Do you miss blue skies?

So the weather has been pretty bad recently, for yonks infact. The constant drizzle was starting to get me down, but then I realised there's a place you can go for your blue sky fix!

Estate agents! Adding (badly in most cases) in blue skies in seems to be contagious! Buy any of these houses and it's sure not to rain.

Now what I really like is that in several picture you can still see puddles, presumably they cloned out each rain drop from the still.

If you've found any terrible Photoshop work that upsets you please share! 

For a slightly more realistic view, here's a picture from a dog walk a few weeks back.

New Lens.

So I haven't posted anything in ages. The wife quite keenly posts daily, I'm more of a once a year sort of person.

Anyway, so now we have the dog and possibly more relevant for this blog a very nice 70-200mm. I've hired it in the past for weddings and was so impressed. It does have the downside of being so massive, heavy and generally precious that It's not going to social events.

Which leaves it for weddings and dography.

Chekhov is his name, chasing squirrels and drinking dirty water is this game.

After literally thousands of shots of him running at me I can count the number of unfocused shots on one hand, truly amazing. When those missed I was annoyed, then realised I bought this lens for weddings - and generally brides don't run at 30mph towards you through woodland; so still fit for purpose.

The cracking F2.8 means you can be a bit casual about composing the background of images, which is good if you're in a hurry, forgetful or working with a dog (or bride) who doesn't take instructions well.

Another Mosaic...

Well I've just backed all my photos up on a new USB3 hard drive... and what better way to test it than by using a mosaic program to process every image?

Full size Image here.

 I'm sure I've mentioned AndreaMosaic before - it's a cracking bit of free software I would suggest to anyone who has a lot of photos saved away. Go to www.AndreaPlanet.com for the free download.

You just give it the source photo in this case (if you're going to use a picture as white as this you need to have a lot of white pictures)

You give it a folder to process for the images, this works well if you're using Picasa and face scanner - I've made cards for people several times using mosaics using just pictures of their face... great way to scare somebody.

As promised!

Shot at F1.8 on the F1.4 50mm lens.

Finally, we have our own dog!

This is Chekhov, he's a rescue pup we've just re-homed...



There's bound to be lots of photos to follow!

Snow!

Well despite being really busy and not really photographing much recently, the snow did get me out in my boots. Out into our garden to try and track down where the foxes are getting in from, even a city dweller like me can track foxes when they leave foot prints in snow.

ANYWAY - obligatory snow picture:

That's right, it's a picture of coffee in snow - new house, same old life.

Way to busy to blog... So here is a funny link.

So we've recently moved into our new hours - so photography has sadly taken a bit of a back seat while I do the DIY/Garden.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/never-ask-the-internet-for-photoshop-help

But came across this link on Facebook today - very funny. Photoshop used for evil does make me giggle uncontrollably, it also reminds me of a poster campaign I ran at uni of my fellow housemate.