Author: Richard

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Whitby Goth Week

A day out at Whitby.
It’s the start of Whitby Goth Week and I am not sure but the Photographers may just out number the Goths.

As always the outfits are fantastic and whole family’s get involved.

With so many Photographers, Goths, Steam Punks & Emo’s not to mention lots of bikers clad in black leather (not us this time thou), I am not quite sure what the ‘Normal’ holiday makers made of it all!

If you are going to Goth week during March or later on this year in the autumn, remember to treat everyone with respect.

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Ryedale Folk Museum

Today we had a trip across the North Yorkshire Moors and spent several hours at the Ryedale Folk Museum.

William Hayes’s (1871-1940) Photographic Studio has been moved there. It’s the oldest daylight lit studio surviving. His studio still has his large format camera with 7.5 inch portrait lens and his dark room is also there.

The studio was set up in 1902 in Monkgate, York, and moved to Hutton-le-Hole in 1911.

In many ways its not much different todays studios, a selection of cloth backgrounds, props, but instead of flash, a side wall of glass and a glass ceiling.

The Museum opened in 1964, and the original exhibits comprised of the private collections of Wilfred Crossland, Raymond Hayes and Bertram Frank.

 

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Evening Meal

If you are ever near Lastingham, try the Blacksmiths Arms, good beer and fine food.

 

Game terrine starter, belly pork, black pudding and a bottle of fine red wine. Glad I was not having to drive.

 

If you are ever in the area do pop in to the church.  St Mary’s has a wonderful crypt well worth a visit.

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a long weekend of photography

We have decided to have a long weekend of photography.

We will be spending Friday to Monday in North Yorkshire and we will be visiting as many local National Trust and English Heritage properties as we can.

For you gear heads we will be packing just two Digital SLR’s with a Nikkor 12-24mm f/4 DX on one and a 24-70mm f/2.8 on the other.  We will also be packing our Medium Format Kit (Hassleblad) and a good heavy tripod.

I’ll be blogging when I can using WordPress for iOS using the iPhone, but due to the very rural nature of the area’s we will be stopping in, Wi-Fi and even a mobile phone signal for voice, never mind data, will be extremely limited, so i’ll be updating these posts during the following week and uploading more photographs.

Friday consisted of a trip to Nunnington Hall, a rather fine country house, with lots of willing Peacocks all trying to impress.

I had a Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 on the camera but a long lens was fortunately not necessary as the birds were extremely tame. In fact one Peahen walked up so close I thought she was going to peck the lens.

This weekend will also be the time I’ll be testing GPS4Cam. A piece of iOS software for the iPhone which Chris Bennett uses and has reviewed on his site.

I’ll possibly not get round to posting many photographs until Monday so I’ll update these posts then.

Posted using WordPress for iOS

Updated

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On the road again

Well, really starting to feel much better now.

Last Saturday we took the big GS out for a spin, just a quick hour long trip to get some quilting fabric for Caroline.

It really exhausted me but there was no problems.

Wednesday I was feeling really good, nearly normal in fact so we commuted into work on the bike.

Boy did that feel good. A lovely day, passing all the cage (car) drivers stuck in traffic.

Today was back in the car. Very tired and not up to riding the bike.

Still the doctor did say 6-12 weeks to get over this, we are half way now and I am so much better.

Might just have to plan a weekend motorcycle trip for the summer, that will be something to look forward to.

To all you motorcyclists out there:

Keep it sticky side down.

 

Posted using iOS WordPress from my Apple iPhone

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English Heritage – iOS app

We are members of both the National Trust and of English Heritage.

Now the National Trust have for some time had an excellent free iOS app for finding places to visit nearby and getting information about them.

Finally English Heritage are also joining the 21st Century (that’s nearly funny) and are releasing their own app, due in April.

Hope it’s free like the National Trust App.

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WordPress for iOS

Just a quick note to let you know an update for WordPress for iOS has been released

Using it now to post this. Interface is improved and I look forward to trying it out in anger.  The previous version did crash fairly often and once even lost me a post that I had previously posted.

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Standards – a quick rant

When it comes to standards and companies not following them, I could have a good old rant about many top companies, computer and software companies being the worse.

The other day a photographer friend of mine was demonstrating his new photo editing software.

While key wording and adding other important metadata, we wondered where it was writing this data.

As I suspected, it was using a sidecar file to accompany the jpg’s and raw’s.

What really rilled me was instead of using an xmp sidecar file (an open standard developed by Adobe) which many other software programs can read, not just Adobe Lightroom or Camera Raw, it uses it’s own proprietary format.

Why!  Lock in, thats why, but the worry is, will the companies own future software support their own proprietary formats, past history suggests not.

From Wikipedia:
XMP sidecar files. For file formats that have no internal support for XMP data, the data is stored in separate .xmp files with the same base file name. Many photo cataloging applications have support for this file format.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Metadata_Platform

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AeroPress – a new way of coffee making

For the last few days I have been trying out my Aeropress coffee maker.  Not exactly an expresso but not a french press either.

I have been using the reverse method to make coffee, and I have to admit, it does make wonderful coffee, and it is ideal for an office environment.  Easy and quick to use and very easy to clean afterwards.

I can definitely recommend it. I think I like the coffee from it better then from my home filter coffee machine!

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The Fine things in Life

As anyone who knows me will testify I love the finer things in Life.

  • Particularly good quality red wine
  • Fine Whiskey
  • Chocolate
  • And of course coffee

We had to pop into the nearest big city today, as I had another hospital appointment to check on how I am doing, and we took the opportunity to indulge. Two large Lattes and two Cinnamon rolls from Starbucks.

Back to the diet soon I think!