Posts Tagged ‘technology’

Where were we?

Posted: 29/05/2013 in photography
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A couple of weeks ago I created a post asking for advice from you my dear friends of the blogosphere and in return I offered a print to my favourite comment, we’ll get to the winner in a moment but I just wanted to apologise first for being so quiet of late, I’ve been incredibly busy around the house with the boys. I’ve also been out and about on the town with the wonderful creative partnership that is Lenses of Croydon I’m really excited to have become involved with them and no doubt you will be hearing more from me about them in the coming weeks months and years.

I have decided for the time being not to exhibit my work, this is in the most part due to the cost vs. reward I’m sure you all understand that raising kids is not a cheap exercise and whilst I’m fairly confident that the exhibition would have just about broken even I’m not confident that any real money would have been made and when belts are as tight as mine and Mrs BC’s even the small outlay is beyond the current budget.

I of course reserve the right as always to change my mind in the future when metaphoric belts are loosened.

Thank you all for your feedback I greatly appreciate it.

Back to excuses, I have managed to complete a diploma in photography, I doubt it’s going to make me any money either but I thoroughly enjoyed it and certainly learned a fair bit. Since completing it I’ve enrolled on another course with www.camera-school.co.uk. I’ve picked up a little freelance web design work for a local photographer and am deep within the throes of forcing my eldest to abandon Nappies/Diapers in favour of the big boys toilet. My youngest also stole my mouse and has a habit of switching off the computer in the middle of whatever I am doing so if this post seems disjointed that would be because I’ve abandoned and returned to it several times in fits of rage.

Oh yes, my favourite feedback actually came through Google+ and was made by an old school friend the hugely talented musician Matthew Gair, I’ve written about him before although not for some time so please do take a moment to give him a listen.

I’ve included a few recent pictures below from my adventures with the Lenses of Croydon Family for your perusal and commenting pleasure.

Big Cock

Big Cock

Man in a snakeskin suit

Man in a snakeskin suit

Desire

Desire

Smile London

Smile London

Thank you all again

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

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Chessington Zoo

Posted: 14/03/2013 in being dad, photography
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and to follow on, here come the big cats, well and some meerkats because, well because they’re cute and some jellyfish because they’re pretty.

The light on the day way dire to say the least and my primary focus was ensuring I didn’t lose the kids in the crowds too often, I still came away with a couple of shots that I am over the moon with and several hundred more for the scrap-heap.

as previously shared

as previously shared

darn sticks

darn sticks

my favourite picture of the day

my favourite picture of the day

here kitty kitty

here kitty kitty

lioness

 

am I regal enough?

am I regal enough?

 

ok I'll move along then

ok I’ll move along then

 

why hello there

why hello there

it wasn't us we're innocent I tell you

it wasn’t us we’re innocent I tell you

 

we're

we're not aliens

we’re not aliens

I hope you like them and please do add your thoughts and comments to the section below, I’m obviously emotionally attached to the pictures and critiques and ideas are always welcome.

Hope you’re having a great day.

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

 

laziness in repairs

Posted: 01/03/2013 in being dad, photography
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OK well laziness might not be the right answer, being a full-time dad is extremely time-consuming and if I’m honest probably quite dull to my readership, I’ve also been suffering from technical difficulties relating to security settings on my computer that kept logging me out of WordPress, I think I’ve now resolved that issue and promise I will try to get back to keeping you updated on a more regular basis.

My photography hasn’t slowed down although my editing has and as such I’ve been very naughty about sharing any of that with you either.

still here’s a couple of shots from the other night where I went out and played with some long exposures.

le audi le me le park

I’ve also spent a bit of time playing around with a small home studio Mrs BC bought me for Christmas.

f250 port zeiss f252 f253

Hope you’re all well

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

Project 52 Week 24

Posted: 14/06/2012 in photography, Project 52
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the theme this week was architecture and given that I’m lucky enough to live in a city full of wonderful architecture all I had to do was get on a train and take a picture of St Paul’s, the Tower of London, or even one of the modern monstrosities like the Shard or Gherkin.

Now where would the fun be in that, it’s just not my style to do things the easy way and anyway I really wanted to try to capture some of the gritty old buildings in my own town of Croydon (a suburb on the Southern outskirts of Greater London) it doesn’t have the best reputation and I’m sure that some of you at least will remember the images of large swathes of it being on fire during last years rioting.

I’ve lived here going on for 10 years now and despite one burglary have been fortunate enough to personally avoid any incidences of street crime or antisocial behavior, maybe I look tough or maybe I just look poor, I certainly am not stupid enough to think that this isn’t a tough area and I don’t take too many risks.

anyway this weeks theme has turned into a bit of a photo essay with lots of grimy gritty shots and odd injections of colour.

end of terrace

Above is the end of terrace shot I chose for my actual project submission mostly because I like the strong contrast and lines.

opposite end

This is the opposite end of the same row of terraces.

