We went in search of buried treasure. My daughter asked last night if you still got buried treasure. She looked a little surprised when I said I would take her to see some the next day. The Iron Age gold that was recently discovered is on display at the National Museum of Scotland for 3 weeks. So we had a very pleasant hour of a Sunday morning around the much reduced museum. Looking forward to its full return in 2011.
On a photographic note, if you have a Canon DSLR and you don't have the Canon EOS 50mm/F1.8 Ef lens then get that on your Amazon wish light right away. For a prime lens it is incredibly cheap and is pin sharp in good light. In the low-light, glass covered world of a museum it at least gives you a chance, albeit on very high ISO (if you can avoid the people who insist on taking reflections of their flash in the glass). All of the images below were shot with it.
Treasure ahoy! One of the torcs we went to see. I call this one 'Peter'.
I love these, very famous, chess men. Despite their age, you can see a definite 'peace out' message going on here. There is nothing new in the world.
Much to my daughter's disappointment I was unable to confirm her assertions that these were pirate cannons.
It seems a particular quirk of history or historians that most female royalty are always allowed the suggestion (Anne of Cleeves aside) that they were beauties. If this image of Mary Queen of Scots (on her sarcophagus) is anything to get by then, well, decide for yourself.
This eagle head is part of a grand golden lecturn from a church. I picked out this detail as I thought it looked entirely gormless.
Museums are at their best, especially for kids, when they are interactive. This morse generator is good fun. As is required, everything should start with "hello world".
...and then you can go on to explain how you send that message with one of these.
When you've nowhere to go and nothing to do the snow is a wonderful thing. Had a great couple of days out and about in the snow with the camera(s). Here is a quick selection of the photos. I've thrown in a (short) video as a wee test. It's Full HD taken with a wee Kodak Zi8, quality looks ok but the camera work is a little ropey.
Day 1 - Edinburgh and The Meadows
A fairly standard shot of Calton Hill.
A very snowy Arthur's Seat from The Meadows.
You can't really resist the perspective of the tree lined avenue.
Works well in black and white too. This is a Gorman-Holbert conversion.
Day 2 - Botanic Gardens
It's not easy to do this shot of the castle in any kind of new way. I tried. Didn't really work!
I saw someone taking this shot through the trees. So I waited until they were gone and did the same. Thank you unnamed stranger. This is St. Mary's Cathedral in the distance.
The wildlife was being very amenable. I saw this wee guy from inside the terrace cafe. I went outside to catch up and he not only hung about but set very close and very still.
This squirrel was happy to pose too as he had a pile of food to get through.
St. Mary's again, this time with dramatic sky in the background.
And here's a wee video. I need a steadier hand but the Zi8 seems to work OK and scores very high on convenience. Got a great film of the family snowball fight that broke out.
As a fan of the "end of year" meme, thought I'd start a new one with a look back over the photos I took during the year. Nothing more than an excuse to flick back through them all and have a bit of fun picking a few faves.
So, here it is, 2009 - my year in photos...
What to do in January? Hide in the hothouse of Edinburgh's botanic gardens, where you will find robins, also inside, hiding from the cold, but also posing for the camera.
What to do in March while your family are at the Spongebob show? Walk round Edinburgh in the dark pretending to be William Eggleston.
April saw a wee jaunt to London for Easter. Didn't appear to be anyone else there.
May say an almost unheard of appearance of the Pallas Cat in Edinburgh Zoo. You can see more zoo photos herehttp://www.edinburghseasons.com/2009-07-08/scott-liddell-vists-edinburgh-zoo-part-1/.
Sucata Split
Also, in May, the small matter of a drive across Europe to Croatia. I took about 1300 hundred photos. Here is a but a small sample:
"There's a Christmas tree somewhere in London with a bunch of presents underneath it that'll never be opened. And I thought, if I survive all of this, I'd go to that house, apologize to the mother there, and accept whatever punishment she chose for me. Prison... death... didn't matter. Because at least in prison and at least in death, you know, I wouldn't be in Bruges. But then, like a flash, it came to me. And I realized, man, maybe that's what hell is: the entire rest of eternity spent in Bruges. And I really really hoped I wouldn't die. I really really hoped I wouldn't die."
I actually quite liked it. Very pretty. And empty. Which is ideal if you want to take photos at night. You can see more of the Bruges shots here.
And here are three-quarters of @teamgi, actually smiling in Bruges to prove it wasn't that bad. From left to right, @thomam, @dougier and @aigwilson.
8 sad eyes looked backward down the hill as they headed to airport. There, below them, Dubrovnik, the jewel of the Adriatic and host of the Miss Croatia supermodel competition they stumbled into the night before.
Of course, it wasn't all fun, there as the small matter of getting an ageing Citroën over the Alps via the Flüela Pass. No, no, no fun at all. And we met some interesting people along the way...
like Morris Dancers...
...and gentlemen with large red noses.
And my favourite from from the Sucata trip is this one, an HDR shot of Split in Croatia at night. Go here to view it large with a black background.
The summer saw trips back to the Botanic Gardens...
...and many trips to the allotments as my Dad's new shed took shape.
September saw a cracking day at Leuchars. Amazing sun and planes.
