Kevin Whitworth / Jacurutu

The York Railway Institure Golden Rail Band played at Burnby Hall Gardens (in Pocklington) today as part of the garden's series of summer band concerts. Given it was such a nice day, it was decided we'd get a more up to date group shot of the band after the concert. Having half expected this (we'd planned to try a couple of weeks ago at Elvington, but got rained off), I'd actually brought some lighting gear to try and deal with the inevitable harsh sunlight. Unfortunately, no one was quite clear who was taking the photo, until someone pointed out at the last minute that it was me. At that time it was a little late to start rearranging things, or set up lighting gear (especially as it was just starting to rain), so I've tried to make the best of what I had. The photo is shown here, and I think for what the band need it for it will be fine.

From my point of view, there's a few lessons to be learned. Even when it's all a bit rushed, try and calm it down and take your time. Check peoples positions - there's a couple of people on the back row who are partly obscured, and the lad on the right hand side needed to be in even tighter (he'd been moved in closer once already). I think I would also have put the stand with the banner in front of the conductor, rather than over on the left, and moved everyone it a bit tighter. More consistency with hands and how instuments are being held would help too.

The background is also a bit of a problem - there's a drum visible on the left (although that's easily fixed in Photoshop or such like), but the people and chairs on the right are more problematic. Given the opportunity (and people not being in the way), I'd have shot the photo looking straight on to the bandstand (ie from the audience's point-of-view) with the conifer hedge as the backdrop (not the shop).

Finally, lighting is a bit of an issue. It's shot purely in ambient daylight, but there's noticable fall-off towards the left. It's not direct shadow from the hedge (the sun was more or less directly behind me), but I think it was blocking some of the diffuse light from the cloud cover, and it alters the characteristics of the reflected light from the ground (ie on the right there's a lot of scatter from the lighter grass). Given another chance, I'd have probably have tried to use the flash and brolly I had with me to counteract this slightly, and provide a little more intersting light.

Of course, there's also the problem of a few closed eyes - but at least on this shot everyone was more or less looking at the camera - the first one had a couple of people talking, and not paying attention. Given time I could probably photoshop the best bits from the two shots onto this one. Given hindsight, I should have taken a couple more frames without zooming in between them as it makes cutting and pasting heads that much more difficult when they need scaling as well.

Overall, am I happy with it? Well, I think it will do the job, and if the band is happy, so am I.

PS The Kenya photos really are coming along. I've even got one edited and ready to go, but I'm saving posting any until I've got a few more edited.

Well, I've finally started sorting out the photos from our Kenya trip last year. There's nothing to show yet, but hopefully they'll start appearing in dribs and drabs.

Watch this space...

So, as I mentioned in the previous article, I'm looking at recruiting more Octopush players in York. Having started playing again a few months ago with the new formed York University Octopush Club (aka Yorktopush, and also on Facebook), it's reached that time of year when all the undergraduates clear off home for the summer. However, there's a few people playing with the club who are either post-grads or local residents, and quite frankly, we can't live without a fix of octopush until October!

As a result, we've started playing again. Unfortunately, there were only five of us last night, which resulted in a rather exhausting 3-on-2 game (along the full length of the pool!), and sharing the pool hire costs across 5 of us makes it a bit steep. What we really need is more players!

So, if you've played before, moved to York and have been disappointed that there's no local club, or if you've heard about octopush and always wated to give it a go please come along an join us.

Sessions are currently 7 to 8 pm on Sundays. Contact me for further information (eg leave a comment, or click on "Kev" immediately below this article).

We're also hoping that we may be able to get enough non-university players together to start a separate team. We'll probably still maintain close ties with the Uni team, but it could mean two training sessions a week in York, the opportunity for local friendly matches, and we'd be looking at joining the Yorkshire league and/or the new northern (or north-eastern) league that's getting up and running.

So, please, don't wait, get in contact today and come along next Sunday! (We should even be able to provide masks, fins and snorkels if you don't have them.)

