SJG Photography Blog

Men's Inter-County - New Photographs

Steve Gordon — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 08:29:00 GMT

33 new photographs have been added to the Men's 35 Inter-County Championships gallery.

View the Gallery

Men's Inter-County - New Photographs

Steve Gordon — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 20:58:00 GMT

158 new photographs have been added to the Men's 35 Inter-County Championships gallery.

View the Gallery

RIAT 2009 - New Photographs

Steve Gordon — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 20:19:00 GMT

15 new photographs have been added to the Royal International Air Tattoo 2009 gallery.

View the Gallery

Rallye Sunseeker - New Photographs

Steve Gordon — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 07:51:00 GMT

156 new photographs have been added to the Rallye Sunseeker 2009 gallery.

View the Gallery

South Downs Stages 2009 - New Photographs

Steve Gordon — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 11:51:00 GMT

109 new photographs have been added to the Towncross South Downs Stages 2009 gallery.

View the Gallery

Christmas Cards

Steve Gordon — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:49:00 GMT

I've added and will continue adding some of my photographs to card designs over at Greetings by Photobox. It's a great place to pick up some unique cards for all occasions.

Check out my gallery of cards at http://greetings.photobox.co.uk/designer/1155

Adobe Photoshop CS4

Steve Gordon — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 07:45:00 GMT

On October 15th Adobe released there next generation suite of programs bundled as their Creative Suite. Included in this suite was Photoshop CS4, the much rumoured update to the Photoshop series.

While I’ve not yet had hands on experience with CS4 there are a few features which are could be useful for photographers. You can read about them on the Adobe Website

Eastbourne - New Photographs

Steve Gordon — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:46:00 GMT

10 new photographs have been added to the Eastbourne Area gallery.

View the Gallery

Dodge and Burn in Adobe Photoshop CS4

Steve Gordon — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:47:00 GMT

It’s been a very long time since my last blog and what better way to get back into it than with some news on the next version of Photoshop.

Adobe Photoshop CS4 should be out in the next month or so and true to form Adobe look to be releasing a product that adds new features and improves old ones without adversely affecting anything else. There are quite a few new features which Adobe highlight in this version but the one I wanted to mention today is the improved Dodge and Burn tools.

The dodge and burn tools allow you to lighten or darken sections of your photographs which allows you to improve the overall appearance of your images. In the past these tools have worked but have sometimes produced bad results. I have often resorted to using a 50% gray layer set to Soft Light onto which I paint in low opacity white or black to get a more controllable affect.

However the tools have been tweaked and improved and now offer the option to retain tones which does seem to produce more favourable results.

Check out this video from the CS4 learning centre for more information.

Airbourne 2008 - New Photographs

Steve Gordon — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 17:17:00 GMT

53 new photographs have been added to the Eastbourne International (Airbourne) Airshow 2008 gallery.

View the Gallery

Paragliding - New Photographs

Steve Gordon — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 14:44:00 GMT

163 new photographs have been added to the Paragliding gallery.

View the Gallery

Eastbourne Town FC vs Hassocks FC - New Photographs

Steve Gordon — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:59:00 GMT

72 new photographs have been added to the Eastbourne Town FC vs Hassocks FC gallery.

View the Gallery

RIAT 2008 - New Photographs

Steve Gordon — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 19:00:00 GMT

58 new photographs have been added to the Royal International Air Tattoo 2008 gallery.

View the Gallery

Royal International Air Tattoo 2008 Washout

Steve Gordon — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:36:00 GMT

RIAT 2008 Washout

This weekend Rhiannon and I packed our camping equipment, food supplies and camera gear into the car and headed west to attend the Royal International Air Tattoo at RAF Fairford. Last year was my first time at this event on the recommendation of a friend and although the weather wasn’t great I really enjoyed the experience. We choose to stay at a nearby campsite, from which you can also view the display. The beauty of the location is that you are below the turning area of the display aircraft and you can therefore get some great photographs as they fly their displays.

We set off at 5am on Friday morning to get to the campsite for about 8am. The roads were clear and the 150 mile drive went very smoothly. We were pleased to be driving into warm and sunny skies as we neared our destination.

Just as we queued to enter the campsite the exciting sound of an F16 completing it display practice could be heard. Once parked up at our pitch we met up with a couple of friends and all looked forward to the events of the weekend, including the long awaited chance to the see the F22 Raptor in action.

The morning was slower than usual as the showground was being visited by royalty for the 90th anniversary of the RAF celebrations. At 2:30pm a large 90 aircraft flypast was due to show off RAF aircraft old and new. We were pleased to discover that the flypast route was very close to our campsite and we had a good chance to photograph the various formations as they flew overhead. Bad light levels and bland skies meant that the images weren’t fantastic but it was still an impressive event to witness.

The afternoon then saw some display practices, interspersed with heavy showers which really gave the new tent a good test of its abilities. Fortunately with a better forecast for the weekend we could save getting wet and watch the practices from the dry confines of our car.

In the evening we enjoyed a nice get-together and BBQ with some other friends and were treated to a late flypast practice of the Eurofighter Typhoon and Spitfire right over our heads. Not long after however we heard the extremely disappointing news that the Saturday of the show had been cancelled due to a waterlogged showground and car parks. It seems that the previous levels of rain added to the rain during the day were too much for the fields to cope with and parking would have been too tricky. Rumours of the news spread quickly and our spirits were lifted a little by the news that a display would happen for the attending VIPs so we would still get a show.

After an early night we awoke early to more promising skies and optimistically get ready for some displays. Cameras at the ready we met our friends and waited to see if anything would be flown. Early on we were hopeful when the sound of jet engines starting got us to our feet with cameras ready. However a pair of F16s took off but didn’t display, instead heading into the distance. By noon it was becoming clear that there would be no or little flying to enjoy. Instead we had to wait until 4pm to hear whether Sunday would go ahead. We killed some time with a relaxing walk into Fairford village and decided to grab some fish and chips for lunch. I can highly recommend them!

We then waited to hear the final news for Sunday. Thanks for mainly hot sunshine during the day things were looking good. The campsite had dried out very well and we hoped so would the showground. However at about 4:30 the news was that the Sunday was also going to be cancelled. It was a real shame as we had really assumed things would get underway and had geared ourselves up for a better result.

We decided soon after that there was little point in staying the extra night as it meant another night sleeping in a tent and the loss of Sunday morning while we drove back. We took down the tent, packed up the car and said our goodbyes, not really looking forward to the long drive home with barely 200 photographs taken for the entire weekend.

Here’s hoping for better luck next year and perhaps some summer weather for a change.

Eagles vs Wolves - New Photographs

Steve Gordon — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 09:38:00 GMT

60 new photographs have been added to the Eastbourne Speedway - Eastbourne Eagles vs Wolverhampton Wolves (KOC) gallery.

View the Gallery

Biggin Hill Air Fair 2008

Steve Gordon — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:28:00 GMT

I spent an enjoyable but tiring three days at the Biggin Hill Air Fair last weekend and joined the official photography team at the event. It was a great experience and a chance to get closer than normal to the aircraft and pilots. Despite a faulty new lens I shot over 1500 photographs across the three days. That included a range of people and static shots required by the organisers as well as some aerial shots for myself.

I've carried out the initial review of the shots to select the ones I will submit to the organisers and now hope to spend time reviewing the images further and getting some ready for a gallery on the website as soon as possible.

Adobe Lightroom - My Progress So Far

Steve Gordon — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 13:07:00 GMT

I’ve not been very good at keeping things up to date on the Lightroom blogging front I’m afraid. It seems all of my free time is absorbed quickly by offloading, processing and working on the website as well as having some time out for friends as well.

I’ve been working with Lightroom for a few weeks now and I must say that I’m becoming a bit of a convert. It’s taken some time to get used to working in the software and I’m still not sure that the output images are as good as those from Capture One but I think that’s down to lack of knowledge on my part. The added features inside the Lightroom develop module are very welcome however. I like being able to do spot corrections and specific colour edits on the original files in a non-destructive manor.

I’ve completed reading the very good Adobe Photoshop Lightroom book for Digital Photographers by Martin Evening. I was impressed by the writing style and level of detail in the book and it’s gone a long way to help me develop my Lightroom skills.

I also recommend Matt Kloskowski’s Lightroom Killer Tips blog. Matt is one of the presenters from Photoshop TV and his relaxed style and intimate knowledge of the software make for easy but useful reading.

I have uploaded 1500 photographs from Biggin Hill into Lightroom and it made my work of selecting photographs to send to the organisers as part of my job of official photographer a much easier process than normal. I’ve still got a lot of work to do with keywording and editing the images for my website which I hope to make a good start on over the weekend.

Sigma 120-300 – Why You Should Always Test a New Lens!

Steve Gordon — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:32:00 GMT

In my previous post I announced my purchase of a Sigma 120-300 lens. It seems I have little luck when it comes to lens purchases as much like previous lens purchases I discovered that my lens was not working correctly.

I had intended to test the lens at the Shuttleworth Airshow but the poor forecast for that event put me off travelling the relatively long distance to the show. Instead I resorted to some basic manual tests prior to Biggin Hill where this lens was due to get its first proper outing.

My testing process is to set the lens up on a sturdy tripod and shoot some test images of a wall and fence as this allows me to review sharpness across the lens. I’ve always manual focused the lens at this stage to ensure as crisp an image as possible, since there’s not always enough contrast for a decent auto focus lock.

After proving the lens to be sharp I spent a few minutes handheld on AI Servo mode, pointing the lens at different subjects to test that the autofocus was functioning correctly and quickly. This however is where my testing process failed since I never thought to review the AF tests outside of the camera review screen. I’d already tested sharpness and was now confident that the AF motor was working. However as I was later to discover, the auto focus was not calibrated correctly.

On Friday of last week I was at Biggin Hill for the press day and had brought along my new lens to shoot the aerial elements of the day. My initial results were not great, but I put this down to poor light conditions and the learning curve experienced with a new piece of kit. I continued using the lens and after a little while realised that most of the shots were slightly soft, not because of user error, but because of bad auto-focus.

I found myself using manual focus to get anything close to sharp shots of the aircraft and was frankly disappointed. A few tests on a fixed subject soon revealed that the lens focusing was occurring but was not correctly calibrated to produce sharp results.

After a full day of annoyance with the lens and attempts to manual focus aircraft I returned home to redo my lens tests using auto focus, rather than manual focus. It didn’t take long to realise that the lens was front focusing fairly badly. I ditched the lens and resorted to using the 100-300 on Saturday and a borrowed (thank Pete!) 70-200 + 1.4TC combination on Sunday.

On Monday I contacted Warehouse Express about the problem with the lens and they were very helpful indeed. Without spending a huge amount of time questioning the problem (only about 3 minutes total time on the phone) they agreed to send me a new lens and pick up the faulty one. I called in the problem at 8am on Monday and received the replacement by 9am Tuesday. Very good customer service as usual.

They further impressed me as on Tuesday afternoon I suddenly realised that my lens had gone back with my tripod plate attached and after a swift call to Warehouse Express they made a note to intercept the lens, remove the part and post it back to me. I had it by 9am on Thursday at no extra cost. This goes a long way to further convince me to continue shopping with them as they’ve always resolved issues like this quickly and fairly.

The further good news is that initial tests (yes using auto focus this time) suggest the new lens is performing well within spec. I’ll take it out as soon as possible to test it one some fast moving subjects but I’m already much more confident in its abilities.

The moral of this story is to ALWAYS fully test your new equipment under all conditions and don’t save time by making assumptions about its functionality. I’ve learnt the hard way that it can come back and bite you if you’re not thorough with the testing!

Sigma 120-300 F2.8

Steve Gordon — Thu, 29 May 2008 12:45:00 GMT

After a long time spent deliberating my options for a new lens I’ve made a decision and today my new piece of glass arrived. For a long while I’ve wanted more reach from my lens collection and now that my partner Rhiannon is free to join me for photography more often we needed a second telephoto to allow us both to shoot at the same time.

The solution was to purchase a Sigma 120-300 F2.8 lens. While not extending my reach this lens is better rated with a 1.4x tele-convertor and therefore should allow me to be more flexible in my approach. Using the TC it still has a decent F4 constant aperture so should work very well in most conditions.

I had been considering the Sigma 500mm F4.5 prime but in the end cost and usability came into the picture and for now it will have to sit on the wish list a bit longer. I just couldn’t see one of us using that lens as a primary airshow lens for a whole day without sagging under the weight and being limited to more distant shots.

I’d also considered the 100-400 from Canon but although it provides the extra reach it doesn’t cope so well in poor light and isn’t as sharp as the Sigma. I feel pleased with my decision and look forward to getting to grips with the 120-300. I’ve used one in the past and very much liked the results so I’m confident this lens won’t disappoint.

My first outing with this lens may be the speedway on Saturday or the Shuttleworth Air Show on Sunday if the weather turns nice in time. At the moment the forecast is poor and the lens may not see action until Biggin in just over a weeks time.

Biggin Hill Photography Team

Steve Gordon — Wed, 28 May 2008 21:00:00 GMT

I’m very pleased to announce that I have won myself a place on the 2008 Biggin Hill Air Fair photography team and shall be attending both show days as well as the press day on Friday with all areas access. I’m very excited about this opportunity to get closer to the aircraft and achieve (hopefully) some new angles and better photographs.