Highlight of the whole year has to be the arrival of my wee nephew, here with his big lanky streak of piss Dad (love ya @khev:-) )
And the day after he was born, we nipped off to Italy and a fun week in Sorrento.
Following on from the unacclaimed post on Herculaneum, the inevitable Pompeii post rears its head. This was my second visit to Pompeii which is perhaps reflected in my slightly unenthusiastic collection of images or perhaps I was just deflated after a rainy morning in Herculaneum.
The thing that strikes you most on leaving Herculaneum and arriving in Pompeii is quite how much bigger the site is. And this, for the most part, is the largest source of frustration. In the requisite tourist trip 90 minute visit, you don't really see much and none of the further flung cool stuff like the amphitheatre.
This also means that all the thousands of people arriving in Pompeii each day are concentrated in pretty much the same area. This makes it permanently busy and you find taking photos of anything without a fat American in the shot is next to impossible. It also means that you often have to wait to get into houses and villas as it is full of, well, more fat Americans.
But before I appear too negative, Pompeii is a real treat. Just try to make your own way there, go early and have a really good explore. There is much more still to be uncovered at Pompeii but, like Herculaneum, most excavation has stopped in favour of preservation ( presumably from fat Americans ).
Sadly, no images of the, ahem, erotic art, I sped my young daughter past that at high speed.
Unlike Herculaneum, the streets are very wide in keeping with Pompeii being busy port full of bustling commerce, chariots and the like. Again, the Romans rather kindly made it easy for the pedestrian to cross the street without getting ones toga caught up in the effluent and horse leavings.
These photos are taken up the streets that the guides don't take you, hence the relative quiet.
To illustrate my point, I give you a fat American. I assume he was American. As you can see, even on a cold October day, it's a busy place. Don't expect to sit peacefully taking in the awesome Roman-ness of it all, your silence will soon get broken.
The forum at Pompeii is very impressive. A big football field of an area (not pictured here coz it was just too full of folk). At the north end of the forum is the Temple of Jupiter, seen here. That's Jupiter's head delicately placed on the bottom of a column like a talking head from Futurama. Wherever you go in Pompeii, the menacing presence of Vesuvius is always visible, which adds to the impact of it all.
The Temple of Apollo features some very nice sculpture. Although a smaller temple, the enclosing walls give it a good atmosphere.
If you were to ask the advice of Reeves and Mortimer on the tragedy of Pompeii, they would almost certainly say "If you're going to sit and suck your thumb will a volcano erupts behind you, try not to sit and suck your thumb will a volcano erupts behind you". As you can see from this photo, this is good advice (albeit the thumb sucking is entirely conjecture on my part). This is one of Pompeii's famous body casts, presumably praying. That went well.
For the purposes of balance, it's not just the Americans that were fat. Shotty! Volcano! Run fat boy run! ( a rare appearance from our intrepid blogger ).
If you have a DSLR and you've not tried doing some HDR images, you really should. It's a lot of fun. You just need to guard against getting carried away with it like me.
What is HDR? You ask... Have you ever taken a photo of some mountains and sky and either the mountains have been under-exposed and black or the sky blown-out and white? This characterises an image that a high dynamic range (HDR) i.e. there are dark bits and light bits and getting the camera to expose both correctly is a bit tricky. So, how you do conquer this problem? Well, the pre-digital way was to use grad filters and the like but now, with advent of digital, there are ways round this.
There are many resources online that describe how to do this so I won't drivel on here. Suffice to say that the way I do it ( and did in the images below ) is to shoot 3 images in a burst with differently compensated exposures -2, -0, +2. Later on I combined these three images in a program that can tone map them together. I used Dynamic Photo HDR.
A good place to start for more detail is the tutorials page on HDR Creme. HDR Creme is a cracking site dedicated to HDR photography. Also check out the HDR Group on Ipernity, great stuff there too. I'm not a huge fan of the extreme end of the processing, I try to keep things a little more natural.
When I was in Italy recently I pretty much shot everything in 3 shot bursts (the joys of massive memory cards). It is much better if you do this with a tripod but as I was on holiday and didn't want to bore the family with setting up (and I didn't want to carry the tripod) I did all these either handheld or perched on a flat surface somewhere. This is a selection of the HDR images I generated.
All can be downloaded hi-res for free by clicking on them.
Any traveller with a sense of decency will, on visiting the vicinity of Naples, decide that a visit to some Roman ruins in on the agenda. Most will choose Pompeii but many will find good reason to saunter along to its little brother in the 'cities dug up from under volcano stuff' stakes, Herculaneum.
The story is so famous it requires little re-telling here. Suffice to say that in AD79 property prices in the area of Mount Vesuvius took a bit of a tumble and Roman types were heard to say (in the Latin of the day) "shotty, big firey thing".
My visit to Herculaneum was odd in that I arrived on a day when the weather was more Ardrossan then Italy. As a photography type, this was a bit of a disappointment. A more flat, dull day you can't imagine. Undeterred, I clicked away and here are a few of the sites of Herculaneum presented for you in spectacular almostnocolortm.
