Author Archives: athyfoto

Back up, but keep organised.

Things haven’t gone too well on the technical front just lately. The other day my computer got wobbly legs and staggered about  bit, then made a valiant attempt at recovery. It then went into self presevation mode, sulked a lot and then wouldn’t talk to me at all!

Oh dear me thought. But having been through these times before I was more prepared for it happenning again. I have two network hard drives where I keep backups of everything. I have various USB drives too that come in handy too. Now I’m not the best in the world a keeping things tidy and while I had everything on the network drives my filing systems are atrocious. So finding all the program set up files to perform re-installs has been a challenge to say the least. As for data files . . . . . . the machine has been in heavy use for nearly four years and it has been a real headache finding everything.

I now have a shiny new pewter and have got most of the important stuff up and running and have downloaded and installed 64 bit versions of Lightroom and Photoshop. Now I have to get all my plug-ins back in place.

I should be back to normal soon and hopefully the flood of OS updates will slow to a normal trickle soon too.

So it’s not just a case of backup, backup, backup, but keep some semblance of organisation in storage systems as well. I will start with the best of intentions but I just know that won’t last 🙂

Detail and Context

I enjoy being out and about and photographing the landscapes of North Yorkshire but I also like to photograph the small details as well as the bigger picture. On a recent visit to Helmsley Castle there were lots of interesting details in and on the buildings. So after photographing the detail on one of the doors I took a second shot to place the first in context. I decided too that I would leave the pictures in colour because I really like the warmth of the tones.

Door detail

Door in context

Lindisfarne

I was just reading a post by Andy Beel (a must see blog), and looking at his image I was reminded of a picture I shot on a visit to Holy Island in April 2011. Andy asks – “Why are the vast majority of pictures taken from 5′ 6″ from the ground?”. A question that made me smile.

I remember this was my second visit to Lindisfarne and I wanted to take away a picture that was different from the ones I got on my first visit. This low viewpoint was found after much muttering and cursing after clambering about the rocks and turning my ankles. On the path to the castle were dozens of people taking pictures as they walked, not looking for anything other than the view they got from the path.

I suppose a lot of people want a picture that reminds them of the day out and since the beginning of the digital age millions of people are out and about all day every day with a camera in their pocket. They like to just point and shoot, which is great, but they probably would not describe themselves as photographers or have photography in their list of hobbies.

Once bitten by the photography bug you don’t look at the world around you in the same way any more. You are always looking for a picture, an angle, an interesting shape, assessing light conditions. That’s what makes us photographers I suppose.

Lindisfarne Castle

Lindisfarne Castle

Byland Abbey

We took a run out in the Yorkshire Wolds last weekend and pitched up at the Mouseman museum and workshops in Kilburn which is just inside the North York Moors National Park. It’s a really nice village with the White Horse carved into the hillside above. I like visiting Robert Thompson’s museum but it always costs plenty 🙂

We wandered the lanes afterwards and stopped at nearby Byland Abbey. We sat in the car park for a while trying to decide whether or not it was going to rain. In the end we chanced it and went inside. We had barely gone 50 feet when . . you guessed it, it rained . . . . . a lot! I grabbed this shot before we gave it up as a bad job and headed back to the gate kiosk where we decided to join English Heritage, we got our entrance fee back and we can now re-visit when the weather picks up.

Byland Abbey

Byland Abbey

Genteel craft

My wife likes to be creative, she draws, paints in water colours and uses various fibres to make felt wall hangings. One day she was making a wall hanging from wool and other natural fibres. There were a few stages of preparation of these raw materials getting the various colours to blend. One of these involved a multi-pointed needle that was used to prod the work-piece in order to get the fibres to mesh and bind together. I decided to take a few shots and decided I wanted to capture something of the rapid movement of this stage and came up with this almost abstract image that describes a part of this otherwise genteel craft.

Creating a felt wall hanging.

Creating a felt wall hanging.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen . . .

. . .  go out in the midday sun! Or so the song goes. OK it wasn’t midday, it was around 2 pm but the light was just as harsh. The sky was absolutely clear and blue with the sun blazing down, just the conditions not to take pictures, or is it. I don’t always want to follow “rules” when it comes to making pictures so I went out and found these two possibilities, both back-lit by the sun. I converted them to black and white and then added just the slightest touch of green back in.

Back-lit foliage

Back-lit flower and foliage

A Nidderdale sky

I like to make pictures of the sky. I think that there is just so much going on up there, changing minute by minute. It’s the biggest free show on earth in full HD and widescreen!

This was taken in the evening as the sun was getting low. There seemed to be so many different formations going on and a little to the left was a hole where what looked like a bit of a rainbow was visible. Then there was also a strange little line of small clouds floating by right across the sun.