Katie went to stay for the night with her friend Lucy so I had a lovely 36 hours or so with Lily on my own (ish). We had a busy old weekend in many ways, including a trip into the Manchester Art Gallery and a stay with Matthew and Holly, but it was lovely fun from start to finish, and we’re allowed to eat stinky things like kippers when Katie’s not here.
Vignette: a mini photoshop tutorial
I’ve seen quite a few photos on Flickr lately that took my fancy for one reason or another, and one of the things that crops up from time to time is the Vignette that comes with some photos. It reminds me of older times and when I used to do a bit in the dark rooms (of Blackburn College, Sheffield Hallam University and the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal). It’s something that can make a bland low-light photo into something with more focal punch, but without the cheesiness of soft focus.
I should point out that it works effectively on landscape shots too, but you could go overkill, and it tends to have happened (with older cameras and darkrooms) naturally in lower light conditions. Whaddya reckon? (Here’s a link to the Photoshop tutorial I used – it’s very straightforward, but the ‘feather’ setting it refers to will need to be increased for higher resolution original photos)
Left Dave, Right Dave, and the normal twisted Dave
Lily took a photo of me on Sunday and it made me realise how uneven my face is! I made copies of my face in Photoshop – Left, Right, and the original are here….
Scarily enough (apart from the huge difference between my left side and right side), the ‘normal’ photo’s clearly the ugliest. Before anyone leaves any cheeky comments, have a go at it yourself (or better still, send me a photo and I’ll do the same for you!!)
A Jazz dispute acted out
Charlie Parker (sax) and Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet) battle it out… the video! This guy has spent a lot of time on this…!
The world’s tightest jeans
My lovely work mate Kim sent me through this image (goodness knows where or how she got it) of someone in some well tailored trousers. It’s such a great image, not least, the cheesy laugh of the woman ‘posing’ for the photo.
Sunday with the Rowlands’
A lovely trip to see Sally, Simon and Olly, on what appears to be the first weekend of spring.
Video below of Simon and I being creative with the little ones’ vehicles.
Come in, go away doormat
Simple but brilliant. Reversible doormat. (Found on neatorama)
Shutdown day 2007
He heee… I love this concept (though I naturally would recommend appropriate recycling of computer hardware after it’s had its useful life).
Peterborough. Something tells me ‘no’.
Over the last year or so, it’s been required of me to visit Peterborough. Of all places.
The most recent journey was yesterday. Journeys over the 113 (as the crow flies) miles between my home and Peterborough have been peppered with disaster or delay each and every time, including broken down trains (on hot summer days with no air conditioning and no breeze), gale force winds that cause overturned lorries and uprooted trees to block the roads (when I’ve simply given up on the idea of a train), and missed train connections.
Yesterday’s was another beauty.
OUT
Cycle to Rawtenstall,
bus to Burnley,
train to Leeds,
train to Peterborough.
Overall journey time, 3 hrs, 45 minutes.
RETURN: (Same in reverse, to Burnley, then)
Missed bus connection from train,
walked three miles in dark,
hitched the other four miles to Rawtenstall,
cycled home
Overall journey time: 4hrs, 15 minutes
That’s a total of eight hours’ travelling for a two hour meeting folks. If you live in the UK, your tax is paying for my time. I really should say “Thank you”, but I’m not sure that any of us should really be grateful for anything.
Some family wedding pics from the past.
We’ve recently been collecting wedding photos of our families (siblings, parents and grandparents) and have at last got a full set – I’m very proud of these for some reason. Click the image to see all nine happy couples….
Jeans Reunited?
Okay. Long story that I won’t go into here, but if you, or anyone you know, accidentally left a pair of Levis 501s around the altitude of 690 metres within a few hundred metres of Scafell, I saw them and kindly picked them up on 3rd March 2007. They’re size 29 (waist) 32 (leg). They’re in pretty good nick, but they have slight scuffing at the bottom of the heel, as though worn trendily long with boots.
Between you and me, I think these jeans being reunited with their rightful owners are fairly slim, but then I wouldn’t be able morally to sell them on eBay in a month or two, unless I knew I’d exhausted every attempt to get them back on the legs from whence they came.
What you need to do to get them back
Simply contact me, using the comment form below, with a specific grid reference or link on Pin in the Map showing where they were last undone and discarded. At that stage, myself and seven other people in the travelling party would like a thorough explanation of how they came to be there (which will be published).
John Shepherd already has his own theory (listen below) so is not really interested in the truth.
Wasdale, Levis 501s, a scattering of snow, and some laughs.
Every year, on the first weekend of March, I spend a couple of days and one night with my brother Phil, my cousin Adrian, and six or seven other people (Adrian’s old College friends, colleagues mainly). The intention of the trip is to go somewhere mountainous (not just ‘hilly’ or ‘scenic’ – that’d never do), and pretend to ourselves that we are Titans of the mountains who’ve just decided to do a simple walk instead of our usual E6 grade climbs.
Geared up in stuff which far surpasses our ability to warrant it (e.g., my new Garmin forerunner, see right), we have a great day out, tired but splendid evening in a good pub, then a shorter walk on the Sunday, (shorter under the guise of needing to get home that day, but actually shorter because we’re all old and tired).
This year’s trip was a small break from recent tradition of visiting Snowdonia, and instead Adrian chose Wasdale. It was a good choice, leading to much self-congratulation. The snow of 2006 wasn’t about (apart from a few dots on the Summit of Scafell), but we were rewarded with fairly quiet routes (especially Sunday’s stroll up Yewbarrow), and some atmospheric weather.
Good banter is a given when you put eight men together who see each other annually, and it was really a whole lot of fun from start to finish. Some of the highlights included finding a pair of pretty decent Levi 501s at an altitude of about 2,500 feet and a long way from anywhere you’d really need a pair of 501s. John Shepherd has his theory as to how they got there. In any case, I’ll be trying to reunite them with their owner (as well as getting the full story). If not, they#’ll probably go for a tenner on eBay.
Lots of photographing things also goes hand in hand with these trips. That and spending a good 50% of each day discussing how best to photograph things.
Phil uses these trips to become a life coach, and one output of the weekend was to get commitments from Steve Riley to ride the 2007 Three Peaks Cyclocross and for Simon Fox to do the Bob Graham round this summer. And they weren’t even in the pub when this was nailed down. Also discussed at various points of the trip was how most or all of us will be a good deal lighter and fitter next year. I think this was agreed last year too, come to think of it, but this must have been deferred by a year at some meeting I missed.
Thanks, Adrian, for a great time, and I very much look forward to next year. Photos on Flickr here if you want to see them.