Two things immediately strike you about Herculaneum (or Ercolano if you're feeling all local). The site doesn't seem very big and, in a weird way, it looks almost modern. In this shot you can see where the buildings of Herculaneum stop at the modern stuff starts, but it doesn't really leap out at you as you would expect. If it wasn't for the fact that arches are posh and expensive these days it might be less obvious still. This shot also shows how deep everything was buried. 16 metres in fact. The arches at the bottom were where a National Geographic team found hundreds of skeletons, the old coastline was there and the people cowered there waiting for boats to save them. Sadly...
There is much more to be uncovered too but it mainly lies beneath the modern city so, as our guide repeated a dozen times "this will never happen". I think she was miffed about this. Having seen the modern city, I can sort of understand why. There is a frustration with not knowing what cool stuff might be in there. Although, having seen the Roman public toilet in Herculaneum, there will be dull stuff too. But Herculaneum proves that things in archaeology aren't just, as Eddie Izzard would have it "a series of small walls"...
contains strong language
Although that, in many ways, is what makes Herculaneum stand out as an archaeological site is that it isn't just about visualisation based on the small amount is left. Because Herculaneum has much that remains intact. You don't get many 2000 year old interiors these days. Although there is this one pub...
Anyway, who lives in a house like this...
Well, I did in the 70's, that kind of wallpaper was cool then. This is one of the most famous interiors of Herculaneum, frescoes depicting Hercules himself doing hero stuff in the Hall of the Augustals, a group of men was dedicated to the worship of Augustus and the later Emperors.
And the fresco on the other side. The guide was very clear to say that people shouldn't take photos with flash. As you can see, I didn't. But everyone else there did. People simply don't know how to turn off the flash on their point and shoot. It has to be said the guide didn't bat an eye. I did. I let out a hurrumph not unlike the noise of the shutter of my DSLR set at high ISO.
And here's where they left their mark. Swearing in Latin, dead sneaky. This also shows some of the funky wall construction at Herculaneum. Weird mixes of brick and other stone. For a lover of textures it was great. Shame the light was bad. ( download some Roman textures here ).
As our guide was at repetitive pains to point (over our hard won and generally out of charge radio headsets), Herculaneum was largely a residential down of the fairly well to do. So the streets, such as they are, are very narrow. The pavements sit high above the 'road' surface for very good reason. Much of what was flung out would have ran down the middle ( stepping stones at crossing offer a safe way to cross). Again, this little street scene looks quite modern and be straight from the streets of Darrowby. One of the benefits of a rainy day is that you can almost get shots like this with no one in them. This is quite a busy tourist place, so getting great photos is, well, not all that easy to say the least. As you can see, I enhanced the AD79 feel of this shot with a woman in a red jacket with a brolly.
Another of the famous houses in Herculaneum is the House of the Wooden Partition ( or door ). Herculaneum differs from Pompeii in that wooden artefacts were preserved carbonised. This house also has a wooden bed, not unlike the one I slept in during my 1st year at University. This is the view out the door looking away from the wooden door. Again, Herculaneum gives the best feeling I've known of an ancient interior. I can imagine myself walking in that door and laying my various mobile phones on that little marble table before pausing briefly under the compluvium to catch the last rays of the day.
One of the frustrations of the guided tour is being dragged round at someone else's bidding in a large group. I only had a few moments as I passed through the amazing baths in Herculaneum. I immediately start to think that I need to go back and try to get more time on my own in these places. You don't really get time to feel what the place is like. For a short trip, a whistle stop guided tour is fine but I felt I missed quite a lot and a longer, free roaming trip with a map and a book would have been far better.
This is very true in these baths as there can be very little different from what it has been like originally. The amazing vaulted (and functional) roof is intact and everything of the Roman world is here, innovation, style, function, technology.
This fresco ( of Neptune and Amphitrite in the House of Neptune )shows the amazing level of preservation at Herculaeum and it gives an inkling into the current challenge of preserving all of this now that it is open to the elements. As at Pompeii, most new excavation at Herculaneum has been stopped so efforts can focus on saving what is there. The modern city above is causing issues and the elements will take their toll.
One of the most famous houses in Herculaneum is the House of the Deer, named after the statues of stags, seen here being ravaged by dogs.
There is a very simple rule of travel. Whenever you are within reasonable travelling distance of a UNESCO World Heritage site, you simply must go. This is doubly true for Herculaneum. Even on a dull wet day, there are very few glimpses into the past like it. I would definitely recommend getting a book and a map and making your own way round. The fact is, that I've only just been there, but know I should go back. There is much still to see.
Here endeth part 1 - who can guess what part 2 is?
I've waited many years to finally get to an airshow. As a younglet, I would always watch the coverage of Farnborough with Raymond Baxter and fuel my forever love of planes.
I wasn't disappointed. A blindingly (literally, when fully zoomed in, don't pan across the sun) sunny day in Fife and many great planes (and even more people and cars). Here's a short selection of some of the photos that what I took. Not the best, but I learnt quite a bit, I'll be better next time.
To download hi-res versions of these images go here.
The Red Arrows flying in formation with an RAF Typhoon.
Red Arrows in formation completing a descent. (as featured on the BBC Website)
The Red Arrows flew in and parked up before their show.
