Photos
What Adobe is Still Good At
I sometimes think Adobe is fighting the wrong fight. The current spat between the two over Flash is well documented (and I rather like Jeff's take on it). But Adobe's real strength, to me, is in its Creative Suite product, and Photoshop in particular. And last night I had my first chance to play with the latest version of it. I've been looking forward to the new Content Aware abilities (see posts passim), because I'm in the process of digitising and restoring a whole bunch of old family photos.
Here's what I started with last night:
Faded, damaged, parts of the edges missing. It's not in a terrible state, but it would be pretty time-consuming to restore under previous versions of Photoshop.
30 minutes later, extensive use of the content-aware tool and this is the result:
And, you know what? I'm pretty pleased with that. I intend to go to work with some more challenging images in the next few days.
Baptismal Photos
I've been a wee bit busy of late - playing catch-up at work, after a few days off sick, and away for a christening at the weekend. Here's a few photos from the event in lieu of a real post:
50mm of Fun
So, based on many rave blog posts and articles in magazines, I treated myself to a 50mm f1.8 lens for my Canon DSLR, and I've been having fun out and about with it. Fast shutter speeds, really shallow depth of field. Just great. I see why people rave about these things.
These images were grabbed in my mother-in-law's back garden last week:
There's more to be found over on Flickr.
Film Finis?
I promised you an explanation of my current photo project, didn't I?
It was inspired (or, more accurately re-inspired) by this post over on Lemonlight. Angie's evocative pics reminded me of the particular texture of film and the images it produces. I went essentially 100% digital in my photography around late 2004, and I've had a bunch of unexposed, unused film lying around ever since. I'd been meaning to shoot them, rather than seeing them going to waste, and see what the results are.
To add a twist, I've decided that I can only shoot things I come across through the course of my day - I'm not going to go anywhere or do anything special to find these photos.
The image in this post, and the previous ones, were all shot around RBI's office in Sutton on, of all things, a roll of WH Smith colour negative film - which I have a suspicion was Mum's rather than mine. Most of the pics are straight reject, but a small handful of the scans are going into my Aperture library as a record of the texture of my life right now.
On to the next roll…
HipstaWalk #1
Spring finally seems to have arrived in London, so I took the opportunity to walk a chunk of the distance home this evening. I headed down Kingsway, across Waterloo Bridge and made my way to London Bridge along the south bank.
And the light was so very beautiful, I couldn't resist trying to grab some images using the Hipstamatic app on my iPhone. After some experimentation, I settled on the Helga lens and Verichrome film as best suited to the conditions. And I'm pretty pleased with the results .
Buildings:
Plants:
Construction:
I'm really pleased with these results. I'm planning a few more walks if the weather stays good…
A New Photo Project
Some pictures from the early stages of a little photographic project I've set myself:
The observant might be able to make an educated guess as to what it is - but I'll write more about it tomorrow.
Dreary, Snowy, Lewisham
Lewisham still manages to look dreary even on a snowy morning. What is it with this town?
Fair Warning
My brother and his wife were kind enough to but me a new standard zoom for Christmas, a lens I've been putting through its paces over the last few days. Expect quite a few photographs on here over the coming days…
Charity for Time Travellers
I assume whomever donated The Best Bed & Breakfast 1998 to the Estates Gazette charity lending library is under the illusion that we have a couple of time travellers in the office.
Back to the 1990s
I did a little scanning last night of random photos I had lying around, so I could shred the originals and keep the digital copy.
Here's me and an old girlfriend of mine around 1993:
Here's one of a series of pics shot of me for my student union election campaign:
New Flats? No Way.
Autumn's Harbinger
The first conker of 2009, found on my walk from the car park to the office today. Autumn begins…
Born to be...
Mugs in Mousehole targeted at fans of Doctor Who, Spooks or Robin Hood. (Are there any fans of Robin Hood?)
The Most Fun You Can Have at St Michael's Mount
So, we visited St Michael's Mount yesterday, and very enjoyable it was too. And we discovered the most fun you can have there:
- Wait for the tide to come in
- At the point the causeway starts to get covered in water, get a good vantage point on the hill
- With binoculars or a decent telephoto lens, enjoy the sufferings of the those who tried to beat the tide:
The boat across, incidentally, is a grand total of £1.50, and a great ride.
