Too early for decorations?

So we spent the weekend in Disney, possibly getting a little brainwashed. We came home and put the decorations up  the next day.

Each year we're picking up more random decorations, which is giving our tiny tree a quirky feel.

Left: clearly from Disney. Right: The glass blobbery - Wales.

The home made.

Disneyland - Paris.

Normally when you go on rides at a theme park they insist you leave bags on the platform while going around. I've been to a few theme parks in my time, I wouldn't ever take my best camera gear out to leave laying around unattended... so I packed my old 400D and 15-55mm + 50mm lens for this trip.

It really shouldn't be a shock, but the French have a complete lack of health and safety - you can carry whatever you like on the rides... This made me a little miffed I was having to use such a rubbish camera. However this didn't detract from the magic of the venue, it's hard not to smile like a mindless idiot when at Disney.

That's right, we had to queue for this shot! We nearly the only adults in the queue without children. Needless to say, I didn't take this shot personally - a confused park worker did, my French isn't really good enough to explain the purpose of a prime lens... but she seemed annoyed it couldn't zoom out.

 

The decorations were up, which made a very cheesy affair even cheesier.

There are two things my 400D can do very well, blur pictures and endure roller coasters (the last point was a recent lesson). With this in mind I used my tripod and set about trying to capture some motion blur and long exposure views.

Clearly we didn't got just to take pictures, it was B's birthday and somehow she'd managed a childhood without visiting. I'm glad I had my camera, I'd like to thank B for letting me stop to take pictures while she was chasing characters for hugs.

While the grand Canyon is a lot more impressive, the fact this was built just for a run away train ride impressed me!

I probably shouldn't complain too much about my 400D, it's sturdy, reliable and provided me with years of faultless use... given enough light and a good bit of glass it performs perfectly.

ii. Coffee

So I'm a little behind with the blogging - mostly as we went to Disneyland last weekend, one of the few trinkets we brought back was this mug... purchased for B from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride it's already been used for Coffee, and the amount of coffee I'm having at the moment is helping me sort all the pictures taken.

Here is one of the photos which has already been stitched together - It's the first time I've stitched long exposure photos, but it came out really well.

The other bonus to doing long exposure photos is that it nearly completely removes the people in the way of the shot. This worked well on the London by night pictures too.

i. Coffee

Anything which winds my other half up seems to hold extra appeal, coffee does this and tastes nice. Win.

Generally it gets converted into 3 sizes:

Huge

 Medium

 Tiny

Now B who complains on a regular basis that her kitchen is too small (for proof check her blog Shiny Pigeon) seemingly hasn't noticed I've taken over a cupboard with coffee items.

London by night.

When looking at the Thames with the aid of sun light you see it for what it is, filthy - a muddy/green colour...

But wait for night and leave the shutter open for long enough and suddenly it looks pretty.

I went up to London to visit the Tower with my friend, being around for it being dark was pure luck as lunch took a while, the rain making the pavement reflective also wasn't planned - But now I'm keen to do other late night walks along the Thames, time to top up that camera insurance.

10 second challenge

Right, pictures... they're great, so great in fact sometimes I want to get in shot.

I can't really leave this down to other people, because I'm known for taking pictures nobody else bothers to bring a camera!

This means I can use the remote, which is great but its range is only slightly longer than my finger. Leaving me with my camera's 10second timer, for some shots this is a little hairy.

Of course the world record for 100m is under 10seconds... but I'm not that fast and jumping around near the edge of the Grand Canyon, over rocks in a stream or up the Death Valley sign require a little more attention


Here's a few examples of it working:

Sneaking in on the right

Climbing up that sign wasn't as hard as getting down.

It looked more dangerous at  the time.

Up a Tor in Devon

In a stream (still in Devon).

And one of it not working:

I didn't manage to pose, I blame it being gravel, wearing wearing flip-flops and not wanting to fly off the end. We did get it next time, but to be honest with all the cloud it really wasn't worth the effort!

Dartmeet - Yet again.

I was up at Dartmeet a couple of weeks ago for Matt & Elly's wedding but was back again so decided to do a 10second challenge.

This shot was taken about 100m up stream of where we took the photos on the bridge.