I’m very much hoping that the summer weather returns and that I can have three days of glorious sunshine to make the most of this opportunity.

The Biggin Hill Air Fair is held this year on the 7th and 8th of June and will adult tickets cost £21 at the gate. More information can be found on their website at http://www.bigginhillairfair.co.uk/

My photographs from 2007 can be found in my gallery

Adobe Lightroom Experimentation (Day 1)

Steve Gordon — Tue, 27 May 2008 20:53:00 GMT

With the poor weather that greeted me early yesterday morning I decided not to bother with my trip to Brands Hatch for the Historic Master’s Festival. This was a real shame as I really enjoy the event and had been looking forward to it for a good few weeks. Not wanting to totally waste the day I spent a few hours teaching myself Adobe Lightroom for the first time.

I played with the Beta version a while ago but never really got to grips with the software and I found that my Capture One RAW convertor was able to do everything I wanted with much less fuss. However I’ve finally realised that I really need to properly catalogue my photographs and tag them with keywords in order to find things more readily. This on is not a feature available in Capture One and so I felt Lightroom deserved another chance.

I’ve decided to try and keep up some regular blogs about my discoveries and learning curve with Lightroom so that perhaps my ramblings can help and inform others in a similar situation.

Software Overview

The software has been well designed and the initial interface provides a lot of detail without feeling too cluttered or daunting.

At the top you have access to the various modules that you can utilise to proof, develop and finally display or print your photographs. For my purposes the main two areas I will utilise will be the Library and the Develop modules.

To the left you have your folders, collections, keyword and meta groups. These allow you to sort the displayed images very quickly based on any number of criteria. Initially these are unpopulated but I very quickly found them useful once I’d imported a few collections of photographs and started Keywording them.

To the right of the screen you have your develop options and various settings that relate to the active image and at the bottom you have a scrollable set of thumbnails and some toolbar options.

In the centre you can display your images in a grid or work on a single image in more detail. There is the ability to compare images if you are making cuts from your initial import, so that you can decide side-by-side which images you wish to delete.

Importing Files

The first thing I needed to do was to import some images into Lightroom. My current organisational structure involves using uniquely coded folders organised by year then month on a large SATA hard disk.

I was reluctant to loose this structure which works pretty well for me currently and was pleased to find that I could import photographs into Lightroom and still leave the files in their original structure. This allows for the best of both worlds in my opinion.

I imported two batches of images to begin with which totalled around 1,000 photographs. I then began keywording them and deleting some of the bad images. It’s my goal to work on this as often as possible to begin refining my collections to prevent wasted space and to end up with a decent catalogue to improve the ease at which I can find specific photographs.

I will continue this series as I get to spend more time inside Lightroom and as I develop a workflow that suits my requirements.

Bank Holiday Weather

Steve Gordon — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:06:00 GMT

The weekend has been disappointing weather-wise and as a result my plans have all been scrapped. My intention was to visit Goodwood yesterday for my first visit to the Vintage Fly-In but due to the forecasts and the dingy start to the day I made other plans. By the time I realised that things were going against the forecast and the sun was coming out it was too late to change my mind and head along to Goodwood.

Based on some shots I have seen online it looks like the weather turned out as nicely as it did in Eastbourne and some good photographs were available. Today’s event has been cancelled due to the heavy overnight rains which caused localised flooding.

The plan for today had been to head to Brands Hatch for the Historic Masters Festival, but again the weather in the morning put me off. Last year the rain caused major racing delays at Brands and I was not eager to repeat the experience. While it’s now dry in Eastbourne there’s very little light so photography I’m sure would still be challenging.

New Photographs Added

Steve Gordon — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:04:00 GMT

65 new photographs have been added to the A1GP 2008 - Great Britain gallery.

View the Gallery

New Photographs Added

Steve Gordon — Tue, 13 May 2008 19:19:00 GMT

42 new photographs have been added to the Eastbourne Speedway - Eagles vs Pirates gallery.

View the Gallery

A1GP at Brands Hatch

Steve Gordon — Mon, 05 May 2008 17:21:00 GMT

I was at Brand Hatch on both Saturday and Sunday for the final meeting of the 2007/2008 A1GP series.

I've been a fan of the event since it began and have attended all of the Great Britain races to date. On Saturday I went along with the camera gear to do some photography during the qualifying and initial support races and on Sunday I returned without camera to enjoy the racing.

As usual it was a good couple of days and made even better by the good weather and fantastic driving from Robbie Kerr for Team GBR. I hope to get some shots online this week

New Photographs Added

Steve Gordon — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 17:51:00 GMT

28 new photographs have been added to the Eastbourne Speedway - Eagles vs Aces gallery.

View the Gallery

Eastbourne Eagles vs Belle Vue (ELA)

Steve Gordon — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:40:00 GMT

I'll be returning to Eastbourne Speedway at Arlington Stadium on Saturday evening to photograph the Eagles vs Belle Vue meeting which starts at 7:30pm.

This will be my second visit to a race meeting and I hope to improve my flash technique after the steep learning curve I experienced during the Eagles vs Wolves match last weekend.

Eastbourne's team consists of Scott Nicholls, Lewis Bridger, Lee Richardson, Cameron Woodward, Edward Kennett, James Brundle and a guest to replace Simon Gustaffson.

The Ace's team will consist of Jason Crump, Billy Forsberg, Charlie Gjedde, Lukasz Jankowski, Joe Screen, Michael Rajkowski and Steve Boxall.

The weather is looking a bit nasty at the moment but all being well I should have some images online from the event on Sunday.

New Photographs Added

Steve Gordon — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 14:13:00 GMT

20 new photographs have been added to the Eastbourne Speedway - Eagles vs Wolves gallery.

View the Gallery

Snow in Sussex

Steve Gordon — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 19:28:00 GMT

Yesterday we had a very heavy downpour of snow for most of the day and for the first time in ages it settled properly across the county. Rhiannon and I waited until the snow was nice and thick before heading out to capture some of the snow coated Sussex scenery.

Due to the in some places very severe driving conditions we didn’t venture to as many locations as planned and the first place on the light took a lot longer to walk to than anticipated. The upshot was that by the time we’d got back to the car we were cold and tired so returned home with only a few select shots from the day.

The location we did achieve was up to the cottages that overlook the mouth of the River Cuckmere and Seven Sisters cliffs. This is a much photographed scene in the summer but I haven’t seen any wintery shots of it. We took the path that follows the river, which turned out to be longer than I remembered and a bit tricky in places due to the snow and ice. I managed to slip once before righting myself, only to slip a second time in the same spot. No harm done except for some muddy and damp trousers!

The walk was worth it as once we did reach the cottages the view was quite unique. Although the cliffs were starting to disappear into the mist I was pleased with the scene and took a few shots using the 17-40 lens. We spent perhaps 10 minutes at the top of the cliff before the bitter wind and dampening equipment drove us away. I finished my shoot with an eight shot panorama that turned out pretty well. It needs some refined processing to tidy it up before I add it to the gallery.

Here’s a couple of shots from the snowy cliff top…

Seven Sisters Cottages in the Snow

Footsteps to the Cottages

New Photographs Added

Steve Gordon — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 12:53:00 GMT

169 new photographs have been added to the British Superbike Championship at Brands Hatch gallery.

View the Gallery

New Gallery Feature to Cycle Through Photographs

Steve Gordon — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 22:37:00 GMT

I’ve implemented a new feature in the galleries that allows you to scroll though the photographs more rapidly. When viewing a photograph there is now an option to link to the next or previous image from the gallery. This should make viewing galleries a bit more user friendly and less frustrating as there will be no need to return to the gallery thumbnails after viewing each photograph.

This feature is a work in progress and is currently implemented using a database query. I will be re-working this in the future as it doesn’t allow for sorting of the images and isn’t as efficient as it could be. However I wanted to add the feature as soon as possible to make the viewing experience better.

New Photographs Added

Steve Gordon — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 19:44:00 GMT

112 new photographs have been added to the Easter Truck Race Superprix gallery.

View the Gallery

Welsh Mach Loop Trip

Steve Gordon — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 10:38:00 GMT

I returned on Wednesday from my 3 day trip to Wales to visit the famous Mach Loop training ground for the RAF. Unfortunately the weather was very poor and due to the conditions the RAF were not flying while we were there, except for a lone pair of RAF Hawks from RAF Valley. Despite the conditions and lack of aircraft it was a fun trip spent with a number of friends and I certainly wish to return later in the year to try again when the weather is better.

Here's a few shots I managed to get of the Hawks flying past

RAF Hawks Approaching

An RAF Hawk Approaches Cad East

RAF Hawk

Away for a Few Days

Steve Gordon — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 18:42:00 GMT

I will be away for a few days from tomorrow on a trip to the Mach Loop in Wales for some lowfly photography. Depending on the weather I will be back on Thursday or Friday.

New Photographs Added

Steve Gordon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 18:49:00 GMT

63 new photographs have been added to the Arlington Speedway Pratice (02-03-08) gallery.

View the Gallery

Arlington Speedway Practice (2nd March)

Steve Gordon — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 12:38:00 GMT

I returned to Arlington Stadium yesterday for the 4th 2008 practice session. This was my second ever visit to photograph at Arlington and I think I was able to perfect my techniques a little. Riders from the Eastbourne Eagles Team and Poole Pirate team were in attendance.

Again the access was very good around the circuit and I was able to try a few different angles as well. Thanks to the organisers and marshals for the access they allowed. Thanks also to Lewis Bridger for pulling a few wheelies whenever he saw us aiming our cameras over the crash barrier. It was much appreciated.

Photographs from the practice can be found in my Arlington Speedway Practice Gallery. I will be adding more photographs very soon.

Lewis Bridger Wheelies

Karol Zabik slides through the corner

I hope to return on Saturday for the press and practice day to get some more shots of the team.

New Photographs Added

Steve Gordon — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 12:28:00 GMT

148 new photographs have been added to the Rallye Sunseeker 2008 gallery.

View the Gallery

New Photographs Added

Steve Gordon — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 19:08:00 GMT

28 new photographs have been added to the Vintage Sports Car Club (VSCC) New Years Driving Tests gallery.

View the Gallery

New Photographs Added

Steve Gordon — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 19:02:00 GMT

102 new photographs have been added to the Arlington Speedway Pratice (18-02-08) gallery.

View the Gallery

Arlington Speedway Practice Session

Steve Gordon — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 12:22:00 GMT

This Sunday I made my first ever visit to a speedway meeting. It was the second practice session for my local team the Eastbourne Eagles held at the Arlington Speedway near Hailsham.

I arrived at 11am and got myself orientated with the circuit and shooting positions. I’ve visited the speedway in the past for stock car and banger racing but not for the actual speedway events.

I spent 4 hours at the circuit watching the various riders practicing and demonstrating their extreme skill at riding around the circuit. It was a bit of a learning curve to get decent photographs as it required different settings to those that I usually work with but I found some that worked for me and started to get more consistent results. In the end I was shooting at 1/500th second for most of the day.

I hope to return to another practice if the weather stays fine but until then my results so far can be found in my gallery

New Photographs Added

Steve Gordon — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 10:22:00 GMT

96 new photographs have been added to the Biggin Hill International Air Fair 2007 gallery.

View the Gallery

Mach Loop Trip

Steve Gordon — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 22:14:00 GMT

The Mach Loop can be found in north west Wales and is an RAF training ground for low level flying. Last year a few of my photography minded friends headed up to the Loop to photograph the aircraft as they completed their training. Due to work and unfortunate timing of the trips I was unable to make it in 2007

It's been an objective of mine to ensure that this year I get up to the Loop to try my hand at photographing the aircraft. Sticking to my plan I'm booked to join some friends in Wales for three days in March where I hope to capture some reasonable images for my first try at this technically challenging photography.

We're all hoping for reasonable weather and a good bit of activity through the valleys. All being well I should have some photos posted here later in March once we return.

Cuckmere Haven Sunset Shoot

Steve Gordon — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 13:00:00 GMT

Since this weekend granted us the best weather of the year to date I was eager to get out and do some photography. At around 3:30pm on Saturday the weather was still looking very nice and I decided it would be nice to shoot the sunset over the Cuckmere River near the Seven Sisters Country Park.

With an hour and half until sunset I packed up the camera and a couple of lenses and set off. All was going well until I reached the A259 coastal road which was one huge traffic jam. Instead of a few minutes it took me over half and hour to reach the Seven Sister Country Park carpark. I pulled in with 10 minutes spare before the sun actually set, it’s golden glow already spilling over the hills and lighting up the river. It was only then I noticed that the carpark shuts at 5pm, just before the sun actually sets and certainly not leaving me enough time to pack up and return to the car. So rather grumpily I drove back out in search of somewhere to leave the car. Again the traffic caught me and I couldn’t get to anywhere safe and legal in time to photograph the sunset. It was at this point I decided to admit failure and return home, without the camera ever leaving the boot of the car.

A real shame as it was a really fantastic sunset. I will try again when the next opportunity presents itself, but I need to find somewhere that I can park since the carparks in the area will be open long enough. I suspect I will have to time in a long walk from one of the nearby villages.

Version 2.00 Online

Steve Gordon — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:39:00 GMT

After over a year and a half of development and 26,000 lines of code my new website is online.

The first and most obvious difference is the appearance which I've wanted to update for ages. I've still got some tweaking to do but it's getting close to being 100% valid and cross browser compliant.

