Blossom

We seem to be having some slightly nicer weather at the moment. So much so that the blossom has arrived. Which is nice.

Bright New Year in Hull

Today was another of those strange occasions where it actually gets lighter in the house when you open the curtains. So we went for a walk around Hull Marina, which is looking very spry in the New Year sunshine.

This is a slightly processed image of the inside of the lock gates.

This is Princess Quay looking good.

..and this is where we had lunch.

Here’s hoping for another 364 days of sunshine in 2013.

Hornsea Mere

Today started off in a very strange manner. There was no water falling from the sky, and a strange golden disk had appeared above us shining brightly from a great height. It turned out that there was also a fifty mile an hour horizontal freezing wind, but we didn’t notice that until we arrived in Hornsea and tried to open the car doors.

Hornsea Mere is one of my favourite places to visit. There is a cafe which serves tea and buns. I wasn’t expecting that to be open though, but I did entertain hopes that we could at least get in and take a walk around.

It was open. I’ve never seen the water so high. All the jetties for the boats were completely submerged and the wind was whipping the water into quite a serious swell. There were lots of birds there who seemed pleased to see us particularly when they found we’d brought some bread to dish out. They were completely fearless. They were not just happy to take the food from your hand, they’d try to take your hand as well.

Afterwards we took a walk along the sea front, and lost some pennies in an arcade.

The beach was very quiet, although there were a few hardy souls taking to the sand.

Mystery Picture

I took this picture with the Lumia 920 yesterday. With results like these I don’t think I have to carry my camera around everywhere now. But the mysterious thing about this picture is the way that the flags are blowing in completely different directions.

Strange eh?

Luminous Rockets and the Lumia 920

Now, this one impressed me lots. What you can see above is a picture of a rocket that I printed using “glow in the dark” fibre from Faberdashery. I took the picture using my Lumia 920 in pretty much pitch darkness. You can just see the edge of another, non-luminous, rocket on the left of the glowing one.

The picture was taken hand held and I’ve done nothing more to it than a slight crop. Amazing.

Castle Howard

I don’t think that Castle Howard is really a castle. But it is a great place to go and see. It is a country residence on a grand scale, the kind of thing it takes several generations of “unbelievably richness” to come up with. We’ve visited it on and off over many years and once saw Bryan Ferry play live there. That was a good night, that was. It is also famous as the place where “Brideshead Revisited” was filmed. Twice.

Today we went for another visit, and I took the big camera along. We also did something we never normally did when we took the kids. We paid extra to have a look inside the house itself.

This kind of puts our hall to shame….

This is what they have instead of a garden shed.

They seem to have lots of flat screen TVs, but they are all stuck on one picture…

If you are looking for a nice day trip (around 75 minutes from Hull) I can strongly recommend it.

Rob Goes to London

It looks as if Her Majesty’s stock is dropping a bit….

Having a couple of days in London. I like the place, but wouldn’t want to live there. Had lunch at The Diner. Always have lunch at the Diner. I insist. And nobody seems to mind. If you want some of the best burgers in London, you should pop along.

Then went off in search of camera stuff and bits and bobs. Paid homage in the Apple store (I always go in there wearing a Microsoft jacket to see if it will burst into flames). The new Macbook Pro looks very nice. But at the moment I’m loving my Samsung Slate 7 (on which more later) and so I’ll stick with that for now.

I’m breaking in a new camera at the moment, so I took a whole bunch of pictures.

Bright Shades

Patriotic Bike.

Thwaite Gardens Open Day

Last year we went to Thwaite Hall gardens. And this year we went again. The weather was nowhere near as nice, but the grounds themselves were just as amazing as ever. I find it really hard to believe that this area of woodland, complete with lake, is just round the corner from where we live. I think last year’s pictures were better, but that didn’t stop me from having another go.

There are apparently some very rare trees here, but to me they all just look lovely.

One of the greenhouses.

Don’t Buy Dodgy SD Cards

Some time back I bought a couple of economically priced cheap SD cards. They were rated at category 10 (the fastest you can get) and were huge (32G). They were from a shop based in the Channel Islands who have sold me good stuff in the past. I can’t precisely recall their name, but I seem to remember that they are open all week.

Anyhoo, one failed shortly after purchase and the other has developed the interesting ability to turn filenames into guacamole and move datestamps into 2315. Having thought about this properly I’ve decided that perhaps I should have spent the same amount of cash on cards that were around a half (or perhaps even a quarter) the size but were from companies that I’ve actually heard of. It is very unlikely that I’ll wander out and take 650 pictures in a single trip (even assuming I’ve got enough battery power to do this).