Boeings old and new. A B52 with two Boeing Stearman in the background.
An F-15 Eagle in the ground (with some HDR Action ).
Lancaster of the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
Red Arrows in formation.
And again.
The Avro Vulcan was ace. The highlight of the show came for me on take off. It lifted up fairly gently. I was zoomed right in and followed in up when it did an unexpected roll. It was very cool. Especially with a soundtrack of Barber's Adagio on the PA.
Been a while since I've done a photo blog post. So, I went to London for 6 days. It was disappointingly very dull in the weather department. Still, I had set myself a single goal of doing some night shooting as more practice before the forthcoming Sucata Split Run and, in particular, getting a night shot of Tower Bridge. Which I did. So that was good. I also wanted to try blogging images straight from Picasa. Which I did. So that was good.
Tower Bridge by Night Belsize Park Tube Platform A Shop Window on Haverstock Hill Phone Boxes at the bottom of South End Road
Who knew I'd find a valid(ish) reason to use that word. Hopefully I've not stretched it too far.*
For a good few years now I've been giving most of photography away online for free. I now have well over 300K downloads from two sites alone. People often say to me "you should charge for those, if you got £1 a time..." etc. And my answer is always the same. They're not 'worth' anything.
Which is a poor answer. They are 'worth' something, just not money. I dabbled in selling images on stock sites and you find that it is a whole different (and challenging) world. To even qualify for sale images have to be of a very high standard and, to get noticed at all, you need to upload a ferocious amount. Filed under "too much effort - not enough time".
There are countless free resources on the web. Some aim to monetize at some point in the future, but most are simply provided entirely free with no intentions of future wealth.
No obvious value can be put on these. But, to some extent, they fuel a large part of the life of the Internet. Look at it the other way, what if they didn't exist? What would happen if no one gave away their photos/services/information for free.
As as example, check out these three searches. These show where my photos have been used on three large content websites:
This is just a small glimpse. Free stuff permeates the entire Internet in this way.
What would these writers have done without access to free content? Would they have bought images? I get many emails of thanks for providing good quality free photos. Many people say that their work would be difficult/impossible without such resources. Whether it is freelance writers/designers, charities etc they all need free resources to function.
Another example is the LazyWebTools page refresher, something I built for myself to keep up with football scores. I put it online for free and am amazed at how much it is used. Before long it was driving insurance sales, being used in a Florida newsroom and used extensively by the Washington DC fire department (to name but a few, we'll ignore the hip-hop gang DoS attacks).
So, can we estimate the value of these 'worthless' resources? Do we have to? Can we assume that these free resources will always exist and therefore considering their worth is pointless?
I have a feeling that people will always be happy to exist in the underworld below the paid resources. Whatever the individual motivation, the free internet will always exist and therefore questions about its value are moot. But it's worth should not be underestimated. I'm sure you could pay an analyst some money to work out the value to the various industries. I doubt they ever do much for free.
In case you're wondering why I give away stuff for free. I've maybe got a better answer (although it may not make sense to everyone). Soon to appear on a T-Shirt:
"Will work for cheapies"
* look out for next week's post on antidisestablishmentarianism
It is entirely self-evident that the 14th August 1987 is getting on for nearly 22 years ago. And, it is certainly no great surprise to get pulled up short by the recurring realisation that things that feel like yesterday are actually a quarter of a century ago.
Yesterday, I spent a pleasant hour or so pottering round the second-hand bookshops of Stockbridge, largely sniffing out photography books. I came across a book called "One Day For Life". It is a charity book produced for a cancer trust made up of photos submitted by the public (and some celebs*) on 14th August 1987.
There are some decent photos in it, but it doesn't really stand out as a photography book; it does provide an excellent snapshot of that point in time. And this is the striking thing. It is one thing to perceive that time to be drifting into the past, it is quite another to see it looking like the past. To me, 1987 doesn't feel that long ago. But there it is, in print, looking like a bygone era. Which, of course, it is.
There is probably extra resonance for me. August 1987 was just before I started University. I was 17, skinny and about to leave Edinburgh to live in Glasgow. Here I am today, 39 and, well, fat. Still think I'm 17 but I'd guess I'm kinda quite different to that little scrawn now.
Makes me think that a similar project now might not be a bad idea at all. Anyone up for it?
* Gloria Hunniford & Terry Wogan et al - you get the picture
Over the years, I've started to become an avid collector of photography books. I love bookshops and the photo book section is always where I head first. Thing is, most books are mainly available online and a photo book isn't something that is easy to size up online.
So, I thought I'd try to review my photos book collection. If nothing else, it gives me a great excuse to get them off the shelf and flick through them again. There is never really much of a reason to look at them in close detail and it has been very pleasant to sit and look through.
I've only done two so far, but there are another two on the way (with more to come). You can see them on my photography site.
I had neglected my photo site for a while so, as it had started to pick up quite a few Stumbles, I thought I should freshen it up a bit. Cue orgy of tinkering e.g. I got rid of the horrible banner and replaced it with another horrible banner.
