Here’s a picture I took from Portmeirion last summer. This time from ground level, and this was taken with my 17mm extreme wideangle lens. I mentioned in a previous posting that to buy such equipment for modern digital SLRs may be prohibitively expensive, and this was taken using a conventional 35mm SLR with the wideangle acquired from eBay for a nice price.

The extreme wideangle makes the lawn look much bigger than it actually is, as well as giving exaggerated ‘converging verticals’. For anyone who wants to broaden their scope and is put off by the cost of new digital lenses, do what I did – look on eBay or in your local stores, there are many people keen to offload all their conventional equipment now and there are bargains to be had. If you have not got an SLR camera at all, you can often pick up a whole kit for a good price now.

With the ability to have films ‘printed’ to a CD nowadays, you can still have a digital image to play with – so get scouring the classifieds!

There was a documentary on television tonight about Vegas, which is excuse enough to post a photo from there:

When I was there, it was for a conference, and although it was very rewarding and I learned a great deal, there was not that much time to go sightseeing. So I have made it a goal to revisit the place as a tourist, and get more photographs. Most of the ones I did take were done at night, and this one was taken on the last night I was there, once all our meetings were over. Having never visited the USA before, let alone Vegas, it was an amazing experience. From a photography standpoint, it is a Mecca. That’s why I want to go back!

This shot of the New York-New York complex was one of my favourites; I had only a pocket camera with me on this trip and nothing to steady it on, so a lot of the time it was ‘hope for the best’. This came out really well, and I just love the way they’ve compressed a Manhattan skyline into a corner of the Las Vegas strip. It is thanks to the conference I got the chance to go, and to meet many successful people, and it is because I joined this business I got to experience something I would never have had the chance to do otherwise. There is a link to the right of this post; for more details on the business itself, just fill the fields in!
Another photo soon, and again it will be something different!

I thought I’d go back a few years in time for today’s picture, 28 years as it turned out!
This shot, of a Lancaster bomber, was taken in 1982 at an air show held at Liverpool Airport. I found this and several other photos from that day while sorting out some old stuff recently, and as you don’t see too many flying examples of this aircraft today I thought this particular shot was worth scanning in.

There are air shows held locally still, but it is rare to see such vintage aircraft nowadays. I’ll post a completely different picture next time!

Here’s a snap I took only three weeks ago, the day before the snow hit us. It wasn’t planned, I just liked the afternoon sky set against the chimneys throwing out the smoke. This is in St Helens, and was snapped using a pocket camera which I usually keep handy in case a picture just ‘happens’.

It is always worth carrying a small camera around; you never know when that picture might present itself, and it’s not always practical to carry your SLR. Even if all you have is a camera phone, the resolution they have nowadays is sufficient to get a nice picture. So always keep something on you to capture that moment!

If you’ve seen the ‘Photography’ section you’ll know that this is one of my biggest passions. I’ll be putting up a picture on here frequently; they may be relevant to my post or it may just be something I particularly liked.  This one is the latter; the photo was taken a couple of years ago in Elterwater, in the Lake District. I love autumn time and trying to capture the colours, but the weather does not always co-operate in England (!)

The other thing I wanted to mention is that this was taken on a conventional camera; if you are on a bit of a budget for equipment but want to use more interesting things such as extreme wide-angle lenses, why not look on eBay or in the classifieds? You’ll find plenty of people who have ‘gone digital’ and are trying to sell their old film camera equipment, there may be a bargain out there to be had!

You can of course, have your film developed and the pictures put onto a CD nowadays; that’s what I did here and so you can still upload to the web. Worth considering if you want to broaden your photographic horizons but put off by the cost of new digital gear.

Another picture soon!