So this years cards are:

A fairly simply layout for Gizmo & Furby

though making a miniature cracker & getting a character with no hands to hold it are both harder than you first imagine.

A christmas pudding Apple for Bramley Computers

Which after whisky didn’t work as planned, reverted by to schoolboy physics and some deodorant and a lighter. This also lead to a ‘happy accident’ shot of Cooking Apple (click through to see on flickr).  This is a dual layer shot, with the flames captures in one exposure, and the apple & berries in a second exposure and layered up in Photoshop.

Having gone to all the effort of capturing Santas for the BHF santa jog promotion, it also seems daft not to utilise something from these shoots for Christmas

and the final card for this year, is one of the snowy scenes from last December

Anyway, here’s a selection of pictures from today…

Y.M... oops wrong song

Jump Start?

Belfast Police Station (by PPCC Antifa on flickr)

Belfast Peace Wall (by photographphil on flickr)

did nothing but to remind even an outsider about the troubles, and the past bubbling below the surface. I know Belfast is much more than this, but it did always feel that around each corner was a reminder of the past.

On this visit to Ireland though, I made a promise I was taking the time out to go to the Giants Causeway, seemed a shame to get so close & not actually go there. Along the way though we made a discovery…

After consulting with twitter, we took the long way up to Giants Causeway via the A2 coast road. Out of Belfast, & north of Larne, you find yourself on the mile upon mile of smooth, lovely tarmac, twisting & following the coast line, rocks climbing to your left, the sea feet to your right. Mile upon mile of impressive drive along sweeping curves. Mile upon mile of stunning views, mile upon mile of serenity.

It turns out then that up the coast and away from Belfast, Ireland is a drivers & landscape photographers HEAVEN. The Giants Causeway to be fair was a bit of a let down, it is afterall just a bunch of hexagonal rocks, but the drive & the views on the way there & back? Stunning. It’s a shame the Causeway steals all the glory, as you can pretty much stick a pin in the map along that coast, and be guaranteed a stunning view.

Overrated

How about instead

Kinbane Castle (by Vins64 on Flickr)

which is more than a castle on a rock, you parked at the cliff edge with views of an island, walking down from there you look back at the coast and there’s a 200′ waterfall, and caves and… It should be a major attraction, instead it’s just sign posted as “Kinbane Head” and has parking for 20 cars!

or Dunseverick Castle which is ever so conveniently placed, again fab, and parking for about 6

or Carrick-A-Rede

which has more rocky outcrops, a rope bridge, and god knows what else, to give you an idea, this is the view from the over flow car parking

you parked in the quarry with unobstructed views out to sea, just watch you don’t reverse too far though!

or Port Much

Isle of Much

and this is just a small sample. Every one of these places looked like you could spend hours there. The day we had to tour was simply not enough to take it all in, really need to go back another time and spend at least a week plus here. Oh and did I mention the tarmac? Next time I’ll take something fun to drive too.

So on the first Saturday of August, the sleepy village of Bonsall is awoken as the whole world descends upon them, competitors from as far & wide as Bonsall to Bakewell, some foreigners even turned up from Nottinghamshire too. You can bring your own hen, or if you don’t have one, there’s a local “Henterprise” where you can rent a hen to race.

The competition attracts young & old, on the right is “R” from “The States”, a man of few words, and even stranger than the Nottinghamshire lot.

The premise is simple, it’s basically a 50 yard sprint, first chicken across the finish line wins. The world record for a well trained hen is 2.9 seconds!

And they're off..

Of course you then hope they make a run for the finish line with their owners calling & baiting them

Here chicky chicky

Of course, these are chickens, so there’s as much chance they find the dirt around the start line interesting, in which case their is a three minute time limit, and nearest to the line wins.

Or sometimes they just revert to some good old 1600s hen fighting

but as this is a cruelty free sport (funds are raised towards Campaign For Free Range Chicken Farming) hens that fight are warned, then receive a yellow, followed by red card & removed from the course. The grey hen here picked  a few fights & was quickly dismissed.

Like any sport, there’s evidently some attempts at cheating, though some were easier to see through than others

Luckily all these were caught out & dismissed.