Behind the scenes nearly all of the back end code is updated and the database has been totally rebuilt using MS SQL 2005. Most of the front end functionalilty appears the same but the gallery system has been majorly improved, allowing more frequent updates and better information about the photographs.

This is only stage one of my plans and over the coming months I will be developing and adding more features and tweaking the current one to perform better. At the moment speed could be better and I'm looking into that now that the site is properly hosted.

Please take a look around and let me know what you think using the contact form.

Goodwood Towncross Engineering South Downs Stages

Steve Gordon — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 16:01:00 GMT

This weekend I hope to attend the annual South Downs Stages tarmac rally at the Goodwood Motor Circuit near Chichester, West Sussex. It's usually a fairly relaxed event with entrants competing for the quickest times on stages marked out with cones and wooden palettes on the circuit.

I shall be arriving around 8:30 in time for the first car on track at 9am.

Full details of the event can be found at http://www.southdownsstages.co.uk

UPDATE : The final gallery from the event can be found in my gallery

Events for 2008

Steve Gordon — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:16:00 GMT

It's about this time of year I begin planning the events I intend to visit in 2008. After visiting quite a lot of airshows in 2007 I am hoping to attend many of them again this year. I'm hoping the dates don't conflict too heavily with the various motorsports events I was to visit.

The list is based on the dates I can find for events but I will update the blog with other events and date changes as required. Later in the year I hope to have an online version of my event calendar available where all my planned events will be listed.

January

13th - VSCC New Years Driving Tests at Brooklands

February

2nd - South Downs Stages at Goodwood
9th - Wyedean Forest Rally
23rd - Rallye Sunseeker

March

24th - Truck Superprix at Brands Hatch (Indy)

May

2nd - 4th - A1GP at Brands Hatch (GP)
25th - 26th - Goodwood Aero Club Vintage Fly Display
24th - 26th - Masters Historic Festival at Brands Hatch (GP)

June

7th - 8th - Biggin Hill 2008
28th - 29th - Lydd Airshow

July

11th - 13th - Goodwood Festival of Speed 2008
12th - 13th - RIAT 2008 at RAF Fairford
19th - 20th - Farnborough Airshow 2008

August

14th - 17th - Eastbourne Internation Airshow (Airbourne) 2008
24th - Dunsfold Wings and Wheels
30th - 31st - RAFA Shoreham Airshow 2008

November Update

Steve Gordon — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 11:18:00 GMT

I’m still being quite bad at keeping this blog updated which is really down to the lack of free time I have at the moment. The past two weekends I was at motorsport events and the evenings have been filled with processing the shots and trying to push forward with the new website.

Equipment

I went a bit extravagant this month and purchased a second hand Canon 1D MkIIN. This is part of Canon professional range of camera bodies and is a widely used camera for sports photographers around the world. While the 20D is a great piece of kit and still has a place in my camera bag, the MkIIN is a significant upgrade in terms of speed, performance, flexibility and build.

Photography

At the beginning of November I spent the day at Brands Hatch for the British Truck Racing Association meeting. As always the trucks were great entertainment and it was a chance for me to use my new ID MkIIN for the first time. The results were very impressive and while I still need practice I came away from the day very happy with my purchase.

Truck Racing Gallery

This past weekend I was encouraged to join some friends at the South of England Tempest Rally in Hampshire. An early start was required to arrive at the Yateley stage for our 8:30 meeting time. We spent the whole day on this stage watching both the 2 and 4 wheel drives groups making their way through the forest. The light was very tricky and high ISO’s were required for the whole day in order to get reasonable shutter speeds. I was quite happy with the results and pleased to try out the MkIIN in low light conditions. High ISO noise does seem better than on the 20D.

Tempest Rally Gallery

Website Development

Development continues on the website and some of the main elements are nearing completion. The gallery system is coming together nicely as is the updated blog engine. I’m hoping to get to a point soon where I can think about releasing the new site to the public. It won’t have all of the new features I planned but will be a big improvement. I’m hoping that there may be a chance I can get the release of 2.0 out very early in 2008.

October Update

Steve Gordon — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 17:51:00 GMT

It's been ages since I've last updated the blog and the website in general and so this first sentence should really be an apology. I've recently completed a rather large order or prints for a local company which has taken up much of my free time for the past couple of weeks. I was commissioned to photograph some "staff in action" shots for display on the walls around the building, as well as providing a number of local landscape photographs to brighten the place up and give visiting customers a sense of the area.

My favourite item was a large 1m acrylic landscape which has turned out very nicely indeed. They are quite expensive to produce but look very professional on the wall. The acrylic is now hung in the lecture room and looks fantastic. I'll be adding prices for the acrylics to my new version of the website.

Work on the next version of the website has been stalled a bit as well but I plan to pick that up again when time permits. I'd like to get it online as soon as possible because it will make uploading new photographs much quicker and therefore mean the site gets updated more often.

This weekend I am planning a much needed return to motorsports photography with a VSCC event at Goodwood. It should be a relaxing day due to the lack of fences and hopefully the clear skies will stay with us until then. In November I have the truck racing at Brands Hatch and possibility of attending the Tempest Rally.

Lydd Airshow 2007 Review

Steve Gordon — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 12:28:00 GMT

On Saturday Rhiannon and I spent the day at Lydd (London Ashford) Airport near Dungeness watching the 2007 Lydd airshow with a few friends and fellow photographers.

We started our trip from a friend’s house in Bexhill and a little later than planned arrived at the airport at 10:50am. Having pre-purchased our tickets we had quick entry to the show which was well organised and rapid.

We were the last to arrive out of our group and we found them at a great position near the press area on the display line. The walk from the carpark was quite short compared to what I’m used to at some other displays. With a bit of space left for us we set up our chairs and took a short wander around the aircraft parking area. Since it was the first day of the display there wasn’t a lot that had arrived, but I took a few shots of the Team Guinot aircraft and a Yukolev Yak-50. Already the clouds had formed up a bit and were presenting some dark stormy looking skies.

At 1:25pm the airshow began and we were treated to four hours of nearly constant flying displays. The crowd line at Lydd is fairly unique in that it faces north. This is great for photography as the sun is behind you throughout the display which gives clean direct light on the aircraft. It also offsets you from the runway and some of the pilots take this opportunity to perform some banked passes along the crowd line that show off the topside of the aircraft quite nicely. Quite often at other airshows you don’t get very many topside shots and Lydd presented a nice opportunity to collect some more original shots.

There was a nice mix of different aircraft at Lydd including the entertaining Tiger Club Turbulent Team which put on a very unique display. A show favourite was the Hawker Hunter “Miss Demeanour” jet in its bright coloured paint scheme and the Catalina PBY5A, a very photogenic aircraft. The Battle of Britain Memorial flight put on a good show with some nice formation passes of the Lancaster, Spitfire and Hurricane.

The weather throughout the day was mixed. We had quite a lot of heavy dark cloud which did leave some bland looking skies and made for some dark shots, but we did get spells of sunshine. The sun when it was out lit the aircraft beautifully and even some of the clouds formations made nice backgrounds for certain aircraft.

As will all events there was a bit of a rush getting out of the grounds after the final display by the RAF Falcons. We took our time packing up and walking back to the cars which allowed some of the crowds to clear. There were queues getting out of the carpark but they moved pretty freely. The stewards directed us to a recently opened route that saved some time and the police had good control of the merging of traffic onto the main road.

This was my first visit to Lydd and a very enjoyable one. A nice mix of less common aircraft and a great position for photography made it very worthwhile. The weather could have been better but it didn’t ruin the day. I’ll certainly be adding this event to my calendar for next year and if the weather is better I might even consider both days as the entry price is very reasonable.

I’m starting to build up the gallery from the event at http://www.sjgevents.fotopic.net/c1362559.html

Airshow Processing Backlog

Steve Gordon — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 10:41:00 GMT

With many days of airshows completed this year and potentially a couple more left at Shoreham later in the month I have built up a huge collection of photographs from the events. I haven’t counted but I expect there are about 2500-3000 photographs from this year’s airshows on my computer currently. They are all in RAW format so they take up a nice chunk of hard disk space and have to be processed to produce the JPEG required for web display.

The RAW choice was a conscious decision and while more time consuming to work with I prefer the latitude the format gives me for making exposure adjustments after the event with less negative effects than trying to make the changes to the JPEG files. It also future proofs the files a little because it means as new software is released and I learn new techniques I have an untouched file to work with to re-process the shot to get the best possible image.

I’m trying to get through the processing as fast as possible in the evenings and weekends I have free, but with events most weekends during the summer and other priorities in the evenings time is short. I have recently made the decision to spend less time on the JPEG (web ready) preparation of my photographs and now only perform more basic processing and adjustments to try and limit the time spent on the files. It still can mean 3-5 minutes per photograph which can quickly consume the free time I have.

It is very likely that the winter will be the best time to catch up on some of my backlog as with dark evenings and miserable weekend weather (not a huge change from this summer!) I should have more time to spend in front of the computer getting the files processed. It is my hope to get my new website online before too long which will make the upload process for the photographs easier as well.

This week I’m making a big effort to get a collection of photographs from each of the airshow online. I’ve started working through my most recent outing at Lydd and will also be concentrating on RIAT and Airbourne photographs. I haven’t had time to put in proper links on my main website to the galleries but check out http://www.sjgevents.fotopic.net for all of my airshow photographs processed so far.

Canon 40D and 1Ds Mark III Announced

Steve Gordon — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 12:30:00 GMT

Canon has now officially announced two highly anticipated new models for both their Prosumer and Professional series bodies. The most interesting of the two for me will be the Canon 40D which is now two models up from my current 20D. When the 30D came out 18 months ago I didn’t see any real reason to upgrade. Some minor changes that would have been nice to have but not really that important meant I really didn’t give it a second glance.

The specification for the 40D is much more tempting, with 10.1 megapixels, improved AF system, self cleaning features and 3 inch LCD being just a few changed that grab my attention and may make an upgrade worthwhile.

Features at a Glance

10.1 Megapixel CMOS Sensor
DIGIC III Processor
Bigger Buffer and 6.5 FPS
Self Cleaning Sensor
ISO Display in Viewfinder (Increased Viewfinder Size)
Quicker, Quieter Mirror
9 Cross-Sensitive Focus Points
AF-ON Button at rear
3 inch LCD
New menus and Shooting Display on LCD
Live View on LCD
14 Bit RAW
Highlight Recovery in Camera

Many of those features are of interest to me and should make some of my photography such as motorsports easier and more accurate. I’ve not seen an official price for the UK yet. That will most likelt be the deciding factor in my plans to upgrade.

I have been considering a second hand 1D Mark II since the release of the Mark III but the 40D is certainly a good second option. The Mark II would be fantastic but certain features of the 40D are more useful to me than those of the Mark II. It seems over the next few months I will have to do some careful thinking on my plans. Hopefully in September we will see some reviews of the 40D and a definite price to give me some idea on the best route to proceed.

Airbourne 2007 Day 2 in Review

Steve Gordon — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 18:37:00 GMT

As planned I returned to the pier for my photography again today. I was joined by a fellow photographer and we spent all day on the dome at the top of the pier. The displays seemed to come in less close today and the results have been hit and miss.

I’m returning to my usual location near the wishtower for tomorrow’s display.

RAF Chinook

BBMF Spitfire and Hurricane

Airbourne 2007 Day 1 in Review

Steve Gordon — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 20:18:00 GMT

Today was day one of Airbourne 2007. Thursday is always a quieter day for the show and this year was no exception with only the smaller displays taking part. I was disappointed to find that the display line seems to be further away than last year, making good photographs difficult.

We did however try a new vantage point from the end of the pier that yielded some reasonable passes for closer shots. I tried using my 1.4x TC during the day but was not happy with the results so switched back to using the 100-300mm on its own.

I will back tomorrow to try again. I’m hoping for more keepers and some good shots of the Eurofighter as I will be trying from the pier again. Here are a few shots from today...

Spitfire Mark 9

Royal Navy Seafire

Blue Eagles Lynx

Airbourne 2007 Plans

Steve Gordon — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:05:00 GMT

With July nearly completed I’m starting to look ahead into August. The main event for me is the Eastbourne International Airshow (Airbourne) which takes place only a few miles from my home. It’s a spectacular 4 day airshow held on the seafront and over the years it has grown to be the biggest free airshow in the UK.

I’ve attended the airshow for as long as I can remember since I was a young child. In fact I’m pretty certain I have been to every show since it started as a much smaller event many years ago. The highlight for me was always the Red Arrows and even today I get a real buzz watching them perform. Their display is always a crowd pleaser and is great to watch over the seafront.

In the past few years I’ve had to put up with the torture of hearing and seeing glimpses of the Thursday and Friday of the show from my office nearby. Last year the best weather came on the one day I couldn’t do since I was working and that being the first year with my new camera it was a bit disappointing. This year I have booked off the Airbourne week from work so I can visit and enjoy all 4 days. There’s plenty to see and do so I’m sure I’ll manage to fill them all.

My current plan is to use Thursday (usually the quietest of the four) to look around and photograph the static displays and arena events. I’ll stop to get some air display photographs as well I’m sure. Then Friday to Sunday will be concentrated on enjoying the air displays and photographing the aircraft. I have a favourite spot which I’ve viewed the display from numerous times. It’s about display centre and provides a great view of the show. I’ll spend a couple of days at this spot but on one day might be adventurous and move further along the beach to get to the banking point for the jet displays. I’d like to catch some vapour and afterburner shots.

