Photo taken in the garden on one of those rare sunny days here.

A slightly long walk away from the house I found these fields ripe.

I was out with the long lens one day and captured a few shots of the sheep and their pups who were in a field behind out vet.

Hello, this is my first proper new photo in ages!! Sorry for being away for so long. Just lack of time, lack of motivation and lack of access to Photoshop CS. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a few more done before my trial runs out in 12 days time.

This was taken in the fields near my house after a we got covered in snow (for the first time in years) in February 2009. We don’t get much snow here so I made the most of it and took lots of pics.

I know this is not the most appropriate place to put this but there you go. If anyone is interested in a 32in TV head over to the eBay page below. It’s a seller collects so check the details:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MESEX:IT&item=330220742725&_trksid=p3984.cSELL.m315.lVI

I’ll be adding lots more, like mini hi-fi, CDs, games, DVDs, books and all sorts of other goodies.

World Tour: Do Before You Die:
flickr.com/groups/dobeforeyoudie
(a group of photos that’ll inspire people to travel the World)

Wonders of the World:
flickr.com/groups/wondersoftheworld
(a group of photos you think are ‘wonders’)

British Isles & Ireland:
flickr.com/groups/britishisles
(a group for anything relating to the British Isles and Ireland)

Learn by Picture:
flickr.com/groups/learnbypicture
(a group to post your photos to get feedback and advice from others)

How-to by Photograph:
flickr.com/groups/howtobyphotograph
(a group to post images and their details of how they were created for others to learn from)

Tutorial by Picture:
flickr.com/groups/tutorialbypicture
(a group to post images that are photography tutorials)

And a quick list of the rest:

Ashdown Forest - a large park in the South East of England
Edenbridge - a small town in Kent, UK
Hever UK - near Edenbridge and home of the great Hever Castle
Rally Car British Isles & Ireland - I like rally cars what can I say
Rugby Union England - a group about the sport in England
Tennis UK - sports group for the UK
Thatcham - a town near Newbury and Reading in the UK and one of the many places I’ve lived
Tonbridge - a another town near Edenbridge
Westerham - guess where this town is near?
Westerham Golf Club - one of the golf clubs my brother has worked
Wimbledon Tennis Championships - a group for the great tournament

So please pop along, share you photos and post your discussions.

If you’re like me and rushed off your feet with little time to spare check the public Google Reader feed I’ve created here. It’s put all my groups together and any new photo added to any and all of the groups above will appear there. And once on the page you can subscribe to the RSS feed yourselves and receive regular updates. I’ve created several public feeds like this so if you think that might be of use to you then watch this space as I’ll be posting details of how to create them and a list of my other feeds in the future.

A shot of my Golden Retriever, Kaz. He’s a poser as you can tell.
Seriously though, it’s very hard to capture him as he doesn’t stay still for more than a few seconds. At just 3 years old he’s is so full of energy especially when I take him out for his walk! I reckon he could keep going all day long!

But luckily on one of my early morning expeditions I caught him here. He was standing up on a mound near a pond while the Sun was coming up and the sky was a wonderful yellowy-orange. I think he might have heard a train coming and so went into ‘alert mode’ – Kaz loves to chase the trains, but so far he’s never caught up with one.

Again this is Edenbridge and at a place called Prettymans Pond. I’m not sure what it’s called that but it’s fantastic little pond and I’ve spent many an hour here practicing my photography and taking shots of the pond and the trees in every way I can think of. I’ve found that by going back to the same place over and over again you eventually see different angles for shots and find different ways of capturing the same subject. I’ve also tried to go here at different times of the day in different weather conditions. It’s been very interesting to see the changes these bring and I’ve certainly learnt how to look at things with a ‘photographer’s eye’.

This is a slightly adjusted photo (see below for original). I’ve cropped the top and left a little and increased the saturation throughout. Also I’ve lightened Kaz a little as he was a bit too dark. What does everyone think? I still think the sharp foreground branches are a little distracting?

In the process of creating this photo I thought of two questions:

Question 1: What is the best way to convert an image from Photoshop (PSD, TIFF) to JPEG? What I normally do is save the PSD as a TIFF then go into ACDSee and convert it there at max. quality to a JPEG (thus keeping the EXIF data). But this photo really highlights a problem (or two) I’ve noticed in that converting to JPEG reduces the saturation and darkens the brightness. Is there a better way to convert to JPEG to keep the exact tone of the image as well as the EXIF info?

Question 2: I had to refine and touch up the selection of Kaz in Photoshop as left alone he stuck out too much and his hair (especially his underneath) had a nasty line where one part of the image was dark+saturated and the other was bright+lightened. What’s the best way to blend these areas? I used the smudge tool on the selection layer and the result seems OK but is there a better way?

