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.

This was taken on my trip to Hampshire and the New Forest where we found some wonderful donkeys . I was visiting my Aunt who lives with her dog in a mobile home very nearby. The couple in shot are my brother and his girl friend. As you can tell it was cold but you don’t know the half of it – it’s was really cold. We were having a quick wander around while my Aunt had a rest and over the hill we found a few horses and gusts of winds only normally found in the Arctic.

I took this shot and a closer shot but went with this one. From the original I tried to up the mood and atmosphere here.

Vote for the shot on PictPicture.

Flickr entry is here. And bordered is here.

• Nikon D300 – my second digital SLR camera and a fine upgrade. It has taken a while to convert and learn how to use it but it’s a class machine
• Nikon D50 – first bit of equipment and is to blame for my shift of interest into the world of photography
• Pentax Optio 550 compact camera – slightly broken now the shutter cover is slightly ajar and blocks out the top corner of photos slightly
• Sigma 30mm f/1.4 EX DC HSM
• Nikon 50mm f/1.8D AF
• Sigma Macro 105mm f/2.8 EX DG
• Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX DC HSM
• Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 EX DC Macro HSM
• Nikon 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D ED VR AF
• Nikon Speedlight SB-800
• Nikon ML-L3 remote
• Nikon ML-3 remote
• Manfrotto 679 monopod
• Manfrotto 190XB tripod + 390RC2 head
• Joby Gorillapod

In addition I have various Hoya circular polarising and UV filters plus Cokin P-series adaptor and filters.

I chose Nikon (over Canon) for the simple fact that Nikon use SD memory where Canon use CompactFlash cards and it didn’t make sense to me to have a Canon with a different memory format when all my other equipment (mobile phones, PDA, etc) used SD/MMC cards. Other than that there was very little between the two manufacturers. The D50 camera itself is amazing anyway so it wasn’t a hard choice and the price was just about right at the time. I thought it was a good choice for an entry-level SLR. Now I’ve upgraded to the Nikon D300 and just starting to get to trips with the semi-pro camera.  But guess what, it uses CompactFlash memory.  No a big issue now as I’ve been able to purchase a unit that converts my SD cards into CompactFlash cards.

As well as photography gear I have a load of computer equipment, which you can find out about over ‘ere.

During one morning the light outside our house was amazing. It was very moody and mysterious, so naturally I fired off a few shots. This is one shot which I’ve toned in sepia. I changed the tonal colours as the original lacked colour anyway and so thought the image would work in a sepia-style. Other than that I’ve not changed anything, so that is what the light looked like. Cool eh?

What you’re looking at is the view outside my office window. I’ve set myself up in a small downstairs room – nice a cosy. I saw this light just after getting up and logging on in the morning. The fencing you see is the basketball court that is mainly used by the local kids on the estate as a football pitch. It’s a big bone of contention it being their but if the kids didn’t have such things then they’ll be causing trouble on the streets elsewhere so we shouldn’t complain. The court is built in the middle of the housing on a small patch of grass and you can see the trees on the remaining part of the field.

It was amazing, not sure what caused it, was it the low light coming through the gap in the houses or something else? – but it only lasted 2 mornings and it’s not happened since.

Blog entry at Dark Matter Magazine is here.

Flickr entry is here. And bordered here.

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.

I’ve been selected to post on the Dark Matter Magazine site. I feel very honoured to be among such fine artists so have a look. So here’s a copy of my first post there.

This is my (currently) home town of Edenbridge. A small place in the UK county of Kent, bordering Surrey and Sussex. This particular shot was taken near Boxham Manor which is found near Marl Pit. I get a lot of my shots from walking the vast amount of farmland here. It generally means very, very early mornings to beat sunrise, scouting around a bit then picking my spot. Sometimes, though, the spot is already in my head from previously seeing it but this shot was a ‘there and then’ and happy how it turned out.

If anyone is interested I used this picture to create one of my first HDR-style images. It’s an interesting way to create a picture but I’m not quite there with the technique yet. Have a below (second image). To me the photo becomes more like a painting?

As a second attempt I also produced the picture below (third image), but felt that the top left part of the image was too dark (and dark in general). Again, each had slightly different tonemapping settings. Let me know which one you prefer? I’m quite keen on the original myself.

This is my second attempt at an HDR image. The photo shows the farmhouse at Boxham Farm in Edenbridge in Kent, UK. I took the shot while on one of my early morning walks in the local fields. As you can see it was a cold, cold morning but it’s worth it when you get such a great tree in the wonderful sunlight. Unfortunately I was only carrying my 18-50mm lens and could step any further back to get the whole of the tree in shot, so alas this won’t make it into my portfolio. But ignoring that I really like the shot and experimenting with HDR for the first time was fun. Flickr liked it too, so much so it made #11 for 22-Feb- 2008 on Explore!

The way I created this HDR (High Dynamic Range) shot was from one RAW file. I saved it out from Camera RAW to a TIFF file and created 3 images one at -2 EV, one at 0 EV and another as +2 EV (so 3 exposures, one dark, one normal and one light). I then dragged these into Photomatix, generated the HDR then tonemapped it. It took a bit of fiddling with the tonemapping settings but eventually I got the result above. The first thing I’ve noticed is that the clouds are far more dynamic but this is at the cost of a lot of added noise. I’m not sure I really like this style of HDR but it’s an interesting alternative and was fun to try. I’ll be posting a more detailed entry on how it was, so please check back soon.

The original photo is below, so please compare it.

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.

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