Being a seafront show you don’t get a close to the display as you can at the airfield displays. This means getting full frame shots is tricky. I’m hoping I can do reasonably well with my lens but I can remember last year I was craving something longer. At Fairford earlier in the month I tried using my 1.4x teleconverter which I’ve been avoiding as the results are not all that great in my opinion and again I wasn’t that impressed with it. I think I’m just getting fussy about sharpness but also it looses me some focus speed and accuracy which is important for photographing fast jets a long way away. With 4 days at the event I’m hoping to try using it again, so long as I’ve got some keepers of each aircraft before hand.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for decent weather. We’re certainly due some. I’d particularly like some nice blue skies to work with. RIAT was a bit dull and grey in that respect.

Airshow photographs take a long time to process as each one has different lighting and therefore different work required. With 4 days at the event I’m sure it will take a long time to get the shots processed completely. I am hoping however to get a few online after each day of the event. I’ve still got some Biggin Hill photographs to process and plenty from Fairford as well so my aim is to clear some of those before the display which takes place on the 16th to the 19th of August.

RIAT 2007 Photographs

Steve Gordon — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 08:00:00 GMT

I returned on Sunday from my trip to RAF Fairford to watch and photograph the 2007 Royal International Air Tattoo. As planned I camped outside the airfield on a nearby farm and this is where I watched and photographed the display from as well.

It was a great weekend and although the weather wasn’t always perfect we did get some sun and blue skies on the Saturday which made things more pleasant. Sunday’s weather was less good but we made do until 1pm at which point we set off home to beat the traffic. The view from the farm was fantastic and although we were not close to the display line action we were able to get close-ups of the aircraft as they turned directly above us.

Thanks to the good company we were with the evenings were very enjoyable as well and I came away very relaxed. It was a tiring couple of days but well worth the trip. I will be aiming to do the same again next year.

Fairford RIAT Plans

Steve Gordon — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 12:32:00 GMT

This weekend I will be travelling to see the Royal International Air Tattoo at Fairford in Gloucestershire. It’s about 160 miles away (about 3 hours according to Google maps) and to make better use of the trip I will be camping there so that I can see both days of the show.

My current plan is to head over late Friday afternoon after work to a campsite recommended by a friend. The campsite is run by Totterdown Farm and costs a very reasonable £10 per night for a pitch and has the advantage of overlooking the base. My current thinking is that I will only watch half of the show on Sunday before driving back early to avoid most of the traffic. This should give me some time to rest when I get home and possibly a chance to check through my photographs.

I’ve never been before but the line-up at this event looks very impressive and I have heard good things about it. I’m very much looking forward to it and I’m hoping that the weather turns out to be nice for some good photographs.

Goodwood Festival of Speed 2007 in Review

Steve Gordon — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 12:25:00 GMT

After numerous bad weather forecasts leading up to the Festival of Speed I wasn’t entirely sure it was going to worth the day off work and 1 hour drive but on Thursday evening we got the gear packed and some food prepared in the hope that the forecasters were wrong.

The alarm woke us early at 5:30am and after a quick check out of the window things were not looking too good. However checking the latest weather forecast it did give us a glimmer of hope for a semi decent day.

We arrived at the car park at 7:20 and after ensuring we had all of the necessary waterproof clothing and camera gear we caught a ride on the tractor shuttle from the carpark to the entrance. Our plan was to firstly lighten our load by eating some of our supplies and then take a look through the paddocks.

We didn’t have time to see all of the paddocks before making a start on our trek up hill so we decided to check out the ‘Cartier Style Et Lux’ area. I took the opportunity to try out some ideas I’d had for angles and detail shots I wanted to capture. With the short tour complete we headed up the hill to a spot I’d photographed from last year. On arrival I was disappointed to find they had increased the hay bail height and moved the crowd back just far enough to make photography practically impossible for me. I put on the 100-300mm with 1.4x teleconverter and tried my best but only managed a few shots while balanced on tiptoes.

At the next available opportunity we crossed the track to the slightly better angle offered from the opposite side. With lower bails it meant I had more of a chance at a decent shot but still required the TC to give me enough length over the hay. During the morning we moved up the hill and then decided to take a walk through the rally stage.

We were eager to find the new jump that had been setup for the rally cars to tackle and after a long walk and a few stops at the decent angles we found it. However due to the crowds and trees it meant photographing it was too tricky and we moved on.

At lunchtime we headed back to the bottom of the hill and found a spot on near the beginning of the track outside Goodwood House. This was the best position I shot at during the day as it didn’t require a TC and I could shoot without trying to avoid the hay bails in frame. The weather up until this point had been great, often with sun gracing the circuit. However a dark cloud had moved in and soon a heavy shower came down. I covered the camera in it’s waterproofs and continued taking photographs. The spray was quite welcome as it gave a more dynamic photograph, although the low light levels were more challenging. After only a few minutes it dried up and the sun came out to evaporate the surface water. Not enough though to stop an Aston Martin having a huge crash just past Goodwood House. Due to the large clean-up needed we took the chance to head back uphill to our initial location for the final few runs.

At the end of the day we returned to visit the paddocks we had missed in the morning. We started with the F1 paddock and moved around to the Cathedral Paddock and Supercar area.

In terms of photography the day was mixed. I felt partly off my game and wasn’t as successful as I would have liked but considering the difficult lighting and poor positioning the hay bails I was reasonably happy to get the shots I did keep.

Photographs from the Hill and Rally Stage.

Goodwood Festival of Speed 2007

Steve Gordon — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 12:34:00 GMT

My first visit to the Goodwood Festival of Speed was back in 2005 after taking advantage of the Sunday Times free tickets offer for the Friday. It was a great day out and offered some unique photography opportunities. The rain at the end of the day was a less welcome element, but huddled under the BAR F1 team tent we got a chance to talk to the chief engineer and witness the dismantling of the car.

Last year we went along again but missed the times offer and paid for our tickets. Again it was an enjoyable day and with my new camera and lenses I was able to get much better photographs. The weather again was a bit poor and a downpour midway through the day sent us into the wooded rally stage for cover.

This year I was more prepared and applied for the times offer as soon as it came out. However with only a few days left until the event I’m still awaiting my tickets. I’ve rang the Times twice now and both times I had it confirmed that I am due tickets. They were sent Thursday and should be here. At some point I must make the call whether to buy tickets just to ensure I can go. I’m hanging on a bit longer in the hope that they arrive tomorrow. I can only assume that they were sent via a carrier pigeon with a bad sense of direction!

Regardless of the ticket situation I hope to be there and should have some photographs online during the weekend.

Restoration Services

Steve Gordon — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 12:34:00 GMT

I’ve been looking to expand my services for a little while and having recently completed some photographic restorations with good success I am starting to offer this service. Many photographs get damaged over time and with modern digital techniques much of this damage can be corrected.

Link Removed Temporarily - Please Contact me for Details

If you have an old photograph that’s seen better days why not scan it and send it to me for a free estimate for the repair? Even better, I will carry out the work with no upfront payments and no obligation to purchase the final image. After I’ve done the work I will provide you with a secure online proof of the repair and if you’re not happy you can simply walk away. I’m offering the no obligation service because I’m confident that you will see the value in the final work and I understand that most people don’t feel comfortable paying for a service via the internet with no proof of what they will get from it.

I can currently only accept digital files for restoration as I’ve yet to purchase a scanner for this task. I have my eye on a few options but can’t yet justify the financial commitment. Please scan your images at high quality using at least 300dpi for larger photographs and 600dpi for smaller photographs. If the file size is manageable a TIFF will provide the best image to work with but a JPEG saved at maximum quality may be suitable. I can accept files by email or CD and I’m also looking into a file hosting service to allow customers to upload the images directly to me.

Prices start from only £12.00 and include a free 6x4 print.

Contact Me for Estimate

Progress on the Website

Steve Gordon — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 12:32:00 GMT

Version 1

This current version of the website has had some minor revisions in order to correct its appearance when viewed with IE 7.0. I’ve got the major problems fixed but it’s still not perfect. I’m trying out a few ideas to improve it further but have run into the issue that fixing IE 7 breaks IE 6. I’ve also spent a bit of time testing the contact form as I noticed some errors in my log. All tests have been successful to date so hopefully the problem is resolved.

Version 2

I’ve been continuing my work on the new version of the website and although things are still moving quite slowly I’ve made good progress in a couple of areas. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks working on the blog engine, which has been completely re-written after version 1. The main features are the same but the efficiency of the backend is much improved and easier to work with. I’ve also enhanced the layout quite a bit. I’m now starting to add some new features such as the ability to email the blog link to a friend and an RSS feed. The admin side of things has also been changed quite radically to make it easier for me to manage. I’ve also added some usage stats so that I can see which blogs are most popular.

I’m still weighing up the usefulness of implementing a comments system for the blog. While it would be kind of cool I don’t think its use will really warrant spending the time to build it. Most of my blogs are informational or news based items and I can’t imagine many comments being left. I may consider adding this after the initial release if it looks like it may be used.

Biggin Hill Internation Air Fair 2007

Steve Gordon — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 20:17:00 GMT

I spent a very hot day in the sunshine yesturday at the Biggin Hill airshow in Kent. It was a great day with plenty of good displays including the RAF Typhoon, Tornado F3, Tornado GR4, Chinook, Tutor, Tucano, Hawk Swift Glider, Blades Aerobatic Display Team, Hunter "Miss Demeanour", Oasis 747-400, Hercules and the world famous Red Arrows.

It's going to take a while to get all of the photographs processed but I have got some from the beginning of the day online already.

Biggin Hill International Air Fair Gallery

Brands Hatch Masters Historic Festival

Steve Gordon — Tue, 29 May 2007 12:31:00 GMT

Rather optimistically I made the decision to head to Brands Hatch yesterday for the inaugural Masters Historic Festival. The night before I was considering cancelling my plans due to the bad weather that was being forecasted, but I set my alarm regardless. After waking up and checking the skies locally I was pleased to see patches of blue sky, so I grabbed my gear and headed for the car. After 30 minutes on the road the skies were darkening and soon the rain started. After another 10 minutes when the rain really started to come down I very nearly turned around and headed back to home but having made the effort so far I pushed on.

Arriving at Brands Hatch the showers continued and without even taking the camera I trekked to Hailwood’s for a wakeup coffee, dressed in full winter rally gear! The first race, ‘Sports Racing Masters’ had begun and the rain eased a little, prompting me to return to the car to get the camera ready. Once it was wrapped in waterproof covers I headed to Druids for the first shots of the day. The spray and rain made focusing very tricky and my keeper rate was off to a bad start but I was able to capture a few sharp shots.

Staying at Druids for the remainder of the race I planned to catch the start of the second before moving on to another location. The Gentleman Drivers’ GT race began with a nice field of cars and after 15 or so minutes I moved onto Stirlings for a few shots. Thanks to the new fencing photography from the exit is very hard now but I did get some photos before working down the straight a little. I then moved onto the entrance of Stirlings for some rear-end shots of the cars going into the corner. That is where I met up with a fellow photographer and friend who made the miserable conditions a bit more bearable.

Fortunately the weather cleared a little later in the morning with the rain stopping and some light getting through the clouds. I was, however, still shooting at ISO 400 for most of the day.

The rest of the morning was spent walking the GP loop anti-clockwise, spending most time at Westfield. I had intended to try out some new locations but the weather was too poor to make it worth the while. Nearing lunchtime and it was the turn of the Group C Sportscars. We intended to photograph the first lap from Pilgrim’s Drop before moving back to Druids but after seeing a flaming Mazda fly past we stayed a little longer as the rain started to get heavy again. After a few laps we moved to Druids for the remainder of the race.

Lunchtime came and I hid from the rain in my car and tried to dry the equipment. The rain continued and I fought the urge to return home early. After lunch it was time for the old F1 cars to come out to play, which had been one of the main reasons for my visit. Too wet for photography I wrapped up and retuned to Druids to spectate After only 1 pace car lap the race was aborted due to the poor conditions and not fancying a further 30 minutes in the car I set off home.

The results where mixed with the rain and spray making everything quite difficult. I was pleased to see some decent shots and the water and reflections do and another element to the shots.

Master Historic Festival Gallery

Continuing Website Development

Steve Gordon — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 12:32:00 GMT

Around everything else I'm still finding small pockets of time to work on the new version of this website. I'm trying to break it down into manageable elements as the project as a whole is very complex. The tricky part is that I'm trying to include a lot of new features all at once and while implementing them slowly in stages may seem easier they all require other elements to be in place for each of them to work properly.

One of the main improvements will be a gallery system that allows me to bulk upload and more easily manage my photographs so that I can include my motorsports photographs on my main website. I'm currently working on the underlying database structure for this section and the administration pages for creating and maintaining motorsports events. By constructing my own database I will be able to include additional photograph info such as driver names to make the images much easier to search.

Race for Life

Steve Gordon — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 09:13:00 GMT

My partner Rhiannon and her sister Candice will be taking part in Race for Life in Brighton in June. They've set themselves a target of at least £150 sponsorship for the event and would gladly except any donations that people can spare. Below you can see a running total for their sponsorship to date. If you would like to contribute you can do so by clicking on the donate button.

