new car insurance time !!!

dammnit, i hate this time of year when we get screwed over for car insurance..

I usually hate the compare sites, but compare the market have been coming up trumps and have been delivering cheaper insurance than our previous provider....

There is no such thing as brand loyalty these days, but when the difference in a policy is how much they charge in interest.payments and they wont budge.. its time to move... plus we get a free cuddly meerkat!

Now its time to get a quote for our Guest House !!!

Blackpool Illuminations Switch on concert !

Keith Lemon

Well it’s that time of the year again when Blackpool extends the summer season to well in to late autumn by having the illuminations along the promenade.

The illuminations switch on is always the Friday after the August Bank Holiday and carries on through to the first Sunday in November. To celebrate the switch on of the Blackpool lights there is a open air concert that can accommodate 20,000 people. The show is also broadcast on a big screen on the promenade by the Blackpool Tower.

Every year, they gather together a whole host of stars and a celebrity to pull the main switch and light up Blackpool. This year for 2011 Keith Lemon was the celebrity to do the honours. It was a bit of a controversial decision to have Keith Lemon as he is unknown to a lot of people but has a near cult following by others. His particular style of humour is a bit hit or miss. It’s a bit like Marmite; you either love him or hate him.  Accompanying Keith Lemon on stage was Wonderland, Scouting for Girls, The Undertones, Paul Carrack Pixie Lott, Wynne Evans, Joe McElderry Darren Hayes, Beverly Knight, Ollie Murs and topping the bill was James Morrison.

Beverly Knight

Darren Hayes

The concert was a good place to hone photography skills. Capturing good images in low light and changing light conditions can be very taxing. Trying to get a fast enough shutter speed, while using a longish zoom lens, the only option is to crank up the ISO. Trying to avoid grainy noisy pictures is a nightmare. Next year, I think I will try for a fast prime lens and push to the front of the stage !!

Time for a new monitor.

I was looking at getting a Tablet computer for Christmas this year and had got my eye on a Acer Iconia A500

but, common sense got the better of me, these tablets are not much more than a giant phone. I have a good Android phone so I dont really need a tablet! What I do need is to replace my monitors on my PC for some more suitable to photography. 

I have been using two 17 inch monitors, an Acer and a Samsung in a dual screen configuration. Its has worked well enough over the years and with the recent addition of a Pantone Huey colour calibration system, it will extend the life a little. But my photography skills have now reached a point that my computer just does not cut it any more. The bottle neck is the display !

It didn't take too long to decide what I need is a IPS display. They are a little pricey for a someone who only do a little bit of photo editing such as holiday snaps etc., Prices start at around £200 up to several thousand pounds, but if your income depends on the quality of your work then the cost is easy to justify spending a few thousand pounds.

As my photography is still in the realms of semi pro, I cant justify the price tag into the thousand pound mark, but I know its where I will be in a few years. 

One of the most important things to do when looking for a new bit of kit is research what it is you want, decide if its what you need and make a compromise.  What I want is a monitor for around £400 or less, 55cm to 60 cm across the diagonal. and the widest possible gamut that my price range can stump up for. 

One of the first monitors I found that fits my requirements is an ASUS PA246Q ProArt. and a good review of it can be found here. The fact it covers 98% of the adobe RGB gamut and 100% of the sRGB gamut makes this one top of the list. its available from Amazon for £407 It plenty of features that are desired by pro photographers and its price point gives it a real competitive edge from more expensive monitors.

The Asus PA246Q is definitely top of the list.

The only other display I am looking at is another Asus display from the ProArt range, the ASUS PA238Q. and a review can be found here. 

It is a little smaller than its bigger brother and on the asus website there is no mention of adobe RGB gamut, but as both monitors are only ever going to be a stepping stone to a much bigger panel in a few years time, fir the price saving now, the adobe RGB gamut maybe something I can live without. It is still 100% within the sRGB gamut. you can buy it from scan.co.uk for £270

Decisions decisions.... I cant decide !!

Colour Correction.

Well, I have been obsessed with getting colour correct for a while now and the biggest problem has always been that when I produce an image, edit it in post production, finally get it how I like it and publish it, When I look at said image it always looks different on my laptop, net-book and the missus's laptop. Across the other computers, the pictures although different, are all a lot brighter with less contrast. The thing is, It will look different on other peoples computers too. Even printed pictures are never the same as on the computer !!

Its time to have done with it and get some proper colour calibration going on my monitor.

I originally was going to get a Spyder 3 pro, but was always a little put off by the price. I needed the pro version because on my computer set up I use multiple monitors. Because I am going to (soon) switch to a new (single) monitor, I wouldn't have needed the pro version.