One thing I had been wanting to try for a while was to load the photos into CoolIris (formerly PicLens) for display. This was remarkably easy and the result is quite pleasing on the eye (although a few people have said that the display quality is a little reduce from the existing FlashRelief galleries).
It was made easier by the fact that the FlashRelief galleries were already setup with XML feed files so that conversion to Media RSS format was pretty quick (if anyone wants a quick way to how to convert FlashRelief XML files to Media RSS files give me a shout). There is also a publisher tool to make this process easy.
What was particularly nice is that I created a separate RSS feed for each of the galleries and then chained them together (with next, previous tags) to create one seamless stream.
Another one of the cool things you can do once it is all setup is drop the gallery in anywhere. Check it out on the photo site.
While the world is stayed generally Flickr obsessed, Ipernity has snuck up on the rails. I've been a member for a while and I have to say I like it a lot.
First of all, it is a really neat implementation. The UI is neat and makes great use of all the Ajax-y goodness you'd expect from a modern generation site. And especially a photo site.
In addition, there is a really good community feel and, being a European site, has far less of a US feel.
They have just produced this slideshow widget thing, so to celebrate the award win, I'm sticking it in my blog, showing my latest Ipernity uploads. After all, I did vote quite a few times.
You could argue that I should have categorised this under Writing. Either way, it is very amusing and so wonderfully, accidentally apropos!
Many thanks to the people at 101 Reasons To Stop Writing for using my image (and for making Stuart's day). For the record, I expect my next novel to be a triumph (if I ever finish it!).
And don't forget folks, The Beatle Man is available widely, now discounted on Amazon.
On 30th June 2005 I uploaded my first photos to morguefile.com. They were fairly uninteresting shots taken with my old point-and-shoot Sony. In September 2007, I started uploading a few shots to sxc.hu.
Across these two sites, I have now had over 250,000 hi-res downloads (with a further 820K views on MorgueFile, which could be low-res downloads).
All in all, pretty amazing numbers and worth taking note of herein. And certainly testament to the popularity of these two sites.
Had a play with TinEye today. It was really quite nice. Given that I have so many pictures littered over the internet, could be a very useful tool for finding out what people are using them for (aside from the kind souls that tell me).
I think the range of searching is still quite limited, but I was still able to find lots of my photos being used in places I hadn't seen before. Although I understand the idea behind how it might work, it is still pretty impressive.
Here's a good example. I didn't know that my robin photo had been made into one of those cool chimera things at Human Descent, here it is. I found this with TinEye (well, actually, mainly lots of reposts in Russia by people that stole it and put it on their site). It found it even though the image is quite a bit changed from the original.
And someone at HP seems to really like my fruit because it seems tobeinquiteafewplaces. So do Channel 4, in the guise of that odious jobbie woman. Star fruit, who knew. I think I might end up playing with TinEye for hours.
One last thing, I give you this example and ask you, dear reader, to try and work out what on earth this story could be about. Suggested translations of the headline please!
Edinburgh Zoo was looking fine in the sunshine. The new Budongo Chimp enclosure was very good (although not that great for getting photos). Still, did manage to catch some of the critters. As usual, click on the image to download a hi-res version.
There is so little to report it is a little embarrassing to even consider a blog post but I feel I owe my reader some output.
So, you'll have to put up with a crappy clip show of a post (and a really spammy title, just as an experiment).
Book Stuff Bit of a distribution delay; apparently the text on the title page was too near the edge. So much for buying a copy, seeing it was fine and approving it. I could scream 'racket' but I won't. I'll believe that this was a safe precaution to avoid issues at the distribution printer. But having to get another pointless proof? Well...
I've dipped my toe into some Google Ads in advance of distribution. Quite good fun, quite enlightening. I'll do more when things are ready to rock on Amazon.
Set up a Facebook page for the book. Go now, become a fan! I've got a design for a Facebook Ad ready to go too.
I've also integrated a PayPal cart into The Beatle Man website for buying signed copies. Two sales so far, thanks guys! **
Photo Stuff A lovely weekend on Islay didn't yield too many photo ops due to some dodgy old weather, but was quite pleased with what I did get. You should all go to Islay, its fab. Many thanks to A&M.
click to download full size
I finally got round to trying my new black backcloth too. It went quite well for a first time. Here's a new portrait for you all to hurl abuse at (if you haven't already on Facebook).
For old times sake, I shot some veg.
The new lens is a real peach. But the f2.8 one would have been better for:
Had a rather fun (but challenging) shooting the dress rehearsal of a stage musical at the Kings in Edinburgh. Was very different and great fun roaming round an empty theatre. Discovered that auto-ISO would be a very useful feature in low light. Excuse no. 1 for a new body. Thanks to Scott for letting me have a go.
Puzzles
Not long now until season two of Bimbogami is nearly there. Most of the puzzles are in the can and MorFF is busily coding the new improved site. We'll be going for a full synchronised launch so the teams can have a good battle. Should be fun.
** Late breaking news, that's 3 signed copies now! One is off to the US...
You don't expect too many benefits from the Winter Vomiting Bug. OK, the weight loss is nice but probably not all that healthy. No, in this case I refer to last Saturday when, sadly, my daughter had been sick so we were quarantined from visting people. Because she was quite well and energetic we went to the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. Turned out to be a lovely day.