April Plans

Steve Gordon — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:06:00 GMT

Once again I seem to have fallen into the trap of blogging and have neglected my updates for a while. In part this is because I have been busy with work and other things so photography has taken a back seat for a bit. However with the extra light at the end of the day and the upcoming bank holiday I hope to get out and take some photographs quite soon and perhaps even find the time to process some of them and upload them to the site!

At the weekend I did make a brief return to the camera, mainly to play some more with my new 17-40mm lens. I must say I am pretty happy with the results. The shots are quite a bit sharper than the 17-85mm manages, although not quite as good as the 50mm 1.4 which I think will still see a lot of use. The contrast of the 17-40mm is pretty punchy when compared to the 17-85mm with the colours (reds in particular) seem more saturated. I've found I tend to need to increase the exposure by about 1 third of a step when using the 17-40mm as otherwise the shots tend towards being a little underexposed.

The one aspect of the 17-40mm I'm not so happy with is the level of distortion at the 17mm end. I need to do a proper comparison but it seems that the sides of the shot pull in the verticals more than on the 17-85mm. Obviously some effect is expected at such a wide angle but it has affected a few of my architectural shots or landscapes with verticals on the horizon.

The motorsport circuit season is now getting off to a start with a few events already having taken place. One of the main ones for me is the A1GP at Brands Hatch at the end of the month. I'm currently contemplating a two day visit. Saturday will be for photography and Sunday to enjoy the racing. I'm hoping the traffic situation on exiting will be better than last year as it was pretty awful. It took us 3 hours just to make a move towards the M25!

I'm not yet sure what else I will be attending this month. There's a hill climb at Gurston Down on the 21st and 22nd which I may trek over to. It's a long way but always an enjoyable and relaxed day. That one may be dependant on reasonably decent weather.

I'm using up my remaining holiday this month and taking Thursday through to the following Friday off work. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for decent weather and a chance to do some local photography as well as visiting a few other places a bit further away.

A New Lens

Steve Gordon — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 18:07:00 GMT

Yesturday I recieved a new shiney lens to add to collection. The Canon 17-40mm L F/4 is a well regarded piece of glass and will replace my current 17-85mm. I'm holding onto the 17-85mm until I'm happy that the slight loss of range won't be a problem to me. I'm considering future purchases of either the Canon 85mm prime or even the Canon 24-105mm L to cover this gap should it be a problem.

The lens has yet to receive any sort of workout due to work and the dingy weather. I'm hoping this weekend will give me a chance to try it if the weather turns around. There's plenty of local landscapes I've been wanted to shoot for a long time and this gives me a great excuse to get out there.

Rallye Sunseeker 2007

Steve Gordon — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 12:02:00 GMT

My photographs from the 2007 Rallye Sunseeker Wareham stages are online in my Sunseeker Gallery.

MCSE and Rally Plans

Steve Gordon — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 18:40:00 GMT

It's been a while since I updated the blog because I was studying for my final Microsoft exam required for my MCSE and MCSA: Messaging qualifications. I'm very pleased to say that I passed it with a pretty good score and can enjoy a bit of time off from intensive studying.

I'm headed west tomorrow to Wareham near Bournemouth for this years Sunseeker Rally. We're going to watch two stages in the Wareham forest so should be able to try at least two angles during the event. The weather looks like it should hold out for most of the day. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for a bit of decent light at least.

The Towncross South Downs Stages

Steve Gordon — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:16:00 GMT

This Saturday I am planning to attend the South Downs Stages tarmac rally at Goodwood Race Circuit near Chichester. Currently the weather forecast is looking pretty good so I'm hoping a warmed day than last year. It's reasonably close to home and something a little different to photograph, that combined with the distinct lack of other events makes it worth a visit. Keep an eye out for photographs appearing from the event within a week or two if I get time around my busy study schedule!

Brooklands Update

I also just wanted to point out that I've now increased the image count in the Brooklands gallery to 138 photographs. There are more pending and I am getting through them.

London Update

Steve Gordon — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 12:50:00 GMT

I forgot to mention last week that I was heading to London for 5 days to complete some Microsoft Exchange training for my MCSE. It's the last course I need to do to prepare me for my final exam so I'm feeling glad to be near the end!

I still have access to my emails so you can get in touch with me via the contact page. I'll be back on Friday evening and over the weekend will try to fit in some more processing from Brooklands if I have the time and energy.

Prints and Gifts

Steve Gordon — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 16:20:00 GMT

I have updated and added a number of pages with additional information about my print prices, new gift products and canvas prints I am now offering.

Please visit the purchase pages to find out more

First VSCC Photographs Online

Steve Gordon — Thu, 18 Jan 2007 18:52:00 GMT

I've managed to squeeze in some time to process the first of the VSCC photographs from Brooklands. Hopefully I will get a few more online before I head off on sunday for my training week in London.

You can view the photographs in my Brooklands VSCC Gallery

Here's a taster shot...

VSCC New Years Driving Tests

Steve Gordon — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 18:23:00 GMT

I've just returned from Brooklands Museum which hosted the 2007 New Years Driving Tests organised by the Vintage Sports Car Club. It was a good way to get back into motorsports photography after the end of season break and a relaxing way to spend the day.

The morning weather was pretty good with clear skies and fairly good light. By the afternoon the clouds had shifted in and things were a bit dark. I'm not sure yet how good my results will be as I've yet to review my shots on the PC. They'll certainly need a bit of work to reduce the noise after shooting at high ISO levels.

I'm going to try an be a bit more organised this year and use a new processing workflow to help me get shots online quicker. I'm still studying for my remaining MCSE exam so they may be a bit delayed.

If you are interested in a particular image then please contact me with the details and I will make it a priority to process those photographs first and provide you with the proofs if required.

Improved Code and Contact Page

Steve Gordon — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 17:21:00 GMT

I have finally worked out the problem preventing some visitors from leaving messages via the contact form and have put a fix in place that should correct the issue. If you used the contact form in the last few months and kept recieving an error I appologise. Please do try again using the modified form as it'll be a good test of my changes.

While correcting the contact me page I also corrected some issues that appeared during the conversion to the .NET 2.0 framework. These may have load times on some pages and also correct some display problems that presented themselves in Internet Explorer.

Please do contact me if you experience any problems while viewing the site.

Also I believe that for some reason some of the messages I am sending are being marked as spam. I'm not sure why this is exactly but if you contact me via the contact form please keep an eye on your junk email / spam folders as my reply to you may end up there.

Happy New Year

Steve Gordon — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 18:12:00 GMT

I wanted to take this opportunity to wish all my visitors a very happy new year. 2006 was a good year but a busy one. I managed to get to quite a lot of the events I'd hoped to but did find the post processing a bit daunting. A nice end to the year was having one of my photographs used on the cover of 'Cats Whiskers' Sunbeam Tiger's Owners Club magazine. The shot was taken at the 2006 Goodwood Revival during the Mod's and Rockers parade.

Cats Whiskers Cover

I all ready have started adding dates to my diary for the 2007 events, with my first one coming up this month. For the second year running I will be visiting Brooklands museum for the New Year's driving tests held by the VSCC on the 14th January. Last year was my first time as Brooklands and I enjoyed the unique day out with a chance to photograph some very interesting cars. It's a nice way to ease back into motorsports photography with plenty of freedom to play with angles.

Over the Christmas break I completed my first attempt at a Photoshop video tutorial. I need to do some editing and screen it for my test audience but I hope to have it available for download soon. My only issue will be how much of my allocated monthly bandwidth it eats into!

Also over the break I upgraded my PC with some additional storage and starting work on a new image filing structure and naming convention. I added a new 320Gb Internal SATA drive which is now dedicated to photographic storage and also purchased a 250Gb USB 2.0 external drive to use as my first line of data backup. I was very slack with backing up photographs in 2006 which is something I definitely need to change. I will now backup to the external drive and also to DVD for offsite storage. Once my new file naming convention is implemented this process should be a lot easier and tracking images will be much less complicated.

Happy Birthday to SJG Photography

Steve Gordon — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:55:00 GMT

That's right it's been one year now since SJG Photography first went live. Time seems to have really flown by but it’s been a good year for me and the site.

Achievements

• In one year the site has had nearly 5000 visits which is pretty good going. I know this figure is a bit inaccurate as my stats software is a bit rubbish, but it’s hopefully a fairly good estimate. Even if it’s as low as 4000 I’m pretty pleased!

• I’ve developed my photography skills in a number of areas, including motorsports, landscapes and portraits. I can see improvements in my work and also they way I approach certain shots when compared to my work from a year ago.

• My post-processing skills have improved also as I’ve gone along. I have much better methods for editing the shots and have started to work on workflow improvements as well.

• I managed to attend quite a few motorsports events and also a few airshows which I’ve been meaning to visit for a few years. I also got out and about locally and visited a lot of local events which I hope to do again next year.

Goals

• At some point in 2007 I hope to have SJG Photography Version 2.0 online or at least be testing a beta version. It’s a much more in-depth development and I’m continually finding new things I need / want to add. I’m also yet to find a design that works throughout and feel right.

• As well as changes to the site I hope to raise more awareness of it to further build on my visitor figures. My search engine optimisations have helped a lot and I seem to be doing well in the Google search lists for certain searches.

• I may consider some new equipment during 2007 to extend my range and quality of work. Top on my list is the possibility of a Canon 17-40mm F4 L lens to give me sharper results for my landscapes. The 17-85mm Kit Lens is still pretty good but I must admit that in terms of sharpness it doesn’t match what my Canon 50mm Prime can manage and I’ve begun to crave similar results from the wide angle! I’d also quite like a decent flash gun to improve my indoor work and event shots in low light.

• I mentioned above my processing techniques have improved over the past year and to further improve things I’m going to take a big look at my workflow to improve and automate things were possible for big batches like motorsports and other events.

• I'd like to get more local awareness of my presence next year but trying to get a few shops to consider selling some of my local area prints. I may also approach some other local businesses with the hope of displaying more of my work.

• I’d like to share some of what I’ve learnt since starting out in photography and hope to start writing a series of tutorials on photography techniques, my approach to shooting and also processing techniques.

Canadian Vickers Canso PBY-5A Catalina (G-PBYA)

Steve Gordon — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 10:05:00 GMT

Back in September I atteneded the Shoreham Airshow for the first time and greatly enjoyed the event. Of course I had the camera with me to capture some of the aircraft on show during the day.

I've decided I'm going have to challenge the numerous photographs I have waiting for processing in small batches and today I finished preparing a few shots of the Canadian Vickers Canso PBY-5A Catalina (G-PBYA) flown by Chris Nune.

This impressive looking aircraft has a wingspan of 104 feet and a range of 2,800 miles. Used during World War II by the Royal Canadian Air Force the G-PBYA was challenged with the main task of anti-submarine patrols in addition to rescuing ditched airmen from the sea.

The Catalina taking off in front of Lancing College

Catalina Fly Past with Wing Tip Floats Deployed

Catalina Fly Past with Undercarriage Down

I Am Still About!!

Steve Gordon — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 20:07:00 GMT

I realise it's been a very long time since my last update here. The last time I blogged I was in London on a training course for an IT certification I’m pursuing. Since then I’ve been studying hard for the 6 exams I need to take that form the core part of the qualification.

At the end of it all I will be qualified as a MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) which will help me in my role supporting Microsoft server and desktop operating systems and planning for the development of Microsoft networks. It’s a pretty intense period of study as I’m condensing the course and exams into quite a short period of time.

I’ve taken and passed the first 5 exams and have one more to take before Christmas. After that I will take the training for the final exam in February.

A side effect of all of my studying has meant I haven’t had the time for any photography, processing or development of my website and things have gotten a bit behind. It’s a bit of a shame as this year I really had my heart set on taking a series of Autumnal shots of the surrounding landscapes. The trees are pretty bare now so I think I will have to wait until next year!

I did manage to get out to Brands Hatch at the beginning of the month for the British Truck Racing Association (BTRA) meeting. I’m very glad I did as the weather was perfect and the racing was very entertaining. I’ve been able to get a few photographs online in my motorsports gallery and I hope to add to them as I get a few spare moments.

I won’t make any promises but I do hope to have some fresh new photographs processed and online soon. I still have a huge bunch from the air shows I attended in August and September, so maybe I’ll start with those!

Away on Training

Steve Gordon — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 11:12:00 GMT

Just a brief update to say that I'm away from home on training for the next two weeks, so there will be no photograph updates for a while. Before I went away I did a bit of processing on a couple of my Airbourne photographs which I will get online when possible.

I hope to check my emails every now and again and reply to any questions and comments so please continue to send messages using the contact form.

Anthony Nolan Trust Charity Abseil

Steve Gordon — Wed, 27 Sep 2006 19:01:00 GMT

Better late than never I've got a few photographs to share from Peacehaven cliffs, the site of a charity abseil arranged by The Anthony Nolan Trust. These photographs feature my partner Rhiannon and good friend Chris doing their bit for charity and taking part in the abseil.

The Anthony Nolan Trust is the UK's most successful bone marrow donor register for patients with Leukaemia. They organise many fundraising events around the country ranging from walks and runs to diving with sharks and white water rafting. Visit their website at http://www.anthonynolan.org.uk to find out more about them and find events in your area you can take part in.

