Kevin Whitworth / Jacurutu

Martin, Steve and Ally came up to celebrate the start of 2009 with us. Unfortunately, Jenny had to work, but the rest of us went to find geocaches located on Lewis and Harris, which kept us out of trouble for a couple of days, even though we had to put up with Ally's pink, flowery wellies!

Unfortunately, there are no firework pictures this year - although there was a pretty good display in Stornoway, we couldn't be bothered to trek in (and back again) to see it. We did catch it from the house, but I was never sure how long it would go on for, so didn't bother grabbing the camera. I must try harder next year.

Anyway, the photo albums are here, and as ever, the best of the pics are on my flickr account in this set. (For Steve, Ally and Martin, the pics at the end are from a walk we did at Hushinish the day after you headed home.)

For some unknown reason, Steve decided Easter Sunday is the time for a barbecue. So we wandered over Saturday afternoon, and then headed into York for food and beer. The beer was supplied by Brigantes on Micklegate, with a reasonable selection of draft ales, and decent bottled lagers (ie Czech & Belgian lager, not Heineken), including dark lagers such as Budwar Dark and Regent (yum!). We decided to give their food a go - but probably won't again. It's OK, but nothing special, and my order was delivered wrong, so I had to wait for them to go and cook it properly, and with no appology offered either.)

Sunday morning saw a blanket of snow, I saw too much of the engine bay of my car (the battery dies rather suddenly), and Steve got the chance fire up his new barbecue. Alas most of the snow had already melted, but rest assured the odd flurries that fell Sunday lunch time were never going to settle anywhere nearby.

After lunch I dug the camera out (so now photos of the barbecue and snow), and mostly got lots of photos of Steve and Ally's cat, Charlie. Fortunately (for me) Charlie is more inclined to sit still whilst being photographed, unlike our cats Apple (runs away) and Bo (comes to see what you're up to). As usual, there's a couple posted in a set on Flickr, and even more in the Easter 2008 album on this site.

So, a big thank you to Steve and Ally for putting us up for the night and feeding us well (especially the chocolate cookies)!

We were at a bit of a loss for something to do last week, and the weather was too nice just to sit around home all day, so we knocked together a bit of a picnic, and headed over to the RSPB's Fairburn Ings reserve. There's quite a lot going on this time of year, with plenty of new arrivals turning up for the spring.

Even better, they've enlarged the viewing ports on the fence in front of the feeding station so those of us with large telephoto lenses can get shots through them - which is where this shot of a Long-Tailed Tit came from. I tried to get shots of them in more natural surroundings - but they won't stay still long enough! There's a few more shots in the Fairburn set on Flickr, and the full collection on my own photo albums, including a nice shot of a Goldfinch (also on a feeder) and a shot of a Snipe hiding in the reed beds.

Finally, watch this space, as I'm on holiday this week on my own (I had too much annual leave to use up before the end of the year), so I'm trying to work through both recent (ie last week) photos and the backlog I've built up (yes, the infamous Kenya photos...).

I was down in London on Tuesday with some time to kill, so I decided to take the camera along. I grabbed a few photos at the British Museum, but wasn't feeling very inspired (my mind was elsewhere), and didn't fancy getting more shots from the Egyptian section (which reminds me, I've still got those to edit from our last trip there...). However, I did manage to get a few good shots of the Lloyd's Building, the Aviva Tower and 30 St Mary's Axe (aka The Gherkin or Swiss Re Tower) in the City.

I've got some from a previous trip that I don't think I've processed before, but I was trying to find a new angle on these much photographed buildings. On the way back to the tube I did manage a couple. This is my favourite, which is Lloyd's reflected in the glass of one of the other buildings on Leadenhall Street. It could have done with being taken pointing down slightly more, and the street light is a bit distracting, but overall I'm pleased with it.

The full session is on my photo albums, and the higlights are in the London, March 2008 set on my Flickr account.

