Back from Asia

Hello! I am back from Cambodia, and have almost fully recovered from the trip. I didn't get as much done there as I had hoped, either in or out of work. One of those is my fault. As for the second - others are trying to imply that's my fault too. Oh well. I did get a few pictures from the trip, so here are a couple. No great quality, as they were both taken with my phone :-)

Night Light

Here's another photo taken on my trip between work and home - this one in the opposite direction to those I posted a couple of weeks ago, so its already well and truly dark.

I thought I'd try to get an image showing how the street light illuminated the tree that had grown around it - quite difficult to focus due to not having a tripod and also to capture correctly because of the huge contrast between the light and the dark surroundings. Most of the photos I took didn't look great, but this one works in B&W I think.

Sigma 30mm at f1.4, 1/25 sec

This could be the last post for a while - I'm off to Cambodia til Christmas. I'll have my little P&S camera with me so will try and post if anything comes of it.

Back garden colours

Another Autumn related photo - OK, last one I promise. This one was taken in my back garden - we have an old garden chair that came with the house and has been sitting out in all weathers for years. I wouldn't trust the chair for supporting my weight any more, so it just stays in a corner, forgotten. Looks good with leaves on it though.

Nikon 18-200mm VR at 18mm, F3.5, 1/10sec

Improvements and DVD Menus

Just been watching the second season of Spooks. If you're thinking of watching this too, I'm gonna have to recommend you download it instead of buying it on DVD. Don't get me wrong, its a great show - I wish I'd gotten into it four five seasons ago when it started!

The reason I'm suggesting something illegal is the hardship. This DVD box-set doesn't give the worst set of screens, notices and menus I've had to navigate (that accolade goes to Prison Break), but the quantity and length of studio ads, piracy warnings (in five languages!) and badly designed menus you have to go through, just to watch your own DVDs is ridiculous. At least in the days of video you could fast-forward, but not any more because they disable that function while they're telling you what a naughty thing piracy is. How can they not realise that one of the key benefits of a download is that you don't have to watch this crap for five minutes before you can start enjoying the show?

Enough ranting.

If you're a regular visitor, you'll notice some improvements today:

• The Reading and Listening To sections on the left have been merged and now there's an expandable section for the text against all but the newest entries to keep the size down. The javascript for this was stolen wholesale from the VideoLAN home page. Sorry :-)
• Clicking on a picture now brings up a cool image container instead of just navigating away to a separate page with just the image on it. For this I'm using Slimbox, which is great!

edit: I had to get rid of the expandable text sections - they were causing IE to bomb for some reason. They were working yesterday!

Journey to work

I'm normally quite rushed on the way to work in the morning - I leave the house late or dawdle a little on the way so can't stop if I'm going to catch the train on time. Then, by the time I do get to London, I've allowed myself to sleep on the journey and am not really awake enough to pay attention to what's about. When leaving work for the day, at this time of year, there's no light left.

This means that even if I do have my camera with me I don't use it. I carry the camera around to keep me thinking about my surroundings, and often find myself wasting it.

One day this last week I thought I'd see if I could do it different. It was a nice sunny morning and some of the trees were still looking their best, so I got some shots - both on the way from my house to the station and then also a couple between the train and the office.

This picture is from a tree on my way to the train station in Milton Keynes. There's a group of three or four of these and they have this amazing colour and are keeping their leaves well.

Nikon 18-200mm at 50mm, f7.1, 1/15sec

This picture is of some of the trees in Gordon Square in London. This square has been closed for ages while some work is done on the fences and paths, so no-one can actually go in - this was taken from outside on the North side. I was hoping that the work in the square would be finished by now, but progress seems slow. Fortunately I still managed to get this shot with the sun shining through, and showing the colours.

Nikon 18-200mm at 31mm, f7.1, 1/125sec

Photoshopping

Was playing around a bit with one of the images I posted the other day and created a couple of nice versions. First is a straight black and white conversion. Second is my 'the aliens are coming' shot - looks like it came out of the X-Files or any other generic sci-fi film of the last couple of decades.

 

Autumn colours, finally

Autumn is my favourite season - the weather starts cooling down, the mornings are nice and fresh and the leaves on the trees all start to change colour before they drop. But isn't autumn supposed to begin in September? Either at the start of that month, or on the 21st depending on whether you hold with the meteorologists or the astrologists. We've had the odd tree here and there turning colours over the past month or two, but nothing special. Then, over the last week they've all gone in one mad rush. Maybe this happens every year and I've never noticed it before, or maybe the warm September and October we had really are signs of global warming.