The original photo has been printed in the UK newspaper, Kent & Sussex Courier on 01-Feb-2008 (my first print!) and made it to onto Flickr’s Explore on Jan 8, 2008 at #434. The scan of the newspaper print is below:

Blog entry at Dark Matter Magazine is here.

Shot taken near Boxham Farm in Edenbridge, Kent (UK) and not too far away from my previous shot. The light was amazing that morning!I had scouted this area out previously and knew I had to be there for sunrise. So on the next occasion of a bright morning I was up and out the door at about 6:45am. I trekked up to here in the near-dark (which was a good half hour) and then basically waited for the sun to come up through the trees.

When it did, I was up and down this hill over and over, taking lots of different shots from different angles and of course with different light. If anyone saw me they would have thought I was a right nutter. But it was all worth it and got this and many other wonderful shots.

Second entry on Dark Matter Magazine’s web site. Blog entry is here.

Shot from 2007′s Wimbledon tennis championship. What I’ve done here is converted from an original photograph into a painting-style piece. I wasn’t too happy with the original – it was basically a reflex shot and not particularly in focus. But I thought the composition was pretty good and took the option to play around with it a little more and perhaps give it another look. I’ve tried many variations but thought this one came out best.

The player is Klara Zakopalova from the Czech Republic in her game with Hana Sromova against Anna-Lena Groenefeld and Tatjana Malek of Germany where she and Hana eventually lost. The part of the match we saw was great, even with a small rain break in the middle but this is Wimbledon so you wouldn’t expect anything else.

I went with my brother and it was our first time at the tournament. It was a superb experience and we’re hoping to go back in 2008. My brother has this idea of tenting outside the grounds overnight to get centre court tickets the next day, but will just have to see about that.

For a more detailed report on our day, head over to his entry and head here to find the better pictures of the day. And it’s well worth looking at a larger version of the picture to see the painting detail.

Here is the original has and it been used on a home page for a outside television broadcasting company:

Blog entry at Dark Matter Magazine is here.

And these were taken when we were going around:

You could use this as a guide to the City of London. If you click on the thumbnails above and then the link to the Flickr pages I’ve added lots and lots of note boxes to the photos to list what everything is. Anyway the trip…

We went up to London Waterloo for a mid-morning timeslot and walked along the South Bank to the Eye. We got a snack to eat in Country Hall as we were a bit early. We then collected our booklet from the desk and joined the queue. The timeslot didn’t seem to matter, we probably could have queued straight away. It was a fairly long queue but moved steadily. After a security search we stepped into a pod. Now you would have thought it would stop and let you on. But no it continuously spins so we literally did hop on (when it lined up to the floor for a mere few seconds!). About 15 or so people got on and the door closed behind us. Then we were off!

The trip around was steady, you weren’t tumbling around the pod but you wished it lasted a little longer. Of course the best bit was when we were at the highest point. I think you get an idea from the photos what you can see. But I reckon if it was a clear day you could see a whole lot further. The weather wasn’t great but the ride on the Eye was amazing!!

We thoroughly enjoyed the day and recommend it to anyone. Tip though, try and go at the not-so-busy times else get a fast track ticket so you don’t have to queue. Expect to have your bags searched before you get onboard and be prepared for it to be busy as the Eye and the surrounding area are very popular.

I hope to go up on the Eye again one day, perhaps a night trip next time.

More photos are of the London Eye from this trip and others are here.

Well I had an interesting day yesterday (as did many others in the UK). I was working out of the Newbury Business Park [West Berkshire, South England] yesterday (not my usual place of work). It had been raining (and raining *hard*) since I woke up at 5am. News filtered through the office at about 1pm or a little earlier that Vodafone’s HQ [I used to work for the telecoms company] had been evacuated as it was flooded and had lost power. People were being sent home because if they couldn’t get home now they would definitely not be able to later.

So I decided to bugger off once it was likely that everyone would be sent home. I stood at the bus stop for 20mins waiting for the VF shuttle bus but nothing. I could hear police and ambulance sirens going back and forth but couldn’t see the road. I overheard form his phone call that the guy next to me had been there for 40mins so definitely something was wrong as shuttles are normally bang on time. The rain stopped just before 2pm so I chose to walk to the train station and by just walking around the corner I could see why there were no buses – cars, lots of them, not moving at all and all the way down the A4 road! I carried on towards the station, on route to Newbury station a colleague walked by saying Thatcham station was completely under water [the station near my home] so I headed for Newbury station to check if I could get home but found this…

You can just about see the track, so that’s a whole lot of water. Guess what, I had to walk home.