Whilst wandering around the world of Octopush (or Underwater Hockey (UWH) as our international brethren refer to the game) in search of ways of recruiting more players in York, I came accross a link to an article on UWH stick design by Benson Taylor. It's a rather long and reasonably in-depth article (OK, it's very in depth - I'm being picky because he didn't discuss structural properties of wood versus plastic - ie limitations in design imposed by wood and it's grain structure - but that's about all he seems to have missed!), and looks at commonly used stick (or pusher) designs available commercially or hacked together by people like me in their spare time.

The article was rather timely, as we spent half an hour at last nights training session practising flicking. I took the opportunity to compare the various bats I have, and the britbats that the York University club has bought. The first thing to say is that having properly tried the Britbats (I've used them occaisionally before, but not done a back-to-back comparison with mine), I discovered that I hate them. I think it comes down partly to their lack of mass (so it's difficuly to impart energy and hence momentum to the puck), and partly the curved front edge which seems to end up dropping the puck off it, rather than propelling it forward. Maybe it's just me, or maybe I'm just used to my own bats, but I really, really couldn't get on with them. This got me to thinking it might be time for a trip to the local timber merchant, and asking if I can borrow my mate's bandsaw and make the club some decent bats. (They need goals, caps and gloves too - if anyone's interested in sponsorship or making a donation!)

Hence the article was rather useful. Armed with this enhanced knowledge, I'm at the very least going to experiment with making some more bats to try and refine my design (which I don't think Benson would approve of).

The article, as a 1 Mb PDF file, is available here:

• Concepts of UWH Stick Design, Benson Taylor 2007.

It's also worth noting the site I found this on, Underwater Hockey World. I haven't had a very long look round, but there did seem to be interesting info on equipment and technique, and if you're that way inclined, the politics of UWH.

Edit: The original link to Benson's document is now broken. I've updated it with the last good link I have, but I've also stuck a copy on this site as well.

Tonights project was something that I've been thinking of on-and-off for a while. We get bats flying round and above the back garden. Being the height of summer at the moment (honest!), the long days mean they're out at dusk when you can still see them. So, the project is to take (good) photos of them.

My basic idea is to find a spot above the garden where they fly regularly, set the camera up pointed, zoomed and focused on that same location, and light the location from below with a couple of speedlights. Tonight was the first test of this theory.

In principal, it works fine. The problem is the battle between my patience and the bats flying where I want. Whilst I was setting up, there were lots of bats. Once I'd set up, there were quite a few bats, but not flying where I'd set up. For the first couple of attempts I'd used the 18-70mm lens, zoomed out to 18mm to give me a better chance of capturing the bats in the frame. Of course, that results in a tiny bat (hence this photo being heavily cropped). Next time round, I think I'm going to have to develop more patience (or start earlier...) and use a bigger zoom lens.

I shall keep you posted on progress...

We're planning on going to France for 10 days or so later in the year. The cats are already booked into their holiday villa (Breighton Cats Lodge - highly recommended!) as it tends to book up fast, and we worked out a while ago which flights we were going to book (everything has to revolve around the cat's holiday). Last night we decided to actually book the flights before they went up in price too much...

What a con!

Starting out with prices quoted at £49 (out) & £29 (return) per person, we then get hit for taxes (OK, I'm used to that), automatically opted into their own travel insurance (including having pre-ticked the box that says you agree to their conditions!) - which we removed - and now to add insult to injury, you have to book the number of bags you want to carry at £10 per bag (with a 50% online discount - it's £20 per bag if you didn't bother and turn up at the airport). For your £10 you don't even get additional baggage allowance - it's still 18kg whether you take one bag (£10) or 5 bags (£50)! By this time I was fuming, so when it came to credit/debit card surcharges (£2.50 for debit cards, £5.99 for credit cards, although again I was expecting this) I was livid and turning the air blue (apologies to Jenny who was sat witnessing this).

What started out looking like at was going to cost £78 per person ended up costing £128 per person - an additional £50 each in "hidden" charges.