On the morning of the 9th of September we set off under clear skies towards Peacehaven on the A27. The weather was a pleasant surprise after the previous few days of rain which had made me wonder whether the event would be able to go ahead.

On arrival Rhiannon and Chris signed the required disclaimers and handed over their money while I took my chance to see what angles I would be able to photograph from. Reaching the cliff edge and looking down, the 80 foot drop looked a lot further. A couple of people were already heading over the edge and I used them to determine whether my Sigma 100-300 would give me enough range for my shots. I also noted that the sun was completely in the wrong place, right behind the cliff, backlighting the scene.

Rhiannon putting on her helmet

Rhiannon ready to go

Chris ready to go

The wait wasn't long and soon Rhiannon and Chris were being harnessed up and given their hard hats. I took a few photographs and attracted a little attraction wielding my Sigma lens. Next came a short safety briefing and instruction on how to abseil and then it was time for the event itself.

Chris looking a little nervous as he looks down over the cliff edge

Rhiannon having a quick lesson in abseiling

I moved into my first location and took a few shots as Rhiannon lowered herself over the edge. Chris followed shortly after and soon they were side by side as they descended. I moved onto my next location on some well placed stairs down to the bottom of the cliff. They were just right for taking photographs using the reach of the Sigma and as they moved down the cliff I followed using the stairs until they reached the bottom.

Rhiannon begins her decent

Back lit by the sun, the pair descend

Rhiannon and Chris pose for a shot half way down

Rhiannon arrives at the bottom of the cliff

Chris follows closely behind her

While they were un-harnessed I took a few shots to illustrate the height of the cliffs from the bottom and waited a few more minutes while the next pair started their turn down the cliff to get a couple of shots with them as a good demonstration of scale.

With Rhiannon and Chris, happy and exhilarated we had to make a move for home.

Looking back up the cliff

Rhiannon would like to thank everyone who sponsored her for the event. Your contributions were very much appreciated.

Shoreham Airshow 2006

Steve Gordon — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 19:45:00 GMT

I've just arrived home from an enjoyable day at Shoreham Airport watching and photographing their annual airshow.

We arrived very early at 8:30am and spent some time wandering around the static aircraft and stands. By 10:15am we had our position at the display line picked out. We had to settle for a spot behind the members enclosure as the rest of the line was already 4 or 5 rows deep!

Flying started at 11:15 and from then on it was a packed display with aircraft following one after another. I was very impressed with the organisation of the event and some of the aircraft on show. The popular Eurofighter and Harrier GR7 were on on show as well as the ever impressive Will Curtis in the Sukhoi SU26 and many, many more.

I shot about 450 shots during the day and think I should have at least one decent shot of most of the aircraft on display. The light was generally favourable until later in the afternoon when the sun had moved around and was backlighting a lof of my shots. The cloud was patchy in the morning but cleared pretty well, not too far into the display. I still need to practice my aircraft panning with such a long lens on the camera but that will have to wait for next year as this was pretty much the close of the UK airshow season.

I've still got a hideous backlog of event and personal shots to process but hopefully I can some of the better photographs online soon

A Spitfire PR Mk 11 in 16th Squadron Colours takes off

The crowd pleasing Harrier GR7 demonstrates its hovering capability

Denny Dobson in his Walter Extra 300

Goodwood 2006 Photographs Update

Steve Gordon — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 21:56:00 GMT

I've been very bsuy recently and forgot to make a quick post here to say that there are now 320 photographs from the Saturday of the 2006 Goodwood Revival online.

There are some final ones that still need processing from the end of the day but most of those are a bit noisy at the light levels dropped and I had to use a higher ISO in order to properly expose the shots and still maintain a reasonable shutter speed to keep the cars looking sharp.

They can be found at http://sjgphotography.fotopic.net/c1072191.html.

Goodwood Revival 2006 - Saturday

Steve Gordon — Sun, 03 Sep 2006 20:39:00 GMT

I sepnt a long and damp day yeasturday at the 9th Revival meeting held on the Goodwood motor circuit in Sussex.

The conditions weren't at their easiest for photography but that didn't stop me shooting approximately 630 photographs of the various old tin on track from Madgwick corner. My success rate was mixed, partly because I was a bit out of practice and partly because the light was so low and focusing seemed a little less accurate than normal.

I'm going to try and get the shots processed as quickly as possible and to achieve this I will be doing limited adjustments on the shots for web display. I can spend more time on any shots that need to be be printed to ensure optimum quality.

The gallery for the day will be found at http://sjgphotography.fotopic.net/c1072191.html.

Mods and Rockers at Madgewick

If you are interested in shots of a particular car then please use the contact form to send me the race and car numbers and I will make those shots my priority.

Sigma SD14

Steve Gordon — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 12:36:00 GMT

I have just read that Sigma are looking to release information on a new dSLR they have developed called the SD14.

There is a teaser site setup at www.sigma-sd14.com which doesn't give much away except that the full annoucement will occur at the Photokina show on the 26th September and it will feature a "Full Color Capture Direct Image Sensor".

Goodwood Revival

Steve Gordon — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 13:31:00 GMT

My ticket arrived today for the 2006 Goodwood Revival. I will be attending on the Saturday of the event. I would have liked to have made it to the Sunday as well but a commitement on Saturday night means it's not really practical. At least it saves me the rather steep price of £45 for the Sunday ticket!

New Canon Equipment Photographs

Steve Gordon — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 17:31:00 GMT

Here are some shots of the newly announced Canon EOS 400D (Rebel Xti), 50mm F/1.2L and 70-200mm F/4L IS USM.

Canon EOS 400D Front

Canon EOS 400D Back

Canon 50mm F/1.2L

Canon 70-200mm F/4L IS USM

All images supplied courtesy of Canon UK

Airbourne 2006

Steve Gordon — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 19:39:00 GMT

Last weekend Eastbourne held it's annual 4-day free Airbourne airshow on the seafront. As usual it was a popular event drawing in record crowds who were rewarded with many hours of impressive flying displays.

I attended on the Friday and Saturday to enjoy the displays and take some photographs. 'Some' photographs actually turned out to be about 800+ photographs! The weather was a bit hit and miss over the weekend with grey skies spoiling some of the shots a little. Friday yielded the best results with blue skies coming out for reasonable periods.

I've nowhere near managed to go through all of the shots yet but I thought I'd post a taster for you all here.

Eurofighter Typhoon F2

Royal Netherlands Air Force F16 Fighting Falcon

RAF Red Arrows

Belgian Air Force F16 with Flares

RAF Red Arrows Crossover

Hercules C130j

Canon EOS 400D, 50mm f/1.2L and 70-200mm f/4L IS

Steve Gordon — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 18:49:00 GMT

Canon have announced a new dSLR and two new lenses this week. Speculation regarding possible new Canon equipment has been circulating the web for a while but at last we seem to have some definite specs and proof of existence from Canon.

Canon EOS 400D

This camera is an upgrade the existing EOS 350D prosumer dSLR. It features a higher mega-pixel sensor, a interesting sounding, automatic sensor cleaning system and an upgrade to the 9-point focusing system found in the EOS 20D and 30D cameras.

Feature Summary

· 10.1 Megapixel (22.2 x 14.8mm) CMOS Sensor
· Self Cleaning Sensor to shake dust from the low pass filter
· DIGIC II Image Processor
· EF/EF-S Lens Mount
· 2.5" TFT Screen with 160 degree viewing angle
· 3 FPS Shooting
· 9 Point AF Focusing
· ISO 100-1600

Read the full specs at the Canon UK Website

Canon 50mm f/1.2L

Rumours have been around for a while about an L (professional) series 50mm prime lens from Canon and here it is. The lens features 8 aperture blades for high quality circular bokeh and will have the usual high quality build of other L series lenses. Prices in the range of $1599 are being thrown around for this lens.

Read the full specs at the Canon Australia Website

Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS USM

This lens is very similar to the existing 70-200mm f/4 lens but now includes image stabilisation to help when handholding the lens in lower light conditions. The IS is rated at 3 stops and will add a little weight when compared to the existing 70-200 f/4 lens. Prices in the area of $1249 have been suggested for this lens which about double what the existing lens costs.

Read the full specs at the Canon Australia Website

August Catch-Up

Steve Gordon — Wed, 23 Aug 2006 18:09:00 GMT

It's been far too long since I blogged here! The summer has been pretty hectic and I have literally run out of time to keep things up to date. That's due to numerous photographic outings (which in turn means literally hundreds of photographs to review and process), time being spent on my new website, studying for my MCSE (Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer) and a busy time as work as well.

New Website Progress

The new website plans are coming along quite well. Finding the proper time to sit down and make things happen is hard but the new features are starting to be realised. The new bulk upload system is moving ahead nicely and the features in it will certainly make uploading photographs to the site a lot more manageable. A further improvement will be seen with the development of an application I will be building to help me automate and manage the processing workflow.

I'm concentrating on features for the website for the time being but will also be working on a redesign of the pages and layout as well. This will mainly be to incorporate the new content and features, but also to update the look of the site and make it as compatible as possible with all browsers.

Photography

As I mentioned in my introduction paragraph I've been doing a lot of photography recently. It's been mainly event shots in and around my local area of Eastbourne. This has included the Eastbourne Motorshow, Eastbourne Extreme, 999 Emergency Services Display and of course Airbourne which is a popular free 4-day airshow. At Airbourne alone I shot in excess of 1,000 photographs and the processing of that lot is a daunting task.

I'm trying to get through the processing backlog but it will be a while before the full galleries for these events appear online. I'll make posts here as and when they are uploaded.

One thing worth mentioning was that some of my aerial photographs were on display at the RNLI tent at the 999 event.

My photographs are the three in the bottom right corner of the display board.

I have also managed over the last few weeks to get a few of my past photographs uploaded to the gallery pages, which include a couple of TVR shots that I took in London last year and a new panoramic of Eastbourne Pier.

New Monitor Ordered

Steve Gordon — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 20:49:00 GMT

Today I confirmed an order for a new Dell 20.1 inch Ultrasharp TFT monitor to replace my aging 19 inch CRT. I've been a bit apprehensive about going with a TFT as the colour representation is not usually as good as a CRT monitor. However with CRT's rapidly being dropped from production and a very good deal that I was able to get on the Dell I decided to take the plunge.

The extra screen space will help with Photoshop work and the reduced size overall will give me back some much need desk space. I've used the 19 inch version of this monitor for many months now at work and have been impressed by the quality and colour range. The few reviews I've found of the 20.1 inch version suggest that it should be at least as good.

It's schduled to arrive on Friday so I should have chance over the weekend to try it out and see how it compares with my current monitor. I plan to write a basic review of it's performance for photographic editing once I've given it a fair test.

Goodwood Festival of Speed

Steve Gordon — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 19:20:00 GMT

This evening I've been keeping quite busy and have finally finished the gallery processing for the Goodwood photographs from the hill. There are 138 photographs in the gallery which can be found here.

The paddock gallery with it's 104 photographs can be found here.

I've also been working some more of the gallery system code for the next version of the site. Some of the more exciting administration features for the site are coming together which will allow me to hold all of the larger galleries on my own site, rather than externally with Fotopic. I'm beginning work of the completely revamped users system and security features which will probably occupy the next few weeks.

My next batch of processing will be the Eastbourne Motorshow photographs and eventually the 999 Show photographs which will hopefully appear online this week.

Eastbourne Extreme 2006

Steve Gordon — Sun, 23 Jul 2006 18:27:00 GMT

Today I spent 6 hours getting slightly roasted while enjoying the impressive displays put on at the Eastbourne Extreme Sports event on the seafront. I mainly concentrated my day at the skate park watching the BMX riders and skaters showing their moves to the crowds.

The gallery from the event can be found here

Catching Up

Steve Gordon — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 06:30:00 GMT

I’ve been back from my holiday for a week new and I’m still trying to get caught up. I’ve got a number of things on the boil (well, simmering) in the background and a couple more upcoming events to attend that should see me even more behind with my processing!

This weekend Eastbourne is hosting two, two-day events that I’ve been hoping to photograph. The first is a motor show held on the grounds of a local college. This year it is hosted by James May from Top Gear and I’m told should have around 200 cars on display. I’ve not been to previous shows purely because I didn’t know it existed. I found out about last years a day after the event finished! I’m planning on an early start to try to photograph the cars out of the harsh midday light. I’m interested to see what sort of cars will be on show.

The second event, which I’m planning to attend on Sunday is the 999 show on the seafront. This event brings together the local emergency services that all put on demonstrations for the crowds. This includes fire fighting displays, police riot demonstrations and a lifeboat rescue out to sea to name a few. There are also a lot of static displays with old emergency vehicles on show. I attended last year with the Fuji S7000 and because of slightly bad weather I didn’t get as many decent shots as I’d hoped. That said I never really got around to processing the shots from that batch anyway!

The weather forecast is looking good for both days so hopefully I can get some nice shots. I’m planning to not only photograph the displays and vehicles but hopefully to try and capture the essence of the events as well. This may include some candid photography if I get up there nerve! I will then be able to create some galleries to showcase both events.

I’m slowing trying to get through the processing of my past shots, including my recent holiday and Goodwood Festival of Speed collections. There are a scary number of photographs in those two recent batches alone that will require a lot of time to work through. I’ve got most of the paddock shots from the Festival of Speed online in my gallery . I will be working on the action shots from the hill next and then try to get through the holiday shots. I also have some shots from my second go at aerial photography to share on my blog at some point.