Some were evidently very relaxed with their hens

this one looked very relaxed & happy to sit without being restrained, or others took theirs along for a drink…

But all in a clucking fun day for everyone with lots of racing

Right, anyone for a vindaloo?

Sometimes that is pretty much is as this shot (gratuitously pinched from Ed Callow)

demonstrates. Shot with a Nikon D3100 (their current ‘entry’ consumer SLR), taken in manual mode, with the aperture set at an ‘open’ F3.5 which in the depths of London at the night equalled a shutter speed of 8 seconds. This has given plenty of time for the passing traffic to give those wonderful light trails, which along with light bouncing off nearby shops & streetlights have nicely lit the car too.

Now I can here some brains melting at the back, apertures? manual? shutter speeds?

So some basics

ISO – this is old lingo for ‘film speeds, higher the number, the more sensitive to light your camera is (so shorter shutter speeds). It also equals more ‘noise’, less so on SLRs but a major issue with compacts. The cameras on a tripod, keep this as low as possible, and don’t worry about really long shutter speeds. In fact this is a bonus.

Shutter Speed – How long the camera ‘exposes’ the sensor to light. Hand holdeable speeds are above approx 1/60 of a second, to get time to ‘light paint’ the cars we need time to run around, so seconds, here shown as 2″ (2 seconds) or higher is what we are looking for.

Aperture – Inside the lens is an ‘iris’ just like the one in our eyes. The higher the number, the smaller the iris is, the less light is let in. Compacts are limited here as often the smallest the aperture can be is F8, whereas SLRs will stop down to F22-32 depending on the lens, which is a LOT less light hitting the sensor.

You’ve then also got the camera modes:

M – Manual, you set the aperture & the shutter speed yourself

AV (Canon) or A (Nikon) – Aperture Priority, in this mode you set the aperture, the camera automatically sets the shutter speed to suit.

TV (Canon) or S (Nikon) – Shutter priority, in this mode you set the shutter speed & the camera adjusts the aperture to suit.

P – Program mode, the camera sets the aperture, it usually attempts to keep it around the 1/125 mark, so will open up or shut the aperture down to achieve this.

Plus of course a myriad of scene modes which I’m going to completely ignore.

There’s also the ‘Exposure compensation/Exposure Meter’, in Aperture priority or Shutter Priority you can dial this up/down to instruct the camera to make the picture darker/lighter than the standard exposure. In manual mode this will show if the camera thinks you are going to over expose or under expose your shot.

I tend to use Manual mode, as this way your exposure is consistent between shots, as the camera can change the amount of exposure in other modes between shots as you compare you never can be 100% sure if the change is something you’ve done, or the camera. So I look at what the camera says in say, aperture priority mode, eg I’ve set it to F8, and the camera says 2 seconds, then use those as the starting point in manual mode, adjusting the aperture, or shutter speed, keeping an eye on the exposure meter indicator to ensure you aren’t heading in to over exposure, or so far off the bottom of the scale you’ll never light the car.

So light painting…, so adding to the previous kit of a camera, car  & tripod, we add a light source. For the basics you can use a big torch, so to demonstrate…

One Compact camera with exposure control, one car, and a torch…

There’s no right & wrongs here, this was shot in manual mode, in a dark area, the camera set to F8 and & 2″ (2 seconds), before the shot the camera was indicating this shot would be underexposed by about 2 stops, this would mean the shot would be very dark without any torch light. I set the camera on self timer and as the shutter went off, wafted the torch over the areas I wanted lit. Hey presto. The car is light painted, and the surrounding areas ‘underexposed’ into darkness. Unless you’re a prodigal genius, or just damned lucky, chances are it won’t work first time. Or the second. I’d probably suggest at a point where the camera suggests it’s only slightly underexposed, so when you take a picture you just get a slightly dark pic, then try another adding the light so you can see the difference, then start working to more extreme variations such as this which would be dark without the light. Beauty of digital is each shot is free and the feedback instant. Just keep changing the settings till you start seeing the results.

Photography is ruled by the laws of physics, so whilst this is using a model car, and a small pocket torch, scale this up to a real car, and a big hand held torch. If it’s too bright, then stand further back with the torch (double the distance the car will receive quarter of the light), or stop the aperture down to reduce the light allowed to the sensor. Too dark, stand closer or open the aperture up.

