Geek stuff
I have passed my final exams I am now a qualified ACA: this is a good thing.

This is me
I posted about XKCD once before. Like the comic strip I pulled out then, I feel I can relate to the one from Monday this week: Tones.

Geek stuff again
Over the past couple of weeks I have been playing Super Mario Galaxy again. Having completed it several months ago playing as Mario, I repeated what was basically the exact same (and still damn fine) game, but this time controlling his slightly taller, thinner brother, as is the option available to those who have obtained all 120 stars. Let me just say this: Luigi is a git. He may run slightly faster, jump slightly higher and have a more awesome vacuum cleaner than his more famous elder brother, but he ain’t half got a traction problem: I lost count of the number of times I fell from a platform having slipped around backwards and forwards and teetered on the edge, failing to stop in time. You don’t get that with Mario. It was a joy to control the Red One again, albeit briefly, right at the end of the game.

And another thing
When will people learn to use their headlights properly? I’m talking about those driving conditions when it’s wet, or just on the turning point between light and dark. Particularly during rain, the number of drivers without any lights on at all astonishes me: some, I would be prepared to concede have simply not realised their omission, having let the rain slip in unnoticed; but there are too many no-lights drivers for that. A fair number must believe they don’t need to switch their lights on, the fools. Worse still are the sidelight drivers, those who seem to think that sidelights are appropriate for driving with. I say: either use headlights or no lights at all. So there.

Having completed this year’s challenge, I have a varied selection of photos; some of which I’m pretty pleased with. But I’d like to know what other people think.

So if you’ve got a few minutes, please take a look through my Photo-a-Day July 2008 set and tell me which you think are best by posting a comment here. Also, have I done better than last year?

See past the break for my favourites…

July 7th 2008 - Lego Wars

July 25th 2008 - Feet

July 11th 2008 - Lego Racer

Well I’m a bit late in posting this, but here’s a round-up of my photos from the last ten days of this year’s challenge.

Still in exam mode on 22 July, I had to grab a quick shot in the house. I had been using these sweets as part revision sustenance, part nostalgia trip (fondly remembering the old adverts with grandpa and grandson). The following day, with the final exam over, I was out celebrating with my friends and used my phone camera to photograph the Mojito ingredients before I’d drunk too many to hold a camera steady…

Photo number 24 was taken in Jess’ garden, enjoying my new-found freedom. I rather like these silhouettes against the blue sky.

The following day I went to meet my brother in London. Jess joined us in Green Park, and here are her feet next to mine. A very simple picture, but one of my favourites so far.

Read on for days 26-31, the exciting conclusion to 2008’s project…

Here are a couple of nature shots; one taken again in Jess’ garden, and the other at Claremont Landscape Garden:

July 28th’s effort was a disappointment. I wasn’t expecting spectacular results as I was trying something new, but I wanted to catch some matches being ignited. Thing is, I made the rookie mistake of setting the camera up beforehand and not then adjusting the exposure to compensate for the large increase in light that the flame was going to produce. So I have a bunch of pictures showing the flame ripping along the matches, but they are all horrendously over-exposed since they were taken at about 1/13s at f/6.3. The frustrating thing is that I had thought about this beforehand, making a mental note to adjust the exposure. Then my excitement got the better of me and I completely forgot! That’s the last time I use my brain to remember anything…

Anyway, what I do have is a ‘before’ shot (the ‘after’ shots don’t look very good).

I like the lines in this next one, taken on the train on the way down to London for work.

Onto the home stretch now. This penultimate shot was again something a bit new for me (in that I hadn’t tried this sort of shot before), and snapped just before bed after a long day at work.

And finally…

I returned home from London to find a package waiting for me. It was a new lens purchase, a Sigma 10-20mm, an ultra-wide. I was naturally pretty excited about this, but at 11.15pm on 31 July I had nowhere to use it for this year’s challenge. Still, it provided a good subject for this, the last photo for Photo-a-Day July 2008:

This guy calls me a ‘jerk-ass’ for not using a knife. I think he’s missed the point.

Plus, what stupid insult. The jerk-ass.

[See here for the video in question.]

This past week I have been struggling a bit for inspiration. On 15 July I had a go at another reversed-lens macro shot, which allowed me to get the following shot of my monitor, showing individual pixels. The front lens (I was using two, with the frontmost one being held reversed ahead of the main one attached to the camera) was just a few millimetres from the screen, and what you see below has not been cropped. Larger versions come with a health warning: may cause fuzziness.

