Hopefully normal service will resume soon (we have some good road trips in the planning stages), but in the meantime I’m uploading photos of our progress to a 119 Project set on Flickr.

Rugby cement works – A shot I’ve had planned for quite a few years, as I can see it out of my kitchen window.

Hoffmann’s Woodpecker – This guy woke up up while I was having a post surf nap at the Funky Monkey Lodge in Costa Rica.

Ali’s Z4 – Taken on the A39 near Porlock on Exmoor during our trip to Devon.

Cloud Forest Abstract – Another one from our trip to Costa Rica, this was taking in the Selvatura Cloud Forest.

Fiat 500 – This was only meant to be a test shot, while Jen was shopping, but I really liked the effect with plain car and bright building.

The evening before I went to Autosport International, at the NEC in Birmingham, I’d been watching a video, posted on Bill Caswell’s Facebook page about Ari Vatanen’s Paris-Dakar Peugeot 405 being stolen from parc ferme, a randsom being demanded, the car eventually found but Vatanen still being disqualified from the rally. This wasn’t a story I’d heard before, but I wasn’t expecting to see the subject of the story the next day. At first I thought it was just another Paris-Dakar 405, but upon reading the plaque I realised that it was the exact same car, what a nice coincidence!

The rest of the show was good, especially seeing a Lamborghini Miura and a Toyota AE86 in the metal, two of my favourite cars, which somehow I’d never seen in real life.

This is my first go at making a video, so I thought I’d break myself in gently with a time lapse. Capturing the images was easy, I set the GoPro camera to take a photo every second, stuck it on the windscreen and drove to the pub (via the scenic route)! Winter in Warwickshire isn’t the most glamorous, or exciting of locations, but I got a new toy for Christmas and I wanted to use it!

The real challenge started when I got back from the pub with 2,500 images on the memory card, I had three options when it came to software, so I tried them all:

• Lightroom – My photo editing software of choice, well within my comfort zone, I could import, back up and add my metadata to the images with two clicks, then process one image and sync settings to the rest. What I couldn’t do without adding plug ins, was compile them to a video at 30 frames per second, this is something I need to investigate further.
• GoPro CineForm Studio – I’m always a bit vary with bundled software, but after a few teething problems (importing a folder full of images works, importing 2000 individual images doesn’t) I was able to get it to stitch the images together and edit the resulting video file, which I didn’t find too intuitive.
• iMovie – Apple always seem to say how god Macs are for creative projects such as video, so their software was worth a look, although seemingly, to get the still images into iMovie they had to be imported to iPhoto. This integration is great, but only if you plan on using both, having said that iPhoto saved my bacon when I accidentally formatted the micro SD card in my camera, meaning I didn’t lose the first picture I took with the GoPro. Using iMovie I wasn’t able to stitch the images together faster than 10fps, with 30fps being what I needed, so I gave up on it for creating time lapses, but when it comes to working with multiple video files iMove seems to be the best application I have available, although I’ll need to upgrade it to export in 1080p high resolution.

In the end I used Lightroom to process the images and crop them to the 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio, then GoPro CineForm studio to combine them into a time lapse then compress them to upload to YouTube. I can see video and especially time lapses being a big thing for me in 2013, it’s certainly got my creative juices flowing, so watch this space.

As usual I had my camera with me and saw this barge which was looking a bit sorry for itself, almost as if it had over done it seeing out 2012. Although from geotagging the image in Lightroom, it looks like the boat has been there a while, as it is on the Google Maps satellite view!

2013 is already shaping up to be a busy year, with a house to renovate (and a flat to sell), an new exciting project at work, car shopping (for my best friend, my Dad and the replacement for my MX-5), hopefully some travelling and not to mention my 30th birthday!

I’m hoping to update this blog more than I have been recently, as one of my new years resolutions is do do more photography, including time lapses with the GoPro I got for Christmas.

The highlight of the year was in February when Jen and I spent two weeks in Costa Rica, I really upped my game surfing (I’m sure warm water and perfect waves helped a lot), we did all the touristy things, saw loads of wildlife ranging from spiders to whales and ate some amazing food!

After a few weekends away in Norfolk and the North West our next holiday was down to Croyde in Devon with some friends, we rented pretty much my dream house and although it rained a lot and the surf was non existent, we had a great week and I can’t wait to go back in 2013. For me the highlight was a road trip to Minehead on the A39 over Exmoor, where I managed to take one of my favourite shots of the year, which I still need to print for Ali! The week ended with meeting Jen’s friend from uni who was back in the UK, from Australia, for a few days, then meeting up with my best friend who had just moved back from Cyprus. From the start of our search in April, we still haven’t managed to find him a new car, certainly a priority for 2013!

Also around the time we went to Croyde was the start of the biggest personal project I’ve been involved in – the 119 project! Jen and I are buying, renovating then moving into her granddad’s house in Coventry. We’re planning on turning this mid terraced house last decorated in the 1970s into our home, we’ve done a lot in 2012, but still haven’t been able to move in, mainly due to my flat in Rugby not selling (if anyone wants to buy a nice 2 bedroom flat in Rugby get in touch with David at Brown and Cockerill). Before our next trip I also managed to fit in visits to the Cholmondeley Pageant of Power with my Dad and the Rally of the Midlands, which was great for photography, after a few years away from motorsports. I also had a business trip to Japan, after an urgent issue cropped up on a project I thought I’d put to bed a few years ago!