Grimey Pub

despite walking past this pub almost every day it is so dingy and grimey that I’ve never even ventured through its doors and I like pubs with atmosphere and sawdust on the floor.

honestly it’s lovely

There’s a really odd mix of light industrial buildings mixed in with Victorian era terraces, if it wasn’t for all the satellite dishes this picture could have been taken any time in the last 100 years.

what happened to the window

see there is colour here, one wonders what happened to the window though.

union doors

I love the way these doors look like a union flag

door to nowhere

I can’t recall if it was the door or the pipe that were wonky

an injection of colour

I just liked the lines and colour of this factory

come and visit

it’s a truly lovely corner of south-east England

beach house anyone?

I can honestly think of no reason why there is an Art Deco beach apartment block in the middle of this industrial estate.

who knows

again I’m at a loss as to the point of these decorative touches.

it’s not all bad though

there are some truly lovely architectural touches too.

And nature is even trying to reclaim some of the more hideous buildings

There is even some interesting textures available to be had

I hope that you’ve enjoyed this little porthole into my local architecture and the area where I live.

Next week we’re going to be talking about love and what that means so keep your diaries free.

Please let me know what you think in the comments section below

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

Long Exposure

Posted: 08/06/2012 in iPhone, photography
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one of the reasons I decided to expand my camera collection from my excellent FujiHS20EXR is that whilst it does have full manual controls they are hidden away in deep dark recesses and its whole design philosophy is based around let us help you to take brilliant pictures by having lots of set themes that allow you to tell us what you want and then we’ll set the camera up to do just that.

This is the modern way as pioneered by companies like Apple telling us what we want before we know we want it. It’s a brilliant concept and allows mere mortals to do extraordinary things with technology that we would never have dreamed possible just a few years ago.

The difficulty comes in when we decide that we don’t want to take what would normally be deemed an attractive photograph and whilst my Fuji would allow me that manual control it made it as fiddly and awkward as possible. My newly acquired Canon EOS 10D on the other hand was made in a time before the iPhone and whilst it does have fully automated options it will just as happily let you, nay encourage you to push the envelope of accepted dogma and behave like an idiot. It’s like being able to switch off the traction control on a modern car, sure  the car probably knows better and ignoring its advice may mean you kill yourself in a lurid slide of acrid tyre smoke but shouldn’t that be the choice of the consumer not boffins in a lab.

Phew that almost turned into a rant of Mr Bunny Chow of old proportions, you’re really just here to look at some long exposure shots aren’t you.

Right then without further delay Nick of Nick Exposed and Shannon of Seeing Spots set forth another challenge following on from the great success of their Quotography challenge this time challenging us to come up with Long Exposures.

I’ve been exceedingly busy over the last few weeks so haven’t had the opportunity to really push the envelope with a tripod and super steady shots but such is the beauty of the flexibility of the Canon EOS system that I was able to produce some interesting shots none the less.

Cycle Strobe

What’s going on

Racing Corner

Please let me know what you think of them and feel free to leave comment, tips and critique.

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

Project 52 Week 23

Posted: 07/06/2012 in photography, Project 52
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I know, I know poor form from me with week’s 22 and 23 being published almost simultaneously I’m sorry I’ll try to keep them more evenly spaced in future.

After the relative nightmare of Week 22 I found this week easy to select as the theme was Straight Out of the Camera something my hatred of the droll of post processing approves of greatly. I’ve mentioned before that if I can’t make a picture work with under 30 seconds of post processing (read a quick crop and maybe exposure adjustment) then I don’t use it.

I know that this is laziness and that the greats all work on their images either in the darkroom or digital darkroom, but I’d far rather be out there shooting than fiddling around in front of the computer wondering if this filter or that filter adds more to the image in front of me.

So with no further waffle I present to you my artsy, rusty bicycle.

Straight out of the camera

As you can see I went for the shallow depth of field effect or bokeh created by using my 50mm lens wide open at f2, otherwise it is uncropped and untouched as it come out of my new to me Canon EOS10D.

I promise that over the next couple of days I will collate some of my other shots from the weekend away and share them here or you can alway pop over to my Google+ profile for all the latest.

I’ve also shared some long exposure shots with Nick Exposed and Seeing Spots, I cannot say for sure if Nick and Shannon will be featuring my shots this time as I was late submitting them but stay tuned to these pages and I’ll get them up here regardless.

Until Next time

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow

Project 52 Week 16

Posted: 12/04/2012 in iPhone, photography, Project 52
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This week I’m going to talk to you a little about technology, which was the suggested theme for this weeks project 52 post.

