Millennium Park Panorama

Just after 6, before the crowds arrive.

Chicago Skyline

Just before sunrise. The benefits of being jet-lagged and awake at 4AM.

How to find locations!

One of the problems I have always had was how to find great photo locations while having little time to spend in a town or country. A Travel Guide will give you the obvious shots, but limiting myself to those I never found satisfying. The solution I found is to scan Google Earth for the area I intend to travel for those little blue markers that indicate uploaded photos. If I find something I like, I note the latitude and longitude and enter those as waypoints (favourites) in my GPS unit.

To keep the system going, I have uploaded some of my photos to Panoramio which is the site Google uses to allow people to upload geotagged photos to Google Earth. Please have a look at the photos I uploaded.

Spring

Just some daffodils because they are so full of Spring feeling.

Northern Shoveler / Slobeend

It has taken me years but yesterday finally I spotted a Northern Shoveler. Reminded me of Daffy Duck and I imagined it having a speech impediment: "You're despicable." :-)

Multi-exposure and automatic EV adjustment

Playing around with the advanced features of my Pentax K20D, in this case the multi-exposure and automatic EV adjustment. This bridge in Richmond in the photo above was never without buses, cars, cyclist or pedestrians, at one point even horses passed. The constant stream of traffic was very distracting and wouldn't make for a nice photo. I put the camera on my tripod and selected a multi-exposure of 9 shots and selected the option to automatically adjust the exposure for the number of shots selected. The result is a bridge without traffic. This is of course nothing new, photographers have been using long exposures for ages to make passing distractions disappear, however, it has never been easier to do and doesn't require ND filters and the like. Exactly the same technique can be used to make photos of streaming water obtain that silky flow.

Freeze Frame

The Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge made lots of fabulous photos available of Scott and other arctic explorers. See here.

My new gallery

A heads-up that I am in the process of creating my own gallery under the name of monochrome.me.uk. Please visit.

Freddie Hubbard dead at 70

I'm saddened to read that Freddie Hubbard died this morning of a hearth attack. My favourites include Red Clay and Straight Life, and his contributions to CTI All-Stars: Summer Jazz At The Hollywood Bowl. Very likely not the best of his body of work, but very relaxed and popular.

Updates

It may be of interest to you that Lightroom 2.2 and Picasa 3.1 are available now.

THE REVOLUTION CONTINUES

Today we visited the Saatchi Gallery close to Sloane Square and admired THE REVOLUTION CONTINUES: NEW CHINESE ART exhibition. I was bored at the Tate Modern museum, where I thought the exhibitions to be pretentious at best, and although the Saatchi Gallery is a lot smaller, we spent more time there. It was simply a lot more interesting to us.

Note that the admission is free for all exhibitions.

Lensbaby 2.0

 

Now that Lensbaby has announced the new generation of lensbabies at the Photokina, the old models can be found for a bargain. I paid less than £40 for my lensbaby 2.0, including shipping. If you are really interested in the possibilities of this lens, you better wait until they start shipping the new version but if you would just like to have a toy to play with, now is the time.

This Is War! Robert Capa at Work

We went to see the Robert Capa and Gerda Taro exhibition at the Barbican yesterday and were blown away by the powerful images. Quote: If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough. Read up on my trip report on my Aminus3 page.

Adobe Lightroom 2

If you are like me, you have already seen too many black and white photos with just one element, usually red, left in the original colour, so you'll have to excuse me while I try to unearth the different tools made available in Lightroom.