Today I decided to leave my coat at home whilst I took my dog out for his morning walk.
While we were out an wild fox came out of the alotments and walked calmly right pass us.
If only I had my coat (which my camera is always in the pocket I would have got some great shots).
Instead I only managed to get this ok shot with my phone.
Lesson learnt – never leave home without your camera! You never know what you will see !
Yesterday I went to Chiswick Sports Centre for the London Hassra Sports Day.
The main reason for going was to get the results of the Hassra Photo Competition, and after a lengthly 2 and half hour drive (thanks M25) I was rewarded with seeing the photo display board with a winners and highly recomended marking on my photos.
FOX – WINNER – ADVANCED CATEGORY
REFLECTIONS – HIGHLY RECOMENDED – ADVANCED CATEGORY
I was also asked by the local camera club to do a small demonstration of K.A.P. (Kite Aerial Photography) after doing a talk about it a few months ago.
The wind at the sports centre was rather blustery so I first sent up my RC flying wing but the wind was a bit too much for the small wing so I quickly landed and launched my small flowform kite.
After a while the kite was in clean air and settled down so I could attach the camera rig.
Then for the next hour or so I managed to send up both of my aerial cameras, my Go-Pro Wide and my Canon A570 for some quick photos.
Below are a few photos taken.
Hello all,
Well its been a while since I last updated my blog, so I thought I should tell you what I have have been upto recently.
The wedding went really well and I have already have had a number of people tell me that they like the photos and some have said they thought I was a professional photographer which really made me smile.
Since the wedding I have been busy with my rockets and trying to get ready for a few school workshops and a display for a large model show in about a months time.
My health has also taken a turn for the worse again with my left knee “giving way” once again which resulted in me spending more time on the crutches.
But last weekend thanks to my good friend George I had my first go at Kayaking.
Its been almost a year since I found out that my good friend George had taken up kayaking and I decided that as I had done it a few times years ago and enjoyed it, that it would be a good sport for me to do.
I have been trying to find a sport which would help me to get fit and lose weight, but which did not put stress on my knees and kayaking seems to fit the bill.
So with Georges help over the winter months I slowly brought myself a “RIO” inflatable Kayak.
I then also started to get the various bits needed to canoe safely, including a buoyency aid, paddles, various pumps and dry bags to keep my stuff dry.
Before I can go on the rivers and lakes George sugguested that I try a pool session to try out the kayak, this sounded like a good idea and so waited for the next session.
Unfortunately I missed my first scheduled session as my knee again decided again to play up and gave way a few days before. But finally on last Saturday myself and my kayak got to go on the water.
I was really nervous at first, but after a few minutes I was helped into the kayak and started trying to paddle the boat around the pool. At first I had a hard time getting the kayak to go straight, but soon I started to get the knack and got more confident with my paddleing.
For the next 2 hours I had a lot of fun learning how to control the boat and finding out how to get in and out whilst in the water, as well as getting a lot of advice from George and the other people in the group.
A few of the more experienced kayak’ers asked how stable my kayak was, and then for about 30mins a few of them tried very hard to get the boat to roll.
The end result was that they found my boat to be a lot of fun and very hard to capsize / roll which is what I really wanted.
I now hope in the next few weeks to go onto one of the clubs local rivers and try it out for real. I am also hoping to take along a few of my waterproof cameras so hopefully I will soon be able to take some interesting photos from the river.
Well after 2 days of processing, the photos have been finally processed and after nearly 3 hours they are uploaded.
A grand total of 279 photos were picked and processed and I still probably will do some more little touches to the photos but I am happy with them now and think if I could easily spend another 2-3 weeks tweeking them, but I could start over processing them which the photos dont need.
Please have a look at my gallery and I look forward to your comments.
Pete
click below to go directly to the photos.
http://www.photoboxgallery.com/gallery/collection?album_id=105800970
Yesterday I had the honour of taking the official wedding photos for my good friends Barrie and Wendy.
