iamrupert

There was a rather large scale fire at Frensham ponds about 10 days ago. I took the dog for a walk there on Saturday 17th and here are some shots that I took on my phone of the devastation.

 Apparently it can be a good thing to  have a fire to clean out an area, and already signs of life are appearing, but it was a rather shocking and saddening sight.

Strangely, about 8 days after the event and the ground was still quite warm and the heatcoming up from it was noticeable.

The High Definition version of the video for Devils in The Sky is now on Youtube along with the standard version. The video isn't really that important, it's more about the song for which I am fiercely proud.

 You can see it here.

 

I had the very greatest pleasure of going to Silverstone to see the 2010 Grand Prix today. Because we were guests of Vodafone McLaren Mercedes we were able to go along the pit lane prior to the race and get very close to the cars and pit crews who were all very welcoming.

I took this shot of the number 2 car and was amazed to see the details, even of the front nose sections, where air is clearly dispersed around the body of the car to achieve better aerodynamics.

It was a real privilege and pleasure and I share this shot here.

We also had the great fortune of hearing from Jenson before the race. Here he is being very relaxed...

 And finally, I was very honoured to see Niki Lauda who was being interviewed for TV.

Well it isn't (it's a gull in action) but I hope you see why I have called this shot Bird of Prey.

This is the latest addition to my bird sequences of shots. This was taken in Fordingbridge when we were staying at Sandy Balls.  There were loads of gulls about and it was just a question of time before I got lucky,

Anyhow, I like this shot. It was taken on my a200 before it broke and has been cropped and touched up slightly by Photoshop but otherwise is clean. I hope you like it.

I did a 23 mile charity cycle race around Farnham and the surrounding countryside. I did the course in 2 Hours 7 mins which I was quite happy about.

I tracked the whole experience on the excellent Sportstracker service on my Nokia device and have shared it with the world.

If you are so inclined, or you would like to see the route I took, take a look here .

The demise of my Sony alpha a200 was a sad time. I loved that camera and it really inspired me to try and be more creative in my photography. It's demise offered up an opportunity to upgrade, and upgrade I did, to the fairly new Sony a550. What an upgrade! It's an amazing piece of kit and far too much time could be taken up on this blog taking about every feature but here are my main plus points:

1) FAST!. It is so fast. The first photo I took with it caught me so unawares.

2) Live View - The live view implementation is very impressive. There's a whole buch of reasons why but basically it allows instant taking of a photograph, even in liveview - something other cameras struggle with

3) In camera HDR. Genius! It takes 2 photos at the extremes of exposure and then masks them together to give you a beautiful HDR photograph,

4) 14.2 megapixels. Somewhat more than the 10 I had on the a200, but also supported by the Bionz CMOS sensor for beautifully detailed shots.

I'll be posting some shots from the new camera in the near future so keep an eye out.

I came across a new service called GroupNation http://www.groupnation.co.uk

Seems like a good concept. Basically you can create ad-hoc groups and then share photos, videos, have discussions etc. You can even log in with your Facebook credentials which makes it easier to handle.

Looks like I am the first customer on the site so I have set up a couple of groups and it will be interesting to see if it takes off. I suppose you could use Facebook Groups but not all my friends / family use facebook so this could have a bit more flexibility.

If you need any web hosting I can completely and utterly recommend csnewmedia to you. I have used Carl and his team for years now, in both a reseller and a personal capacity and have always had fabulous service from them.

I won't lie and say therehave never been any problems, but when there have been the communications have been spot on, and never has anything been "lost".

They do both Windows and Linux hosting and do anything from personal web hosting through to proper dedicated hosting needs.

CSNEWMEDIA

I am delighted to report that Keith Belgium's "Happy Accidents" is already available ion iTunes, just weeks after it was uploaded to RecordUnion through this site.

Congratulations to Keith and very best wishes for your sales!

If you want to get your music promoted onto iTunes, Spotify, Nokia Music and alike the please read this blog on how to sign up and get 2 FREE UPC codes to get your music published globally.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to welcome Keith Belgium who recently became my first music publisher using the Record Union scheme I talked about previously in my Blog. Keith attained 2 UPC codes and has already published his first album ( Happy Accidents) that has already appeared on deezer.com and Nokia Music Store (see below).

Welcome to Keith and good luck with your future sales!