Additionally I’ve been working in small doses on the version 2 plans for this website. My feature list is still growing but I’ve got an idea of the main features I’m working towards. There’s a ton of work to do to get them working though. I’m developing the plans for each new feature much more carefully to ensure that I think about every possible requirement at this stage. It’s mainly the administration pages that I’m working on at the moment. I’ll then move onto the client pages and finally onto the layout and exact design once I know what I’ve got to display.

This week I’ve spent a bit of time on the new bulk upload feature for the admin section. Currently I can upload single images one at a time, populating the required fields and choosing where the thumbnail is on my PC. This has worked reasonably for the general galleries, although is a bit cumbersome and slow, hence the lack of updates to the galleries.

My new code allows me to FTP the photographs to a directory and then automatically batch process the images into the database and move them to the correct directory. I’ve also finally managed to get some code working to automatically extract the EXIF data from the images and populate the database with it. This style of uploading will allow me to move my motorsports and event images onto my site and away from the Fotopic hosting. Fotopic is a great service and it works well as a way to display my photographs but it doesn’t give me the precise control for the data that’s held about each image. Once I can host these larger galleries on my own site it will allow me to expand the information held about each image and implement many more features on the site.

Site Problems

Steve Gordon — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 06:27:00 GMT

I discovered yesturday that this website was having some major problems due to a change made by the hosting company. All of the data driven pages were failing and the homepage was missing. It seems my host tightened security for ASP.NET 1.1 which had a big effect on how my website could execute. They've now helped me migrate my site to ASP.NET 2.0 and most of the problems should be fixed. I've noticed a few formatting issues that I will look into when I get a chance, but at least the pages are accessible.

Canon Firmware Upgrades

Steve Gordon — Tue, 11 Jul 2006 12:51:00 GMT

Catching up on some slightly late news, last week Canon announced firmware upgrades for their EOS 5D and EOS 1DmkII N cameras.

The 5D upgrade addresses the following issues

1. Enhancement of direct printing with specific printers.
2. Correction of the communication errors that occurred when shooting with EOS 5D and EOS Capture software after shooting about 138 shots.
3. Correction of the phenomenon in which the flash mode settings are changed from E-TTL to M (Manual) when EOS 5D is used in combination with Speedlite Transmitter ST-E2 and Speedlite 580EX.

You can download the 5D Firmware from the Canon website .

The 1D MkII N upgrade addresses the following issue

1. Enhancement of direct printing with specific printers.

You can download the 1D MkII N Firmware from the Canon website .

Back from Holiday

Steve Gordon — Sun, 09 Jul 2006 09:33:00 GMT

I forgot to announce last week that I would be away from the site for a few days as my partner and I were taking a short break away. We decided on a UK holiday this year to see some new places and ended up choosing to camp a few miles south of Bath. We had a good few days, spoilt a little by the rain, but saw many of the places we'd planned to, including Longleat, Bath and Stourhead.

I took quite a few photographs over the three days, although the weather put a dent on some of my planned shots and meant we didn't visit Stone Henge as we'd hoped to.

On the Friday we spent a long day at Goodwood for the Festival of Speed. It was a great day but very tiring after the week we'd had. Again the weather was against us for some of the day but I still managed to get some photographs. I'll be starting on the mammoth processing task today but it will be a little while before I can get everything online.

Website Version 2.0 Wish List

Steve Gordon — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 12:35:00 GMT

This site has been live for 6 months now and the visitor hits are starting to pick up. When I first started planning this website I had many big ideas of what I wanted to include. In the end I had to make some big cuts in order to get my web presence online more quickly.

The site has been working well, with my personalised blog system and gallery structure providing the basic functionality I had planned for. However there are a number of features that I never coded which I’d still like to add.

Over the next few months I am hoping to find some time to work on version 2.0 of this site. The features that are currently available are basic and in the case of my gallery image upload not really suitable for high volume work. You may have noticed that lack of gallery updates (for which I apologise). This is partly down to a backlog of post processing and bad weather but also down to the long time it takes for me to add each image. Version 2.0 will see the gallery section completely revamped for quicker and easier uploads.

I have written my wish list of features and functionally for v2.0 and it’s very comprehensive (four A4 pages to date). Since this version is stable at the moment I’m going to take my time and try to develop as many of these features into the next version. It will take a while but in the end will result in a website with some exciting functionality (I hope!). I will also be revamping the look of the site in some areas. I expect this work to take at least until the end of the year. Perhaps I can have it online in time for the site’s 1st birthday!

If you have any ideas for features that you feel should be included then please drop me a message and I’ll see if I can work them into the design if they’re not already there. It’s my intention to develop the new version with some scalability so that other photographers can perhaps utilise the website framework for their own sites.

Modified Motorsports Section

Steve Gordon — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 20:25:00 GMT

This evening I've finally gotten around to updating the appearance of the motorsports page . For a while now I've wanted to modify the page to make it more attractive and easy to navigate. I think it looks and works better now.

I'm also trying to schedule some of my time to processing and uploading some more shots to some of the galleries and adding a couple of missing events. Keep checking back over the next few weeks as I get the motorsports page up to scratch.

Gurston Down - ASWMC Hillclimb Championship

Steve Gordon — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 20:06:00 GMT

After a mammoth processing session this evening I have processed my complete set of 266 shots from the Association of South Western Motor Clubs Hillclimb Championship at Gurston Down in Wiltshire.

We had fantastic weather at the top of the hill for the whole day. I even managed to burn slightly through factor 35 sun block! In fact it was so bright that as the sun moved around in the afternoon it made getting correct exposures quite tricky. I’ve had to tweak the exposure settings for each of the 266 shots manually during post-processing.

The Sigma 100-300mm was performing very well in the bright light and was used for most of the shots. I did borrow a friend’s Canon 24-105mm L for some of the pans taken at Karousel and some 3/4 shots taken at the bottom of deer leap.

There was a great turn out of machinery taking to the hill including a huge selection of Porches, some great looking Morgans and many, many more. I took a lot of photographs filling a full 3Gb worth of CF cards and for the most part they appear sharp. I did worry during the event that the auto focus was struggling but after reviewing the shots I needn’t have.

The full gallery is now online at http://sjgphotography.fotopic.net/c995025.html.

Please be aware that the shots have only been roughly processed for web viewing. For any shots that you may be interested in buying a print I will be reprocessing the shot using much more detailed techniques to produce a better balanced image.

Alfriston Medieval Festival 2006

Steve Gordon — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 19:57:00 GMT

It was quite by chance that I found out about the Alfriston Medieval Festival, which I attended last Saturday. While out working on some panoramic landscapes along the River Cuckmere a friendly couple happened to mention that Alfriston was holding the event.

Deciding that it would make for some unusual photographs I packed up my things and walked along the Cuckmere towards the village. After about 20 minutes I finally saw the spire of Alfriston’s church behind some trees. I hadn’t realised quite how far it was from where I’d parked to photograph the river!

A medieval cook explains the hedgehog shaped food.

I continued to the church and after stopping for a couple of architectural shots I headed around to the village green. Even though I knew that I was visiting Alfriston to see a recreated medieval market for some reason I was still surprised to actually see one! It was a great sight to see the whole green scattered with colourful tents and people in medieval costume. I made the decision to use the 17-85mm lens for a while to give me some flexibility with the shots and then later switch to the 50mm for some portraits.

I arrived at the event around 11am and it wasn’t particularly busy so I took a quiet tour of the tents. While doing so I noticed a jester creating large bubbles for an appreciative audience of children. I took a couple of close-up photographs and a wide angle to show the scene and moved on.

Two musicians provide period music to further set the scene.

I decided quite early on that the main bulk of the shots would be reportage style portraits of the people in costume. I switched to the Canon 50mm F/1.4 set at around F/2.8 and went to the various stalls trying to capture some candid shots of the medieval people. The sunlight was very harsh at this time of day and getting flattering photographs that were exposed correctly was a challenge. This is just one reason why I prefer to shoot RAW as it gives me some flexibility to correct these issues after the event. I was manually focusing each shot as I’ve had mixed results using the auto focus with the 50mm lens. It’s becoming much more natural for my to use the manual focus these days and I like the extra control it gives me.

After viewing and photographing the stalls on the village green I headed up onto Alfriston’s high street, which had been closed for the event, where I found many more stalls to visit. I again tried to be inconspicuous so that I could get some natural candid shots of people. To be honest I’ve never really been that comfortable photographing strangers, even with their consent but considering the fact that a local TV station was filming as well, I didn’t feel too guilty.

A jester juggles for the children.

The jester had moved to the high street as well and was doing some juggling for the children and a small crowd of excited adults as well! There was a bit more space for me here and I stayed long enough to get a few shots.

After finishing on the high street I returned to the green for one final look around. The heat was getting to me at this point and the sun block was in the car so I decided it was best to start the return walk before I cooked.

It was an interesting event and one I’d like to attend again with more planning. Unfortunately it had been badly advertised locally or I’d have arrived earlier to get some more shots in the softer morning light as people were setting up.

For a gallery of the best images from this event please visit the event gallery.

First Website Award

Steve Gordon — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 12:37:00 GMT

I received an email yesterday informing me that my site had won the PhotoGalaxy Web Awards Highly Commended Website Award. The award indicates that my website has ‘the highest standard in both photographic content and website design’.

I’m now in the running for the Site of the Month Award their highest award category. I’ll let you know how that goes.

Nature Photography at Arlington Reservoir

Steve Gordon — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 17:56:00 GMT

On Wednesday I had a change of pace for the evening and decided to try a little nature photography at a local reservoir. In total I enjoyed a couple of hours at the reservoir in the warm evening sunshine making an attempt at photographing some of the local wildlife. I just about managed to resist the urge to attach my wide-angle lens for landscape shots, although I will have to return and make up for that with some wider shots at some point.

The Reservoir

Arlington Reservoir is an entirely man-made 120-acre site built in 1971. In 2001 it was designated as a Site of Specific Scientific Interest (SSSI) and Local Natural Reserve. At the same time Bill Oddie opened the newly named ‘Osprey Nature Trail’, a 4km walk around the perimeter of the reservoir. Along this trail there is a bird hide and views of the ‘Long Man of Wilmington’ figure on the South Downs.

The Photography

On arriving at the lay-by outside the reservoir site I setup the 20D and attached the Sigma 100-300mm F/4 lens with 1.4x teleconverter. Knowing that most of the birds and wildlife would be quite far away I decided that it would best to have as much length as possible. Shooting with the teleconverter attached I would have a maximum focal length of 420mm (equivalent to 672mm on the 20D after taking into account the 1.6x crop factor).

As a result I would loose one stop of maximum aperture giving me a widest of F/5.6. This is on the limit of the 20D auto focus ability. I also expected to loose a little quality and sharpness due to the addition of the teleconverter. It was all worth it in this case to give me the extra reach.

I also took my monopod along with me to help steady the lens. I figured this would be more manoeuvrable than the tripod. Hand holding a lens at 420mm without a fast shutter speed was destined to lead to blurred shots, which I obviously wanted to avoid.

My first destination upon entry to the reservoir was to the nearest bank of reeds where a few ducks were swimming about. My duck identification skills are none too hot but I know enough to identify the first pair as mallards. Two other breeds were at the bank, which I’ve since identified as some coots and a great crested grebe.

The coots had three babies with them and were quite cautious of my presence. Fortunately at 420mm I was able to get fairly close to them and managed a few shots. At this point the light and my shutter speeds were a bit low. Looking back I should have bumped up the ISO a step or two. The babies had some interesting orange and red plumage and looked very unlike their parents. Until the mother coot fed her baby with some reeds I didn’t even guess that they were related.

The crested grebe was less flattered by my attempts to photograph it and only stayed around long enough for a single shot. It’s a fairly unusual looking bird and I hope to get some better shots of it on a return visit to the reservoir.

There was also a pair of mallards hanging around on the bank. These seemed less bothered by my presence but also offered very boring poses. I’m guessing they haven’t been to modelling school yet! I shot a couple of photographs of each mallard before leaving them in peace.

Having spent enough time photographing the wildfowl I started on an anti-clockwise walk around the reservoir. A saw a couple of swans out on the water but they were too far away for a decent photograph and I moved on. The next part of the walk takes you around the perimeter of a small farm past a couple of fields.

In the first field were perhaps 5 female Shetland ponies each with a young fowl. Also in the field was a single male pony that I assume had fathered the fowls. The females were a little wary but the male came up to the fence and posed for a portrait. I photographed the mothers and fowls using the full magnification offered by the lens trying to avoid too much back lighting from the lowering sun.

In the next field were some sheep and their lambs. Most of these seemed to be enjoying the chance to sleep in the warmth of the evening so I didn’t bother with too many photographs. Sheep on their own don’t usually make for the most interesting photographs. I was however pleased with one shot of a lamb sleeping against the boulder like body of it’s mother.

Continuing around the reservoir I spotted a magpie high up on a telephone cable. Hand holding the lens at this point, I aligned my shot and just as I had it composed the bird flew off. Had I been set to AI Servo mode I might have tried to catch it in flight.

