The Dr Who experience Cardiff

Went to the Dr Who experience today, if your a fan of Dr Who you'll enjoy a visit.  The tour is interactive, with visits to the Tardis and a few other 'sets', after the tour theres a sort of museum of Dr Who stuff where you can take photos (not allowed on the interactive part) lots to see and shoot.  The trip took us about two hours with a bit of time spent taking pics.  Note it's fairly dark so you'll need flash or a camera with decent high iso.

Waterfalls shoot

A few pics from a waterfall shoot.

Wedding/reception venues

As having spent some years as a wedding photographer I wonder about the sanity of people who design/prepare wedding venues.

Many places (the majority in fact) seem to forget that weddings have a photographer and often a video crew.  Why for example cover the entire wall behind the top table with mirrors, the Bride can't see them, shes got her back to the bloody things, but god help the photographer/guest who want to take pics of the speeches, they are reflected in every shot, pointless and an expensive waste of time.

Then there are the top tables against the windows, yes lets back light the entire wedding party, it helps no one, they are in their own shade, that means we have to use lights or flash with the same reflection issues of the mirrors.

The latest 'fad' I've encountered is the 'gloom room', yes the bloody rooms blacked out, I was at a friends wedding a few weeks ago, blazing sunny day (and we don't get many here) yet the reception rooms like the black hole of Calcutta, talk about depressing, the dessert was Prozac! and another with the mirrors behind the top table.  You had to use flash, I nearly needed night vision goggles, it was so bloody dark  none of could see what we were eating.

My final whinge is the venues (mostly churches) who use those horrible yellow sodium lights, yes I know they are cheap but did the bride really pay two grand for her dress to look like a banana!  If she's wanter a yellow dress I suspect she'd have bought one.

Why doesn't anything work properly???

I've got sticky tape that won't stick to anything,   I've got a mobile phone that hides the bloody keypad! Handy if you need to phone the emergency services in a hurry.  
My strimmer (or string breaker as I like to call the bastard) is totally unfit for purpose.  My front garden isn't very big but it's taken me an hour to strim it because 15 seconds strimming equates to two minutes of repairing the stupid pathetic excuse for string they use, and I've bought the heavy duty one, God help if you've got the 'normal' string, it must be like cotton.
I have a car jack that won't lift the weight of my car (so I had to buy a proper trolley jack, miles better and quicker) and I have a spare wheel thats a different size to the rest of the wheels on the car (space saver they call them) I wouldn't mind but A my car is freaking huge! so plenty of space for a proper bloody wheel, and B they are technically illegal in the UK, the law here states that wheels and tyres must be the same on any axle, not different sizes.

 Gets off soapbox and goes for a stiff drink.

Rain on leaves

Well it looks like summers had it!, Still we did have a week or so of actual sunshine so I shouldn't grumble really.

A few pics from yesterday of the rain on leaves.

Orange stairs and bridge

Ok they are not really orange but they look that way to the camera, it's actually the horrible sodium street lighting, yes you can correct to a certain extent (not fully due to non continuous light source) But I quite like the effect here.

Seaway parade crash

I was passing along seaway parade when the police closed off one side of the road due to a road accident, it appears two vehicles were involved, I'm told there were no serious injuries.

The call centre

My God was a disgrace of a program... and it had to be in Wales as well!  It's the 'Office' meets a call centre, sadly the boss Nev has all the charm wit, and grace of Jayne Mansfield after the car accident.  He makes the fictitious David Brent look like an intellectual.  His idea of management is throwing things at the staff, and telling a ginger haired.staff member that he thought they already had their quoter of 'gingers'
What he thinks he's doing is beyond me, what he is doing is making himself look stupid, and leaving himself open to claims from an industrial tribunal.

People watching

As something of a student of human behaviour I find myself watching and observing people quite a lot.  Today for example I was by the beach eating a sandwich and wondering why so many people had pop-up tents at the beach.
It makes very little sense really, if your trying to avoid the sun don't go to a sunny beach.  Secondly the beach was really windy, a flimsy lightweight tent this is simply going to be blown away, and several were.  Trying to peg out a tent in soft sand with 4 tent pegs is a bit like trying to dam Niagara falls with a few stone, you can try but it's not going to work.  So why do so many people try?  Buggered if I know.

Waterfall

I went for a walk to a waterfall today, didn't take many pics but heres two of my favorites.

Smoking ban in buildings

The smoking ban in buildings doesn't seem to have worked that well as far as I can see.  First off I'll make it clear I'm not a smoker, so it shouldn't really bother me, but it does.
I was at a wedding yesterday, a glorious sunny day, yet the smokers were clustered around the door of the reception like it was pouring with rain, why I don't know?  This creates several problems, one is all the smoke simply blew into the room on the  breeze, and secondly the bloody doors were blocked by a large gang of 'gaspers' as I call them.