Category: Family

Family related posts; generally only of interest to fellow members of the Brown Clan and relations by Marriage into this mad house.

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Downside of Diets

We love cooking and baking. The upside of being on a diet is that one can get much more inventive with food. Our latest experiments have been with Wraps, and also a lovely Orange & Fennel Salad.

One thing we have been doing is cutting down on Bread and Pasta.

This has meant no home made bread. I think though I am going to change track slightly. When we want bread we have been helping ourselves to a few slices of cheap supermarket bread.

Instead of occasional bread of poor quality, I am going to make two high quality home loafs every couple of weeks to give me my bread baking fix.

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A normal week ahead

This week things are back to normal. In fact normal work life hit yesterday when my boss phoned as we had a major issue. So today was busy busy busy.

Last week was fantastic, such a great mix of activities. On the photography front there was Wedding and Landscape Photography, the Landscape Photography was more location scouting, the shot above taken with my Nikon Series 1 V1 and RAW file processed on location on my iPad using SnapSeed, if money was no object I would carry a MacBook Air, but then if money was no object I would be spending just about every free minute of my time doing photography.

As previous mentioned, we also managed some motorcycling in the North Yorkshire Dales, fantastic roads, fantastic scenery and we even got to practice some serious water crossings; on a bike; thats interesting!

A seven mile hike was also fitted in, following the river, from Aysgarth Falls, which is where the photography above was taken from.

We also managed to celebrate our seventh wedding anniversary, champagne was the order of the day. We even went for a 2.7 mile run before lunch in the continued effort to get fit.

I also received back, my first developed shots from my Ebony Large Format Camera. I had sent seven off to be developed and all seven came back spot on. There not photographic master pieces but at least they all came out and were correctly exposed.

I’ll be posting results up in the coming months, in fact one of the last shots I took was last months photography of the month, its not great but being film and an early shot on my long road to learning the ins and outs of Large Format Photography, its one that I am pleased with.

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Gym, Wii, Beer, oh and Sorting out Lightroom

In an attempt to tick as many boxes in my categories list as possible, todays blog posting is a bit of a summary of the day.

Its been a busy day at work, and it has been a tempting time because of all the cakes that seem to be around at the moment.  Until the afternoon I had managed to resist, but then after a lunchtime trip to Nandos (yes so much for the diet, but I did have only a 1/4 chicken, rice and corn), I found on my desk a Chocolate muffin.

Thanks Bill!

After a busy afternoon doing 3PAR Admin, (doesn’t Exchange 2010 eat disk space), we went straight to the gym.  Nothing in particular, just a bit of general weight work, and 30 minutes cardio, spent between the Cross-Trainer and the Rowing Machine.

This evening has been far more fun.  A rather nice real ale, and a bit of time split between playing bowls with my lovely wife Caroline on the Wii, and sorting out her data on her external hard drives.

Her old PowerBook just had a 60GB drive so most of her data was on a mix of old hand-me-down firewire 800 drives that I no longer required.

Well with her shiny new MacBook Pro Retina, I also bought her a new 1 TB usb3 drive to hold her iTunes and Lightroom Libraries.

So between beer, the Wii and moving data around, tonight has been rather a fun night.  It was great to finally get my hands on her new MacBook Retina.  I was amazed at the speed it could backup and optimise a Lightroom V4 library.  Very impressive.

While sorting out her data I also took a few moments to look through some of the photos she has took of me, I thought you might enjoy this one, its me and Chris Bennett shooting Herons. With cameras of course not guns!

Chris with his Trusty Nikon D3s and me with a Nikon D200.

Anyway, its getting late and its time for bed.  Now that I have Adobe Lightroom on her Laptop, i’ll be finishing sorting out her data then getting Photoshop installed and trying that.

I wonder what else I can volunteer to do, anything will do as long as it involves using this joy of a machine.  The new MacBook Pro Retina with SSD and 16 Gb of RAM, fast hardly describes it!

 

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Lincolnshire Show 2012

This week has been the annual Lincolnshire Show.

The county show lasts two days.  Yesterday we had fantastic weather and the show events in the main and secondary arenas could be enjoyed to the full.