I’ve come to the conclusion SD cards are one area where false economy will not just fail to save me money, but also raises the possibility that I might not get my pictures back home.

Good Friday at Sewerby Hall

Today, despite the poor weather and the even nastier forecast, we headed of to Sewerby Hall, another of my favourite places in all the world. It has the most amazing gardens, as you can see above. We had a great lunch and then took a walk along the cliff tops.

This picture is probably more in keeping with the weather, which by now had gone back to horrid grey mode after the promise of yesterday.

Merely Hornsea

Now, isn’t this a turn-up for the books? After yesterdays “grey-fest” today has dawned all bright and sunny. Of course, we’ve got to stay at home waiting for a package to be delivered, but once that arrived we headed out to Hornsea Mere, one of my favourite places in all the world. It has a place you can buy cups of tea, and a very old Pike stuck on the wall.

It also has a pitch and putt golf course where I once got a hole in one. Unfortunately it was the wrong hole though. The massive slice I played at hole number 1 somehow ended up in hole number 9. And there are ducks and geese and boats and stuff.

“You lookin’ at my bird?”

Cafe view

If you are lucky enough to be a student at Hull and you are at a loose end later this term, take a trip to the Mere. Just a great place.

More HDR Fun

Yep. Think I’ll buy this program. This is Hull Holy Trinity Church by the way, think I’ll nip back there with a tripod next week and take some proper shots.

High Dynamic Range Photography

I’ve been playing with High Dynamic Range photography. This is where you take a bunch of pictures of a scene at different exposures and then make a single shot which has a greater dynamic range. The picture above is just a snap I took last year. I didn’t have three different exposures, so I did some fiddling with the RAW file to fake the different exposure levels. I then used program called PhotoMatix to combine them and then tone map to get the grungy effect that you see above. If you look closely at the picture you’ll see that it has a Photomatix watermark which means I’ve not paid for the software yet. However, I’m very tempted to, as the results seem quite nice to me. Not particularly photorealistic in this shot, but definitely interesting.

If you are into photography you might find it fun to have a go. The only thing you really need is a tripod to keep your camera steady between the different exposures.

Lightroom Rocks

Last week I sold a MacBook and bought a camera. And got a free copy of Adobe Lightroom. And it is wonderful. Up until now I’ve been muddling through managing my many photographs, keeping them in folders and using Windows explorer to find and look after them. This mostly works, but it is a bit of a pain.

Lightroom provides a really good way to find and then fix your pictures. It works really well with raw files and the noise reduction abilities are awesome. It also has some rather cool picture styles built in. And it will upload directly to Facebook, Flickr and SmugMug, among other places. It also takes care of the importing and has very good tagging and metadata management.

If you are serious about your photography, then I think you should take a good look at it. The trial download runs for 30 days or so, by which time you should be hooked.

New Years Hornsea

For some reason we always try to go and see the sea early in the New Year. This usually means a trip to Hornsea. Today the weather and the tide were very kind to us, and so we had a little walk down the beach and I took some snaps.

The weather was nice, but very chilly in the wind. We sought refuge in an amusement arcade.

They have these “Penny Falls” machines where you try and push pennies off the a ramp. This looks like it is good to drop, but I reckon those coins are super glued into position…

Old Age Gadgets

I was up in the loft today getting down our Christmas tree and found a few things that I thought would be fun to photograph.

Remember this?

I think I’ll print a large version of this to stick on the wall.

My first mobile phone next to my present mobile phone.

Cottingham Lights 2011

Every November they turn on the Christmas lights in the village and I go and take pictures.So this evening we sallied forth.

This year I tried waving the camera around a bit.

.. and even left the shutter open for 30 seconds to see what happens.

I quite like this one too.

Leaves on Cottingham Road

Went for a walk this afternoon. Took the camera. Jolly glad I did too.

Hull Holy Trinity Church

Went up town in Hull today and took some more pictures in Hull Holy Trinity Church. Great place.

Climbing Needles

I’d convinced myself that there was no point in going to Seattle. I’ve been before, it is a half hour bus ride and I had work to do. Then I saw the weather outside, and I went anyway. Monorail – Space Needle – Pike Place Market – wonderful.

This is the tower reflected in the building nearby. Amazing stuff.

Another view from the top of the needle.

I took a bunch of pictures that will no doubt appear on these pages over the years. Then it was time to board the return bus and head back to pick up my luggage and catch the flight home. I’ve been using this rather cunning (I think) trick of getting up around 3:00 am while I’m out here to try and trick the body into not adjusting to the Seattle time zone. In a couple of days I’ll find out if it works…

It’s been a great trip. Very intense, but very rewarding. Great questions and interaction with the audience. Thanks folks.