The final straw came when, after completing booking, we were invited to choose our seats. I figured "why not?" I was expecting the extra leg room seats to cost money, but it looks like it was going to be another £5 just to reserve any old seat (probably each way as well). The cheek! So, we'll turn up and take whatever we get allocated - in fact, if we turn up early enough, we may get put in the extra leg room seats for free because the crew need someone to man the emergency exits!

Right. I feel better for that. It's not the cost that's the problem, it's the fact that there's an extra £50 added on to the initially quoted (and probably advertised) prices that does it. For my next rant, ask me about availability of cheap (~£10) train tickets...

PS Anyone know anywhere nice in France to visit? Having booked the flights, we havent actually decided where we're going yet!

OK, I admit, this is partly an excuse to post another photo from the Fairburn Ings set, but I did want to say a few words about my Nikon AF-D 80-400mm VR lens.

I bought it just before we went to Kenya last year, as I knew I needed something longer than 200mm. The problem here is cost. There are cheap 70-300mm lenses, or you're up into the multiple-thousands of pounds for something like to AFS 200-400mm VR lens, or fast AFS 300/400/500/600mm primes. There's a couple of non-Nikon lenses out there (Sigma do a 50-500mm and a 150-500mm), but in the end I went for the Nikon 80-400mm, which I picked up second-hand for slightly less than the cost new. It's still not a cheap lens, but anything else is at least twice it's price, and until I'm earning lots of money from photography, I simply can't justify spending the money. I also bought a Kenko 1.4x teleconvertor, just for little extra reach. I didn't get the Nikon TC partly for cost savings and partly because Nikon's own TCs seem to not always be 100% compatible with their own lenses (I think they're aimed more at the AFS lenses though).

Anyway, In Kenya, I used the TC and 80-400mm lens together a lot. However, a lot of the photos have come out very soft. In general, I've been less than impressed with the 80-400mm lens. Aside from the softness (which I at least exaggerated by the TC, if not caused by it), it's slow to focus and being f/5.6 at 400mm, it needs lots of light (even with VR) to get a good shot (especially if you've got the TC on it as well). I've been in two minds whether to sell it and cough up the extra cash to get something better.

That was until the Fairburn walk. Carting around my D200, the Kenko TC and extension tubes, 18-70mm kit lens, 70-200mm and 80-400mm lens all day, apart from the damselfly shots (taken with the 70-200mm lens with Kenko extension tubes), all the other shots were taken with the 80-400mm lens (no TC). Now, I won't say all is forgiven, but I think I've got some good shots with it - including the pheasant shown here. A bright day helped (although I was still using ISO 400), as did not using the TC. There's still a lot of soft shots, and focusing is still not great - tracking moving birds is almost impossible - and it still doesn't have enough reach for bird photography, but I think I'll hang on to it until I win the lottery.

(When I do win the lottery, I'm after the Nikon AF-S 200-400mm, and probably the AF-S 600mm as well. And an assistant to lug them round for me!)

Well, I'm trying hard this year to keep on top of editing the photos I've been taking, rather than let them build up, necessitating a massive end-of-year editing session. I'm not doing too bad so far, and here are the photos from a walk we went on around the RSPB reserve at Fairburn Ings at the start of June.

Fairburn Ings is always a nice place to head for a picnic, and being just down the road it's rather convenient place to head if we're at a loose end. However, this is the first time we've actually walked all the way round the main lake (right up to Fairburn village). There's quite a lot to see - always lots of water birds (ie ducks!), and the usual smaller birds we get on the bird table at home, but the varied habitat also supports things like damselflies and (closer to the village) farm animals too.

As a result, the set (available on Flickr or in my Photo Albums on here) has a variety of different flora and fauna, including a series of a pair of pheasants, damselflys, a heron flying overhead, great crested grebes and of course the coot taking flight shown above.

Unfortunately, although I've been trying to keep on top of this years photos, I still haven't managed to do the Kenya photos, or the Northumberland ones (and that holiday is coming up to being a year ago). Hopefully the rain might keep up so I can get on with the editing!