One of the many nice things about working at the university is that it is just such a nice place to be. And when we get some autumn sunshine I can nip out of my office and take some pics.
This is the front door of our building.
..and this is the view the other way.
I'm quite proud of this picture. I took it in the Post and Telecommunications Museum in Copenhagen (well worth a visit and free). The panel was used by coastguards who were talking to ships apparently. I took three photographs, made an HDR version using PhotoMatix and seriously tweaked it.
I've used it as the backdrop to the Festival of Daring and Excitement poster, but I think it makes a good standalone shot.
If you've just had a wedding, christening or some other noteworthy event, then you might want to think about making a book about it. It's never been so easy to take pictures these days, most smartphones have pretty good cameras built in, but I rather miss the experience of seeing my work on paper. I can print out pictures if I want (and I do) but I'd never really thought about making a book.
However, last week I uploaded a bunch of shots to photobox, clicked a few buttons (a surprisingly small number) and paid a few quid for what has turned out to be a very nice souvenir of the occasion.
The book arrived today and I really like it. The printing quality is just like a "proper" publication, as is the heft and feel of the item itself. I paid a little bit extra for the "lay flat" spine, which means that we can use it in a proper "coffee table" role. The cost was not excessive. I judge the price of everything in video-games, and we managed to get two books printed and posted to Hull for less than the price of a game.
If you have done something special, or interesting, then making a book about it is actually very easy. The company we used also has an amazing repertoire of pictures, posters, phone cases, mugs and the like which can be customised with artwork.
If you are a student who is not sure what to get mum for christmas, a personalised book that tells the story of your last semester might be a good plan. Although I'd not advise you to put every picture you take into it.....
One of the many lovely gardens spread around the site.
Today we headed off into the Yorkshire Dales to take a look around the Forbidden Corner. This is part theme-park, part country gardens, part awesome place to explore. We'd heard good things about it from numerous different sources and so we were expecting a good time.
We got one. The weather was kind to us and we had great fun wandering round. Admission is by pre-booked ticket only, which means that the place is never overwhelmed by visitors, and there are lots of things that scare, intrigue and amuse. Plus some things that squirt water at you or, better yet, the people with you.
There's a cafe with nice food and a gift shop with sensible prices and Yorkshire memorabilia. I enjoyed it at my age. If I'd been six I would never have wanted to leave.
There is actually some blue sky in this picture. No. Really.
This is Orca the dredger. She'd make an awesome Lego model.....
Today we celebrate 100 years since the King George Dock was opened in Hull. To me this means a chance to go and take some pictures. We got the first bus out of Hull to the dockside and were there at the very very start. Which was nice because we got to go straight onto the boat and take a look around. I was trying out the ultra wide-angle lens.
I'm very proud of the fact that I didn't touch any of the buttons or levers....
The dredger was huge. It is basically a floating container that they take out into the estuary and fill with mud. Then they sail somewhere else and drop the mud off. The cabin was massive and had lots of interesting consoles and controls. I took pictures of all of them.
On the way out I did something by mistake that I plan to do again. I changed the colour temperature on the camera settings. This is the thing that makes colours look "right" in different lighting environments. Normally I leave it on automatic, but by pressing the wrong button I changed it to "incandescent". This is not really a problem, I can fix it later, but it does mean that you get neat colour effects sometimes.
Interesting. But wrong.
I'm not suggesting that you do this as a matter of course, but if you want to get a strange "other worldly" effect on your shots it is definitely worth a try every now and then.
We wandered into a massive warehouse that they'd set aside for exhibitions and bumped straight into Warren and the Seed crew. They were there to show off what Seed can do (which is quite a lot).
I'm not sure what Warren made of me, what with the Autgrapher pinned to my T-shirt and two cameras round my neck (actually, I am quite sure what he made of me - I just don't want to think about it) but it was nice to see them all there. At the time we turned up things were just getting going, so I think they were in for a busy time of it.
Waiting for the flood....
I had some lawns to mow and stuff to do at home (no - really) and so we had to head back to Hull. After a game of "hunt the bus" which went on for a bit longer than it really should have, we got to sit on the top deck at the front. Which was nice.
The Buddleia had a whole bunch of bees on it, so I set my little camera in macro mode and fiddled around until I got the picture above, which I'm quite pleased with. Then I got out my Lovely Lumia 1520 and got this by pointing it at the flower and pressing the shutter button:
I'm finding fewer and fewer situations where I need to have a proper camera with me....
We are having some quite nice sunsets at the moment.
In preparation for the Imagine Cup World Finals in Russia I've got myself a tiny camera that I can carry round at all times. It seems to do a good job of the Union Building.
I don’t know much about tomatoes. Mostly red, different sizes, used in bolognaise and on pizza, some discussion over whether or not they are a fruit. Oh, and in New Orleans they have a festival for them. It was a bit warm, but you could always cool down with a Bloody Mary drink. We took a wander through the French Market and I took a whole bunch of photographs.
Including this one. We have to head home tomorrow, which is rather sad as I’m just about getting the hang of “The Big Easy”.
If you are going to have a day off, I can recommend New Orleans as a great place to do it. First we went off to Audobon Zoo, which has to be one of the best zoos I’ve ever been to. We expected to spend a few hours there, but we ended up finding a day’s worth of stuff to keep us busy. There were all the usual zoo favourites (pictures of which will filter onto the blog over time I’m sure) along with some local specialities.