We had show jumping, heavy horses, Knights in Armour, jousting; as well as many other things to see.

Today the weather was not so good.  In fact we had heavy rain showers through the day, but it was still very enjoyable.  We’re British!  Stout boots, heavy rain jackets, and a good hat was the order of the day.

It did mean I did not manage a lot of photography, but we did have fun going round many of the indoor stands.  Many things to see as well as the usual farm animals, we visited the local Bee Association tent, and met many familiar faces.  The honey and lemonade was quite a food highlight.

As well as Bees we are also interested in keeping Chickens, so a visit to the Chicken tent was a must.  A spectacular mix of breeds, who knew you could get so many different breeds of chickens!

Of course with it being the County Show we also visited the tent of the WI (Women’s Institute), I am not sure I got all the competitions but the floral displays were very impressive.

We finished the day on a high, with the falconry display, the highlight being the Peregrine Falcon.

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Blogs – Who are they for and what is their focus

I read a number of blogs, and each one is focused on a particular subject.

Many are about photography, or about photographic gear. Others about Motorcycling, Flying and cooking.

My blog has a number of functions. Primary it’s like my diary, I look back over time and see what has happened, it’s also a record of my photographic and motorcycling trips.

I sometimes ask what do I want from my blog. Most blog readers want a targeted blog detailing and being focused on there interests.

My blog while primary about photography does drift off sometimes onto other subjects. I hope you will continue to bear with me while I sometimes blog about subjects that may be off no interest to you.

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May The 4th be with You

It’s very silly and a bit geeky but people are trying to get today know as Star Wars day, i.e. May the 4th Be With You (may the force be with you).

It’s a very bad pun, but fun.

To celebrate we’re having a night watching Star Wars Movies.

Enjoy your May The 4th, how ever you spend it.

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a Good Run – but a Wicked Reward

After the ill health of last year, both of us are trying hard to get fit again this year.  Tonight marked a small milestone in that we managed a good long run and a personal best for Caroline.  Not very impressive for any real runners but for none runners like us getting started again a good and well achieved milestone.

After the run to celebrate we dropped into the fish and chip shop for a treat.  Well a little now again does you no harm.  Once home we had a shower and a cold beer.

Yes I know we probably added back all the calories we had just run off, but for now we are still in training to get to the level where we can seriously run some distance, three times a week and really get the calories burnt off.

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Birthday Parties

A quiet bank holiday for us, over the course of the last couple of weeks and the next couple we have a number of family birthdays so we all had a family get-together at Angela’s (Caroline’s big sister) house.

Cake and trifle was the order of the day; a good job we had both managed plenty of running this week!

 

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Hit and Miss – Frustrating Bird Photography

Wildlife and landscape photography can be a frustrating affair.  Saturday was our last day at Whisby Nature Reserve on our Bee Keeping Course.  We have now finished all the theory and soon will start the practical sessions once the weather is better and the hive activity picks up.

After the lesson, I headed out to one of the main lakes to check out what I could find.  With spring now underway I had taken with me my longest lens and my Nikon SLR together with the big Gitzo tripod.

As you can see, nesting in the reed bed I spotted a nesting coot, and when it moved I spotted it even had eggs.  Unfortunately when it moved and showed the egg, I was not ready for it and had too slow a shutter speed set and ended up with a blurred shot.

Disappointing but those are the breaks.  For every good shot there are thousand of bad ones.  Research, planning and knowing your subject are key to improving your chances.

Hopefully I will have better look next time.

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Your Local Bee Inspector

As most of the family are by now aware, we want to start keeping Bees and Chickens.

To that end we have been attending Bee Keeping Classes every Saturday Morning held at Whisby Nature Reserve.

Well tonight we had the chance to meet up with some members of the Lincolnshire Bee Keeping Association at a talk being given by the local Bee Inspector.

If you do keep Bees its well worth introducing yourself to your local Bee Inspector and also registering your hives.

You will get advanced warning of any crop spraying and diseases in your local area. If you think you may have a problem or just need advice they don’t mind coming round and giving you the help and advice you need.  This is a free service that all Bee Keepers should make use of.

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