The session also gave me a change to play with the new Sigma 18-50 mm f/2.8 that I bought off Mark / Shootin' the breeze. It's not the HSM version, but it still seems to focus quickly and reliably. It's also pretty sharp, and doesn't suffer from the vignetting that the Nikon AF-S 18-70 mm does when wide open (although I hadn't noticed until I did a side by side test). However, one thing I did notice was a lot of purple fringing (chromatic aberration) on the high contrast sections of the Lloyd's photos (eg the cranes againt the sky). Photoshop's Lens Correction filter managed to reduce it slightly, but it's still present. Still, for the money, it's a good lens and gives me a few extra stops over the Nikon kit lens. I'll try and do a more in-depth comparison (inclusing playing with it's macro function) later and post it up here. Meanwhile, I'm still contemplating spending my bonus on a super-wide zoom, but am split between the quality of the Nikon 12-24 mm f/4, the price of the Tokina 12-24 mm f/4 and the even wider angle Sigma 10-20 mm f/4-5.6 (or whether I can justify the Nikon 10.5 mm as well as the Tokina).

I've been having a bit of an update session with my online photo albums, as they were starting to get somewhat out of date:

• The Kenya album has been updated to add the Mount Kenya photos, some taken on our arrival in Nairobi, plus those from our visits to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's elephant orphanage and the Giraffe Sanctuary.
• I've added photos of the Cawood flooding last month.
• I've put the photos of the 2008 Octopush Student Nationals After-Party online as well.
• Plus I've added the toothbrush photo I took for the Leeds Flickr group's object of the month (January 2008) challenge to my Strobist section.

That's it for now. As soon as can get hold of the scored and final placements from the Student Nationals, I'll post something up about them.

Well, that's really annoying. I just spent half an hour writing this on the (now free!) wifi connection on a National Express East Coast train back up to York, and one wrong click of the mouse and it evapourated into the ether! Oh well, try again!

It's been a while since I last posted, mostly because I haven't had much time. A large part of this has been due to the flooding of the river Ouse. We live in Cawood, between York and Selby, and last week the Ouse burst its banks and flooded the area on the other side of the river to the village, known as Kelfield Ings. Whilst this may look pretty, it means that the road we normally use to get between Cawood and York has been under about 8 feet of water. Journey's have to be made via Selby, significantly increasing the journey time. I'm getting the train down south a couple of times a week at the moment, but Jenny has to do this every day to get to work, and unfortunately the local bus service has become rather erratic as a result. Still at least we weren't flooded, unlike some people, including those who've only just started recovering from last autumn's floods.

The image on the right, showing the B1222 vanishing under water, is part of a series taken the night the Ouse burst its banks. I've also a number of other shots showing how close Cawood bridge came to being swamped, and how the flood defenses kept the river out of the village (the river level was about 6 feet above Old Road, which runs along side the river).

I also took a few shots on the morning of Thursday 24th, after Kelfield Ings had completely filled with water. I haven't had time to process these fully yet, but I did have a quick experiment with the shot on the right. The aim was to take the sunrise over the flooded fields, but it wasn't particularly spectacular, resulting in some rather dull, grey images. With a little tweaking in Photoshop (rather more than the exposure correction and sharpening I normally do) I was able to produce the image on the right. There's a few issues with it - mostly the sky is blown out - but overall I think I'm pleased with it.

To produce it, I used the shadow/highlight tool to bring the grass bank on the right out of the shadows, and then applied graduated tints to the sky and foregound. These were done with a new, completely orange layer, with a gradient applied to a layer mask. I fiddled with the blending mode until I got the desired result - I think it was using colour dodge. The opacity was then changed, stronger for the sky, weaker for the foreground, until the right balance was acheived. A touch of vignetting was added using the oval selection tool on a new layer, heavily featherd, then inverted and the corners filled in black, again blended with the rest of the image to acheive the right look. A touch of dodging and burning on the sky brought out the clouds, and finally a touch of sharpening to finish things off.

When I get time, I'm going to go through the rest of the set and see if I can find a better starting image, to avoid the floating bit of grass on the lake, and the blown out sky. Or failing that, I might use the same image but edit from RAW instead of JPEG. (This is what I'd normally do, but this started as a quick experiment.)

The full set (Cawood Flooding January 2008) can be found on Flickr, and as and when I finish editing the other shots of the floods, I'll post them there too.

