Quilt Show

So the last two weeks has been a bit blogging light, so what have we been up to?

Spalding Quilt Show

Well its been a mix of trips to things we enjoy, Quilt Shows, Fabric shops, a small motorcycle tour as well as lots of work done back at home.

We started the holiday with a trip to the quilt show held at Spalding in Lincolnshire. As is usual at events like this there are no photography rules to prevent people stealing the copyright of some of the quilt designs but there are still opportunities for a few photographs.

While Caroline went round the stalls I practices my candid photography, getting a few nice shots in the process.  Camera of choice was my little Leica M8 with the Summicron 35mm lens, which on the Leica M8 is a 46mm field of view.

No Blog Tuesday – and possibly Wednesday, Thursday and Friday

Steep Hill GigIts sometimes tough, sometimes very enjoyable, but when I started this blog I set the rules that I would blog at least once a month, and where possible four times a week; Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays.

Well so far I have been pretty good and I have managed to keep to my rule.  For the rest of this week though I’ll not be blogging.  The reason is that we are moving.

No not virtually but physically.  Currently we live in a lovely village just outside Lincoln but it does lack room and when ever I need to use a studio I have to hire a space, either in Lincoln or my favourite studio in Worksop.

Studio Complex Lighting Setup
Studio Complex Lighting Setup

Well this week we are now moving to another lovely village near Lincoln but this time, we have room not only for my office, but also for my Photographic Studio; and also for Caroline’s Craft Studio.  It will be a while before we have everything fully setup, and will be welcoming clients and models to our new place but this week is the start.

So lots of hard work ahead but great times are ahead.

Bikes & Bread

Today we have had the day off and have enjoyed ourselves just being able to do as we pleased.  This meant a pleasant motorcycle ride round parts of Lincolnshire, and included a trip to Wisteria Patchwork.   They had a sale on this week, so some fabric indulgence was a must for Caroline.  Then we headed further North to Kirton in Lindsey, the weather had turned colder at this point so we stopped at Mount Pleasant Windmill and enjoyed some of their warming soup.  I also took the opportunity to stock up on some fresh flour for my own bread making.

We then went home as dark clouds were heading our way.

Once home I proceeded to make some fresh bread while Caroline did some sewing, making some more quilt tops.

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Forgive the poor quality shot above, low light and shot with my phone, never conductive to good photography.

A cracking day out

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Did you get the Wallace & Gromit quote, now I will admit this is a very tenuous link but we are about to go out to the local village pub and we are are both looking forward to a fine cheese board.

Now what has that to do with photography. Well nothing really, but I am in a silly mood, and it has been a cracking day out.

The early part of the morning was spent photographing Blythburgh Church, in the glorious autumn sunshine. I hope to have captured a number of rather nice medium format images. There were one or two shots that would have been ideal for either a large format technical camera with full movements, or a Nikon D3x with the tilt & shift wide angle. Unfortunately I only had my medium format Hasselblad and Nikon 1 to hand.

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The afternoon saw us visiting Wickham Market, they have a nice tea-shop, but far more importantly they have a quilt shop, where Caroline was able to indulge in some fabric buying.

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To finish the day, we headed back to Southwold where we photographed the Pier as the sun quickly set. It was quite challenging, the meter readings were changing by about a stop a minute, and shooting medium format, with filters and a handheld spot meter is not the fastest form of photography. Under the rapidly changing conditions I only had time for one shot before the best of the light disappeared.

January Holiday at the Seaside

A New Year. First off we got back into the gym, we had not been much due to the colds we had been getting. We also had our first holiday of the year. Whitby and Southwold are always are top choices for breaks away.

We decided on Southwold and also so a day trip down to Quilters Haven in Wickham Market, and Sew-Sew’s quilt shop in Bungay to buy lots of new material for Caroline’s quilting projects.

After we got back we also had a family get together for Sofia’s First Birthday.

iPhone Launched in UK and a Trip to see the Seals

Caroline worked hard to finish another quilt this month which see is calling ‘Minerva Spools’.

The Bike GP season finished. Poor Rossi came third in the championship. If not for engine failure in the last race he would have come second. You cannot fault Ducati and Casey Stoner they had a great package. The Ducati has always been fast but now it handles too!

Richard is starting to think about his next bike. Maybe next year. We took a BMW R1200GS out for the day a few months ago and really liked it.

This month was also gadget month. Richard is very lucky in that he gets to play with all the latest gadgets, Smart Phones, Windows/Palm PDA’s. He has always liked Psions but as there not available any more switched he switched to Palm, occasionally replaced with Windows Mobile.  Richard has a Windows and a Symbian 9 mobile phone and is testing a new Blackberry for work. The Windows device makes a great GPS as we have the TomTom software on it but as a phone its not so good. The Symbian device is good and stable but is slow. The blackberry for companies is certainly the best mobile email device and from a IT perspective its very supportable.

The big event in smart phones for the UK is that the Apple iPhone was released this month. We had both managed to test one at work for a week many months ago and was very impressed. It may not have all the features of a Windows smart phone or say a Symbian device, eg Nokia N95, but the key point is, it actually works as a great phone, has the best browser in the business and the OS is very good. All it needs for us, to make it perfect, is the ability to edit MSOffice documents, support Microsofts push email standard and run a Citrix client. So lets hope third party developers meet our needs. Lets see what happens in February when the Software Developers Kit is released.

So yes Richard bought the Apple hype and got himself an iPhone. Yes it was expensive. Not how you think, but that Caroline insisted on getting an iPod Touch. Only fair don’t you think. At least now we don’t have to worry about Christmas presents for each other!

We also made a quick visit to the coast. At Donna Nook the seals were giving birth. Lots of photographs were taken.