It may be more or less on the doorstep but I find there aren't many reasons to venture into Oldham, even in daylight. The former cotton spinning capital of the world has been spinning itself into serious decline at the foot of the Pennines since the industry moved on, making it a grim and unforgiving place at the best of times. Once in a while though a bright idea sparks into life there, however temporarily, like a dying animal twitching with defiant pulses of life.
Six projectors cast a 10,000 square foot image of these Flanders poppies and the word 'Remember' onto two sides of the otherwise hideous Civic Centre and the result is said to be visible over 40 miles away on a clear night. Whilst 40 miles away sounded like the perfect place to be, I dragged a minimal amount of camera gear there last night to grab a few quick shots before the lights go out forever at midnight tonight.
An entire generation made so many sacrifices and endured so much hardship to ensure we can live our lives in relative freedom today, whilst many of us have friends and family caught up in the current conflicts. Don't forget to remember, 11am sharp.
There will now follow an interruption of service whilst I turn my clinically dead Vista desktop into a clean and healthy Windows 7 machine. Time to hunt down all those application and driver CD's filed not-so-neatly around the office and hope my favourite open source apps are compatible with the latest OS. Once up and running I'll be using the new drive imaging and backup tools in Windows 7 to ensure a running start should the unthinkable happen yet again.
Unlike the Great Hard Drive Disaster of 2007 I do have my photo collection, music and most other goodies backed up but I have lost a little working file of unposted stuff, which may never now see the light of day. Hopefully that's not the tip of the iceberg... see you on the other side!
On my last trip through the area I grabbed a quick shot of the lovely
coastal village of Staithes just as the rain set in. The photo was
deemed good enough to make it into my Pentax Photo Gallery collection,
but as is usually the case I wasn't fully satisfied and ached to go back to do the job properly.
This time around there was little chance of precipitation, but due to
other necessities (like having to eat) the light was already disappearing
over the hills as we unpacked our kit from the car.
A bit of scuttling around to find our spot and a few test shots later, the last remnants of daylight had really fallen away and lights were coming on in the village. After some more considered, 'proper' photography than last time (using a tripod and everything!) I began the series of seven long exposures that were stitched, blended and tweaked to produce this panorama.
Job done? Nah, not yet. Maybe next time...
For a brief moment he was a God, conquering nature, towering over those around him, whooping with joy and freed by adrenaline from all the self-constructed restraints in his life. For a brief moment the world was everything he'd wanted it to be - exciting, thrill packed and with him in a starring role. In fact, for a brief moment he almost managed to forget that tomorrow he'd simply be 'that fat bloke in the office' once again.
Well, the clocks went back at weekend signalling the end of British Summer Time and the start of 5pm darkness, seasonal affected disorder and increased energy bills. It also means my trusty old K10 comes out to play, being as it is a much better long exposure performer than its younger siblings. I'm sure there are many technical reasons for this but it does mean I can't bear to part with my K10 until Pentax resolves the issue in newer models.
So what better way to dust off the old bruiser than a quick overnight visit to Whitby? The camera did great though I performed less well and need some more practice to fine tune my judgement again... for example I gave up on this startrail shot after around 14 mins thinking it was too cloudy for the exposure to work. Ooops!
I built it lovingly from scratch, creating a new look with new media, new code and new ideas. I even got to grips with Pixelpost to create a whole new blogging and gallery system. I was really proud of it but it failed the acid test... nobody I demonstrated the site to particularly liked it. Nothing wrong with the feel, operation or speed of things, just the deviation from black and orange to polar opposite white and blue was too much of a leap. Thus the original digitalCG V3.0 concept site was pretty much stillborn and I had to bin a very decent chunk of work to go back to the drawing board.
By now, work on cannbalising the existing digitalCG site code to become VictoriaSportscars was well underway and the resemblance was obvious... I needed a new plan and fast, as VSC is due online by the end of the month.
In the end I decided that discretion was the better part of valour, that I was fast running out of time and talent, that coding a new site from scratch just wasn't an option - after all, I'm no web designer and much of my coding is time intensive trial and error. I found a template I liked, made some modifications to suit my purpose and pressed ahead. The result has been live all week and has proven quite robust despite some serious testing by my friends. The galleries are still in beta but everything else is there, so feel free to go and browse through V3.0 of my site, digitalCG.co.uk
That bug of mine gets quite an easy life, all told. I don't use it on
a daily basis, I try to avoid using it in inclement conditions and I absolutely refuse to subject it to our terribly salty winter roads.
This is primarily because I once spent every penny I had (and beyond)
to get it into shape and am in no hurry to hasten the inevitable
second restoration, knowing the various sacrifices that
entails. However, I feel I already make a few sacrifices to run a second car and do like to get some use out of it from time to time, so once
again I took advantage of the unusually mild and dry October we're
having thus far to go for a ride at weekend. After
all it won't be too long until the colder, darker nights bring frost
and ice, which brings the deadly road salt out to play - each and every
opportunity must therefore be enjoyed before the onset of wintry
weather confines the old veedub to a period of hibernation.
The light up in the hills was particularly spectacular, bright yet overcast with rays periodically beaming through breaks in the cloud cover. It was pretty cold and windy but that didn't stop me grabbing a few more shots for the archive. This has had a little enhancement during processing (sorry Spike!) but in my reckoning/memory is pretty close to what the naked eye, being far more sophisticated than any digital camera, could see....
...is photography, so it's perhaps a surprise that I haven't ever really combined the two with any dedication or purpose. Bearing in mind my desire to revamp the old web galleries it was something I intended to address at weekend, so the bug found itself dusted off and propelled into the West Yorkshire hills for the Marsden Jazz Festival, with the intention of doing a 'proper' shoot as the day relinquished the last of its light.
Sadly, despite the lovely Autumn sunshine, relaxing entertainment, home made cakes in the church hall and fine ale from Marsden's own Riverhead Tap Brewery, an unknown lurgy was creeping into my companion's bones. A quick stop at the chemist to dose up didn't do much to help, so the decision was made to curtail activities and head back home. On the climb out of Marsden, after setting off a car alarm with the slightly loud exhaust, I did stop to grab half a dozen quick snaps.
'I feel like your other woman' she'd stated earlier, glibly. In fairness my attentions had been divided throughout the day, but if she was just 'my other woman' I'd surely have gone ahead and done the full complement of photos anyway?
I'm trawling through the perilously unordered archives at present looking for some shots I may have missed the first time round and it's all because a friend of mine lost his job recently. To cut a long story short he's sick of working for the man and is setting up his own business. For this business he needs a website and has always been a fan of how my own site looks and feels. Consequently a deal has been done with me providing logo design, web services and lead photgraphy.
My lovingly crafted and thoroughly tested site code has been appropriated and adapted for his use, giving me a very short timeframe until his goes live to do something completely different with mine - after all, every page on that site links to mine and I wouldn't want people to click through and think I'm a one trick pony, would I? A few false starts later and the new look digitalCG.co.uk is ready, all bar the galleries that is.
Which brings me back to trawling through the archives, looking for updates to my woefully neglected old galleries. I'm drowning in images and am my own biggest critic anyway, so if you've any recent faves that you think deserve inclusion, do let me know!