I’ve walked home before with a broken bike and also along the canal (there and back) and normally took an hour and a quarter but this was something else. The A4 was only slightly moving when I returned to it to get home. The side coming from Thatcham was fine but heading towards it was near-static. I decided to go down Lower Way [road] as it’s a shorter route to my home near [Thatcham[ station but this was one of the pics I took while going down it.

Basically most of the lower part of Lower Way was like this. People had to walk up on the hill and on the grass to walk along the road. Cars were being turned back up and onto the A4!! A few cars and a van has been abandoned, stuck in the middle of this. It didn’t help that water was furiously gushing down from the hill in 2 or 3 places and that this was all right next to the sewage works (my soaked-through work shoes went straight in the bin when I got back). I had parts of my journey where I was walking in water well over my ankles.

It didn’t get much better once I got off this road and onto Station Road. This and roads off it were totally water logged and you could see people had just given up and parked their car anywhere they could and walked the rest of their journey. I think ti was 2 hours later (could have been a lot more) by the time I came up to my house. I was fearing the worse, thinking my house was flooded but thankfully it wasn’t and have to admit being one of the lucky ones

I didn’t go down to see but Thatcham station was supposed to be even worse than Newbury station. Going pass it this morning it was OK but the grass area at the front of the pub near it had 2 mini swimming pools in it. Parts of roads in my residential estate were still flooded and you could see a few houses with piles of rubbish from their homes sitting outside their doors.

Wow that was some rainfall!

(both these pics were taken with my N73 mobile phone)

UPDATE:

It was a terrible day and we are now told to expect this on a more regularly basis. I was told that Thatcham was one of the worst hit and aerial shots appeared on the BBC news the following days. When I left Vodafone in October I think the HQ was still not fully operational so that shows have much damage that day made.

Country-wide there are still people living out of caravans or temporary accommodation, flood precautions are still not in place in lots of areas but luckily we have not had a day like that since.

My brother and I went down to Goodwood Festival of Speed 2007 near Chicester for the middle day (Saturday 23rd June 2007). We were up early as we thought we’d either get lost like we normally do or we’d get stuck in major traffic. But the journey down was a doddle (apart from a little tour of a roundabout or two) and it’s was dead quiet. The flyer said to look out for signs to the event but we couldn’t see them though we did work it out in the end and rolled into the field/car park close to the top and thus the entrance. So a good start.

We timed it well as behind us we saw the masses starting to come in. After a quick sort around in the car (Neal eating a bit of left over pizza, yuck, and complaining he was cold) we walked up with tickets in hand. Going through the ticket barrier we walked up (there is a lot of walking up) and thankfully got to a food store where we had ourselves a small meal and drink. As soon as that was down us we carried on walking up and came to the old cars section. Great cars but some were still covered in rain spots, tsch.

Hidden nearby (though you could hear them from miles away) were all the cars getting ready for the day. We had a wander and saw old cars and some spectacular supercars. I’m no car enthusiast but this was great and the noise was fantastic!

It wasn’t long before a few started going out for their first runs, we were up close and personal at this point as they drove by and disappeared down to the start.

Eventually after watching some cars race up the hill, itt all cooled down so we carried on walking, yes you guessed it, up! Here is where all the exhibitions were, as well as a skate/BMX board, mini-concert stand (where all the food stands are – naturally we got a bite to eat, well a hot chocolate drink, and I mean hot) and the F1 paddock (which we somehow completely bypassed all day ). The main showpiece, though, was from Toyota. It was pretty amazing to see the set of cars hung up in the air like that.

As we carried on walking up we caught a few of the cars coming down the hill at incredible speeds. But the giant haystacks that protected us from the cars crashing into us were so high we couldn’t see a great deal. Tip: spending extra on stand tickets might be a good idea, though the tickets in general are very expensive. Saying that, we weren’t sure, but it did look like there was a free-entry stand. Unfortunately we didn’t investigate further.

We didn’t take the option as we went up, but at a certain point you can hop onto a tractor shuttle service that carries about 20 people a time up and down the circuit. It starts from about half way up then takes you all the way to the top where you’ll find loads of food stands and the start/finish point of the forest rally. What we did instead was walk it and found small pockets where we could see the main track (and the supercars) a lot clearer – so was worth the effort. We kept going until we go into the forest… and the rally.

For us this was the highlight of the day by far! I’ve never really watched rally car racing but we came away as massive fans! It was fantastic!! We found and stopped off at several points to watch the cars come down. The speed was amazing, the way they skidded around corners, dirt and rocks flying everywhere and all in the middle of a forest. Loved it!! This is where I captured the best photos of the event, the Sun was creeping out a lot of the time but overall it’s pretty dark though the pics came out well.

