All Blacks in Edinburgh - 23/09/07

The first of our planned world cup games. We thrashed Scotland 40 - 0 in a handling error ridden game but it was fun nonetheless. Have never seen one place so overrun with Kiwi's in my life. Oh and can we change our flag?

Zoom In Photography Course - 06/09/07

I've just finished a 4 week photography course (3 hours, once per week) and as such have uploaded the results. Some of the photos, whilst they aren't the best compositional shots, do demonstrate some interesting aspects of photography such as the effects of perspective and colour filters on monochrome images.

My favs are without a doubt the Thames Festival fireworks shots.....some great annoying tripod action to get those. Sorry punters!

Speed Updating

Ok so here goes. Now that I've got my entire photo library up to date and where it should be, there's pretty much a years (although meagre) worth of photos and good times for you to check out.

27/08/07 Notting Hill Carnival - As per usual, the most free festival fun you can have in London.

08/06/07 Berlin - Yock was over again for more of his scientology bothering so Aidan and I met up with him in Berlin for the weekend. Cue crazy nightclub / bar / hostel / hippie commune / impromtue documentary accommodation and general spreading of democracy. Don't worry if that doesn't make much sense to you either......I'm still trying to figure it all out too.

30/03/07 New Zealand - Christie and I took a month off and spent 3 weeks in NZ and 1 in Aussie. Of the many highlights, hiring a campervan and driving from Auckland to Wellington was one.......me playing a starring role as Bridesman at Ruthie's wedding was definitely another.

03/03/07 Wales - Just before our big trip to NZ we took off to Wales for the weekend. Cheap hire cars are a great great thing.

05/01/07 Amsterdam - Still not sure about this place although the Heineken museum is a must.

21/12/06 Toronto, Niagara Falls & New York - I'm sure we're still paying off this trip even now. A magnificent week in Toronto for Christmas followed by a train through Niagara Falls and New Years Eve in Times Square. Yeah.....NYE in Times Square....don't go for the fireworks......I've had bigger displays in my back garden. Go for the sheep like pens they herd you into, go for the 8 blocks back view you are going to get if you turn up 6 hours before midnight and go for the no alchohol, no toilet breaks, standing in the freezing cold fun of it. Go so you can say you have been. So rubbish it was hilariously good.

Feedback

So to give some feedback on the GX100 and Aperture. The new camera is fantastic, I enrolled in a camera techniques course to give me an understanding of the manual controls of the camera and found it incredibly worthwhile. The camera itself I would wholly recommend. It's lens is quite wide to begin with but with the addition of the wide angle lens attachment (16mm!) it enables some amazingly creative shots.

Aperture, Apple's pro photo workflow application (think glistening insane octane iPhoto), is nothing sort of a workhorse. It's features are very geared towards photographers who take hundreds of photos for each project and need a streamlined way of narrowing them down to then adjust and apply keywords. Considering I took just on 1000 photos over the 4 weeks of my photography course it's made my life just a little easier.