As I'm currently fixated with HDR, I spent the today with the camera permanently on the tripod* (which is easy with so much space). The light was universally fantastic and I got some very nice shots. One of which made it onto the BBC Website (no. 11). I don't mind linking to them, always good to get traffic to new, upcoming sites.
Click to download hi-res images and see others in the same series
The HDR approach certainly helped with handling some pretty severe light at times. The low winter sun is great but some of the shots would have been impossible without the post-processing tonemapping trickery.
So, the vomit bug ain't all bad...
On Friday, I also found out that the BBC had used another of my images for a while. Very nice indeed.
In other news, I won "Best of the Week" for the 2nd week in a row on Ipernity. Thanks to everyone there. One of the Botanic Gardens series is in the competition for the hat-trick!
* I have a monopod now so I'm looking forward to trying that
Had my first go with the new lens today. Wasn't hugely successful but it was as flat/grey as it gets so I wasn't expecting much. With the hood on, it is a big old beast, that alone makes me glad not to have the 2.8, I think that would be too heavy.
I can see the benefits of having IS though. With it being so dull I was struggling to get a shutterspeed that would stop camera shake. I'm sure the IS version would have helped a lot with that, but would have stung me for a lot more. When I did get 1/125 or so, the lens was sharp as a tack. Hopefully it'll be easier on a brighter day. Or maybe I was just shivering, it was around freezing.
Anyway, looks like it is going to be a good portrait lens, which was part of the thinking when choosing it.
Ever since I started photography again there has always been this strange feeling of pressure. I would see a great shot and then worry about my ability to capture it well. On many, many occasions I have made mistakes, some pretty basic, and missed great shots or, at least, not grabbed them as well as I could have. This is probably more due to my "learn on the hoof" approach than anything else. I'm sure some real learning would pay dividends.
Maybe I need to do more basic learning because as of today, thanks to my lovely wife, I now how some more serious gear to play with. The number of excuses for messing it up have now reduced quite a bit.
Then again, even if I do get nowhere with it, I'll still get people saying "look at the size of that"...
Oh look shiny toys! I briefly wandered off the "getting the book publishing done" to spend a few fun days finally getting something together for scottliddell.net, the long since abandoned photography only site.
I got up early one Sunday morning and just built a very basic layout with much of the CSS I had already. It worked OK, I much prefer it to the fishy design I had been trying out. The photo gallery sofware makes it quite easy and hopefully fairly minimal maintenance.
Thanks to MorgueFile and FlashRelief it is already getting towards 100 hits a day, which isn't too bad.
In other photo news, didn't have as much success with this year's Everyman competition. It's easy to see why, some stunning entries this year, well worth a look.
And finally Esther, managed to shoot some shots for an attempt at HDR Tone Mapping. The results are below. Tone mapping was done with Dynamic Photo HDR, which seems to work pretty well. I don't blame it for the average results, a combination of my ability and the fickel Scottish weather are more culpable. This is a combination of 3 shots at f8, shot at -2.0eV, 0, +2.0eV. Black and white conversion was done using the Gorman-Holbert method.
While I'm here, just like to say a howdy and get well soon to my very good and much loved friend MorFF. Look forward to you getting well very soon.
On the occasion of my 100,000th download from MorgueFile, I thought it appropriate to share what I have learnt in the 2 years of my images being downloaded. This is not meant to be anything like a guide to good photography or, indeed, a discussion of how you shoot for micro-stock. This is about shooting for reference, taking pictures for people to use as much as enjoy. Obviously, this applies predominantly to the MorgueFile model of free reference photography, so this post could just as easily be named "How to get downloaded a lot on MorgueFile".
First of all, lets talk a bit about what I think "shooting for reference" is all about. Put simply, shooting for reference is about never seeing an image as a finished product, it is about creating raw material. These are not photos that you frame and put on the wall. These are for designers, artists to use, to build on, to adapt, to create something else with. Clearly, this is common to micro-stock and most stock photography.
There is no better example of this than the realisation that the most downloaded images are not what would be considered the 'best' pictures. Sure, good images get a lot of downloads but most likely only for screen backgrounds, art reference, that kind of thing.
The ones that get the most downloads are almost always the most useful. Probably the best way to look at this is to look at the most popular images and try to work out why they have been downloaded so often. So, here we go, top 4 most downloaded images.
1. Pasta Ingredients
There is no doubt that food pictures do very well. It is one of those universal subjects that you never can go wrong with. I remember when I took this picture and being disappointed that it was over-exposed and with blown highlights. It makes the food look a little plastic and unreal. And that shows you what I know. This is now my most downloaded image. On average this gets downloaded about 2/3 times a day. Well over 800 downloads now. I have to be honest and say that it is still not entirely clear why this is so popular. It would likely be rejected by every micro-stock site out there. The over-exposed, high key look makes it is a very bright image and this helps support the suggestion of fresh, healthy food. Also, I think it makes it work better as a small image. This is important on the web especially, like here. This shows how bright and bold works well. In general, it is always a good idea to try to add some brightness/contrast to your images to make them 'pop'. You don't need to be an expert with image editing software. You can use something as simple as Picasa, a quick 'Auto Contrast' usually helps a lot. The great thing about images like this is that they are very easy to take. The subjects are easy to obtain and you can eat it all afterward.