Sadly, though we of course didn’t know it at the time, it was one of the last times people saw Colin McRae race. RIP. He saw him fly past us at least twice – very cool!

:

We eventually got up top, had some lunch, be it with a bit of rain, and watched a few cars come through the start and finish gates. One or two of them show-boating at the end there.

Then we had to think about heading down (as that’s where our car was that would get us home). This time we did take the shuttle and it’s one of those more interesting rides in a vehicle. The seats weren’t too comfortable, the track was, of course, dirt track and bumpy but the journey was fairly slow and painless. A different way to see the forest methinks.

We were trying to get down the bottom in time to see the Red Arrows. We did but a few minutes before they were due we had a massive downpour of rain!! – I was so glad Neal brought his big golfing umbrella else we would have been soaked. It went on for several minutes and thought the Red Arrows would be cancelled but amazingly it stopped and actually started to clear. It wasn’t long after that the Red Arrows came out and did their stuff. Great display. Though it was cloudy and a lighter day would have helped see them, having them on a background of white cloud helped a bit with their smoke trails. Another tip, make sure you’re not standing behind a big tree, some of the display was lost as we were low down, we moved up a bit which helped a lot but positioning is key.

We thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience, especially the rally cars. I hope to go again and to see more rally rally. We were planning on going to the Wales World Rally Championship (the final round of the WRC) but we ran out of money by then (late November/early December and so it was canned. As for the FoS, we were there for the middle day, so we didn’t get to see the final rounds. Plus the likes of Lewis Hamilton popped up on the third and final day, so perhaps a 2/3 day ticket is needed next time.

More shots are here.

Goodwood Festival of Speed web site is:
htpp://www.goodwood.co.uk/fos/

I’m sure we’ll be there for the 2008 event.

Eventually I plonked myself in what I thought was a good position, a clear view of the riders coming round a bend with a bit of straight before me. Yep it was good, got a lot of good shots of riders practising. But I later found I was right next to the hospitably area and once the procession (a load a French cars and float-type trucks coming down the road at 100mph throwing all sorts of promotion junk at you or some nice ladies dancing for you – see below ) and the time trials started I saw very little. Hiding in their posh exec room they all flew out and completely blocked my view of the bend and straight.

So I was left with small gaps in the crowd, hence why my pics are of the cyclist side-on. I had to time my shots very well to get anything. And the resulting images are just a “handful” compared to what I did take – I got so many photos of just tiny bits of the cyclist in shot where I was either too quick or too slow with the release button. It was a good test though and luckily we had a nice policeman nearby and people seem chatty.

I didn’t stay all day, my legs and feet were aching from standing in one spot for hours but it was very cool and hope they do it again at some point.

Quick tip to the organisers though: more bridges over the track. I had to queue to walk over one and was there for 25mins!

More pictures came be found here.

Tour de France:
www.letour.fr/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tour_de_France

Tour de France London:
www.tourdefrancelondon.com/

My brother and I enjoyed the Red Bull Air Race on Sunday 29th July 2007. We were up at the crack of dawn, missed the first train out of Edenbridge so drove to Redhill to get up to London. Tube was fine and we found it to be fairly quiet when we first got there (35k turned up in the end, they say). We had bought standing tickets on the South of the river where we could see the end of the ‘track’ and a big screen showing the whole thing.

The day was good but not great. The racing itself was something else (boy do they get low on the river, one of them was supposed to have been 3-4 metres above the water!!). It was excellent to see the light aircraft race down the Thames, flip over and race back up it while dodging the ‘bollards’ or whatever they call them. But the let downs were the commentators who were an American and an over-the-top extreme sport junky Englishman. They just talked and talked and a lot of the time it was rubbish. The music from their so-called DJ was lousy at best and there were huge delays in between each stage, for example. the 12 pilots went out just before 11am as a sort of time trial to kick out 4 of them. This was 1.5 hours, then came at least an hour break (yes of commentary and very little else). They played clips to explain the race and the history, which was fine, but some of the clips were repeats, e.g. a John Travolta clip was played at least 4 times that we saw. There was no indication of when the next stage was starting and they didn’t really lay out the day well (ie. what was going to happen after the prize-giving at 3pm? No idea but it was supposed to be open till 5pm). OK, there were the Red Devils and 2 different helicopters performing some amazing moves in the breaks but the event needed a lot more going on. And they just didn’t have enough food stands, we queued up for burgers for about 25-30mins!!