During the long exposure you don’t even need to worry about getting between the camera and the car either, as long as you keep moving then you won’t be stood still long enough to be recorded, as long as you don’t point the torch at the camera.

Here’s another demonstrate the process through the stages

Aperture Priority – No exposure compensation. F4.5 1/13th second

This is how the camera saw the shot, regardless of mode (without flash) this was pretty much the results you are going to get. Sat in the middle of nowhere, there is no passing cars, shops or streetlights to light the car.

Manual Mode – Under Exposed approx 2 stops.

This deepens the depth of the sky, but the car is now silhouetted as the sun is behind, and the car is now very unlit.

Adding some light

This is an identical exposure to the previous shot, but this time adding some light from a flash gun, just one on the floor pointing in quite clearly to the front wheel.

Finally adding two lights

The front flash is now angled to cash a bit more light along the side of the car, and a second flash is held up just out of the right of shot lighting the front end.

The above shot was done using radio remotes on the camera, as the ‘ambient’ light levels weren’t dark enough for longer exposures. As the light levels dropped, so did my batteries. You’ll see quite a lot of magazine shots done this way in brighter light, but they have much bigger flash guns than us.

Here’s something from a shoot a few years ago, did I mention white cars are awesome for this? White reflects the light superbly making your job easier. Dark cars as you can imagine suck the light in. Shooting my old Audi bordering on black but green really saloon on the same night I gave up as I needed a lot more power than my flash at the time .

Shot again in manual mode, with the shutter set to F13, giving an exposure of about 5 seconds. Later at night you lose the ‘dusk’ blues, but longer shutter speeds are easier to achieve, I then took my flash gun set to 1/8th power, and ran along it firing it so it got an even coverage of light. This could just as easily been some torches waived over it.

Hope this helps someone.

Zumba is one of the new keep fit crazes and in attendance were 342 ladies, and 3 blokes. It’s a very high energy dance aerobics, lots of fun, and below is a sample of pictures from the session.

Zumba!

“Join newcomers and Zumba lovers, young and old, to support the British Heart Foundation’s life-saving Mending Broken Hearts Appeal. It’s just £5 to register (children under 5 go free) and you’ll get a 50 minute Zumba class with qualified instructors. £4 of your entry fee plus all sponsorship raised goes directly to the British Heart Foundation by kind support of our partners Sheffield International Venues.

Gates open from 10.30am for an 11.30am-1pm Zumba session.”

Just in case you (like me until today) have no idea what Zumba is, Zumba is (according to wiki) a dance fitness program originating in Colombia during the 1990s. The program combines international music with dance in an effort to make exercise fun. Zumba classes are offered through licensed instructors in more than 110,000 locations in over 125 countries.

Anyway, enough waffle, here’s some pics…

Zumba Dancing & Mr Hearty

Mr Hearty & the SIV Team

However I still find neither of these bags perfect, the Lowepro 350 can hold a LOT of kit

here is the Fastpack 350 with 2 bodies & grips, 3 lenses, 2 flashes, cleaning kit, plus batteries, filters etc hidden away, plus there’s the slot in the back for the laptop to hide in too.

or here with a single SLR set up and a few more lenses.

However one of my big bug bears with this, and a lot of other backpacks, is that in order to access your kit, you’ve got to put the side that goes against your back, on the ground. Lovely summer days, fine, after rain, snow, farm parks, this means putting it down in mud, crap etc, or carefully kneeling trying to balance the bag across your knees whilst you fumble with an SLR & 2 lenses…

Another backpack issue is you’ve also got to make damned sure the bag is zipped up before you (or someone trying to be helpful) pick it up, which then drops all your kit all over the floor… It’s also not useful at some motorsport events where you are right beside the course, and frankly there isn’t the time to zip it up before grabbing it.