2. Blue Water
This photo brings with it much hope. This was taken on a dull grey day. I threw a stone in the water and clicked the ripples. It was still a pretty dull picture after that but with a quick contrast fix and a slight blue tint and it is in the charts at number 2. This is a great example of a photo of nothing that is useful for everything. There is no real subject, just a water texture background, a canvas that can be worked on in any number of ways. There is a key thing to remember here. There is always something to shoot. Whereever you go, shoot the sky, shoot the walls, shoot the floors. People will look at you funny, but these type of background images are very, very useful. Any sort of interesting texture is manna to designers. Again, you just have to make it 'pop'. Sure, if you get the light right you don't have to do this, but many good images can be made great (and popular) with some very quick fixes.
3. Christmas!
Demand for images is very seasonal. Its September now and Christmas images are already starting to download. So much so that this image may be number 1 in the charts before long. Most of its downloads were before last Christmas and it has lain in wait for this Christmas to come around. Again, its a very simple image. It doesn't have a lot in it but there is enough to know it represents Christmas and crucially it contains copy space. Leaving somewhere on the image for people to add text. Interestingly, the focus isn't so great in this image, its a little soft, the bristly nature no doubt confuses the auto-focus a little. Doesn't seem to affect the popularity but it does suggest that people tend to use these images at small sizes. A stock site would probably reject this as it maybe isn't perfect at 100%.
4. Plain old nature
Once again, the less you have the picture, the more popular it is. This image would certainly be improved with a little Photoshop effort on the sky, but its general-purpose nature makes it work.
People
This list is a little odd as a general rule will always say that pictures of people probably do best. I don't have a lot of them so my results are a little skewed. That said, this image has sprinted into the top 10:
This will be near the top very soon. You don't need to worry about seeing faces and model releases etc to get a good people picture. You just need to get an image that conveys a feeling or tells a story. The only problem with people walking away is that it can be a little melancholy. Thankfully this one is still quite a happy image.
Pictures of Things
Its not all about taking photo of nothing to maximise usablity. Sometimes you should just take pictures of things. After all, this is about shooting for reference. Very often, people, especially in education/schools just want a picture of a thing. These won't necessarily get downloaded a lot, but they will get downloaded every time someone wants a picture of one of those. All you have to do is make sure you get the best possible shot.
This doesn't get downloaded a lot, but when people need a picture of an otter...
Simple Rules
Whereever you are, there is always something you can shoot that can be useful to people. Just look around you and do the following:
Not like me to miss a stat milestone but unbeknownst to me, sometime today, I passed over half a million views of my photos on MorgueFile. That's quite a large number. Clearly it is a greater testament to the site that Michael has created, but thanks to all that took the time to click and have a look. Full steam ahead for the mill.
Described by Stuart as a lazy man's blog content, some more photo usage. I like to think of it as more of a thankyou for people who have taken the time to let me know how/where they have used my photos. So, with that, here are some more:
Website of the day: Mmm...tricky one, too busy today to get near the web, but I'll go for PhotoBox, got a photo book from there today, can't praise the quality high enough, the recipient was very pleased. And the UI to design the books ain't bad either...
Track of the day: Once again, the randomiser not on top form tonight, but you can ignore the all-round loveliness of Cherry Coloured Funk
Brought to you on behalf of Visit Scotland (unofficially)
Just back from a week in Lochgoilhead. Took quite a lot of photos, I'll be getting the good ones onto MorgueFile over the next week or so. Here's a selection of a few, click to download the full versions:
View of Glen Croe from "Rest and Be Thankful"
Boat on Loch Goil
View of Loch Eck from Jubilee Point on road to Dunoon
On an unbelievably clear sky (for Edinburgh) last night, took some pictures of the lunar eclipse from the back garden. They're not great, my cheapo telephoto isn't really up to the job, if anyone knows of a better reason to get one of these, I'd love to hear it.
Not done a photo blog post for a while. The dark and dreary Scottish winter tends to keep the camera in its bag. Anyway, it emerged into a lovely weekend in the West. There is a large selection of the shots from that weekend on MorgueFile. Here is a smaller taster, all are links for download etc...
Been a bit lax posting news of photo usage lately. I was inspired to post some more by news I just received of one of my photos being used on a billboard in Las Vegas. Pleased with this one.
Also, one of my photos is being used by Craig Zobel to promote his film Great World of Sound and the Sundance Film Festival, which is pretty cool. Best of luck to Craig at the festival.
Despite having more time off work than I can remember over the festive period, didn't do much photography. Only managed one trip out on a very foggy and cold Christmas Eve, went down to the bridges to see what they looked like.
I'm delighted to say I got an 'Honorable Mention' in The Everyman Photo contest landscape section. Got into the top 10 of a few of the 21 judges. The image I entered was:
Took a very rare day off on Friday, got up early and went to Cammo in the dark. Feet got very wet trudging across the field and it was a little chilly thereafter but I did get this picture of my favourite tree. Its up on a little rise which means you can get below it and capture a good perspective against the sky.
