Thermal

….and beyond.

If you’re a regular Flickr user, or if you just love great photography then I can recommend the work of Ian Cowe. Here’s a few examples:

This is the Crown Tower of the University of Aberdeen at sunrise, which is pretty spectacular I think you’ll agree. Then for good measure he captured it at night as well:

If all this photography wasn’t enough, check out this oil painting of a lighthouse:

Don’t you just hate love people with talent? If you want to see more, check out his profile on Flickr and leave him a few comments, they’re well deserved.

Did I mention that I share an office with him? I told him I’ll kick him in the shins if he keeps coming up with stuff like this…..

Is it nearly Wednesday already?

We’ve been having some interesting weather this week, heavy snow that didn’t settle, lashing rain, sun & a hard frost and now back to rain and gales again. Fortunately when we headed for Scolty Hill on Sunday it was a day of blue skies and white frosts:

Here’s Pat working his way up the hill. This was one of the few times he or Tom was at the back. They get a bit bored walking the forest tracks, but show them some rocky slope or streams to cross and they’re gone.

Scolty Hill is a small (but steep!) hill overlooking Banchory in Aberdeenshire and is popular with the locals for an after lunch walk. We prefer to get there early and have it to ourselves! At the top is a memorial to General Burnett who I really can’t be bothered to look up – here it is:

That’s Tom already at the top, and poor old Steph labouring up in his wake As you can see you can climb to the top, and here’s the view:

Which made the climb all the more worth it. And we were back home in time for Sunday lunch too

Going by the cats I’ve known, it’s more a case of they can’t be bothered to chase after their dinner anymore.

I’ve long maintained that if cats learned how to use a tin opener, they would have no further use for us and would take over the world.

It’s Pat’s Halloween mask. Don’t ask.

I think he’s frightening enough without it, takes after Mum……

I would say that the following is the boy’s first attempt at pumpkin carving, but it’s actually Stephs

Happy Halloween & all that

“Yes? Can I help you?”

Seen near Knock Castle outside Ballater.

Whoops, where has the time gone? Can’t believe it’s been 6 days since I was last here.

It’s half-term in Scotland, meaning I have the boys at home for 18 days…… oh, joy! So this week, Steph’s taken a few days off and we’ve been eating walking our way around the autumnal landscapes of Aberdeenshire.

I’ll put up a few more pics later, but for now, here’s the eating, from the Old Station cafe in Ballater:

Afternoon tea, and yes, she did eat it all herself (kidding!)

And here’s Brodie Castle, where the cream tea was out of this world:

I don’t think it’s unfair to say: Burp.

Not sure where we’re eating tomorrow, I’ll keep you informed

First of all, I must point out that I am a rank amateur, who’s only been doing this a week – if you need an expert, move along there’s nothing to see here…… However, I’ve got some good results already, and most importantly I can tell you how to do it using only free software, and if you like it you can spend several hundred dollars later on the professional suite!

So what’s an HDR image look like? This is a fine example from Evgeni Dinev:

While a beautiful photo, this type of image is not always possible with a single shot, as a normal exposure may not capture all of the detail with regard to light and shadows.

High Dynamic Range images are achieved by the blending of 3 or more images together, taken at different exposures, in order if you like, to enhance the best bits of all three.

So first, you need to take the images, typically 3: one normal exposure, one under-exposure, and one over-exposure. If you’re lucky, your camera will have AEB or ‘Auto-Exposure Bracketing’. What this means, is that when this function is switched on, pressing the shutter button once will take 3 photos at the aforementioned exposures. If your camera doesn’t have this function, simply take 3 separate photos, changing the exposure manually. On my camera, the range is from +2 to -2, and it is best to set exposure to these extremes. One other crucial thing is that the camera should be mounted on a tripod, or resting on a wall or something – the 3 exposures must be identical for obvious reasons.

OK, once you’ve taken the photos, you will have three images something like this:

The Normal Exposure:

The under-exposure:

And the over-exposure:

Now the top one is an OK photo, the middle is obviously very dark, but you’ll notice more detail in the clouds, and the last one is just very bright. You can already see just what might happen if we bring the three together…..

So to put them together, let’s get the first piece of free software: The ludicrously named Qtpfsgui. Don’t even try to pronounce it.

Unzip it, and fire it up. Then choose ‘New HDR’, and browse to your 3 photos as above, and follow the prompts to click ‘next’. Just accept the default options as they are presented to you. The program will process the images and present you with a rather odd looking HDR image. Save it with a natty name to suit yourself, and then from the top menu, choose to ‘Tonemap the HDR’.

This is where the fun comes in, I don’t understand it fully yet, but just by playing with it, you can get some great results. First click the big green ‘Apply’ button at the bottom, and your new HDR will appear with the default settings applied. A word of warning here: the bigger the image to be processed, the longer it takes your PC to think about it, which is why the image pops up quite small – do all your initial processing at this small size, or the processing will take hours.

Simply move the sliders up & down, clicking ‘apply’ at each stage, and noting the effect it has on your image – there are no hard & fast rules, just experiment. when it looks close to how you want it, increase the size and click apply again – I have a fairly powerful dual-core PC, and processing a 2048 pixel wide image takes 4-5 minutes, so don’t think your PC has crashed.

If it all looks good (or close enough), choose ‘Save as LDR’ and give it a new name – this will now save it as a JPEG or other common graphic file. You can now show it off to the world, or if you want to do some further fine tuning, use another free program, like Paint.NET.

Here’s the final product (for now) of my 3 photos above:

Compare that to the original ‘normal’ exposure, and there’s more colour, detail and life to the photo.

Like I say, I’m a rank amateur, but I learned to do that in a couple of days, so there’s no reason you can’t. Claire, I look forward to seeing your first HDR……

Just don’t, OK?

I mean really, what goes through these people’s heads as they design these signs? Sure, you can use the ‘you’ve just got a dirty mind’ defence but just how innocent are they claiming to be?

I mean, really……

On a somewhat unrelated note, I wonder if I’m one of the few people in the world to have hit a ski lift with a golf ball? The ‘Red Bull’ golf course in Austria is actually laid out around the finishing area of the famous Hahnenkamn ski race. Standing on the tee, I guaranteed my Dad that I could (unintentionally) hit the ski pylon, and sure enough I did. I didn’t bargain on the swine ball bouncing all the way back to the tee though……

This is up near Braemar, and we were up there this Sunday.  It is as beautiful as it looks, and immediately behind where I’m standing, the water has cut a deep gorge through the rock with whirlpools and hidden caves and all sorts of beautiful but dangerous things!

This image is a HDR – High Dynamic Range – which simply means that 3 photos were taken in one shot at various exposures and were then superimposed over each other. Hence the vivid colours and light.