A couple of days ago, I received the following via Flickrmail:

	From:	Emma J. Williams
	Subject:	Schmap: London Photo Short-list
		Hi Kevin, I am writing to let you know that one of your photos has been short-listed for inclusion in the fourth edition of our Schmap London Guide, to be published mid-January 2008. www.schmap.com/shortlist/???? Clicking this link will take you to a page where you can: i) See which of your photos has been short-listed. ii) Submit or withdraw your photo from our final selection phase. iii) Learn how we credit photos in our Schmap Guides. iv) Browse online or download the second edition of our Schmap London Guide. While we offer no payment for publication, many photographers are pleased to submit their photos, as Schmap Guides give their work recognition and wide exposure, and are free of charge to readers. Photos are published at a maximum width of 150 pixels, are clearly attributed, and link to high-resolution originals at Flickr. Our submission deadline is Sunday, January 13. If you happen to be reading this message after this date, please still click on the link above (our Schmap Guides are updated frequently - photos submitted after this deadline will be considered for later releases). Best regards, Emma Williams, Managing Editor, Schmap Guides

Now, I must admit to being quite excited. When I first read it. But then I thought about it a bit, and decided to file it for further reference. (Plus until I got somewhere with a decent Internet connection.) I tend to be sceptical about things like this (and offers of large sums of money to help move someone's husband's/dad's/etc ill-gotten life savings out of some African country), so I wanted to do a bit more digging.

It turns out that it's legitimate. But I still have this nagging feeling that Schmap are asking me to give them my photographs so that they can make money. OK, they're not selling my photographs, and they're not selling their product to their customers, but their business model is supported by advertising revenue. So, at the end of they day, they want my product (a photograph) to improve their product (a city guide) in order to make money. And they don't want to pay me for it. I know they're offering a photo credit and a link to the original on Flickr, but is that of any real value to me?

There is much discussion, on Flickr and elsewhere, about how amateur photographers (and sites like Flickr) are killing the photography business, making it difficult for professionals to make a living when amateurs will give away their photos (or photography services) for nothing (or a link). As a keen amateur with wanabee-professional aspirations, I have mixed feelings on this. I've done a couple of jobs for friends for little or no financial profit, no doubt depriving a real pro from some income. However, I've gained experience and (hopefully) references, and they've had to take a risk that I'm actually capable delivering what they've asked me for. Clearly this isn't a long-term sustainable business model, so the amount of work I'm taking away from pro photographers is limited, and hopefully it helps me get to the point where I can start to earn a real income from photography.

Anyway, I digress. Having searched around on Flickr and elsewhere, there quite a few articles about Schmap asking Flickr users for a free license to use their photographs (eg Editorial Photographers UK, telescreen.org, Joe Gratz). Having read a few of these, and the discussions that they've provoked, I was still initially undecided.

However, on further reflection (and a couple of cups of coffee), that the excitement of being "discovered" was clouding my judgement. It's my work, if someone wants to make money from it, I want more than a photo credit and a link to a photo on Flickr. Schmap are welcome to license it from under commercial terms, and until they're prepared to do so, they can't use it.

Clearly plenty of Flickrites think otherwise. I'm not going to have a rant about how they're eroding the commercial photography market - plenty of other people have done that (and no doubt many more will do so in the future - perhaps even those who've crossed over to the pro side!). I'm not even going to have a rant about misleading people that Schmap is non-commercial (Joe Gratz did that).

What I am going to do is have a rant that I've got much better photos of London, and of the Royal Observatory, in my Flickr stream (although maybe I need to learn to separate myself from my photographs). Actually, I'm not going to have a rant about that either (mostly because I'm running late - I'm off for a curry and need to wrap this up), but I will express some level of mild annoyance about it.

Grrr...

Here's the latest instalment of photos from our safari to Kenya last year. Out third port of call was Lake Baringo. Lake Baringo is one of only two freshwater lakes in the rift valley, unlike Lake Nakuru (which was our next stop, but I've already posted about it). The road from Mount Kenya was rather mixed. An initial tarmac section was swapped for a fairly good off-road track to get further west, and then another good section of tarmac took us a long way north. However, closer to Lake Baringo, the road had been washed away, so we had some rather jarring off-road sections across dry river beds for the last hour or so. On arrival our first stop was Lake Baringo Club, a pleasant oasis after the last bone-crunching section of the journey. We watched the local birdlife flitting in and out of the fruit trees in the garden whilst out guide sorted out what happened next. Finally we load ourselves and our luggage onto a small boat/large canoe to head over to Island Camp on Ol Kokwa Island.

Island Camp is a fantastic location. Accommodation is in "tents", but although they are partly canvas structures, they are pretty permanent (the back wall of ours was stone, and the roof was thatch on a wooden structure), and well fitted out - definitely luxury camping, not backpacking! Even better, the end of the tent opens to views across the lake and we spent plenty of time just sat here watching birds and lizards in the trees at the lake side, plus pied kingfishers fishing on the lake.