Later in the day, went into Edinburgh for lunch and wandering around with the camera, clicked a few things. Never easy to get a unique view on the centre of Edinburgh, don't claim to have succeeded either!
As usual, click on the images to download hi-res versions from MorgueFile.
Went back up to Harlaw today in the Pentland Hills. Not a great day for photography at all, windy, raining with only very brief moments of sunshine. Had some time to experiment with my new filters, mainly a circular polariser and and Cokin P grad filter. Not quite got to grips with it yet (as the sun went pretty quickly, but looks quite promising. Not many great images because of the overall greyness, but this one of sheep I quite liked.
( click for hi-res version available on MorgueFile )
I was reminded recently of CafePress which led me to remember I set up a shop on there once. The idea was to have T-Shirts with eye charts on them that were actually sayings/slogans. Obviously, being me, I did one design (and some people got them for Xmas) and forgot about it. I just logged back in tonight to found I had actually sold 2 and made $4! Goodness gracious, perhaps my career in fashion was curtailed too early.
While I'm on, some nice new Eurovision photo usage examples:
Website of the Day: Some shameless self-promotion, my newly updated Times Tables Tutor Track of the Day: Has to be Henrietta by The Fratellis ( oh, hang on, as that was publishing the great randomiser put Junior Kickstart by The Go Team on, that might be a draw tonight )
Going to start blogging the places that my photos turn up. Not going to go back and list all the previous uses, but here are some recent/interesting ones. It is amazing where your photos end up when you give them away for free.
Shot some fabric close-ups for Time To Change Fabrics. Good fun, lots of great colours, tartan seemed to come out the best.
Then used some great red fleece I got from the site as a backdrop for my first attempt and some Christmas stock shots. Nothing great yet, just experimenting with the setup of the background, lights etc. This one shows the fabric works well, even my if control of DOF wasn't all that great. I'll have another go later in the week.
Had a couple of hours in Edinburgh yesterday to run around with the camera. It was generally too bright ( between 2pm - 4pm ) so it wasn't very good light at all. That combined with there being lots of people about made it quite tricky. Was up Calton Hill and got some OK cityscape type shots of Leith like:
Favourite shot of the day was probably this one taken from near the top of the High Street, lots of interesting colour:
The closes of the High Street were quite tricky, there is only a very short time when the sun hits them at the right angle and I don't think I was there for any of them. I liked this one though, hopefully get this on the front cover of Iain Rankin's new book 'Rebus and the Killer Pigeon'
Note: full size versions of most blog images can be accessed on Morguefile (if they are links).
This is a post I submitted to the MicroStockPix forums. Seemed worthwhile to replay it here.
Have you ever asked yourself “What is a stock site?”. Let’s break it down to the basics. It’s a website that sells stuff. It has no supply chain issues and pays simple, minimal commission to its suppliers. What does it do for the money it makes? It provides infrastructure and marketing and a pricing mechanism that is attractive to the end customers. Stock sites would argue, for the sake of their own valuation as a company, that they have a massive asset of, in a few cases, over 1 million high quality images. They achieve this massive asset through the assent of several thousand high quality photographers who benefit from the easy-access market place to sell their skills in. This is simply a big numbers games. No one photographer could attract enough traffic on their own to sell enough of their own stuff independently. The many serve the needs of the few.Imagine, if you will, an alternative model. A stock site owned and run by the photographers themselves. If you took the top, say, 100, 500 (more?) stock photographers and got them to collaborate you could take a huge number of high quality images into the birth of a new site. (now, I know that this is starting to sound fanciful but bear with me, it’ll be fun at least). Assuming you could get all these prima-donnas to agree, the costs of setting up the necessary web infrastructure is not prohibitive at all, storage and bandwidth and getting cheaper by the minute. Marketing is easy. The exodus of photographers and images from all the other sites would sell itself. First of all, there would be no reviewing, if you're in, you're in, it could self-police quite well.OK, so how do you share the wealth? Well, first of all, you could probably make the prices a little higher. One exclusive archive means that all the individual sites no longer need to compete on price (of course, you won’t get all the photographers so you’d have to make sure you get all the good ones!). But, here’s the thing, rather than get paid a mere commission per image, each photographer would get paid a pro rata share of profit based on their contribution to sales. Its that simple. OK, before you say “hang on, but I make commission from 8 different sites, how can that be the same”, you miss the point. An exclusive archive is worth a lot of money, look how much stock sites are going for and they don’t even own the images! The idea is that you sell the whole lot as quick as possible to another competitor, again the money going pro rata to the photographers. 500 photographers, sell the lot for $10M?Then you just do it all again! OK, its maybe a little silly, but the fact is that stock sites do very little for what they get and what they are worth. You could never organise such a collaboration but if you would it would be very powerful. Never think that stock sites do us a favour, without us they have nothing. Literally, nothing.
lens then get that on your Amazon wish light right away. For a prime lens it is incredibly cheap and is pin sharp in good light. In the low-light, glass covered world of a museum it at least gives you a chance, albeit on very high ISO (if you can avoid the people who insist on taking reflections of their flash in the glass). All of the images below were shot with it.
