Archive for the ‘Photography’ Category

London sightseeing

Saturday, March 5th, 2011

893I’ve had a few days of work this past week, mostly spent around home, however on Wednesday we decided to take the children up to London for the first time. We bought a family railcard for the trip. Although this meant paying for one of the two children when both would be normally be free, the saving on our adult tickets meant that we almost broke even on this one trip and we should hopefully get more use out of the card than that. We arrived at Waterloo around half-ten and decided to do a bit of sightseeing en-route to a primary destination: the Natural History Museum. We went past the London Eye, the Houses of Parliament and through St James Park to Buckingham Palace. Although we arrived just in time for the Changing of the Guard, sadly they only perform every other day during the winter and this was an off day. We were, however, overtaken by some Horse Guards and then, as we reach Hyde Park, were passed by two Royal carriages. It was then on past the Serpentine, the Albert Memorial and the Royal Hall to arrive at our destination just in time to check out the restaurant. Christine and I both enjoyed our lunch. Unfortunately we enjoyed most of the children’s lunches as well!

Emma was keen to see the dinosaurs after a previous encounter at the Pitt Rivers in Oxford. We then went on to look at the mammals (including the life size blue whale) and the creepy crawlies. Duncan also seemed to love the museum although that may just have been the chance to run freely from one brightly lit case to the next. There was bright sunshine when we emerged but we dived down in to the underground (all part of the experience) back to Westminster and then walked back to Waterloo, just about beating the commuter rush back home.

There are a few photos on Flickr. I would have taken more but the auto-focus on my kit lens seems to have packed in. Thankfully it’s still under warranty.

Welsh Holiday

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010

869I’m just coming to the end of two weeks of vacation of which we spent the first 10 days on a family holiday to Wales. We originally had had various plans for an overseas trip but, apart from anything else, we’d failed to get Duncan a passport! In the end, we spent a week in a ‘lodge’ at a place called Timber Hill near Broad Haven in Pembrokeshire and then, because the original plan had been to find some mountains, up to a cottage in Llanberis for 4 nights.

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New Year at Hilliers

Friday, January 1st, 2010

821We decided to make the most of the sunshine today and spent a large part of it at Hillier Gardens. Despite no longer being members, entry is still free with our Culture-all Passport. In some ways, the passport is better as, in my absence, Christine can take any guest along with her for free. I’ve put a small selection of photos up on Flickr. (I’ve decided to make a concerted effort to download photos in a more timely manner, sort them more ruthlessly and get more of them up on the web.) Unfortunately a large number of people had obviously had the same idea and, although they are easily lost in the gardens, there was a long queue to get something to eat.

On the road at Christmas

Friday, January 1st, 2010

815I’m behind on the blog so this post is a catch-all for our activities over the festive period. Having taken the weeks off before and after Christmas we’ve had plenty of time for visiting friends and family and also had a chance to spend a bit of time at home. On the Tuesday before Christmas we set off to visit Christine’s parents in Monmouth (it’s her Dad’s birthday on the 23rd). We failed to check the road conditions before starting out but were intending to stick to the M4 rather than going via Gloucester and through the Forest of Dean. However, we hadn’t been on the M4 for long before we were informed of the closure of the Severn Crossing. We mistakenly decided to continue on in the hope that the old Severn bridge (which we normally use) would still be open, or at least that it would have reopened by the time we got there.

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Second place in photo comp

Friday, July 24th, 2009

I try to get an entry in to the monthly competition for the photo club at work. The standard is pretty high now as can be seen by the competition winners and I was therefore pleased to come second in last month’s competition. It’s just slightly annoying that it was in a month where I was really struggling to find anything worthy of submission! In the end, I had to crop this shot of two roses right down to get my entry. That said, it’s nearly the end of July and I have taken almost no photos. I’ll have to try and get out with the camera at some point in the next week (when it’s not raining!)…

Sculpture season starts

Sunday, May 24th, 2009

750Christine’s parents and my brother are down for the weekend and yesterday we decided to head out to Hillier Gardens. We enjoyed a picnic lunch outside in the sun before heading in to the gardens, making the use of some of the 6 free guest passes that come with our joint membership. We’d managed to time our visit for another first: the first day of this year’s Art in the Garden season (the 10th year it has run). This provided additional entertainment for children and photographers alike! Sadly, when Michael and I popped over the road to look at the rhodies (whilst the others checked out the tree house again), we discovered that most were already past their best. Anyway, a selection of my photos are on Flickr.

Changes at Hilliers

Sunday, April 5th, 2009

733We decided to avoid the potential holiday crowds in the New Forest today and went over to Hillier Gardens to make the most of the sunshine. I’m not sure when we last went but there have been a few changes in the intervening months: the wicker man in the children’s garden has been replaced by a giant spider, there are some pigs rooting around in the area adjacent to Ampfield Woods and, most excitingly for Emma, there is a new tree house replete with slide, scramble net and climbing wall – a definite hit. Sadly the early flowering rhododendrums and the magnolias were already past their best. I’ve put a few photos up on Flickr.

Lightroom import finally fixed

Monday, February 23rd, 2009

Having obtained Lightroom about 2 months ago our usage has been severly limited by the fact that an import of our existing Photoshop Elements 5 catalog only brought in about two-thirds of the images. You can read the gory details on one of the many forums I posted trying to find an answer. It then dawned on me that, having paid good money for the product, we might actually be entitled to some proper support from Adobe! Sadly their promised 24 hour response time turned out to be more like 2 weeks and the first set of suggestions (relinking photos, deleting cache files and a recover) didn’t work. They then suggested using the File > Move option in Elements to relocate all of our photos from the USB hard disk to the local disk. This seemed to do the trick (although I suspect moving them anywhere may have been sufficient) and we finally have all of our photos reunited in one product. Now I just need to find the time to get to the end of the Lightroom book that my brother bought me for Xmas!