It wasn’t too crowded, we found it fairly easy to walk about and the weather was good, luckily the expected rain had come overnight. The location was good, the banks of Greenwich are sloppy or had steps so you could see over people in front of you OK.

£30 for a ticket I suppose is cheap-ish in this day and age and paying an extra £10 for a grand stand seat wouldn’t have made much different but it’s high in my book. Shame also that the mass exodus of people was not well organised by the police at North Greenwich underground station. We went around one side of station to get in, stood there for 10mins before they decided to tell everyone that this is an exit only and we needed to go back round the other side. Hey guys, perhaps put up a sign and communicate that we wouldn’t get in this way. I hope they use these events for training for the Olympics in a few years, boy do they not want to screw that up.

I recommend it for a once-off but I’d probably won’t go again if it comes back to the UK.

Check out the site anyway:
redbullairrace.com

Oh and we had an Englishman in the final but sadly lost, tsch.

More photos are here.

My brother and I went on the first Friday of the Wimbledon tennis championships (6th July 2007). We’ve never been before but it was great and we’re hoping to go next year (centre court here we come ).

I train’ed it up from Thatcham while Neal travelled from Croydon – guess which one of us had to get up at 4am? Eventually we met up at Wimbledon tube station where it started to rain, typical!

Luckily we hopped on a shuttle bus that had just turned up. It started to really chuck it down as the bus filled with people. The bus got under way but because of the stupid one-way system and major traffic jams it took us 20mins to go down the road, up, around and back on the road we started just to turn around! It did get quicker as we got closer and we finally arrived at the grounds – wow! They were excellent!

Off the bus we walked up the hill and got on the end of the already huge queue at about 8:30am. We were handed our “queue ticket” to basically say yep you’re not too late and you’ll definitely be getting in today. 2 hours later we were in the grounds!! Some tips for queuing here:-
- take a snack ‘cos you’re gonna get hungry
- make sure you go to the loo beforehand as it could be ages before you see one and
- don’t buy anything while in the queue as you’ll either be told you cannot take it in when you get to the gates or will find it cheaper inside, ie. the event guide.

We, of course, had a security check then went through the turnstiles surprisingly quickly to buy our tickets. £12.

Then we were inside proper. Bang on time for the gates to open and for a mass of people to hurl to their prime spot near a court. No centre or Court 1 seats for us – you have to be either lucky with the ballot months before the tournament or extremely early at the gates (ie. get out your tent and sleep the overnight) to buy them on the day. For us, it was the side courts.

First things first, we were both very hungry by now so grabbed some snacks and drinks from the canteen then sat and watched all these people pour in. It slowed down eventually so we got up and had a walk around.

It was packed! The walking area along the side courts were pretty narrow and we struggled to get down them a lot of the time. We got to Court 9 (ladies doubles match) but it wasn’t too long before the heavens opened up again and we all ran for cover. It chucked it down, so much so that we had to step 10 metres away from the edge of the covering as it blew in – another tip: have a good umbrella (I got one but as we were leaving – doh) and a light raincoat. As soon as it looked like it was about to stop we quickly got back to Court 9 and got seats near the middle (the net). In hindsight perhaps not the best place, I would have perhaps gone for one of the corners but we couldn’t complain. And I think we were on coaching seats but the coaches didn’t turn up do we didn’t have to move. The players soon came out for warm up then the match started proper. Great match, lots of great pics but the Germans won again, lol.

During the match, my brother said the Williams sisters walked behind us. My brother saw them but I missed them – it does help to be 6 foot plus sometimes.

Then this chap called Andy Roddick popped up on the court behind us. He was training with his coach, Jimmy Connors. At this point everyone switched over. A load of us stood up on our seats to then be shouted at to get down by one of the young stewards. Didn’t matter as by then I had loads of shots. I did get a few more from the corner.

Afterwards, we had another walk around, popping in and out of a couple more matches. We were running out of time as I had a train to catch but I made sure we got up to the ex-Henman Hill. Very cool and massive screen but you could tell there was no British player playing as the crowds were pretty quiet.

Sadly we had to leave, so after a little confusion on what was the exit we got off the grounds, round the corner and eventually back on a bus to Wimbledon station.

But as soon as we thought the day was over we saw Roger Federer doing some sort of promo in a small area in front of the station on a specially-built mini-tennis court! We weren’t 100% certain but it must have been him!

Then guess what, yep it started to rain, so as soon as I had my camera out and snapped a couple of pics, Federer stopped playing, packed up and disappeared. I guess we’ll never know…

A great day out and dreaming of getting Centre Court of Court 1 tickets for 2008 already.

More pics of the day are here.

Wimbledon:
www.wimbledon.org/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Championships,_Wimbledon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Wimbledon_Championships