Tag Archives: Photographs

Pink Flower

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StourheadFlower

StourheadFlower,
originally uploaded by etrusia_uk.

Today, I added a new plugin to the blog which is designed to change the way Flickr posts are blogged.

In the past, as soon as I pressed on “post entry” the post was available on the blog, and I had to quickly do any editing required – things like adding tags / categories or tidying up the oddness of Flickr.

Hopefully, the installation of The Flickr Blog This to Draft plugin will change things and now I can make sure it is exactly as I want it before it publishes. If you can see this with Technorati Tags (and in the Photos category) then it worked.

Normal Anti-Religion service will resume soon!

More Photos

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Playing with Lightroom a bit more (and a sunny day) has resulted in a new Flash-based photo gallery (Stourhead Gallery – needs flash player). At the moment these are the basic pictures taken earlier today with no editing. It took about 5 minutes to copy the files off the SD-Card, into Lightroom, create the gallery and upload. The first and last stages were the slowest.

Now, I think I should point out that although I like Lightroom (a lot), I have no intention of buying this when the beta runs out. As a free tool it is fantastic. I am not sure I would be willing to pay for this functionality though.

If I was a professional photographer with no IT Skills it may be worth while, but given the ease with which you can create similar sites (flash or otherwise), it strikes me this is a shrinking market. Adobe may have been better giving this away and charging for support.

Old Photos

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To try and change the subject away from Religious crackpots for a little while, I thought I would upload some photos! Here are a selection from and . As you can see these are quite old photos which have been scanned in.

Stonehenge Stonehenge - different angle Houses at Stourhead Church at Stourhead

Ok, in reality, they have been run through Adobe Lightroom which is actually a wonderful bit of software. I downloaded the beta version quite some time ago but never really made any use of it. Today I had a reminder it was going to expire on 28 Feb so I thought I would try it out.

It is not a photo / picture editing package along the lines of Photoshop but it is excellent for photo management and applying quick preset filters to pictures. This one is called “Antique Grayscale” and seems to be a mix of normal greyscale and sepia tones. I quite like the effect 🙂

Where Lightroom really excells is in creating Web Sites for photo galleries. It is amazing how easily this will take a collection of picures and turn them into a functional, usable (valid XHTML!) website. There is only limited control (in the beta version) over the exact style but the look and feel is good enough that most people wont mind. If you are a graphic artist or photographer, and want a quick and easy website, this package really is the best I have seen. Before my trial version runs out, I fully intend to upload some sample sites so you can see the output. At the moment I did two quick sites (one flash gallery and one html gallery) which are now online. Remember, you need ActiveX and flash player to view the flash site in IE.

As a rule of thumb, a site with 28 pictures takes about 30 seconds to select the pictures, a few mins to type in some basic details and then another 30 seconds to build the site. It really is that quick. The longest part is uploading the images!

This is pretty much software that anyone who can actually copy a image to their computer, can use to create photo galleries in seconds.

Wonders of Photoshop

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Statue of Neptune at StourheadFrom the wonders of Photoshop is this slightly enhanced statue at Stourhead. Basically all I have done is a box blur on the background, a slight enhancement of the white levels of the statue and increased saturation and contrast.

Personally, I think it looks quite nice and I look forward to the day when the crazy monotheistic religions are overhauled and we all get back to worshipping the likes of Neptune (or Poseidon if you are feeling particularly classical today).

We should get back to a time when Gods were proper Gods, not the wet blankets we have today. More thunderstorms! Anyway, all joking aside, I would have liked to have shown the original for comparison but in a fit of foolishness, I saved the changed file JPG over the original. Doh.

More on the Weather

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Old Sarum 1 - 25 Nov 06 - ThumbnailA while ago I posted about how “uncommonly warm” the weather was for February. This got me thinking about the recent weather in general, and it seems fairly safe for me to say that despite the one or two days where it was cold enough to snow it has been very warm this winter.

As some more examples, this is a picture taken at Old Sarum on 25 Nov 06. Although you cant see how warm it is, trust me it was warm – and English Heritage sites such as this are not known for their nice climate…

Normally, when you visit an English Heritage site which dates back to the iron age it is like taking a holiday in a fridge. Only windier and colder.

Old Sarum Picture 2 - ThumbnailThis year, it has been very different. The weather has been nice all winter, the skys have been clear and while there has been a fair bit of rain, it has not been anything major. The sun, on the other hand, has been brilliant.

Now I am not going to make the same mistake as last time, so I wont joke about the “joy” of Global Warming, but having such a nice, warm winter has been…. fun…