Family, Photography and other misc news
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.
During my recent research into studio flash equipment, I came across an announcement by Elinchrom. They are planning to release an app to control your Elinchrom Flash heads.
No real details yet but another posible reason for a photographer to have an iPad around.
Oh and don’t forget, iPad2 released today; at least in America. Oh well just have to wait. Still tempted.
Decisions, decisions:
iPad2 or GF1; We will just have to see.
With winter well and truly arrived, this morning saw us pulling on our winter thermals & fleeces to go under our biking outfits.
I took pity on Caroline, and allowed her to wear my BMW heated waistcoat. The full winter gloves and boots also came out for today.
One we had negotiated the first half mile of ice and snow covered back roads to the village centre, it was an easy ride in on clear roads.
That first stretch was the hard part. Not the weather but other road users. One car driver pulled out on us in a situation they could clearly see was not conductive to using the brakes. I was not travelling very fast, less then 10 mph so was able to roll to a halt without risking the brakes on the ice. Less then a minute later they decided to just stop in the middle of the road with no warning, I gently overtook them. The worse the weather the worse some people drive!
Unlike yesterday today was relatively warm, the temperature reached -0.5C. We felt warm and it was an enjoyable commute into work.
Photo taken and blog posted from my iPhone.
Maybe not exciting for Apple iPhone users but a big update for iPad users. I know a lot of photographers now using the iPad as their in the field back up device. A great way of backing up and reviewing your images, before getting back to the office or hotel room to process them on your laptop.
IOS 4.2 brings all the advances that the iPhone 4 has to the ipad. Available to download today.
Update: Mac Users, don’t feel left out, a Safari update was also released today.
Well as I reported from my iPhone the trip went ahead, more of a scouting trip then an actual picture taking trip, but I got the feeling that my picture will work.
View Larger Map
The low sun and dramatic contrast made metering the scene some what challenging but I got some good snaps and hopefully I can go back when the sun is in the right place and the weather provides a little more dramatic interest!
Note the squirrel, I was all setup slow shutter speed to shoot the landscape when behind me on the bridge a squirrel ran across, I just managed to grab a shot.
Photo’s here taken with my D200 and a Nikkor 12-24mm f/4.
Not a full update, but the weather gods smile and a fine dawn greeted us. A quick breakfast and out to the planned location.
Shot from my iPhone.
Sent from my iPhone.
My photography breaks down into two main topics.
My studio work is very planned. A studio is like a painters blank canvas. When I plan a studio shoot, there is so much to think about.
A studio shoot for me its the ultimate in photography. Everything can be pre-visualised and planned to the nth degree.
I would like to be able to say my landscape and architectural shoots are planned to the same degree but I am afraid not. Generally these type of shoots are taken on holidays, and I just happen upon these views and try to make the best of them.
This is something I would like to change, and the photography course I am booked on in December I hope will bring more planning and pre-visualisation to this part of my photography.
To this end tomorrow, subject of course to the British weather, i’ll be heading out to try and capture an Autumn scene. I have the image in my head, and with good planing, and of course local knowledge and the internet I hope to get the image I want.
So Saturday morning will see the chief photographer of RBPhotograpic heading out with his medium format camera gear and hoping to get the image in his head commited.
Equipment List
I may also take a digital compact, or my iPhone to snap a few reference shots to post tomorrow, to show you what I had in mind.
In case your wondering it involves, a lake, low winter sun, and lots of trees. Heres hoping for good weather.
How to manage your WordPress blog remotely.
Well I always have my iPhone with me so that seemed the best way. I had a search on the iTunes application store and soon found a WordPress ios application. It was free so I downloaded, installed and gave it a whirl.
Well I spent a while not getting anywhere, like many other users.
What they don’t tell you, or at least I never saw it; you have to enable remote access in your blog first.
It’s easy to do, just log in, select settings, then writing, and at the bottom enable the access. Easy when you know how.
Sent from iPhone during lunch.
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.