
A very dreary gray and miserable day again. Am I ever going to get my calendar update finished?? Sure ain't gonna get too many money shots in this weather! Above was shot at F5 at 1/400 sec at ISO800. I shot at this high ISO in order to get the high shutter speed to capture the rain drops falling. It's raining on such a regular basis that I'm seriously toying with getting a rain cover. A bit of investigation required first. I've seen the AquaTech’s Sport Shield Rain Cover highly recommended on several blogs, but its about £150! Though I think I'd really quite like to try before I buy. I can feel a trip to Calumet coming on.... Off topic, I stumbled across the PicLens add-on for Firefox this morning. Ooooh! What a cracker. It really is a very cool tool and probably one of the best add-ons I've seen for a browser to date. Check it out here.
In keeping with the new regime (shooting every day), I got out mid-morning whilst all was quiet and opted for some more street stuff this time around Stockport. I'd just got into a cool spot and set up waiting for the right subject to wander into the frame when the phone rang with a support call. Typical! Fortunately, they're on a 1 hour turnaround, so I opted to get a few frames in and then had to head back. This was the best of the bunch, shot at 1/200 at F8 on the D300 with the 18-200VR. I was ideally looking for someone sitting on the bench too, but alas I didn't have the time to wait. I've had a few emails from readers asking why I'm not shooting any film at the moment, so I thought I'd post a reply to all here. There are a plethora of reasons, but the primary reason is that I don't have a "real" project on which I'm focusing at the moment. I tend to use film for the more "Fine Art" orientated projects on which I work, and at the moment I'm trying to concentrate on updating the Manchester Calendar and improve my sense of timing, confidence and patience by shooting street portraits. I hope to get the updates to the calendar finished in the next few weeks, and I have plenty of ideas for more "Fine Art" projects, so keep watching and I'm sure there'll be more film on here sooner or later.
On the same note, worth a chuckle is this tongue-in-cheek article by Brian Auer over at Epic Edits - read it here. I've also started twitting in the last couple of days. Whether I'll manage to keep on top of it as well as this blog is another matter. It's quite a laugh though! - nothing like jumping on a bandwagon  . Check out my feed here.
A couple more shots from the second trip to Manchester last week. All hand held and using the D300 & 18-200mm VR. 
 This last image was more of an experiment than anything else. I wanted to see just how good the image stabilisation was on this lens. Even though the tram was just pulling away from the tramstop I still managed to capture some motion blur shooting handheld at 1/20 sec. Impressive stuff. This lens has definitely made it straight to the top of my faves list!
I'm also in the process of experimenting with SmugMug with a view to transferring my online galleries and store there from the ImageFile. I've been making use of the 14 day free trial to see whether it'll do what I want. I've |