Riding

Took my boy riding after a 6 month break.  Straight into jumping.  Good lad!

Family shots - Samsung NX300

I bought a little Samsung NX300 to go to the Lebanon with in January, having left my Canon and kit at home.  I am really enjoying using it.  It has all sorts of clever features which I am only just starting to understand.  So far it has produced some great results.  I bought it because it has a full manual mode and a fairly fast lense.  I'm enjoying the other gizmo's.  One touch on the back of the screen gives auto focus, exposure control and shutter release.  A couple of more touches and photo's can be uploaded to the internet, so long as there is a wireless connection.  Good lenses too.  Just bought a converter (about £12) online which will enable me to use my old FD lenses too.  May buy a converter for my EOS Lenses - let's see how we get on with the FD series for a start.

I like these family snaps - my boy and youngest walking the final mile home after a good leg stretch with the dog.  And below - getting ready for a portrait shot with the children and Pippa.  We never did get a good portrait!  The Samsung can shoot multiple shots in very quick succession - faster than my 5DII for sure.  It can be fun just shooting a blurr of photographs and seeing later what has been captured.  I like this:

Morning Sky in East Anglian

I arrived home last week from my most recent stint in Dubai.  I wanted to capture the feel of the skies here, so different from the almost constant blues over the UAE.  I took Pippa out for an early morning walk and was really looking to photograph the fields.  I had my Canon, a new wider angle zoom and my tripod.  This photo' was almost a chance shot, in that I had finished looking east over the fields towards sunrise, and was just sorting my gear out.  I brought the dog in and made her sit in front of the camera and this was the result. 

The tripod enabled a slower shutter speed and so a deeper depth of focus.  I ran this through Lightroom for some post processing and upped the colour and clarity a little, lightening the foreground and darkening the skies with separate graduated filters.  I also lightened and sharpened the dog a little.  This photo drew some really positive comments on FB so I thought I would drop it up here.  Arguably it is over processed, with a close to HDR feel, although it is one shot and not a combination of exposures so not an HDR photo. 

This and a few other photographs I have taken are close to accurate representations of what I was seeing, although clearly 'sparked up' a bit with post processing.  What it gives is not so much a 100% accurate representation of what I saw, but a 100% accurate representation of how what I saw made me feel.

Nel and Keiran's Wedding - 15th Feb 2015

I went to a friends wedding on a flying visit to the UK in February.  I served with Nel in the summer of 2009.  She is exceptionally bright and fun and we were very privileged to be invited.  I took a bunch of photographs at the reception and particularly like these two for their busyness and the range of expressions.  It would be fun to be the second camera man at a wedding, but I would not want to be the main man.  You only get once chance at the right formal shots, and I'm just not that consistent.

The Shrine of Hazrat Ali

I'm printing a few photographs and, for the first time, using mount boards to package and display them.  Really pleased with the results.  I took a few to a local crafts shop and the lady there has agreed to carry some.  Everyone seems to like this particular photo of the Blue Mosque in Mazar-e-Sharif.  There is more on the Blue Mosque here:  The Blue Mosque: The Shrine of Hazrat Ali - More at Wikipedia

French Landscapes

View from my Brother in Law's place across the fields in France.   A great place to stay for a few days.  More photographs here.

Herat

08 March 2013:  I visited Herat as a part of our bid for airport security in Afghanistan.  The City is very different to those in the South and East of Afghanistan.

Herat is some 100km from the Iranian border and has a strong Persian influence.  Ok, it is still Afghanistan, and so a fundamentalist Islamic town, but hey, they have a Ferris Wheel and a sense of fun.

The Minarets shown here are unstable and have been the subject of much engineering work to ensure they do not topple.  More information on the history of this district of Herat, and these minarets, is available from the Lonely Planet website here.

Our security on this trip was provided by the regional head of border police, a guy we had looked after and vice versa when he ran security at the Kabul International Airport.  (We gave him $1,000 for cricket kit so that his Afghan National Policemen (ANP) could play in a local league.  We never did see a game - maybe I was naive?)  A little good will goes a long way and he came to pick us up from the airport in Herat.

The airport road is frequently bombed, and our soft skinned unarmoured ANP Toyota's would have provided little protection.  On the other hand, the two guys in the back with the Dushka Heavy Machine Gun, who were wearing motorcycle helmets to protect against the dust and the cold, gave us a certain 'Mad Max' look and were certainly a strong deterrent to any ground attack.