
I’ve been working on a property in Gainsborough. Nothing too special about it, except the top bedroom on the front which has this great view of the River Trent and North Nottinghamshire area.
I’ve been working on a property in Gainsborough. Nothing too special about it, except the top bedroom on the front which has this great view of the River Trent and North Nottinghamshire area.
I’ve recently done a photo shoot for my wife for the inside about the author section of her new book.
I took the opportunity to get a photo of us both at the same time though.
I felt like doing something fancy.
I’m hardly the perfect advocate, but you know when you see those photos online of before and after? Well these are mine.
It’s just over 12 months since I began my lifestyle change from an unhealthy fat potato with plantar fascitis & knee pain to become what you see on the right.
It was the photo shoot for the covers band on the left which horrified me. I looked disgusting! I was enormous and in an ill fitting suit which at the time I actually thought looked quite good.
Now I can shop at normal shops, delve into the middle of the rack, and when I see something really unusual like the PVC suit from ASOS I can actually buy it off the peg.
It’s not a diet that did this; it’s a lifestyle change. Less food, more exercise. For me it’s about the high fat foods. I now have them as occasional treats and only then as a small portion.
This photo was the shoot taken with my folk band a few weeks ago. The transformation is unbelievable!
Throwback Thursday to September 2017 when we visited the Midland Railway at Butterley.
I took this with a camera phone and promptly pissed off loads of pro photographers by making the cover of the society newsletter.
I have posted photos on flickr for many years now, and in that time have amassed over 16,000 pictures – some are just cheesy little camera phone VGA size pictures; but since late 2008 I have owned a DSLR and have been taking photos using a 10 megapixel CCD.
As you can imagine – this has set my photostream in a very high kilobyte count… in fact I would hasten to say gigabyte. In total, I have 14 gigabytes of photo data on my flickr photostream!
Now recently, flickr hasn’t evolved. It’s interface isn’t the best, and I find it clunky at times. I have used Picasa side by side for a while now and the Picasa interface knocks spots off Flickr; but the community hasn’t been there in the same way.
Then along comes Google Plus…
Google really have got their heads screwed on right. Where facebook becomes bigger and clunkier by trying to do everything itself, G+ outsources things like photos and videos – after all, Google do own Picasa and Youtube (although – note – you CAN post videos on Picasa). The community is suddenly there – but instead of comprising mostly of people you don’t really know – as is on flickr – it now comprises of your friends and family.
Picasa has an amazing face detection system which also swings things for me. The more photos you identify people on, the more it learns what they look like; such to an extent that I now upload a band photo and it tags all the members for me without me even having to do a thing.
Yes, I therefore am migrating my ENTIRE photostream to Picasa storage. It’s no more expensive than flickr ($24 a year) although unlike flickr it does have a size limit (which I will still be miles off!) and the size limit is upgradeable (subject to paying out more money), and the virtual cloud drive of Google is also shared with Google Apps and Google Mail… but I don’t mind. I like the cloud. I quite like the Google cloud (although I do also use Dropbox, just in case).
Anyway, for you tech heads – I am using a nice piece of software called Bulkr to download stuff… and just Picasa to upload back to the Google cloud. I do wish Google would do a photostream import, but I should imagine Flickr would object to massive raids on their Yahoo! owned file storage.
It’s always the truth that you never visit or appreciate what’s nearby. Take Bolsover Castle for example – just off Junction 29A of the M1 and less than half an hour’s drive away – and I’ve never been.
I’m rather impressed with my cupola picture…
The other visitors were rather bemused by a bloke in a black shirt and leather trousers laying on the floor, sticking a camera up in the air, and taking photos of the ceiling, or the same bloke setting up a camera on “The Pod” and taking a self portrait of himself sitting on some old steps… which gets me onto…
It seems the people at icanhascheezburger.com have taken notice of a couple of my photos:
Today I decided I needed a new photo.
I’ve recently been building the new website for Manning and it has given me a little bit of an insight into what constitutes a BAD band photograph and a GOOD band photograph. I give you the example at right – I won’t name the band (unless you email me and REALLLYYYY PLEAD) but the example in question shows a few faults:
We were offered this gig as Deadline and we declined it. I am so glad we did!
Now my second example is how you SHOULD take a gig photo. This was taken in a similar sized venue, but has the advantages of both experience and equipment. Believe it or not this venue had less than 30 people in and the front stage presence was non existant… so why does this still look great?
I hope this guide has helped you. I don’t profess to be an expert, in fact I’m hardly even a novice but I will share what I learn.