The day went as a blur as I spent most of the day busy rushing around taking photos of the arrival, wedding and at the reception.
I finally returned home at around 10pm and uploaded the photos to my computer before going to bed. I planed to get up early the nexy morning to start the job of processing the pictures to get them ready for printing and the online gallery.
But this job is going to take me quite a few days as I took just under 500 photos in total, so to everyone that took one of my cards, firstly a big thankyou, and please check back here soon as the photos will be (fingers crossed) online in the next few days.
Today I decided to pick my favourite few photos of the wedding before doing some quick processing on them, as I decided I wanted to print them and surprise Barrie and Wendy with them.
As well as printing some A4 photos, I also created a short photo DVD slide show of the main photos so they could see all the photos I had taken.
All of the Wedding photos will be online in the next few days, but until then, below are a few from the day.
all comments welcome.
Yesterday I returned to Chessington, for probably the first of a number of visits this year.
Was rather happy to see 6week old Meerkats as well as other new animals to the zoo.
Also really like the Otters and managed to get one in mid yawn.
I normally keep my camera on ISO100 but I tried the higher settings to get a better and faster shutter speed as I was using the 100-400 lens and most of the shots were being taken at over 300mm. Once I got home I was happy that the noise was not too bad and with a quick clean using paintshop pro x2 the images came out well.
below are a few of my favourites from the day.
Its been a while since I last posted, but I have been rather busy with my camera and even did a hour long presentation on Aerial Photography which went down really well. I was rather nervous about doing it but the people were nice and I found the talk went easier then I had thought.
But recently I have found out the International Space Station and Shuttle are visibile from the UK most evenings for a few weeks so I have been trying to get some nice long exposure photos of the ISS crossing the sky.
The ISS only takes 3-4 minutes to cross the sky from West to East but thanks to the ESA and NASA web sites I have found out the times and flight paths of them and have so far managed to see it for the last 3 nights.
Last night was the best yet as the sky was almost totally clear with only a few small clouds in the north.
It still took some time to spot the ISS which appears as a bright white star / light which crosses the sky at about the same speed as a plane and so a few times I thought I had spotted it only to see the flashing nav lights of the aircraft.
Once the ISS was spotted I had just a few seconds to pick a good spot and to set the camera up for a 60second long exposure.
Below is what I took.
all comments welcome.
Today, I got a nice surprise as I found out a few of my cards have been purchased – to who ever you are – THANKYOU !
Apart from smiling from ear to ear – I decided to sit down and try to add a few more cards to the collection. I concentrated on Valentines Day and Mothers Day.
Below are a few of the designs I have uploaded today.
Please feel free to leave a comment or click below to visit the card gallery.
As the snow continues to fall, I found time to create some more card designs and upload them to the gallery. The card gallery has only been up and running a few months but I am rather happy to see a few have already been sold from my small but growing collection.
Below are just a few of the designs added. All comments welcome.
You can visit the gallery to view and purchase the cards by clicking the direct link below
http://greetings.photobox.co.uk/designer/638
Or clicking the link in the side bar.
Well last night the heavens really opened and it just snowed heavily for most of the night. When my alarm went off at the unkind time of 5:30am I woke up to find we had at least 6 inches of snow and it was still falling.
Most of the town and area was at a standstill with no Buses and only a few cars atempting the roads. I first did think to try and clear the snow from my car and make my way into work, but I live in a small street where the only way out is up a rather large hill.
Several cars did try to climb the hill but they soon found themselves back at the bottom and gave up.
After phoning in to work and telling them I could not make it in – I let my old dog out, Even though he is now an OAP in dog years, he always seems to become a puppy again when he sees snow.
Once Charlie (my dog) was back indoors, I decided to get my Fuji F100 out and take a few photos of the snow. Below are some from today.
Click the small thumbnails for a larger version.