Anyway, I went out on my bike on Saturday morning to capture some of the colour before it all starts to disappear for another year. I went down from my house to Teardrop Lakes, which is only a short distance away, and spent a pleasant hour ambling around shooting a bit. The trip was cut short due to getting a puncture in my front tire - I'd have like to have stayed out longer and gone on somewhere else, but decided to head home and see what I'd got. Here's my favourites. Click the pics for larger versions.

Nikon 18-200VR at 20mm, f7.1, 1/100sec

 

18mm, f7.1, 1/30sec                        18mm, f8, 1/200sec

Life In Still Mode

Every now and then I click the 'Next Blog>>' button on the Navbar at the top of this page and see what I come across. Today's click found me at Life In Still Mode, where I found some great photography. The latest post (Traffic) is as good as the rest on there - I'll be visiting back every now and then to see what's new.

Fireworks

I mentioned last week that I had some fireworks shots that I thought were pretty useless. Well they are as far as pictures of fireworks go. Far too low an aperture selected for anyone who is interested in why - I stupidly thought I'd keep it as low as possible to enable me to keep the shutter speed up as I had no tripod so was hand-holding. The upshot of that is that there's no focus as all, no definition to any of the sparkly trails of burning chemicals. I'll know better for next year!

Anyway, some of the shots are interesting none-the-less. If you ignore the fact that they are actually fireworks, it looks like I was doing some weird experiments with fibre optic cables in the dark, or maybe with some previously undiscovered luminescent flowers.

So, here are the 'best' of a bad bunch.

 

 

Boozy Dog - Old News

Turns out that story about the tipsy terrier I mentioned yesterday is old news: the Northern Echo reported it over three months ago. That didn't stop the Daily Express giving a whole page over to it today though - it even made it onto BBC Breakfast this morning.

Free News

I'm not a fan of newspapers - I don't buy a daily and I don't pick up any I see lying around, much preferring to turn back to whatever book I happen to be carrying at the time. Newspapers to me are not worth the effort and insult my sense of responsibility slightly by being too easy to not recycle. I often wish I was more 'in tune' with current events, but not enough to be buying or reading a paper every day.

If you live in London, travel into or around London, or have read Neilly Done, you'll know that that over the last few months there have been a growing number of free papers being produced and handed out in our fine-ish capital. Due to a number of factors - having read Neil's post, having had a couple of pints after work, sitting down on the train and being confronted by a stack of about eighteen papers - I decided to shun my copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, much as it entertained me this morning, and pick up the first thing that came to hand - London Lite.

I think I continued reading this paper because it had a picture on the front of Britney in fishnet tights and I had a random conversation today about fishnets. Strange but true. Actually, it wasn't that random a conversation - I started it. But for some reason this morning it seemed like almost everyone was wearing fishnets and I don't particularly like them so I mentioned it and then Britney turns up wearing them!

Now this paper, London Lite, I found as pointless as any other. In fact, more so, due to the way that it inexpertly weaves celebrity gossip with real news. However it still kept me reading for the entire 45 minute journey and there were a few things in there that made me chuckle and/or think for a moment.

• First up was the guy who somehow managed to successfully charge people £300 to sit their driving theory test for them. I wish I'd thought of that. Unsurprisingly, given what I know of this test having sat it myself four years ago, he had a 100% pass rate. Until he got caught.
• Next, there's a quarter of a page given over to Gail Porter slipping on a step. Since when is that news? Or gossip? I'll admit I have a bit of a soft spot for Gail Porter ever since her Blue Peter days, but surely this is just an excuse to point out (probably again) that she's got alopecia. I didn't know that before, but hey, now we have something in common :-)
• Apparently Jennifer Aniston sleeps in her dog's bed when she wants to get an extra 20 minutes kip. I guess with her being so rich her dog probably has a bigger bed than I do, but that's still odd.
• Lastly, there's the story of a dog that takes the bus down to his local pub when he's supposed to be working down the farm. The story says that the dog's owner originally bought the terrier to keep down the rodent population. See now, that's where he's gone wrong - I'd have bought a cat for that particular duty. Most people are aware that cats are better suited to that role and that, generally, they're tee-total. There's always the exception that proves the rule, but I'd trust a cat with my stock of hooch before I'd leave Fido alone with an opposable thumb and a bottle of vodka.
  

Maybe its because of those two pints earlier, or perhaps its due the extra one I had on the train home, but I find myself here writing about my paper-reading experience, almost in its entirety. This is my longest blog post ever. I've suddenly become what I feared most - your everyday, archetypal blogger, rambling on about nothing that anyone is ever going to read. Is that what beer does to a person? Are the majority of bloggers permanently drunk? I tend to have a couple of drinks after work at least once a week - perhaps this will happen again. Should I be scared?