After recovering from the journey, we went for a bit of a wander. It's definitely not a place for those of limited mobility - Island Camp is on the side of the hill, and there are steps everywhere. There's a couple of bars/lounge areas/garden areas for guests to sit and relax. Unlike Samburu, Masai Mara etc, there's no big game, but there are birds everywhere, and Island Camp is well placed amongst the trees for you to get quite close to them. Definitely a bird watchers paradise!

The only downside is the amount of time we spent there - we arrived for a late lunch, and left early next morning for Lake Nakuru. It was a lovely, relaxing location, and definitely on our list of places to go back to if we return to Kenya, but probably staying for a couple of days. Oh, and next time I want to take a 600mm lens with me too!

The best of the photos are in my Kenya set on Flickr, and the rest are in the Lake Baringo section of the Kenya album on this site. Enjoy!

As promised many times, I've finally got some of the Kenya photos edited and online. This first batch is taken at Lake Nakuru National Park in central Kenya. Although there's lots of mammals there, including White Rhino (as per the picture of one taking a rest in the shade), there's also lots of birds too. Although there are many wading birds (such as Pied Avocets, Little Egrets and of course Flamingos), there's other birds too, including the Superb Starling (see below - a personal favourite, mostly due to having seen them in captivity locally at Lotherton Hall). We also got to see several eagles, although identifying them and taking decent photos of them proved difficult.

Unfortunately, the flamingo numbers have declined somewhat. The older guide books described the lake as being tinged pink with flocks of flamingos. However, as evidenced here and here, this is no longer the case. I'm not sure there's a clearly understood reason for this, but drought (reducing water levels, which in turn alters the chemistry of the soda lake) and pollution of the lake from sewage and industrial effluent are likely to be significant contributing factors.

There's now a Kenya set on Flickr where I'll upload all the Kenya photos, although I may create separate sets for each area we visited as well. I've also created a Kenya album on this site, which will be split into each area/park, including a Lake Nakuru album, as and when I get the remaining photos edited and posted up.

Talking of which, the Lake Baringo photos are edited, and awaiting to go online, the Nairobi, Samburu and Mount Kenya photos are filtered and awaiting editing, which just leaves 1,000 photos from Masai Mara to sift through. Oh, and the photos of Northumbria (including the Farne Islands) from earlier in 2006. And a few other bits and pieces too!

I'm back from BarCamp Leeds, and I've even managed to get a few of the photos edited. There's a few left to go, but as people were uploading them at the event, I didn't want to leave it too long. I'm not sure I'm really happy with the photos - mostly they're too dark so exposure has been heavily boosted in post-processing, resulting in lots of noise. Lighting at the event was a challenge - trying to expose both the projected images/slides and the people is quite tricky - flash helps, but washes out the projections. Still, they may not be art, but I guess they're a record of the event.

I have to say, I came away with mixed feelings about the event. It wasn't really what I expected - which was lots of people talking about Web 2.0 and social media applications. Ie really geeky (meant in a nice way, of course). Given this isn't really my area (which is more networks, OSS and dull back-office stuff), I guess I was hoping to recieve a crash-course in what's going on a the front end. I turned out that the talks were much broader than that. Lee Strafford's talk on his history, inlcuding Force9/PlusNet, and his latest project The NetStart (aka Project Sahara) was interesting, as it covers similar timelines to my involvement in Freeserve, and there were one or two interactions between Freeserve and PlusNet. Tim Water's talk on OpenStreetMap was also interesting, and I note he used my photos from the Leeds Mapping Party (which are incidentally marked as copyright - the lawyers will be round shortly!).

Unfortunately I had to leave after the afternoon coffee break - too much time spent working away from home, so being away for half the weekend as well wasn't really on. I kind of wish I'd done the talk about DSL, ISPs and stuff, but at least now I'll be able to prepare it properly for next time. I keep getting ideas (which I must try to remember), but with only 20-30 minutes, it could be a struggle to get through everything.

Right, that's it for now. When I get the chance, I'll try and edit the rest of the photos and put them online. One last thing, a big thank you to Imran and the rest of the organisers for such a great event. Roll on BarCamp Leeds {2008}!