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

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!

Frozen Chesterfield Canal

A little splash of colour in the mainly empty town centre car park. This is Monday before it had really hit.

Winter Wonderland

Uphill Struggle

Just out doing the shopping

Cleared over a foot of snow off my car last night, only for it to be covered by morning, but even with benefit of chains with 2′ of snow for a fair distance before even hitting the road, I’m not driving anywhere for a day or three.

Some motoring heros & zeros

Her0s – The emergency services who’ve kept going through the worst of it (both the visible & behind the scenes people)

Delivery drivers still getting through. The Warburtons van driver paid in loafs to those that helped dig out. Think if those in shop had known that everyone would have helped. Local Co-op was queuing all the way around the shop & very quickly sold out of both bread & milk.

Zeros -

Those that couldn’t be arsed to remove any of the snow before setting off

Especially professional drivers who didn’t ever clear the whole of the windscreen, this one of Tower Taxis

You shop, we get stuck half way...

Abandoned Slalom

Abandoned vehicles

But the star award goes to Spire Tyres

who’ve got no excuse not to be running winter tyres, and also waited until they’d gone sideways on the main A619 & blocking it, before deciding it may be a good time to fit snow chains…

The usage is backed up in Lightroom too, instead of being a ‘one trick pony’, it has been used for nearly 40% of my shots, the Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 just pips it at 44%, but suspect those figures will soon be reversed. Favourites though, the fisheye is a clear winner, not just for myself, but evidently very popular amongst my Flickr viewers too.

Snout

Like everything on a full frame camera, it vignettes wide open, but it soon goes as you start stopping down, not that I care much as I usually like it, and if you don’t it can be quickly fixed in Lightroom. It’s also sharp, I’ve not looked closely at 100% samples, but The Digital Picture spend a lot of time looking at those things so I don’t have too.

One unexpected downside is limbs, from the Tokina 10-17mm fisheye, I knew fisheyes were wide, but the Canon 15mm is a few degrees wider in Canon mount and it’s quite easy to get your own elbow in shot when bracing, or your knee, or your backback, legs are pretty much expected on most days. The flip side of this is of course how close you can be to a building and still get it all in shot, usually you can pretty much take a few steps out of the door, turn around and you’ll fit it in neatly demonstrated below, this was taken from within the boundary of the Gherkin in London (about 20′), and you can see it’s managed to capture in the whole building.

The Gherkin

Genuine bad bits about the lens, the focus motor is one of the older micro motor lenses and it’s a bit slow, and, but more annoyingly the push on lens cap doesn’t have quite enough grip, and is prone to falling off in the bag, I’ve taken to holding it on the lens with an elastic band till I find a more permanent solution.

Of course all that is forgotten the moment you pick it up, bung it on the camera and start smiling at the results you’ve got. Worried about getting one? Don’t be. They’re excellent fun and a great addition to the kit bag. If you are using one of the many crop sensor bodies though, I would thoroughly recommend the Tokina 10-17mm fisheye which is just as superb.

The World Through my Fisheye

Two years ago I went along with the camera to do some photography, came back with some great pictures including the rather fun “Synchronised Santa’s”

Synchronised Santa's

which the BHF are using on their promotional materials for the event (inc the application form). Details of the Sheffield event on the 20th December are here on the British Heart Foundation website.

This year I’m entering too, though I’m not actually intending to do the run, I’m just going to do the photoshoot in Santa outfit instead for a laugh. But come along too, join in, these events need support and entry to survive (last years had to be cancelled), if you can’t make the Sheffield event on the 20th, see the British Heart Foundation site for events in your area.

Well I’m happy to say it doesn’t get any more sensible this year, because this year we had a huge snow fall in Feb, and, I already had Santa hats for them, and I had a day off to go up into the peaks to find some snow the kids hadn’t, so this years cards will be loosely based around…

Gizmo & Furby in the Show

Also like to make a special mention to Moo Printing at this point, as they’ve been through their printers twice trying to get the colours right on the cards, as I’d managed to select some text (the cards will have Merry Xmas on them) that CMYK printing really doesn’t like.

Fingers crossed the next batch will be bang on, and cards should be landing on some peoples door mats soon.

30second exposure, tram was moving for approx 20sec then painted the front end in with a few pops of flash to help freeze the front end of the tram after it had stopped. Pushed the raw white balance around which helped towards the period processing.

This shot is simpler than many think at first look. Basically it’s a stationary tram up front with another passing behind it during a 30second exposure.

This shot quickly got back a comment on twitter ‘”Oh WOW! I live about 7 miles from Crich but I’ve never been… you may have tempted me though.. Great photo…”