Food Festival

It's Food Festival weekend so we popped out last night and today to see what was going on. Mum grabbed quite a few pics last night and I got some pics today.

I thought this performer made a good subject.
I've offered him free electronic copies of all the photos I took of him if he emails me.



This rather shiny old car headlamp makes a nice pic too I think

Photo Competition Entries...

Having joined the local Photographic Society (Camera Club to the rest of us) I have entered my 1st club competition. The competition is Digital images only with section 1 being "non-manipulated" and section 2 "manipulated" work.

I've entered 5 images in total, 3 in section 1 and 2 in section2. Here they are, let me know what you think.
I'll update you on the critique I get and the points scored after next Tuesday.

Section 1
Motoring History

Shelly

In Flight


Section 2 (Manipulated)
The Weir

COLD!

Night time photos

I've had a go at some night time photography. Here are the results...

New Forest Frolics

We'd booked a great looking B&B ( http://careyscottages.co.uk ). Dogs always welcome they said.
And the picture on their website looks great...

The reality looks like this...







we went away for the weekend, Saturday afternoon to Monday Afternoon so I could practice some photography and get a bit of walking in too.


The woman sounded sort of French on the phone and sort of a nice lady so we booked (£26 pp/pn) no charge for the dogs. WOW what a bargain we thought.

After a bit of looking around we found the place tucked away in a corner of, wait for it...
BUTTS LAWN.

The name of the place should have sent us scurrying for the nearest hotel but no we decided to park the car and I went up to the gate. I was a little alarmed at the large black dog barking at the from the other side of the front gate teeth showing and drooling. The dog that is not me.

Wendy, who's always braver than I am just opened the gate and walked in past the dog and up to the front door. No probel, although the dog is still growling at me for some reason.

The woman comes out and takes the dog in and welcomes us, then shows us to our room.
A small room up the stairs and at the front of the house. We manage to overcome the awful smell of rotting dog sweat and squeeze past the four used horse saddles hanging over the banister rail to get to our room. There are 2 beds, a double and a childs single.

"Will the dogs sleep on the bed" she asks. Erm, well they might but we have dog beds with us.

"I'll need to change the bed spread then..."

Well, I'm so surprised that she's thinking about cleanliness and hygiene I speechless.

We get settled in a bit and decide to go to the local pub for a drink and a meal. Marcelle, the landlady of the B&B, directs us to a "... nice little place on the high street... the Rose and Crown. Good food and cheap."

The high street is about 10 minutes walk away and after and hour walking and trying to find the place we decide to go to the Forest Park Hotel and see what its like.

To our surprise its NCDL DOG FRIENDLY so we go in for a drink, well deserved by this time and while we're having those Wendy decides that this would be a far better place to stay so we drink up and check out of the B&B by making up some random excuse that we'd met some people we were here to see and that they had booked and paid for accommodation already. It worked and we were away, almost skipping with joy at our achievement of finding such a great place to stay at short notice.

The Forest Park has not seen the last of us. We're already planning to go back in the summer for a long weekend of walking and photos.

I'll be uploading pictures in the next couple of days.

BT Phone Fault

Strangely the internet connection has been good ever since I booked a BT engineer to come and test the line the phone and broadband have been fine. A little bit of a crackle on the phone but broadband has been great.

Anyway, the BT engineer came today and found some rusty wires outside so he's fixed that and all seems even better than before.
Excellent!

Working from Home

One of those days when working at home seemed much more worthwhile. I left the office at 12:15pm and travelled around the motorways at was home by 1:00.

No one else in, just in time for a spot of lunch. Cheese and Ham toasted sandwich.

Before I'd left the office I'd emailed a few thing to my home email account so that I could work on them.
Settled down after lunch to find that the Broadband connection was playing up again. I'd had trouble yesterday evening but it seemed OK this morning. I checked the phone and sure enough it was crackling like mad.

nothing else for it, I phoned BT to report a fault. The automated service, which is pretty good all in all, called me back and then the line went dead. Ah, I thought they've found the fault!

Half an hour goes by and the line is still dead. I'm getting a bit anxious by this time because I'm supposed to be working, not waiting for BT to fix my phone line.

Then the phone rings, it's a woman from BT. "You reported a fault this afternoon. We've done all our tests and found no fault...."
While she's going on a bout there being nothing wrong and it must be my phone thats the problem, the internet connection springs back into life and all the emails come through.

Magic!

Those BT people are wonderful. Fixing stuff without even knowing they've done anything!

Pictures from the Palace

Blenheim Palace

Off to Blenheim Palace today. Photo Opportunities I'm told....

Photo Mounting

I've decided to enter some of my great works into a photo competition at the Henley Camera Club. The only proble I had was cutting those bevel edge mounts. I've got a mount cutter but have never been able to get the cut just so. I'd been discussing this with Norman at the HCC and as he's dab hand at it he offered to show me how to cut mounts.

I went to his house on Saturday with 5 10X8 prints which we looked though and chose 3 that would be suitable for the competition. Norman set about measuring the prints and boards and settled on a 7cm border around each print and an extra 1cm at the bottom so that when the print was displayed for judging the border would look even. The bottom edge sits in a groove you see.

Norman has a fancy mount cutting system the "LOGAN Mat Cutter model 310" which is simple to use and keeps the blade straight.

within an hour and a half of me arriving Norman had mounted all 3 prints.

Excellent. I must get one of those Logan cutter systems - £115 - Bargain!