Photography – Page 4

Leeds Unity Day in Hyde Park

I went along to the Leeds Unity Day in Hyde Park on Saturday. It looked as if it wasn’t worth leaving the house as it had been raining all day, but it stopped around 1700hrs and the clouds dispersed and the sun came out. We were only there for an hour or so but I managed to snap a few photos. The light wasn’t ideal so they weren’t so great, but I managed to salvage a few with a good bit of post-processing using The Gimp.

As usual I’ve made them available in my photography folder.

I also submitted some smaller versions to IndyMedia.

15/8/2005 Add Comment

Scotland photoblog

We’re back from our weekend in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. It wasn’t very sunny until today, but it was warm and at least it didn’t rain. I took some photos, which I’ll share soon in a gallery. For now here is a few selections in the form of a photo blog. Just to clarify though, Scotland is not home to a large Meerkat and Macaw population. As far as we could see, they do not roam the small towns and villiages digging holes and chirping “hello”s respectively. There are just nice photos I took at Galloway wildlife park in Kirkcudbright.

Also, I purchased a new extreme wide angle lens (fish eye). You’ve probably seen them used to take photos of skateboarders and, um, perhaps rollerbladers. I plan to use it to do more interesting things, mainly as I don’t know any skateboarders. As a first start I present to you the following sample shot taken in Scotland.

24/7/2005 4 Comments

Summer solstice sun set

A Leeds sunset from the summer solstice evening. This was my first experiment with long exposures; I think this was a 5 minute exposure. I’ve tinkered with it using The Gimp to make the horizon more of a silhouette and enhance the colour of the sun set. I also removed a lit up powerstation in the foreground. I also originally saved this in the NEF raw format, just to piss Nikon off.

1/7/2005 1 Comment

Nikon NEF image handcuffs

Nikon recently released a new digital SLR camera named the D2X. They have their own RAW file format named NEF which can be used to save images with no loss of quality, allowing the photographer greater control of the photo once it’s on his computer. Nikon provides software to load NEF files, but only for the Windows platform. The NEF file format has since been reverse engineered by various people, which allows the use of it in other non-Nikon and non-Windows software.

Nikon did something underhand with this new camera. They now encrypt the white balance data in the NEF file, the intention being to prevent reverse engineering. Remember, this is meta-data about photos taken by the photographer; the creator and copyright holder of the photo. Nikon seem to think they own it this meta-data.
(more…)

24/6/2005 5 Comments

Post box

I noticed this scene on my drive to work and waited for a few days for the sun to come back before photographing it. The sun never did come back so I snapped it anyway, in case the flowers died, or the post box was blown up as part of some terrorist plot (of which there are so many here in the UK). Due to the blue being so distinct from everything else I can trivially change the hue of the flowers independent of everything else. They look good in yellow and purple, but I’ve left them as evolution intended.

17/6/2005 2 Comments

Blue tape

I took this at the site of a relatively modern building that had 80-90% burned down in West Yorkshire. I had to sneak around all the barbed wire fencing. It seemed to be some kind of storage facility for car cleaner stuff. There were hundreds of thousands of burned blister backs of wax cream or something, and rolls of this blue plastic, and lots of burned metal including a burnt out fork lift truck.

10/6/2005 Add Comment

Fig leaf

This is the first photo of my photo blog. I’ll just be selecting a good photo, probably enhancing it electromonically, and publishing it here. Some will be new photos (as with this one) and some may be taken from my collection, but they’ll all be my own. Click the thumb to see a larger version. If you like my photos and want to use them for any reason drop me a line to john@johnleach.co.uk and I might provide you with a full resolution version.

4/6/2005 Add Comment

Compact flush card

One of my 256MB compact flash cards containing some photos went through the wash. It was a colours cotton wash at 40 degrees with a spin cycle at the end and then into the tumble dryer for 60 minutes or so.

It still seems to work perfectly, though some of the colours in the photos look a little lower saturated (read: ‘washed out’). If this were a floppy disc I’d expect extreme data loss (though, at 1.44MB, that’s less that one lost photo), and when I’ve washed CDs before, they were completely destroyed.

I bet if this were a microdrive it’d be broken too.

12/4/2005 1 Comment

Photos from Amsterdam

A few photos from around and about Amsterdam, but the majority are from the ARTIS zoo. I’ve uploaded them to the usual place. You can see how tiny my hotel room was, Tux advertising ice drinks, and this bear showing the crowd what he thinks of them.

The zoo was rather depressing. Many of the animals had very little space and looked so sad. So many people were tapping on windows and annoying them too (even using flash photography in the aquarium). This guy was a complete dickhead. Clicking his fingers and shouting at animals to take photos of them. His horrible daughter had learned the same behaviour from him. I clicked my fingers and shouted until he turned around and then I took a photo of him myself. He didn’t get it at all.

I’ve got more stories from Amsterdam which I’ll write later.

5/4/2005 Add Comment

Cute Little Image Gallery Script (CLIGS)

The Cute Little Image Gallery Script (CLIGS) is a PHP script that autogenerates a nice html index for a directory full of jpeg images. I wrote it to run my photography galleries and have released it to the world under the Gnu Public License (GPL). Download it and give it a bash (needs some setup and Apache trickery to get going).

20/3/2005 Add Comment

New photos, Armley and new lens test

I’ve uploaded some new shots around Armley (plus one errant one in Bradford of my Sister).

I also bought a cheap-ass telephoto/macro lens to try sate my close-up needs. I’ve bunged up a few shots I’ve taken with it. It’s a Sigma 70-300mm APO (f/4 – 5.6). f/5.6 is useless at 300mm in dim light, so this is a strictly bright daytime or flash lens (though the flash is obviously of no use with anything other than close-up at 300mm). The auto-focus drive is slow and noisy too. Compared to the fast and expensive Nikon lenses of equivalent focal length, this doesn’t seem bad for the hilariously low price (though to be honest, I’ve not used the expensive lenses). I’m not experienced enough yet to comment on sharpness or colour saturation or anything. I’ve not noticed any obvious problems yet, and no obvious lense distortion, but I really dont’ know what to look for yet.

Also, me rubbing shoulders with the rich and famous.

18/3/2005 Add Comment

New photo gallery

I’ve written a new photo gallery system and am now using it for my photos. I’ve also uploaded a huge back catalogue of photos. Take a peek and tell me what you think.

The best place to start might be the yearly selections.

There are lots of new snaps up, such as when a bunch of IRC buddies came to visit, when I visited James in the USA or various drinking times.

I’ve been to loads more places than I’d previously let on, such as Budapest, Brimham Rocks and recently York. Lots more photos around Leeds and Bradford too.

Lots of portaits too. Some of me in all my glory too. And cats.

A few more to come, including Prague, which I seem to have missed.

4/3/2005 1 Comment