Things may get a little geeky at points and I apologise for that I’m passionate about a number of geeky things though so you’ll either have to skip this one or put up with it, you never know you might learn something that will be useful in your life. Actually I doubt that you will unless you are slightly geeky.

left to right we have FujiFilm HS20EXR, Canon EOS 10d, Canon EOS 650

I mentioned recently that I’d managed to buy an old Canon EOS 650 film camera but wanted to borrow a lens to ensure that it all worked before investing any further in it, well I put out the shout and an old friend who I’ll call Mr Falkland came through and has leant me not only three of his lenses but his incredibly beautiful Canon EOS 10d semi professional body so that I can have an idea of what the lenses to before wasting valuable time and money on film and shooting blind. I know he’s an occasional reader so thank you Mr Falkland, I am hugely touched that you trust me not to break it. I plan to make the most of your incredibly generous loan and learn as much as I can.

Going into a little more detail about the picture contents included we have my trusty HS20EXR which looks dwarfed in this company, I still love her though, she’s a great camera and hugely flexible. The strap is obviously not original and is a retro look GoTo strap purchased for me by Mrs Bunny Chow as a 4th anniversary present.

Squashed into the middle and barely visible is Mr Falklands EOS10d fitted with a Sigma 30-100mm (I’m working from memory here so could be wrong) lense.

and then finally my Canon EOS650 in this instance fitted with Mr Falklands Sigma 18-30mm wide-angle lens and another GoTo vintage strap bought again by Mrs Bunny Chow.

I’ve not had much opportunity to play with either the loan or film camera as yet but will endeavour to get some shots done over the weekend to share with you all next week. (longer for the film stuff I suspect)

moving on.

The rather poor quality picture was taken with my new phone a HTC One X running Android in its latest Ice Cream Sandwich incarnation then skinned with HTC’s own sense interface. As many of my longer term readers will know I have been an iPhone user for a number of years now and decided to make the switch for a number of reasons which I’m going to list.

  1. I’m a geek and no self-respecting geek is entirely happy with how iOS locks you into doing things they way they see as being the right way.
  2. I couldn’t see enough of an update between the iPhone 4 that I had and the iPhone 4S to justify making the swap but wasn’t prepared to wait for the theoretical iPhone 5.
  3. 3. I wanted to see what all they hype about android was all about and if I’m honest just fancied a change.

So what do I think so far?

Pro’s so far:

  • The huge 4.7inch screen is beautiful to behold and the colours really pop, the iPhone’s retina display still has smaller pixels and deeper blacks though.
  • It’s different, I had an iPhone 3G followed by an iPhone 4 and other than the semi regular iOS updates which were evolutionary not revolutionary I’ve had the same basic concept for four years now or an eon in technological terms.
  • Widgets and live wallpapers are an amusing/fun thing even if not much more useful than a red circle reminding me that I have more emails to check than I have time for.

Con’s so far:

  • The camera on paper at least should offer superior performance to the iPhone with an aperture of f2.0 (smaller number means more light hitting the sensor) and 8mp as opposed to the iPhone 4’s aperture of f2.8 and 5mp. The reality is though that the picture quality from the iPhone’s sensor seems to offer much lower levels of noise (sparkly bits) in low and even medium light levels. This noise is obvious and apparent on the phone’s screen never mind when blown up to its full size on a computer screen. As a camera guy this is a big deal to me and time will tell if software updates and improve this major flaw. 
  • The 4.7 inch screen despite being a beauty to behold is just a tiny bit too big for my hands to comfortably type on single-handed. Not a big deal 90% of the time but if you have lady like hands something to be conscious of before considering one of these.
  • The screen is not as sensitive or as accurate as that of the iPhone, I’m sure that I’ll get used to this one as my friend who’s always been an Android man thinks it’s fine but to me at least it’s still a niggle, the difference is subtle but still there.
  • Despite its quad-core +1 processors, the fact that apps etc continue to run in the background unless you force them to stop means that it’s no faster than iOS the majority of the time. 

I’m still happy with the phone and realise that a lot of my niggles are more things just being different from what I have become accustomed to. Time will tell if they are things that affect my next phone upgrade and whether I go back to iOS or stick with Android in the future, but that day is at least a couple of years away so we’ll have to see how things unfold and where technology has gone by then.

If you’d like to see more of my pictures there are plenty available through my Google+ account, be sure to introduce yourself as not everything is posted publicly.

Next week the suggested theme will be in the Kitchen so as well as taking some pictures for you I may even make an effort to revive the fortunes of www.mrbunnychowcooks.com

Until then

TTFN

Mr Bunny Chow