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This morning, as it was a clear night, I decided that I would try and see if I could take some star trails. I've never taken any before so I went out as a learning experience and to become more comfortable with being out on my own in the middle of no-where in the dark. I took the car to increae my illusion of safety and parked up on a small lane slightly to the north east or where I live. Although there was still quite a bit of ambient light around as it was a crecent moon there were still a lot of stars to be seen with the naked eye. Whether they would come out on the camera or not I was unsure of. I started off with some quick exposures, mainly because despite it being a back road and I thought, pretty deserted, one person drove past while I was taking pictures and one person rode past on a bike! My exposures in these two cases were not so much 'I'll expose it for x seconds', rather 'there's light coming, close the shutter'.

One of the cool things about where I work is that we sometimes get a random flypast of various different aircraft which is cool if you are like me and like planes. Last time it was Harriers and Spitfires. Today it was the Airbus A380. I went out onto the grass leading up to the start of the runway with some colleagues. The weather has been miserable all day with scattered downpours and dark clouds. Everyone was hoping that it would stay sunny long enough for a good view of the aircraft.

This is another panoramic image that I took while trying out my new tripod head. It was taken in April. I've fiddled with it to try to give it an 'older look' but it was mainly taken just to use my new tripod. I think if I was to take this again, I would get someone to pose in period farmer costume, maybe with one leg resting on the hoe and chewing a piece of straw. Anyone fancy dressing up for me?

It's been a while since I've updated so I thought I'd make an effort with this post.

Around the end of April I obtained a new panormic head and legs tripod combination for my camera to aid in taking panoramic shots so that they line up properly when you try to stitch the multitude of images together. I decided that I would head out in my car and look for anywhere interesting that I might try out my new 'toy'. The tripod needs setting up accurately for it to work properly so it was also an opportunity to test out the settings that I'd figured out to see how correct I'd managed to get them.

Yesterday, after spending the weekend hanging around my flat I figured it was about time that I stepped outside and saw so light that wasn't generated by electrons hitting a phosper screen. I set out with my camera gear and just went for a walk around the local area. I visited places that I'd already been - the Three Brooks Nature Area and the local lake but didn't really find any inspiration.

I've had some time to process some more of the photos that I took last weekend while out with my friend. While looking for a way up to Racton Monument we passed a church. The Sunday morning mass was just finishing as we went past so we left to come back later when we would be able to park. I was hoping that we might be able to get some pictures of the stained glass panels in the window through one of the other windows from outside but amazingly, when we came back over to the church after photographing the Monument, the church was still open and we could get inside.

Last weekend I visited one of my old friends from Uni down in Southampton. On the Sunday we decided we would go out for a drive and see where it took us. While looking for something that was listed on my atlas as an 'abandoned village' we came across an interesting looking ruin on top of a large hill. It took a while to find somewhere where we could park and gain access to what eventually turned out to be a folly.

I've been playing with panoramic shots and have yet to find a satifactory way to display them. Underneath the 'read more' link is a panoramic image of the lake in my previous post. If all goes well, it'll be displayed in an IFrame. It's only 3 shots and the image is 91KB in size (I've made it a lot smaller than the original). I tried the SPi-V engine but didn't find it very satisfactory. If you've got a better idea of how to display it let me know. I'd be very interested!

It's been a long time since I posted anything but for a good reason - honest! Work has been manic the past couple of weeks and I've been putting in more hours than normal leaving me wanting to just sit around and vegetate at the weekend. The end of this week calmed down a bit so I managed to leave on time Thursday and Friday therefore this weekend I figured I'd use my 'perkyness' to take my camera out into the local area.

This time last year, I decided to pay a carpenter to replace six of my inner doors so that I could make stained glass panels for each room. The outside of the house has UPVC double glazed units so no opportunity for me there to add panels. I love colour hence what some may think are garish colours in some of the panels suit me and DH lets me decorate with whatever colours I like. The panels for the six doors follow. In some cases the glass colours have had to be sacrificed in order to get a clearer photo and most were taken with a white sheet suspended behind the door a little way.

I'd always been intrigued by this design which in some way reminded me of an Egyptian motif on a tomb. I liked the flowing lines and the many colours I could use.