First HDR Attempts

It's been a while ...

So I thought I'd try my hand at HDR shots.  Took some pics of the town centre parish church, but it was too dark - lesson number 1, take these shots at dusk / dawn, not at bona fide night.  Also took some pics on the river but got nasty lens flare ... I think I need to clean my skylight filter (or something).

I got lens flare on my shots of the Ivy House too, but not so bad that would ruin them.  It's not the best composition in the world (lots of road! I was hoping for car-light trails but lesson number 2 - HDR kinda kills that, almost by definition) but it demonstrates the technique.

I haven't bought photomatix yet as you'll see from the watermarks, but I can't deny it's impressed me.  These are three different versions using the same four bracketed shots:

Three beautiful things

This is a test, really, posting from my Android phone! But fwiw:

1) Getting outside and actually seeing some natural daylight several times today, for one reason or another

2) Joined a gym and had a good first session

3) Listened to the first few tracks of "When Harry Met Sally" for the first time in years. It really is an almost perfect album!

Formula 1 - How Close?

Is this the closest title contest ever? At the moment, after six races, the top 8 drivers are covered by only 22 points - that's less than the points awarded for a single race win. Has there ever been so many drivers seperated by less than 10 points (one win in old money) at this stage of the season?

By contrast, last year at this point there wasn't a single driver within 10 points of leader Jenson Button - closest was Rubens Barrichello who was 16 points behind. The previous year, four drivers (Hamilton, Massa, Raikkonen and Kubica) were within 10 points of the top. The year before that, only Fernando Alonso was in touch with Lewis Hamilton (eventual Championship winner Kimi Raikkonen was 21 points off the top at this stage).

Alas, I don't have the time and resources to track this back over the whole of F1 history, but my gut feeling is that this could well be the closest we've seen the competition after six rounds. I for one am hopeful that the Red Bulls won't now drive off into the distance, metaphorically speaking, and it'll still be close towards the end of the season.

13 rounds to go ...!

[with thanks to http://www.4mula1.ro/ - what a great resource!]

Year in Photos: DEAD!!

So, that lasted two days then.

And lo, on the third day, I took my camera into town expecting to grab another shot. I knew I was going out so I thought I'd get a nice night-time picture. Unfortunately, I was going out, so I got a bit worse for wear and totally forgot. Doh!

I took some shots on the fourth day but not much I'd post - some personal stuff (and I'm not going to put shots of friends & family online) and not much else.

The following day, I took a shot because I "had" to.

After that, I decided to ditch the "Year in Photos" thing - I don't want to end up taken distinctly average shots for the sake of it.

So now I'm going to try to do a "take decent photos more often that I have done historically" - so very occasionally you might see a decent photo from me that isn't from a family trip somewhere (not that there's anything wrong with those, of course!).

Watch this space!

Year in Photos: 2 of 365

You wait for six months and then three posts come along at once!

Here's today's photo in the soon-to-collapse-from-inattention "Year in Photos" feature on this blog. This set of buildings really stands out from its neighbours.

[click to see the whole picture!]:

Election Winner

By the way, I know it's early but I can tell you who's won the election ... it's ITV! Coverage is way better than the BBC, I'm astonished to say.

I'm back!!!

Hi!

Been a while ... Various things happened over the last six months or so - the xna thing went quiet, I think it suited all of us to stop pursuing it for different reasons. Then I had a scooter accident that has left me with some issues with my right leg (ligament damage and potentially other issues yet to be determined), which has put a bit of a downer on things at times ...

But I'm back, for now at least. Intend to do that thing where you take one photo every day for a year. Very, very unlikely to keep it up, but let's see shall we?

First photo yesterday, on my walk to work. This is near Bank in London. I liked the colours, the green leaves against the blue building, with the red telephone box between them. I think I could have done a better job of finding a composition that crunched those colours together - might have another go at this one at some point!

Note - please click on the photo to see all of it - there's only a slice visible below!