I had been their the week before and was very impressed with the club members boats and spent a few hours taking both stills and videos of these fast moving machines. While I was there I mentioned my R.C. planes and offered to take some aerial shots of the lakes and surrounding area.

So on a perfect Sunday morning I arrived with my 3 planes and various cameras.

My main camera platform is my hard working easystar, this electric glider has been modified with a bigger and more powerful motor and battery, along with a high rated speed controller.

The easystar can carry a variety of cameras including a HD camcorder, high resolution Canon & Fiji stills cameras, but now mainly carries the Go-Pro HD camera as this has a great wide angle lens and can take both HD video or good 5million pixel resolution Stills.

the Go-Pro camera also comes with a shock & waterproof casing which can come in handy.

Below is some of the photos taken on the day.

The Main Boating Lake

The main lake with the fishing lakes in the distance

The Barn and parking / pit area.

A low fly past

The fox cubs will stay at the centre till the end of the summer then re-homed at other centres.

Just got back home after spending a few days in Bude, Cornwall.

The weather was against us most of the time but I still managed to get out and take some photos.

Below are a few of my favourites, all comments welcome.

Red Sunrise,

Robin at end of Nature Walk

Waves of Widemouth Bay Beach

Night Shot of Bude (1min exposure)

My 1st attempt at taking a photo of the Milky Way Gallaxy (I think) not as clear as it was in real life

Aerial View of Kennacott Court – taken from Radio Controlled Flying Wing

All comments welcome.

But I have still been busy taking photos of various things, but recently I have been busy working on my latest calendar.

They were ordered a few weeks ago and soon after they arrived from the printers. Once I got them I took some to the British Wildlife Centre as this year, I am giving them some for free so they can sell them to raise money for their great centre.

They are now available from my main web site www.digitalcanvas.org.uk and hopefully soon also from the shop at the British Wildlife Centre.

Happy Snapping Pete.

I just got a nice surpise, one of my photos that I took a few months ago on a rather foggy night in Felixstowe was picked to be the front cover of their local monthly magazine.

The editor also wrote a few paragraphs about myself and my Digital Canvas web site (www.digitalcanvas.org.uk) on the Editorial section.

Below is the cover and a copy of my original photo.

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 !

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.

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.

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