The next big trip I went on with Jen was one I had been planning for quite a while – a road trip to the Isle of Lewis, the MX-5 performed brilliantly, we both had a great week and ate way too much nice food! This is where my blogging for the year tailed off, as the rest of the year involved a lot of work on the house/flat with only a couple of Pistonheads Sunday Services at Aston Martin (where I didn’t take any pictures) and the Ferrari Race Day at Silverstone (where I reacquainted myself with photography at Silverstone) and a trip to York (to celebrate the ten year anniversary of Jen starting university there) to break up the DIY, hence the lack of blogging!

The year finished up with a trip to my parents place in Perth for Christmas and as Santa seemed to think I’d been a good boy this year he brought me a GoPro camera, so stand by for my movie debut on the blog next year!

Happy new year!

Lewis

Our last day was spent driving back from Perth to Rugby, the weather, especially for the Scottish part of the journey was rubbish, with heavy rain and a lot of spray making conditions difficult. The rain had eased off a bit by the time Jen started driving and almost stopped when I took over for the leg down to Nottingham to meet up with Partho for dinner. We enjoyed our last unhealthy meal of the trip, then I drove the final stint back to Rugby, about seven hours driving all in, so not too bad for a rainy bank holiday Monday.

Total mileage for the trip: 1549

The last day of our highlands/islands adventure started with the now traditional fry up, followed by a warning to watch out for French drivers on the roads! Our goal was to get back to Perth for lunchtime, we couldn’t be late as everyone was waiting for the smoked salmon we had bought on North Uist, we had 100 miles to cover on the A82 and A85! I’d heard that the A82 in particular was good driving road, but on the drive from Fort William to Glencoe ski centre we weren’t really able to enjoy it due to the traffic, particularly caravans, so we decided to stop at the ski centre to have a look around and take some photos (see above), the little huts they had to sleep in looked good, but I’m not too sure I’d want to stay in one in the middle of winter. We thought about taking a chairlift ride to the summit, but the webcam showed that it was in the clouds, so we saved our money and pointed the MX-5 back towards Perth, luckily managing to get some clear road to enjoy. The road wasn’t as twisty as some of the others we have driven this week, with lots of long straights, so probably more suited to something with a bit more power than the Mazda. The rest of the journey to Perth seemed to take ages, as we seemed to be stuck behind slow moving vehicles the whole way, but we did make it to Perth just after midday and the salmon went down well at lunchtime.

The afternoon was spent catching up with my family, mooching around Perth, then a great meal out at the Bothy in Perth to celebrate my Dad’s birthday.

Mileage so far: 1,054

Our plan for the morning was to take the B885 to the east of the island and explore the fairy pools then go to the Talisker distillery. The B885 was a single track road over the mountains, but the A863 to take us to the end of Loch Harport was a much better road, with two lanes following the contours of the loch. As it was raining we decided to go to the distillery first, hoping the rain would stop. The tour of the distillery was only £6, which included a wee dram and £3 off in the shop, which seemed like a bargain to me. The tour was interesting, and I was surprised by how much of the process is still done by humans. Predictably the tour ended up in the shop, where we bought a tasting set for Jen’s Dad and a bottle of 10 year single malt to keep at our new house.

Our next stop was the fairy pools, a recommendation by Millie, we found the correct car park, but I’m not too sure we found the correct waterfalls and pools, but it was suitably pretty and the other set of waterfalls were too far away to walk in the rain, so we may have to go back.

After the fairy pools we took a leisurely drive down to Armadale to get the ferry back to the mainland, we took a few stops along the way, but it was still raining so not ideal weather for sightseeing. We got to ferry terminal early and we were the first car on the ferry, which meant that after the short crossing we were the first off the ferry and onto the A830 to Fort William, which is a road I’d particularly been looking forward to driving. The drive from Mallaig to Fort William was one of the best drives of the trip, with lots of tight corners and great scenery.

Rather than eating at a posh restaurant again we went for fish (haggis) and chips, followed by ice cream and a wander around town, before retiring to the B&B for a catch up online and early night.

Mileage so far: 1,050

After another full breakfast, this time overlooking the beautiful white beach on Berneray we decided to explore the rest of the island. It took us all of about 5 minutes to drive from the north east part of the island to the south west, where it was still raining. We donned our waterproofs and took a walk to see the birthplace of the Nova Scotia giant, then to the beach that runs the full length of the west coast of the island, the tide was in, so there wasn’t much beach to see, but it was really peaceful and the rain had stopped.

We decided that we had fully explored Berneray and still had five hours before our ferry so after consulting the map we thought we would visit the three other islands to the south which were all connected by road. First was North Uist, where we stopped at a smokehouse in Clachan and bought some smoked salmon for lunch when we are back in Perth on Saturday, then continued south, past Benbecula to South Uist, where we stopped at Homore, which had some cute thatched cottages and church ruins to explore. By this time we were getting hungry, so turned back north towards Lochmaddy, stopping in Benbecula for a macaroni pie. The main road through the 3 islands was the A865, which wasn’t really a main road, most of the time it was a single track road, but the locals seemed good at letting faster traffic through, the A867 from Clachan to Lochmaddy was a bigger, straighter road which had just been resurfaced and it almost felt strange being able to use fifth gear in the Mazda, until cresting a summit to find sheep standing in the road, we were certainly still in the Outer Hebredies.

While waiting for the ferry in Lochmaddy we took a stroll to the little hut of shadows, a camera obscura in a small building next to the loch, an interesting way to kill time before the ferry.

The ferry took two hours to get to Uig on Skye, which instantly felt different to the other islands, much less remote and with bigger hills. The drive to Portree was fairly short and it didn’t take us long to find our hotel, which had a great view over the harbour and over to Raasay, which made a change from white sandy beaches!

Mileage so far: 920