I came across the Huey Pantone system a while back, its price point was not too bad, but again needed the pro version for multiple monitors. I then spotted one on ebay, boxed, as new and only had one bid of £10... I eventually got it for £22.55. It was only up the road from us in Morecambe, so I went to pick it up. I wasn't bothered that is was not the pro version, the price I got it for and the cost of a upgrade from pantone to the pro version was still a bargain.

It didn't take long for me to calibrate my monitors at all. and what a massive difference it has made.

I would advise anyone who is looking at photography in any sort of serious way to get some sort of calibration system in place. Even a cheap system is better than none at all.

Finally settled on a theme.

At long last I have finally settles on a theme for my RPS panel. I have decided to theme all of my shots on the sea.

I know a group of 10 shots of the seaside would be quite boring but I may only have one or two shots of a beach, but they will all have a connection to the sea.

The main reason for this is not only that I live by the sea, but I have always felt a connection to the sea. I hate being away from the sea. I know here in England its hard to be more than 50 miles from the sea, but I hate to be more than 10 miles from the sea..

So there we have it. the theme will be the sea.

Busy times....

Well, its been a good few weeks since I updated my blog. With one thing or another I have not really had the time this year for my camera but I am trying to fix this.

One thing I have done is dug out my wacom pad and have been learning to use it properly. It makes life a lot simpler and makes your lines while editing photos more "organic" Photoshop CS5 has really good support for wacom tablets and for anyone who is interested in the more serious side of photo editing should really consider buying one.

One other thing that I have started obsessing about is correct colour balance. for this I have decided to add to my shopping list a ColorChecker Passport from x-rite. The Idea is that for your first photograph in a series of shots in the same lighting conditions, you shoot with the colour chart in the shot. You then feed the photographs into the supplied software and it will process your RAW images into a Digital Negative (DNG) with all the pictures correctly colour balanced.

Lynda.com Training Courses.

I have always been a fan of Adobe Photoshop ever since I first got a copy of Photoshop 2 many many moons ago. But last year I was introduced to Adobe Photoshop Elements, which I have found very useful and in a lot of ways for basic photo editing can be a better option than Photoshop CS. 

A few weeks ago, I got a copy of a Training course from Lynda.com 'Photoshop CS5 for Photographers' presented by Chris Orwig. I found the detail and style of the lessons to be very engaging and inspiring. I have always used the RAW format on my camera and Adobe Camera RAW (ACR) to process my images into elements/photoshop, but I always felt I was not getting as much out of it as I could or should. Partway through 'Photoshop CS5 for Photographers' at the end of the lessons for ACR, Chris pointed out another training course that he had done 'Photoshop CS5 for Photographers: Camera Raw 6'. I have been working through this course and have found that I now get a lot more out of ACR than I did before, to the point that I don't think I will be using Photoshop Elements any where near as much as I have been. 

Chris Orwig

The training course also introduced me to the Digital Negative file format (.DNG). Using this file format has many advantages to the native NEF file produced by my Nikon DSLR. It contains within it any edits that have been made by ACR, a jpeg preview. The file is also compressed so it takes up less hard drive space, which is becoming more of an issue as my catalogue of photographs has expanded. You can also include a copy of the original native RAW file if you like, but this does take up a lot more file space.

If you opened the wallet enough to get yourself a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS5 then its well worth your time and money to invest in these two training courses from Lynda.com.

The first selections for my LRPS pannel.

Along with my twig photo from my last blog entry, the next photo to make the list for possible inclusion is this one.

I particularly like this photo as it has all the parts of a good beach scene. Sand, sea, sky, people paddling, and a seagull.

I need to do a little work on colour adjustment. I want the sky and sea a little more "blue" and the sand a little more yellow.

Spring is here.

Well, at last, spring is here. photography is no fun in the winter. how do you hold a camera when your fingers are frozen? I did manage to take a few shots, we don't get much snow here in Blackpool, but this year was an exception. So out I ventured to grab a few shots and discover the  importance of getting the correct white balance set-up !

February and march were not the best months for me to be getting on with my photography. I had been looking forward to my holidays in Florida for months and months but about four hours after we arrived in Orlando we got a phone call to let us know that my partner, Jackie, her brother had died. There was very little we could do, as we couldn't get a flight back for just over a week as all the flights were fully booked, so we stayed out in Florida until our due date to come home arrived. We just made the best of it while we were there.  I did manage to get some good photos while I was there anyway.

Anthony G McDonald. One of the good guys. RIP fig fella !

Within a few weeks of getting back from Florida, I got a call to tell me a good friend of mine who had known for over 30 years (which is a long time for someone who is only 42) had also died. Two funerals within a few weeks of each other. Not the best of starts to the year.