Tagged: photos

Sleeping Beauty

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I love how Leigh looks when she sleeps, so peaceful and beautiful.

(She will however kill me for putting photos of her sleeping on the internet again.)

Driving Time

Since I passed my test last year in October, and gained my Blue Car in November, I have racked up a modest ten thousand miles driving.

I have now started to learn the nuances of the car and if I leave in good time am able use soft acceleration and gentle braking to help preserve fuel economy. It helps to avoid the motorway as well. My best averages have been 56 mpg on a 40 mile trip and 60 mpg on a 12 mile trip. Both done in light traffic.

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But it is all futzing stone

Yesterday’s challenge on the fast-running-out-of-days Castaway’s blog was to take a short walk and photograph something stone.

This was going to be easy, Lancaster is mostly stone buildings. The office complex we have offices in is stone, the steps leading to it are stone, the bridges on the canal next to it are stone.

So I took a few pictures as I strolled out to lunch along the canal, including the nice reflections from the water on the underside if one of the stone bridges.

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The future is now

It is a regular occurrence for our two boys to want to come into our bed in the mornings.

This morning Ben wanted to join us and for me to get “daddy’s phone” and then to do “pictures”.

This is because he knows I can take, edit, view and upload all from the phone.

I realised once again this morning how much we were in the future we were promised an how the world is so different a place for my children. (By the way, this post is being composed and uploaded from the same device).

Also I had the fun of running a photo through four apps and changing the experience, all of this took less than ten minutes.

So with the camera, then into Snapseed to edit, then PhotoBokeh to add stage one image effects and finally Phoster to make it into a poster.

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Nice Morning For it

When I woke up this morning it was raining quite hard, but as I stepped out of the door the clouds were clearing, the wind was dying to a cool, and refreshing, breeze and there was a smell of Autumn wafting in the air. So I decided to take a longer walk to work along the canal. I also turned on the pace keeping app. so I could measure the time it took me to get to work and the distance as it was something that intrigued me.

Below are the images from the walk and the pace stats.

So I did 5K steps in 48 minutes, which was almost 3 miles (I average 1800 steps to a mile) with an average mph of 3.6 miles – a good speed for walking at I feel.

 

A Hobbling He Will Go

So this is a companion post to the news article on the Shadowcat Page, my Shadowcat Blog Post and Matt’s Shadowcat blog post concerning his recent stay in hospital after slipping and breaking his hip.

I went to visit Matt every day and on his last day in the hospital my 2 year old son and I took a few pictures of Matt as he was being tutored (rather good natured for him, so still incredibly ratty sounding to the rest of the world) on walking with crutches for his driving licence and pass to go home.

Anyway, here are the pictures…

I’m a published photographer…

So I am now a published photographer. It is only a small image in the local free magazine distributed by the local council, but it is still a publication so I’m claiming that as a win, I guess.

Okay, it is a very minor win in the grand scheme of things, but still about a third of a million people have access to the publication so it isn’t that awful.

The image was one I tweeted from my iPhone and concerned the number of vehicles that use the pedestrian section of Lancaster. It coincided with an article being written on the subject and the council sought me out to ask for permission which I was happy to give (nice to be asked tbh). If of course it was a paid magazine I might have asked for payment 😉 – but it is free so the publication was without charge just for accreditation.

The local magazine I am published in

The local magazine I am published in

Image on the Page

Image on the Page

 

I am teh famus, lol, wtf

I do apologise in advance for the title of this blog post and the entire sillyness of anything it points out. But, apparently I am a little bit famous in a manner I never imagined.

In 2007 I created a Trading Card game for my company Shadowcat Systems as a bit of fun to give away as a Christmas Advent calendar item. The rules of the game and the associated files are linked to here (http://www.shadowcat.co.uk/resources/).

Spin forward a few years to the entirely inappropriately named site Fuck Yeah Nouns (http://fuckyeahnouns.com) has used these cards when you type in dbix-class (http://fuckyeahnouns.com/dbix-class), not really that surprising as there are very few images for that, but if you type in Mark Keating you get another card (http://fuckyeahnouns.com/mark%20keating), also works for Lego Robot Wars (http://fuckyeahnouns.com/lego%20robot%20wars) Leigh Keating (http://fuckyeahnouns.com/Leigh%20Keating) gets a picture I took of my wife Leigh.

The idea of the site, btw, is you put in some words and it finds an image associated with them. I have no idea how it works things out, I guess it is looking for descriptive tags in the alt text or something, but it does make me happy that something I did for fun, for free and for joy is still being used now.

And I am a little bit famous for a few brief fleeting moments, a transient star still to find my full fire in the firmament…I am sure at some point other images will replace these but for now, they are mine and I shall retire to my hovel with the clarion calls of fame still ringing in my noggin.

Thanks to Ribasushi for pointing me at this 🙂

Ben, in reflection

So I have been playing with Black and White (well if I am being truthful it is actually Greyscale -256- as opposed to B&W but the essence is true-ish, we could call it monochromatic if we wanted to be accurate), this is the first picture I tweaked of my son, Ben. There wasn’t much that needed to be done as the original shot was okay. I mostly made some hard contrast and brightness adjustments to really punch the blacks and lighten foreground and then used the burn/dodge tool to bring back the details that had become lost, this has given the eyes that un-earthly child quality. (Enlarge the image by clicking on it, which will open a version that fits to your browser, clicking it again will magnify to full size – image is 3mb so beware of loading times.)

Benjamin in glorious monochrome

Benjamin in glorious monochrome

Nathan and Sarah: the Announcement

Yesterday I went to a friends announcement/proclamation at the Yorkshire House in Lancaster. It was a Pagan event wherein the couple announced their intent to marry close to Midsummer 2011 and expressed their love for each other. Afterward we retreated to the comfort of H&N’s house for a festive Blót.[1]

What follows below is a series of images from the event (please just click on the thumbnail for a larger image).

[1] Note that this didn’t involve much sacrificing of Equine livestock, unless you count the threat to Dexter one of my son’s cuddly toys.