There’s an alligator lurking in this picture somewhere, I suggest that until you know where, you should rule out any swimming.
In the evening we went on a riverboat cruise which was rather splendid. There is something extremely civilised about sitting drinking a cool beer while they move the scenery past you and tell you all about it. The Mississippi is a very busy river, with oil, sugar and all sorts of other things moving up and down in huge ships.
Today we also had a rather good sunset as well.
We seem to be having some slightly nicer weather at the moment. So much so that the blossom has arrived. Which is nice.
Today was another of those strange occasions where it actually gets lighter in the house when you open the curtains. So we went for a walk around Hull Marina, which is looking very spry in the New Year sunshine.
This is a slightly processed image of the inside of the lock gates.
This is Princess Quay looking good.
..and this is where we had lunch.
Here’s hoping for another 364 days of sunshine in 2013.
Today started off in a very strange manner. There was no water falling from the sky, and a strange golden disk had appeared above us shining brightly from a great height. It turned out that there was also a fifty mile an hour horizontal freezing wind, but we didn’t notice that until we arrived in Hornsea and tried to open the car doors.
Hornsea Mere is one of my favourite places to visit. There is a cafe which serves tea and buns. I wasn’t expecting that to be open though, but I did entertain hopes that we could at least get in and take a walk around.
It was open. I’ve never seen the water so high. All the jetties for the boats were completely submerged and the wind was whipping the water into quite a serious swell. There were lots of birds there who seemed pleased to see us particularly when they found we’d brought some bread to dish out. They were completely fearless. They were not just happy to take the food from your hand, they’d try to take your hand as well.
Afterwards we took a walk along the sea front, and lost some pennies in an arcade.
The beach was very quiet, although there were a few hardy souls taking to the sand.
I took this picture with the Lumia 920 yesterday. With results like these I don’t think I have to carry my camera around everywhere now. But the mysterious thing about this picture is the way that the flags are blowing in completely different directions.
Strange eh?
Now, this one impressed me lots. What you can see above is a picture of a rocket that I printed using “glow in the dark” fibre from Faberdashery. I took the picture using my Lumia 920 in pretty much pitch darkness. You can just see the edge of another, non-luminous, rocket on the left of the glowing one.
The picture was taken hand held and I’ve done nothing more to it than a slight crop. Amazing.
I don’t think that Castle Howard is really a castle. But it is a great place to go and see. It is a country residence on a grand scale, the kind of thing it takes several generations of “unbelievably richness” to come up with. We’ve visited it on and off over many years and once saw Bryan Ferry play live there. That was a good night, that was. It is also famous as the place where “Brideshead Revisited” was filmed. Twice.
Today we went for another visit, and I took the big camera along. We also did something we never normally did when we took the kids. We paid extra to have a look inside the house itself.
This kind of puts our hall to shame….
This is what they have instead of a garden shed.
They seem to have lots of flat screen TVs, but they are all stuck on one picture…
If you are looking for a nice day trip (around 75 minutes from Hull) I can strongly recommend it.
It looks as if Her Majesty’s stock is dropping a bit….
Having a couple of days in London. I like the place, but wouldn’t want to live there. Had lunch at The Diner. Always have lunch at the Diner. I insist. And nobody seems to mind. If you want some of the best burgers in London, you should pop along.
Then went off in search of camera stuff and bits and bobs. Paid homage in the Apple store (I always go in there wearing a Microsoft jacket to see if it will burst into flames). The new Macbook Pro looks very nice. But at the moment I’m loving my Samsung Slate 7 (on which more later) and so I’ll stick with that for now.
I’m breaking in a new camera at the moment, so I took a whole bunch of pictures.
Bright Shades
Patriotic Bike.
Last year we went to Thwaite Hall gardens. And this year we went again. The weather was nowhere near as nice, but the grounds themselves were just as amazing as ever. I find it really hard to believe that this area of woodland, complete with lake, is just round the corner from where we live. I think last year’s pictures were better, but that didn’t stop me from having another go.
There are apparently some very rare trees here, but to me they all just look lovely.
One of the greenhouses.
Some time back I bought a couple of economically priced cheap SD cards. They were rated at category 10 (the fastest you can get) and were huge (32G). They were from a shop based in the Channel Islands who have sold me good stuff in the past. I can’t precisely recall their name, but I seem to remember that they are open all week.
Anyhoo, one failed shortly after purchase and the other has developed the interesting ability to turn filenames into guacamole and move datestamps into 2315. Having thought about this properly I’ve decided that perhaps I should have spent the same amount of cash on cards that were around a half (or perhaps even a quarter) the size but were from companies that I’ve actually heard of. It is very unlikely that I’ll wander out and take 650 pictures in a single trip (even assuming I’ve got enough battery power to do this).
I’ve come to the conclusion SD cards are one area where false economy will not just fail to save me money, but also raises the possibility that I might not get my pictures back home.
Today, despite the poor weather and the even nastier forecast, we headed of to Sewerby Hall, another of my favourite places in all the world. It has the most amazing gardens, as you can see above. We had a great lunch and then took a walk along the cliff tops.
This picture is probably more in keeping with the weather, which by now had gone back to horrid grey mode after the promise of yesterday.
Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.