Following this I tried an arty arrangement of my iPod Shuffle:

July 17th and 18th both saw me play with light; first shining from the front onto my watch, and then from behind through some beer bottles. Of the two, I am happier with the Light Beer shot (complete with snappy name) - especially given that I’d forgotten to change the date on my watch since the beginning of the month, something that could be a bit of a give-away in a date-specific project like this!

Read on for days 19-21, including my first go at a self-portrait…

I got outside on 19 July… for all of five minutes. Still, I rather like the result. Someone commented that it looks like the watering can and the hand fork are having a conversation

And now the self-portrait. This was actually my first exposure of the day (of a total of eight I think); it was the one that I found worked best. I initially converted it to full monochrome, but I think that this not-quite-fully desaturated look is actually pretty effective.

I rounded off the third week yesterday with a nod to my recent studies. A book of International Financial Reporting Standards (with some two-and-a-half thousand pages) makes for very interesting reading…

Nearly half-way through now! It’s getting difficult to think of new ideas, but I’ve had some results I’ve been pleased with this week. Here’s a run-down of photos from the second week:

I think this one, from 7 July, is my favourite so far. Lego + Star Wars = Double-Cool

On the 8th, several other DVDF members also taking part in this challenge had taken photographs of their guitars. Picking up this theme, I decided to use my Guitar Hero controller and took this. I like the colours, and I think the vignetting (added in post-processing) works well.

I’ve not taken many photos of people, but it’s something I’d like to get better at. I had my lovely girlfriend staying with me so I chose a portrait to be my photo for day 9. I’m quite pleased with the result:

Read on for days 10-14…

I was a bit stuck for ideas on the 10th. Considering, I think I did pretty well; getting a really nice exposure on this light shade and giving it a lovely glow.

Having had fun with Lego on 7 July, I wheeled this one out on the 11th. It was a bit dusty, and I had a bit of fun cleaning it first with a cotton bud. I thought I did a pretty good job, but it turns out I missed some bits, which only became evident when I got my camera out. You can’t hide from a macro lens…

I really like my Super-Takumar lens. It’s thirty-odd years old, looks beautiful and feels nicely solid to handle. It’s just a shame I haven’t taken many decent shots with it (this one being my favourite so far, incidentally). This time I put it in front of the camera:

This one felt like a bit of a cop-out. I didn’t have much imagination and I took a lazy option. However, I did manage to give some depth to the Wii logo, and I had some fun tweaking the blue ring.

I keep changing my mind about how much I like the shot I’ve taken today. At times I think it’s another lazy option, but at others I quite like it. I think the wardrobe with some clothes showing through creates some interest in the background, and there’s another quality I can’t quite put my finger on. I was a bit annoyed I didn’t bother to polish the switch fitting first as you can see some of my fingerprints smeared all over it! At least I managed to put my finger on something, I suppose. I did clean it up and try to re-shoot, but didn’t manage to get a photo I liked as much, so I left the prints in.

Also on the 3rd, I was leaving college in the afternoon and saw this fantastic reflection in the Hyatt, which I had used as the subject for day one. I was a little miffed at not having had such a good reflection to use for my previous shot, especially given the contrast to the dark, moody sky, but I didn’t have my camera on me anyway:

On day 4 I took this shot from the canal, facing towards The Mailbox:

At the weekend, I thought I’d try some different things. So on Saturday I went out and bought a couple of bags of Skittles and spent half an hour dropping them onto a table. I had the camera on a tripod, remote release in one hand and a bowl of Skittles to tip onto the table in the other; and roped in my housemate to hold a lamp providing light from the front. This was the result:

Continuing the different techniques theme, today I had a go at using a reversed lens to create a macro setup. See the description below the photo on flickr (which you can find by clicking on the picture below) for more details on the setup I used.

As before, this is part of a DVD Forums project; for more information refer to this thread. This is also where everyone will be posting their photos as the month goes on - it’ll be well worth the look as there are 30+ people signed up and there are sure to be some stellar results.

My photos will be appearing in this flickr set, and I shall also be discussing them here on Spatho.com every week or so.

Today’s effort (inset, above) was snapped as I walked to college at 8.30 this morning; I saw these window cleaners on the side of the Hyatt hotel on Broad Street - rather them than me!

Finally, for those who missed my photos from last year’s Photo-a-Day for July, you can find them here. They make up the rather lovely mosaic shown below.

Anyway, I enjoyed today’s comic very much. I’ve been saying this all along.

*(it’s the only comic amongst a bunch of intelligent, cultured and generally highbrow media feeding into my Google Reader account, natch)

Each card is tiny and pretty appealing, with my details on the back. I have 100; now I just have to figure out what I’m going to do with them…

You can see a larger shot of the cards here (with apologies for the dodgy, flat photograph).