Pictures, Videos and other meanderings…

Here we are folks, New Years Eve 2008 – a rather cold and dark evening which I hope isn’t a prelude for 2009!

At this time of year, people are getting ready to go out and party or sit at home and watch Jools Holland or some other celeb welcoming the new year in on a pre-recorded TV show as most of the guests are planning to be out partying rather than working – something I plan to be doing in a little while as well.

So what’s in store for 09? lots of doom and gloom around with the state of the economy and a bit of a freezing start to it if you believe what the weather men say, however I think it’s going to be a good year – if you put your head down and agree with all of the media then the chances are that their prophesies will come true, but if you keep your head up, watch whats going on and keep your wits about you then you should be able to manouvre your life to avoid the pitfalls and problems.

That said, I don’t think it will be an easy year, more of a challenge than anything else so lift up your head, face lifes challenges head on and make the most of what you got!

Have a great evening, and a fantastic 2009!

I have finally got round to sorting out my main website www.tonyculshaw.co.uk the design is done, the framework is created and all thats left is for me to fill it with the content.

With the wind in the right direction, it should be complete by this evening but then plans can change – in the words of Roosevelt (I think) a plan is worth nothing, but planning is everything. Makes sense when you think about it.

Thats enough for now, got to get back to understanding php and css again, oh joy!

Thinking about what you want for christmas is a bit of a minefield as there is so much stuff that I don’t really need, but really want.

A nice EOS 5D mk2 would look nice in the stocking on the mantelpiece on christmas morning, but it ain’t gonna happen – maybe in the new year once the prices start to drop – be interesting to play with the video on it as well

Another want, is another set of studio lights – now I already have a set of D-Lite2′s, however the D-Lite4′s are looking nice and not as much as the 5D – so that would save me some money right? I mean it’s impossible to have too many lights isn’t it? Well actually, the more complexity you put into photography the more work it becomes and the chances of being disappointed grow as sods law states that you will miss something.

So going from over two grand to five hundred quid has saved me a fair wedge, but then I want a macro lens, so I could save myself another hundred or so quid on the lights – if I keep going at this rate, I’ll be making money! Now realistically with lenses, I am ok, maybe swap the 17-40 for a 16-35 but I’m not precious about that but an extra stop would be handy – especially with the dull weather we’ve had for the past couple of years but I could get away with the f4 and a bit more ISO.

So, coming down from there and saving myself another pile of cash, I could do with another flash which would save me another seventy quid over the macro lens – then I could spend that money on stands for it – ah, but then I could use my existing stands and save that after all – I’m losing count of how much money I’ve saved in this meander of the mind alone!

ahh – one problem is that the flash stands don’t have brackets to fit my speedlights on, a quick check on ebay and I can get something that will work with my current flashes for a fiver and that will fit onto my tripods, so two of those for a tenner and overall I’ve saved another two hundred and fifty quid!

Right then, for christmas, I’ll have two hotshoe brackets for a tenner then with the money I’ve saved I can but a 5D mk2 and still be quids in! What do you mean how? well, if you take the £1700 I saved between the 5d and the D-lites, then the £150 I saved between them and the macro lens, then the £70 between that and the speedlight and the £250 between that and the hotshoe brackets, that adds up to £2,170 – I reckon the 5D will come down to about £1500 in the new year, so I’ll have effectively made £670 – hey, I could buy the D-lites as well, result!

That’s how it works isn’t it?…..

Rather a gloomy day today, what can you do apart from take photos indoors?

Oh yeah – my college stuff!

Last year I enrolled on an HNC photography course at Oxford College, it’s a two year course and I wanted to finally get at least one qualification before I died (hopefully not just before) and do it in an area that interested me.

As with most things, you know theres going to be some work involved and expect that you will be able to cope with it -  if only this were true!

It’s currently half term ‘holiday’ at the beginning of my second year, and I’m behind – way behind! in fact, out of the 4.5 assignments I should have completed in the first year, I have done two – not boding well for the second year is it? One of the problems that I have found, is that the workload you get from it plus a [more than] full time job and three kids and teh internet to look after, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for college work. I know what I need to do, I have [in the main] my plans on how to complete them and indeed one of them just need the referencing finishing off and then printing and thats it – why can’t I bring myself to do it?

I have a pop-up from my Outlook calendar every day that tells me to complete certain things – it’s reading 14 weeks overdue at the moment, so I think i’ll go public with it in the hope that it will drive me on to complete the assignments as I can be a bit of a last minute Larry at the best of times which has pretty well always worked out.

I did a calculation once on the leadtime of producing some work, and it was three weeks of putting it off followed by ten minutes of work five minutes before it was due – so I overran by five minutes, it wasn’t life or death stuff.

So there you go, I’m going to list the outstanding stuff on here, and knock it off as I get it done – it might be a long journey!

Today was one of those days where I seemed to be peddling at full speed, but didn’t feel like I was getting very far.

The strange thing is, I learnt a whole load of new stuff today just by talking to people – whats that all about? I haven’t managed to finish off the two or three tasks that I should have done, but I’ve helped to change the career direction of one person and helped another guy to clear the fog that surrounded his development goals for the end of the year – pretty inspirational stuff for one day (for me anyways) at the office because if you think about it, seemingly small decisions can change your whole life and at sometime in the future you tend to look back and zero in on the moment that you made a small decision that put you where you are today. Of course, either of these could look back and blame me for giving them a nudge if they end up in a dodgy postition but I doubt they will.

There is some theory around on nudges, and I plan to get a hold of this book in the not too distant future and have a read, but they make perfect sense to me as I often have people chat to me and mention things that I’ve said in the past – quite often in an offhand way – that they picked up on and made a change that altered the course of their worklives for the better according to them.

So, a couple of potentially life changing revelations today, but in terms of what I needed to do – I didn’t get far – just nudged along…

Well, after a while you need to start making changes, and change starts at home so to speak. Artzam has been around for five years now and used as nothing more than a repository for my photos and a bit of a testbed for bits and pieces of apps that I never got round to implementing – apart from on DDN (i just deleted the SMF forum that was a precursor to the current installation)

So here it is, the new Artzam – joining the gazillions of wordpress users out there. I plan to update and change it as I go along and try out new stuff to see how it works and what it does along with getting my head back into understanding the code and playing with that – it has been a few years you know! – and then see where it takes me.

Not happy with the look at the mo, but that will change and evolve as my understanding does, so it’s a journey, and now is the time to begin it.