The West Ring

Well I’m almost there.  The good news is that email notification for Gallery comments is now installed and working.  So you’d better start commenting on some pics!!

The bad news is that the plugin which displayed the random Gallery image at the top of the right hand side bar doesn’t work any more.     I’ll see what I can find out over the weekend.

I seem to have broken things somewhat! That’ll teach me for fiddling!

Hopefully I’ll be able to get things back up and running at some point today…

Last of the Thursley pond pics from Saturday morning. We’ll be back to the hounds very soon This is probably my favourite because of the curving contrail*, and the snake-like reflection of it.

This is also my first proper attempt with doing some Photoshopping: I cloned out some grass that was spoiling it. In all honesty it was a rush job, but even so, it really does improve the picture.

Don’t know what’s happened with the conversion to jpeg though – seems noisier/softer than the others (I just haven’t had time to see what I can change.)

And no, there aren’t any prizes for pointing out where I did my cloning!

*@rse! The smaller pic doesn’t really show the contrail well. Click through for the bigger picture.

As a matter of fact they should have been from the start! Somehow I hadn’t noticed the module wasn’t active but it is now. So feel free to say exactly what you think!

A couple of more pictures for you, and a question. Is the wake of the duck an interesting detail, or a distraction? I know which I think but I’d be interested in your opinions.

And if you’re feeling really helpful you could take a look in the Gallery and compare the brightness of the originals (shown above) with edited versions. One has the tones set to auto, the other is tweaked by me. If you do go and have a look it’s also worth comparing the larger pictures – it makes a difference!

This afternoon I was working on the lighting in our second bedroom, putting in a remote dimmer [/posh]. I know that I had switched the upstairs lighting circuit off and tested the fact. But when a light comes on as you’re elbows deep in the ceiling rose, it’s bit of a shock! (Yes, :groan: at the pun…)

Turns out it was Lexi nudging the new touch sensitive bedside light! :phew:

… but it was worth it Mind you, it was my own stupid fault for not believing the sunrise time on Metcheck I wanted to try out my new tripod on the sunrise so decided to go out without the hounds. I was on my way to Hankley when I saw the reflection of the sky in Thursley Moat Pond so turned around and parked up.

It would seem that my brain hadn’t woken up yet because I was out-foxed by my tripod… I was disappointed to find that the legs only extended once, which meant I spent the entire morning kneeling down. In my defence the other extension isn’t obvious! (It’s one of those twist to unlock ones, and doesn’t have clips. I’m not quite THAT useless!)

Luckily, I noticed the ISO was on 800 before taking too many pics. (Wondered why the shutter speed was so fast… ) After taking a few shots and looking at the histogram I saw that there wasn’t anything in the right hand third indicating it was waaay underexposed. I realised that it was time – I had to be brave and use the manual mode I did enjoy playing with the aperture and shutter speeds to get the correct exposure. I even had a go at deliberately under exposing slightly but haven’t had time to investigate how well it worked.

I’ve only had time to do a quick cull and play with one of the early shots in Elements. I think there are some that are pretty good, even if I do say so myself! But as a teaser here is the one I’ve had a play with:

The cropped original

The tweaked one (light tones -100)

Any preference? The above tweak was deliberately extreme for my benefit. I know that something in-between might well be the best choice.

My plan is to try and post up some of the others every couple of days or so. I’ve also got some more pictures of the hounds at Hankley from this weekend that I need to go through…

Larger versions available in the Gallery.

I was recently surfing the blogosphere looking for photography related ones and found this post by Brian Auer over at Epic Edits, and thought “Why not?” He’s hosting a writing project on “Social Photography”, and it’s part of a bigger project called “The Social Media Mega Project” hosted by InspirationBit. The idea is to write something about one of the photography based social media sites.

Flickr – it has caused me angst and confusion! I guess that’s not quite the opening you were expecting? Let me explain.

When I first set up my own website it was mainly because I wanted to have my own photo gallery. I had used Fotopic (is that still going?) but was never really keen on the interface. So, I set my own up using Gallery v1 and was very happy with it.

So, to Flickr. I created an account as it was the best way I could find of moblogging to my Blogger blog. (You couldn’t do so directly here in the UK.) Though I didn’t upload many pictures, I was quite happy with the user interface. I especially liked the ability to geotag my photos – it appealed to my (not so) inner geek.

When the time came to change my web hosting provider and rebuild, I agonised over what I wanted to do, and what I wanted out of it. At the time I said that I wasn’t after, or expecting, much traffic. It was only really for my amusement, and something for my immediate family to look at. The main dilemma was whether I built my own gallery when I liked Flickr’s user interface and its functionality. And if I had my own gallery, why would I want to upload my pictures to multiple places? There was also the cost factor – with my own gallery I could have as many albums as I wanted. In the end I decided to stick with Gallery but upgrade to v2, and not bother with Flickr.

The thing is, I didn’t “get” what Flickr was about. Being kinda new to the social web I’m not really “into” it, and nor it seems, are many of my friends and colleagues. My philosophy has tended to be that if I’ve got something that’s worth saying then I will, but otherwise I tend to look, not touch. Even on forums I tend to lurk. But that’s not what Flickr (and blogs) are all about.

Now I’m getting a “feel” for the web 2.0, I find I do want to be included, and I do want other people to look at, and comment on, my work. (This still feels slightly wrong as I’m not the attention seeking type!) Hence deciding to participate in this project and also making more use of Flickr. Since that decision I have had a proper look around it. One of the things I like is seeing pictures taken by specific camera models and being able to see the exif data (if allowed). I also searched on the name of our next holiday destination and it’s confirmed there’s some great coastal scenery. Who knows, maybe one day I’ll end up vetoing a proposed holiday destination because of the poor photographic prospects! I found a couple of good photos during that search so began looking at that user’s other pictures and even ended up posting a comment! I suppose the next step is to join a group but I’ve not been that brave yet…

I opened by saying Flickr gives me angst, but I think what it really gives me is an opportunity, and maybe in time, inspiration.

For the record, my Flickr photostream is here, though currently low on content!

Back to Hankley with the hounds but in daylight this time. They obliged me by running back and forth, jumping over the puddle. Amusingly, the very first photo is probably the best! We’re not talking perfect focus, but in the smaller sizes I think it works ok, especially with having the reflection there. In terms of focusing, I tried pre-focusing and I think the timing was only slightly off. The bit that confuses me is that the Exif says “aperture priority” but I’m sure I had set it on shutter priority (Tv).

This second shot I like despite Lexi being well out of focus. I think his blur plus the big splash gives a good sense of speed. This is the continuation shot after the above.

Larger versions of the above, plus some others, can be seen in the Gallery.

…has been set! I.E. this is how it was when I knew nothing

Took the DSLR out for its first walk this morning, and a dashed early one it was too. Unfortunately I missed shooting the best view of the sunrise by walking from the car park so you’ve only got this snapshot I’m afraid:

I say snapshot because I didn’t really work on the composition. I didn’t take any more in that direction because I was quite taken by the other view with the moon and sun tinged clouds: