At work, once a year, we have this wonderfully corporate sounding “Staff wellbeing day” where we all get to choose an activity to do in the afternoon. Some people go golfing, some people play football, others do less intensive things involving health checkups and sitting in dark rooms learning how to relax.

I chose to go for a walk round a local country park type thing and I took a camera…

Nostell Priory Circa 2011

I’ve downloaded a few photography apps for my iPhone, and in the recent sunny weather of the past few months have been out playing. Occipital’s 360 Panorama makes it very easy to take panoramic images by waving the camera about, and Hipstamatic gives you various “lenses” and “films” to mess with. Not sure you’d want to use these for high resolution images, the processing in hipstamatic seems to create bands of solid colour that show the JPEG compression a bit too much, but for small pictures it’s quite fun. The 360 Panorama software works well providing nothing moves in the scene and you carefully move the camera in a circle.

Went out for a curry last night to the rather excellent Cafe Aagrah on Clarence Dock in Leeds. The docklands in Leeds have been redeveloped and look quite nice in the dark, with lots of shiny metal and coloured lighting.

I thought I’d try my iPhone out in dark conditions to see what kind of images it can produce. The software used was Camera Genius and its anti-shake feature which I’m fairly sure captures several images and averages them together or some other trick.

So, for Christmas I got a Sigma 70-300mm lens for my Nikon, and what with Winter being cold and dark it’s not had much use beyond photographing the atoms in my TV (it has a really powerful macro mode!). For the past few days the sky has been quite clear and there’s been a nice sunset on the way home from work, so today I stopped off by the side of the road to take some test photos.

This is Ferrybridge Powerstation taken from about 8 miles away just as the sun was setting. I quite like the way atmospheric conditions, a bit of light Photoshoppery and the angle of the sun have combined to give this shot a dirty, film-grain effect. Coal fired power stations are big, dirty monsters that shouldn’t be photographed in fine detail, the plumes of steam and smoke are more interesting than the buildings themselves.

I also managed to capture the moon, and after some very heavy Photoshoppery discovered a whole load of detail I didn’t know existed. This picture came out far better than I expected, the best I’ve ever managed to capture previously is a bright white dot.

During the bank holiday weekend me, my dad and the dog went to Llanberis in North Wales. There’s a large campsite there which even in the middle of Bank Holiday weekend had plenty of free space. The weather wasn’t especially great, but I managed to get some nice photos.

We arrived on Thursday to avoid the traffic, and after battling with the tent managed to get it upright and securely attached to the ground. Friday was spent walking up Snowdon, going via the col between Snowdon and Moel Cynghorion before meeting the Ranger Path to the summit. About half way up it started raining and didn’t stop until we were part way down again.

There’s a new cafe on the top of Snowdon, a massive collection of slate, steel and glass giving massive panoramic views of the mist and rain. It’s very well heated and somewhat of a shock when you’ve spent four hours trudging through the rain and mist. And yes, it was full of badly prepared tourists who’d caught the train or walked up in shorts and a t-shirt.

Just as we were leaving the weather cleared, warmed up and dried us out. All the way down the tourist path we were treated to the exact sorts of panoramic views the people rammed in the cafe couldn’t see because the summit was still thickly covered in mist.

On Saturday we went to a place outside Porthmadog called Borth-y-Gest, a place I last visited about fifteen years ago. Scrawled on a rock in a remote cove on the beach I found some graffitti that was possibly done by someone I know which was dated 1991.

Sunday was spent visiting Beaumaris on the Isle of Anglesey, watching hundreds of people crab fishing off the pier, eating fish and chips and watching a sailing race. On the way home, while driving along the coast road to Conwy we stopped to watch some kite surfers.

Here’s some photos I took with my T-Mobile G1 and the ‘Vignette‘ camera software.

I like the cheap look caused by a mixture of the software and the camera hardware. The borders and fake film bleed looks a bit cheesy, but it seems to work quite well for random shots like these.

… without a colour in between. Or at least that’s what my art teacher told me at school. I don’t think nature was paying attention that day.

It’s approaching summertime and all the flowers are in full bloom. Around here are fields full of poppies which add nice contrasting red shades to the scenery.

Another photo from the camping trip I did over the weekend. This is Grisedale Tarn which has a large population of small fish in it, somehow – the Tarn is completely isolated from everything and has no rivers running into it.

It’s been a while since I posted a landscape photo, and after recently buying a new compact digital I’ve been wanting to test it; there are only so many shots of the inside of your house, work and where you live that can be taken after all! Over the weekend I spent three days camping and walking in the Lake District. For two of the days we had excellent weather, so here’s a picture of Brotherswater looking back up the Kirkstone Pass which I had just walked down.