There is a happy ending to this story - I bought the paper home with me and it will be recycled.

PS - Kiran, update your Blog and maybe I'll post some failed fireworks photos to make you feel better about your own.

More wildlife

Wow, it was a busy week last week. Didn't get a chance to post more pics from the wildlife park before now.

I was actually hoping to have something different to post today - fireworks. It having been November 5th yesterday, we strolled down to Cambell park to watch the pyrotechnic delights and I took the camera down. We've lived in Milton Keynes three years now and never been before so didn't know where they would be exactly - I think we ended up standing a bit too close to get pictures covering the whole area, and I really didn't choose the right settings for the camera. I think the whole lot are useless! If there is anything I can salvage I'll post it later in the week, but don't hold your breath.

In the meantime, here are some others from the park I promised. Eventually I'll post these and more on my website. Click the photos for larger versions.

 
 

A grand day out

Boy (pointing): What are those mummy.
Mother: They're Zebras.
Boy: No, those, lying down.
Mother: Those are logs.

Yes, I went to the zoo a few days ago, during half term week, and a laugh was had by all.

Well, when I say zoo, I actually mean the Cotswold Wildlife Park. A wildlife park is like a zoo, but instead of bars separating you from the animals there is a fence, a ditch then another fence. The height of the fences, and the amount of electricity going through the second one varies with the likelyhood of the animals inside eating you given the chance, but generally I think the view you get is better and the animals have a lot more room than they would at what you would normally consider a zoo.

Last Christmas I adopted a penguin for Helen as a gift - or at least I gave a bunch of money to the park in her name, they sent her a certificate, and they have some penguins, which is almost the same thing - so we were mostly interested in seeing these guys. I didn't really realise how much else there was too see there though. I would recommend going along to anyone.

While we were there I took a load of pictures - far too many to post here. Here is my favourite from the day - I'll post some of the others later in the week.

Click the photo for a larger version.
Nikon 80-400 VR at 280mm, f8, 1/20sec

Published!!

I just heard the other day that I've been published! Well, one of my photos has anyway.

My Dad is a church minister and has just moved to a place called Wisbech. He and my mum went on holiday last month to Sri Lanka, and while they were there they collected money and bought a fishing boat for one of the locals. Those two things together got them a spot on page two of the local Wisbech paper, and a photo I took of them before they moved made it in too.

A Foggy Morning

This morning I had arranged to go over and see Chris, a work friend of mine. He lives near the Marston Vale forest and conservation area.

The idea was to head over to the lakes and take some shots of the swans there. Left my place about 9am. It was pretty foggy, but I thought that yesterday started the same and the fog lifted by a little after 9 then, so we should be OK. The fog didn't lift :-)

Oh well... got some shots of some birds in the mist, but none of them great. There were however some good opportunities for looking at the dew-covered spider webs and for some atmospheric scenes - this is one I especially like.

Click the photo for a larger version.
Nikon 80-400 VR at 80mm, f16, 1/50sec

Shameless self-plug

In case you didn't see the link on the right to my website here it is again - www.davelicence.com

I have just updated my pages and have uploaded a load more pictures there - you won't see them all here as this photo-blog is intended only for my favourite shot every week or two, so pop over to main webpages for more.

Update

OK, so I updated the picture so its now rotated the right way - I guess if you're reading this now you'll have no idea what the issue was in the first place and there's no way to see my error. I could have kept it all quiet eh?

Ho hum.

As a bonus I'll attach my favourite photo from my recent holiday in Portugal - taken on a day trip over to Seville.

ok....

Alright, so things aren't perfect. My picture should have been rotated 90 degrees - thats my fault - and its taken me far too much time playing with the layout to get sidebars both left and right than it should have. Maybe I'll stick with it though.

Well hello

OK, this'll be my second attempt. I just created my space, on a bit of a whim and I cocked up my first attempt to create a blog entry. Second time lucky. There's some wierd shit on Winamp and its doing my head in. My idea is to create a photo-journal - encourage me to take some pictures every week and post my favourites, that kind of thing. To get the ball rolling, I'll add a pic I took this week with my new macro lens - I like it a lot, very clear images, but I'm worried that I need to get quite close to the subject to get real close-ups - spiders don't seem to give a monkeys uncle, but other creatures may do

Just a simple test post

This will see how wide the page is - who knows, it might not even wrap now. Or even now. Who knows how long this line will have to be. Could be longer than the longest non-wraping line ever