New equipment

Well yesterday was my birthday and I was lucky enough to receive quite a few photography related presents.

I'm now the proud owner of a Logan 301-S mount cutter which will allow me to create my own mounts for photographs and give me greater flexibility in choosing what format and size I want to display my photos in. I just need to make a visit to Lion in Slough to get myself a supply of quality mountboard.

A new Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens is also sitting in my camera bag and initial shots that I've taken have come out really well. The lens itself is pretty small in size but is perfect for portraits and creating fantastic depth of field shots where I need the creative control. I'm really looking forward to using this lens a lot over the coming months and years.

I also received a couple of books which will really help me to improve my photography further and provide a great source of reference.

Slideshow / DVD presentation software (2)

Having tried out the Proshow Gold software for a couple of weeks now and created a few slideshows for viewing on a PC and also a DVD for viewing on a regular TV, I've been very impressed.

It's a really easy process to just drag and drop your photos into the show and do the same for your audio tracks as well. You can even automatically synchronise the length of the slide show to the length of your audio and it works out the duration each slide is visible for and it's transition.

It certainly looks like it will be a very worthwhile bit of software to have.

What a wonderful weekend!

Had a great weekend so far. I went up to London as I wanted to visit an exhibition at the OXO Gallery on the South Bank. The exhibition was called 'Ocean' and was a display of the work of the famous marine photographer Philip Plisson. There were some stunning and inspiring photographs on display, really capturing the changing moods of the sea and coast. It was well worth the visit.

Going into London also gave me the opportunity to get some photographs along the South Bank. Around by the Royal Festival Hall I was able to get some great action shots of the trick riders on their BMX bikes as they rode around under the concourse. I also got a selection of shots of the London Eye and tried various techniques with exposure compensations to counteract the strong sunlight. I've just got to sit down now and do the post-shoot processing.

Website progress

The re-design of the website is coming along well. My good friend (and web designer!) Nolan, has shown me a mock up of the home page and one of the subsequent linked pages and I'm really happy with how things are progressing.

We decided on a couple of tweaks but it's coming along very nicely. I'm just sorting through the pictures to include in the galleries so people can see the standard of my work. Not an easy task trying to whittle things down to a manageable number really!

I'm really looking forward to getting it all up and running now.