Kite flying on Old Hunstanton Beach
Waiting for the weather and tide
Multicoloured layered cliffs at Hunstanton, Norfolk, UK
The play of light in the sky and the humps of the the eroded sandstone boulders which were arranged in lines pointing out to sea, was wonderful. I made a couple of attempts to capture it, and this is the one I like best. The green of the seaweed was a great bonus. It really was that vivid. Even though it was accurate, I had to take the saturation down just a tad as it was looking unreal.
The picture was taken looking West from the beach at Hunstanton, where there are some wonderful layered and coloured cliffs. While setting up and taking this picture I knew there was a chance of the sun breaking through and lighting up the cliffs behind me. But after a seemingly interminable wait, we gave up. Sure enough later on the sun shone through but I wasn’t in a position to get the shot.
Sun burst over the Wash
08 July 2011 | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman
Guile Point leading Marks. Lindisfarne, UK
You can also see Bamburgh Castle on the horizon.
An attempt to get a picture of Lindisfarne Castle and use a wall to frame the castle and obscure an ugly lamp post on the quay.
Lindisfarne Castle
07 July 2011 | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman
Oil refinery at Grangemouth seen from Culross
It’s about time I posted a picture that didn’t include lots of green in it.
29 June 2011 | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman
Dunmore hill and Melville monument
Taken on our Comrie hike, looking North towards the granite obelisk on Dunmore hill which commemorates Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville.
There was a tad too much water vapour in the atmosphere for a really clear picture, but I liked the way the light was playing on the field and trees.
The 18mm – 105mm kit lens that came with the camera is very good – though as I shot this at 50mm I could have used my prime lens and got an even sharper image. Checking the image in detail I was very surprised to find that details of the obelisk can be seen.
29 June 2011 | Comrie | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman
Looking North along Glen Lednock – Comrie, Perthshire, Scotland
Looking North from the road while on our Glen Lednock hike.
Gary seen in a ditch getting ready to take a picture - Photograph by Ginger
29 June 2011 | Glen Lednock | Comrie | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman
Pastures and derelict buildings – Dumyat, Stirling, Scotland
Keith, Gary and Ginger on Dumyat, Stirling, Scotland
28 June 2011 | Dumyat, Stirling, Scotland | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman
Scottish hills
We’ve been hiking in Scotland. Taken from Dumyat, Stirling.
28 June 2011 | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman
Floor 4 – Tate Modern
I liked the lighting. The original upload of this picture looked a bit wishy washy in most browsers. I’ve since fixed it – read on for more details.
Browser colour issues
Unfortunately the popular browsers don’t support the colour profiles embedded in most image files. This means that pictures viewed on the Internet are not always presented the way the photographer intended, which is an absolute travesty and a personal peeve. IE and Google Chrome are among the worst offenders. It is particularly bad when products like Google Picasa which purport to be photographic tools complete with editors ignore the embedded colour profile information.
Recently I’ve been using a Nikon Adobe RGB colour space for my pictures as it provides for a higher dynamic range – which I need to make the best of my pictures as I’m using a 14 bit camera. However as described above most browsers fail to display the pictures properly. To get around this I’ve converted the jpeg images to the standard sRGB colour space used by default by the popular browsers. Of course this shouldn’t be necessary, but there you go.
The best browser I’ve found so far for viewing pictures is Firefox with a colour profile add-on.
You can check your browser’s compliance on this site: http://www.color.org/version4html.xalter
The Firefox profile add-on can be found here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/user/907358/
There is a lot more information available on this issue, search for ‘browser color profile support’ and lose a few hours reading all about it.
21 June 2011 | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman
Sunflower Seeds at the Tate Modern – Ai Weiwei
You can read more about the original piece here: Sunflower Seeds – Ai Weiwei.
A close up of some of the Sunflower Seeds
21 June 2011 | Copyright © 2011 Gary Allman
Fire in the sky
I was on the web cam with Ginger when I noticed the light outside had changed. Pulling aside the blinds I was quite stunned by the sky, and sorted out the webcam so that Ginger could see it too. Being a bit photographically uninspired at the moment, I was reluctantly persuaded to take pictures.
I’ve applied minimal post processing, just enough to darken out the distracting foreground. It really was a spectacular sky.
19 July 2008 | Portsmouth UK | Copyright © 2008 Gary Allman
Lynn’s big day
Taken on the morning of her wedding, just after she’d finished having her make up put on. The lady doing her make up kindly held the black backdrop up behind Lynn for me.
12 July 2008 | Copyright © 2008 Gary Allman
Sedgwick and Dent Fault
We found a very nice parking and view point on the A684 in Garsdale, just to the east of Sedbergh in the Yorkshire Dales.
13 June 2008 | Map | Copyright © 2008 Gary Allman
St Nicholas Church
9 June 2008 | St. Nicholas Church, Great Hormead, Hertfordshire, UK | Map | Copyright © 2008 Gary Allman
Visiting
I’ve not been a particularly attentive son. I’ve only visited their grave a few times in over twenty years, and this was the first time I’ve taken the time to do some cleaning and tidying up.
Being there brought home my own mortality; they both succumbed to cancer relatively young. If I live another eleven years I’ll be older than they both were.
I sat and thought for a while about what they would make of my life and plans. Thinking about those eleven years, I’m glad I’ve found the courage to follow a more difficult path that will hopefully lead to happiness rather than take the easy route of accepting the status quo.
13 May 2008 [366:102] | Map | Copyright © 2008 Gary Allman
At the top of the stairs
13 May 2008 | Copyright © 2008 Gary Allman
Shell
Shell service station, Goldsmith Avenue, Portsmouth
12 April 2008 | Copyright © 2008 Gary Allman
KFC at the Pompey Centre, Portsmouth
The Pompey Centre, Portsmouth
This is an unusual post-processing technique for me. Though I like the original picture, it felt a bit sterile. I prefer this take on it.
12 April 2008 | Copyright © 2008 Gary Allman
Tonight…
I might be tired, but I am happy. Maybe tomorrow I’ll be more accessible.
08 April 2008 | Portsmouth, UK | Copyright © 2008 Gary Allman
At peace
03 March 2008 | Copyright © 2008 Gary Allman
Hair Cut
Playing with the settings on my webcam and I rather liked the results.
01 March 2008 | Copyright © 2008 Gary Allman
