Churchyards.

Churchyards can be an interesting place for photographers, some of the better one's like Highgate and Kempsel green in London are full of mausoleum's, all overgrown in ivy, this one in Briton Ferry isn't quite so interesting but produced a few interesting pics all the same.

Hard drive died.

One of my back-up drives pegged out yesterday, it won't write, although I can still read from it, for the time being. The fact is ALL hard drives will fail at some point in their lives. The very way they are made with moving parts means something will give up sooner or later.
I was fortunate I have all my important stuff backed up at least twice, and usually DVD as well, a bloke I used to know lost all his family photos when his hard drive packed up, and that on a 2 year old PC.
So back up and back up again, you know it makes sense.

Pic for today

Heres a photo for today, it a wedding shot taken in the brides house. Wayne

Urgent warning

Be advised the "grabber" is back. This gadget was around a few years back but seems to have made a comeback, for those who haven't heard of it, it's a car key grebber. When you lock your car your key fob sends a remote signal, this thing "grabs" the signal and when you have gone the thief can play it back to open your car door, he can't steal it as the gadget won't start the car but he can either steal your stuff or steal your car using other means.

Wedding trends.

It's funny how there are trends in things. When I was a child it went from conkers to marbles to hulla hoops.
Weddings have similar tends, currently in "fashion" are two best men. Presumably the groom couldn't make his mind up, either that or reading a few cards was to much for one bloke? Either way it increases the group numbers in the wedding party, and makes it more lightly one or other will be in the bar come photo time.
The other trend, which has been around for a little while now is the "you've been tangoed!" look, the false tan thats BRIGHT orange. Sadly this is all too popular, and in a group shot a few of these stick out like the proverbial pork pie at a Jewish wedding, it also make sorting out the colour balance a bit trickier, as it's not so easy in close up's to get it looking "right".
Frankly I don't know why they don't go the while hog and shave their heads if they want to look like captain beanie.

Getting it right in camera.

There's a tendency now with digital of shooing quickly and "fixing any errors in Photoshop. Now personally I think that's wrong, it's much better to "get it right" in camera.
Back in the good old days of film, I used to shoot a wedding on 2 rolls of 36 (72 shots) out of that I'd have to get between 30 and 60 really good shots for the album (depending on package) Now it's not uncommon to shoot 1200-1500 shots on a wedding, ok the albums hold 120 shots now, but thats still a much higher wastage rate, for want of a better term.
What is easily forgetton is the more shots you take and the rougher they are, the more time post processing you'll spend.
Back with film I'd shoot a wedding, drop the films off at the lab and spend an evening putting the album together, now with digital I can spend 2 or 3 days post processing the images, if the photographer who took them them didn't get it right in camera.
So theres your tip guys, work slower, take less shots but get each and every one right in camera, you'll save yourself a lot of time and trouble in the long run.

Motorway piles-up and CSI Miami.

Heres a shot of a motorway- pile-up I took recently, it's shot on a cheap phone camera which explains the quality. Whats the CSI Miami connection you ask? Well it goes like this, while looking at this shot it reminded me of the typical video quality, on CSI Miami recently (I'm not a fan) they took a similar pic to this, run it through their "magic" software and Bingo! they could read the VIN number (vehicle identification number) which is a tiny plate inside the door with stamped type about the same size as this text.

Heres a blow up using some specialist software that actually exists, I don't know about you but I can't even read the number plate, never mind the vin number.