The laptop slip on the FastPack 350 is also on the side too, so even that isn’t safe, if it had been top loading you’d have to turn the bag upside down to lose your laptop…

The Nova 3 is again very versatile, and can hide a lot of kit in what looks a small bag

whilst this looks full there is more hidden underneath

It’s a bit of a squeeze, but yes all that lot DOES fit. Though is does involve stuffing the OC-E3 (coily cable) & the blower case in the outside side pockets, the fisheye & small 19-35 slip into the pockets under the grip. However whilst filling this bag when I had a 400D & some lightweight lenses, you kind of regret taking this more than a mile or two with some heavier kit in it. However what I do like about this is you can just leave it over your shoulder and change lenses, when you put it down in the mud, it’s the side that’s going to drip on the floor in the mud, you can also pick these up whilst not fastened and gravity does all it’s work of keeping the lenses inside…

However I’ve got past the weight issues, and also ‘blatant camera bag’ theft worry issues, by stuffing the Nova 3 inside a top loading Adidas sports bag. this gives backpack advantages, but without the camera backpack disadvantages, It also gives you somewhere to keep your lunch/coat when doing hikes for double bonus. I also don’t care what anyone says about Crumpler & ThinkTank bags not looking like camera bags so not noticed by thieves, bullshit. Except for the opportunist & take any old crap crackheads, thieves specialise, if we can spot a Crumpler & Thinktank bag a mile off, so can a thief. So I think the mid sized shoulder bag hidden inside a non camera bag is a lot more discreet for when out in tourist thief hotspots & dodgy areas.

However recently I’ve traded the Tamron & Tokina lenses for Canon equivalents, and they’re a bit bulkier (especially the lens hoods), so I’m now probably going to have to look at this all over again at the Focus show in a few months…

All that went out of the window yesterday, something was obviously amiss when the car took two attempts to start for work in the morning, but then in the evening dropped down to a local pub to meet up with a Twitter friend, at which point the Audi took three attempts to start, and then down at the pub that was it she wouldn’t start again. I’d already seen very similar symptoms on my dads A6 which has the same 2.6 engine as in my car, so very quickly suspected the camshaft sensor that had given him the same issue. Gratefully my Twitter friend gave me a lift up home so could at least wait for the AA in the warmth, first repair van turned out after 1.5hrs at 6:30, quickly confirmed that the car wasn’t sparking, so it was the camshaft sensor as predicted, or coils. I can’t tow you home though, going to have to send another truck. Luckily they dropped me back off home again as the recovery wagon didn’t arrive for another 3.5hrs at 11pm, can’t really complain too much though as did know I was on the non priority list, only fair those stuck on the M1 at night etc get attended to first.

Undignified Return

Just to prove she’s a female too, at the presence of a recovery truck she started, but decided as got a perfect line up with the truck, better to recover her than to get round the corner & the fault kick in and end up with a more difficult recovery.

Whilst waiting for the recovery truck, spent a bit of time digging around parts & prices, found the camshaft sensor on eBay from about £40 to Euro Car Parts at £150 (at this weeks VAT rate) and no idea of the quality level. Phoned the local VAG trade part services first thing this morning, genuine part with blagged trade discount, £97, and bonus it’s 10 minutes up the road, not 2hr round trip (eBay) or 1hr (ECP). Phoned a friend, can we nab your car? Cheers. Right on our way…

The culprit

Walks out the door, shuts it behind us and realises that moment, when you’ve got keys one side of the door, and you’re the other, it’s Christmas Eve, cold & locked out!

“Fuckety fuckety fuckety fuck” pretty much summed it up as my Twitter/Facebook status.

Nothing to do but to press on, got the bus in to town so could borrow a Focus, detoured via work to borrow some tools & plywood, on to dealers to pick up the car part, then home, & put a hammer through a window, carefully reached through & unlocked the security lock, then climbed in. Times like this lucky I’m still relatively skinny & nimble.

Smashing Christmas

Not sure how but managed to get in without injury or any cuts, then ended up cutting myself against the glass whilst measuring up the wood for the fix, only a nick though.

Hopefully that’s it now, not sure could have taken much more going wrong. Leaving the car for a few days before looking at it, but at least (hopefully) got the part in ready when I do.

Santas in the Fountain

and attended today as their official photographer. So here’s a selection of images from today

(PS I know I gave my card to a few parents today, if you know I took a picture today & it isn’t here and you want a copy please contact me and I’ll email one over)

Santa Gets Funky

Darth using dastardly tricks

Santa Love

Santa Baby