Looking away from the reservoir I had a nice view of the Long Man of Wilmington slightly dulled by the haze. Still handholding the camera I tried for a couple of quick shots. Without changing lenses I was unable to get a particularly exciting landscape. While facing in this direction I noticed a swallow fly past. Up for a challenge I bumped the ISO up to 400 in order to increase my shutter speed and set the focus to AI Servo. I stood as silently as possible and on each pass of the swallow I tried to get focus and track it in flight. After 5 minutes and perhaps 6 to 8 failed attempts I accepted that I wasn’t going to succeed. It’s now a personal objective of mine to get a sharp shot of a swallow in flight. I’m a glutton for punishment like that!

I was able to get a couple of shots of some smaller less energetic birds as they rested on a nearby fence. A young wagtail seemed most happy with my presence and I was able to quietly stalk closer to get pretty close shot.

I continued at a quickened pace around the reservoir as the light was starting to drop. After a quick stop to take a portrait of a curious lamb I came upon the bird hide. Well placed at the edge of the reservoir and concealed by trees the bird hide is a peaceful spot to sit while doing some photography.

Out of one window I could see a heron sitting on a nearby jetty. Unfortunately it was pretty much silhouetted from my angle in the bird hide due to the low sun behind it. I shot a few shots as it patiently watched the water around it.

Just as I was closing up to leave the hide a rabbit moved in the grass. I opened the appropriate window and took a couple of photographs before it bound off into the trees.

On the final part of the walk back towards the reservoir entrance I encountered tens upon tens of rabbits. Most of them scattered before I was even close but some including a couple of younger ones were a bit calmer. The sun was very low by this point and I had to shoot at ISO 400 to get a reasonable shutter speed. The golden glow from the sun is visible in some of the shots.

All in all it was a pleasant outing that gave me a chance to try out some new skills. Wildlife certainly makes for a challenging but rewarding subject to photograph and I think I will be returning to try to get some shots of the other birds that frequent the area (and perhaps those speedy little swallows!).

Sports of All Sorts!

Steve Gordon — Sun, 11 Jun 2006 15:31:00 GMT

With the summer weather finally making an appearance here in Eastbourne it’s got me thinking about new areas of photography that I can try. While landscapes, architecture and motorsports are my main interests at the moment I’d like to venture out and try some new things while we have the longer evenings and bright weekends.

One idea that did spring to mind was trying my hand at some action photography in the form of sports. It’s the time of year when tennis and other outdoor sports become popular and I’d like to have a go at taking some photographs of these.

I didn’t want to just turn up at an event and force myself upon people, especially during a tournament where they should be concentrating and not me as an unexpected interruption. With that I mind I have sent out a few emails to local tennis clubs to see if any would be willing to have me attend their matches or tournaments for some photography. Tennis was the first sport that came to mind as I enjoy watching it and it can make for some great action shots.

I’m still looking for other sports I can try, so if you’re a member of a local (by which I mean immediate Eastbourne area) sports team that takes part in outdoor matches and you’d like some photographs taken please contact me. My intention would be to attend the event on a relaxed basis, take some shots and display them for the team members, their family and their friends to view.

Do Your Bit for a Charity – Help AYME

Steve Gordon — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 20:09:00 GMT

My sister has suffered with M.E. for a number of years now. It’s thanks to the support of the Association of Young People with M.E (AYME) and the great people who work there that she, my parents and myself have been helped in coping with the condition.

What is M.E.

M.E. is a painful, debilitating and isolating illness, affecting 25,000 children and young people and over 200,000 adults. The illness affects many body systems and their functions, particularly the nervous and immune systems. In 2002, the British Government gave formal recognition to the illness. It is also recognised by the World Health Organisation as a neurological condition.

M.E. (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Encephalopathy) is also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and sometimes diagnosed as Post Viral Fatigue Syndrome (PVFS).

Who are AYME

The Association of Young People with ME, AYME is a national registered charity providing information, advice and support to children and young people with ME/CFS and their families/carers. It receives no government funding and relies entirely on donations and fundraising to run its services.

If you’d like to read further into M.E and AYME and perhaps make a contribution towards their efforts you can visit their website at http://www.ayme.org.uk.

Click here to make a direct donation to AYME

Online Shoppers - It Doesn’t Cost You To Help!

If you do some of your shopping online you can help AYME further without any extra cost to yourself. If you shop from any of the online shops listed below you can use the links provided on this page. to ensure that a percentage of your payment goes to AYME. An extra reason to feel good every time you buy a new DVD or CD!

Amazon.co.uk
Play.com
CD-Wow.com
WHSmith.co.uk
Game.co.uk
101 CD.com

HSCC Summer Festival at Brands Hatch Photos

Steve Gordon — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 17:37:00 GMT

On Sunday I made my way over to Brands Hatch in Kent for the HSCC Summer Festival event. This was going to be a chance to test out my replacement lens under motorsport conditions.

The weather was very good and even at 8:30am it was starting to warm up. By the time I arrived at the circuit a little before 10am it was getting pretty hot and I applied my first layer of factor 30 to protect my skin.

The event was running on the full GP circuit which is considerably better for photography that the Indy circuit. As you head out into the wooded areas of the longer circuit the fences are far less intrusive and you can get some more interesting angles.

We started the day at Druids for a few a few shots before disappearing into the woods for some shots from the GP section. Already I was happier with the lens as on the review screen things seemed sharp. I was getting my fair share of poor shots but it was down to my technique and not the equipment.

We spent the whole day on the GP circuit as the angles and lack of fences made it a much more pleasant experience. I made a couple of trips back to the car for a top up of the sun protection and to get some water which I hadn’t wanted to drag around with me all day.

I’ve since reviewed the photographs from the event and they seem much better than before. I did however notice some ‘ghosting’ on some of the shots. It may be down to technique but I’m not sure just yet. I’m going to have to do some more camera and lens tests soon to rule out further equipment problems.

I’ve posted the first 35 processed shots from the event in my motorsports gallery. I hope to get some more up before the weekend if I can get a few spare moments.

Brands Hatch HSCC Summer Festival

Steve Gordon — Wed, 31 May 2006 20:35:00 GMT

This Sunday I will hopefully be getting back to motorsports photography with the HSCC Summer Festival at Brands Hatch. I missed the previous HSCC Superprix event in May due to lack of equipment and other commitments so I'm looking forward to this meeting. It will be run on the Grand Prix circuit which I much prefer for photography as the range of angles and lack of fencing make it a much more pleasant experience.

Event Lineup
Group C
Pre-1966 GT
Sports Racing Masters
Pre-1966 Sports Racers
Orwell Supersports cup
European F2
XK Jaguars
Historic Saloons
BRDC 50s Sports Cars
Historic Sports 2000

Look out for photographs from the event early next week.

My Sigma Has Returned

Steve Gordon — Wed, 24 May 2006 20:26:00 GMT

Please note that the test shots in this blog entry have lost some sharpness when being compressed for the web. The uncompressed images look a lot better

Last week I received news from Warehouse Express that my Sigma 100-300mm had been sent from Sigma’s UK repair centre to the one in Japan. Apparently one or more of the lens elements had a problem and it was too complex to be fixed in the UK. They could not provide a date for it’s return, but could confirm it was going to be a few more weeks at least.

I explained that this time of year is bad for me to be without the Sigma as there are many motorsports events taking place and it’s my only long lens in my collection. The customer services person was very understanding and agreed to send me a replacement so that I didn’t have to wait for the repair. True to their word the lens was delivered the following morning, albeit to my home address rather than my work one! Fortunately someone was home to sign for it.

Last night I finally had a chance to do some basic tests with the lens in natural light.

Me using the Sigma 100-300 at the Rally of Kent. Photograph courtesy of my partner Rhiannon.

My Testing Process

For this initial test I wanted to conduct some basic checks to ensure that I’m been sent a decent copy of the lens. My first test was to ensure the auto focus was working properly. On my very first Sigma it had been very noisy when focusing and had had to be exchanged a week after getting it. I pointed the lens at various subjects at different distances and pressed the auto focus button on the 20D. The focusing was quiet and fast, as it should be with this lens.

A full frame shot of the wall I used to test for image sharpness at 100mm

To further ensure it was functioning properly I switched to AI Servo mode on the 20D and focused on a nearby house. Still holding the focus button I moved the view to different subjects to see if it would focus on them. Again the focusing seemed up to spec, focusing fast and accurately on the subjects. It doesn’t really compare to focusing on a racing car travelling at up to 180mph but was good enough to see that the focusing was working. I will be watching this lenses performance carefully at the next event I take it to.

A full frame shot of the wall I used to test for image sharpness at 300mm

My final test was to see if the lens was sharp across the whole frame. To do this I aligned myself parallel to a wall and shot a few test shots at varying focal lengths. I was handholding the lens so made sure to keep my shutter speed high to avoid motion blur affecting my tests. After a few wall shots I took a few static car shots. Seeing as these are the main subjects this lens is used for I wanted a few images to ensure they were sharp. After this I shot a couple more test shots of some roof tiles, another wall in less direct sunlight and a plant growing in someone’s garden.

A full frame shot of the neighbours flowers. Another willing test subject!

All in all I was only outside for perhaps 10 minutes. I wanted to review these shots first before setting up any more complex tests.

Analysing the Results

Returning inside I copied the 30 or 40 test images to my PC and opened them up in Photoshop. Since I wasn’t using these shots for anything special I had shot in JPEG mode to avoid converting them from RAW. The walls shots were the most important for me as these where the same views that I’d used to diagnose the problem with the previous lens. I was pleased to see that the centre area was particularly sharp and that even in the corners there was very little drop off in quality. Certainly not the noticeable blurring that I’d been seeing before.

A 100% crop of the wall test shot - No editting applied

I skimmed through the other images of the cars and plants and all of them looked very sharp, much more like I’d been used to with the other lens before it’s failure. I’m very pleased that it all checked out okay as it means I can attend my next motorsports events with familiar photography.

A 100% crop of our neighbours Land Rover - No editting applied

Oilseed Rape

Steve Gordon — Tue, 16 May 2006 21:54:00 GMT

The fields of Sussex are brimming with colour at the moment as the oilseed rape crops reach full bloom. I’ve wanted to capture the magnificence of these yellow fields since last year and at the weekend I was able to get out for my first short attempt.

The first view I had in mind can be along the A27 heading towards Lewes and leads up onto the South Downs. I rose early on Saturday morning so that I would have time to travel to my location before the sun moved around and ruined the shot.

The weather was not at its best unfortunately and although the sun was shining and there were some nice wispy clouds, there was a lot of haze around. As we drove to the location I was disappointed to see the clouds gathering on the horizon. I hoped that the Downs might mask the worse of the clouds and decided to continue with the shoot.

As the fields came into view I was awed as always by the sight. There’s something special about the combination of the bright yellow flowers, the deep green hills and dazzling blue skies all in one scene. My next challenge was to find the nearest parking to the field. It turned out to be about ¾ of a mile to the nearest pull-in.

I had in mind the shot I wanted to capture and I had also planned to do a panorama. On reaching the field I noticed that the low clouds were almost rolling across the Downs. Although it was somewhat obscuring the view I did hope that it might make for an unusual photograph.

One problem I hadn’t considered was the height of the crops. They were growing as high as five and half feet in places and with the limited space I had between them and the hedge it meant the shot I’d envisaged was not going to be possible. Instead I was going to have to compromise with a lower angle looking over the tops of the plants.

I scoped out the best available space to setup, levelled the tripod and attached my Canon 17-85 lens. I planned to begin with some wide angle shots utilising the polarizer, with a lot of bracketed shots to allow me to create a HDR (High Dynamic Range) image. I turned on the camera and chose my settings for the shot. I was shooting in manual mode to give me full control over the photograph. I went for a small aperture of F/20 to try and get as much depth of field as possible. Since I was using a tripod it did not matter how long the exposure took. On metering the scene I found a speed of 1/15 to 1/20 was about right for the shot. I was working at 17mm to capture as much of the view as possible.

I also decided to enable mirror lockup and set the timer to try to minimise the camera shake during the exposure and therefore get the shot as sharp as possible. I levelled the horizon in the view finder and triggered the first shot. In order to bracket the scene for the planned HDR image I adjusted the shutter speed by one stop and fired off another shot. I continued this, reviewing each shot and it’s histogram until I had a range of 10 stops covering the whole dynamic range.

I reframed the shot in a portrait format and repeated the process to capture another 10 shots. Finally I wanted to shoot a panorama using the Canon 50mm lens to try and capture the range of the scene in a bit more detail. I removed the camera from the tripod and started the process of changing lenses. This is the moment when I was attacked! I suddenly felt what I thought must be a sudden rain shower but looking at my arm revelled that this shower was courtesy of a passing bird. I was shocked to notice that the camera had also been caught but thankfully I’d got the lens caps on just before the bombing run. If the internals of the lens had been sprayed I would have been far more annoyed. I wiped off what I could with some handy tissues and finished changing the lenses.

Ever the professional I continued with my plan, attaching the camera to the tripod and focusing the shot. When shooting a panorama I focus the main point of interest and then leave that focus set for all of the shots. This makes sure they stitch together naturally when I process them. I took 13 photographs in all which covered the entire scene with a reasonable amount of overlap for the post processing.

Post Processing

On returning home I wanted to see how the shots had turned out. As expected the haze hadn’t helped the shots and a lot of the South Downs were lost. Another problem I hadn’t considered on location was the wind. The movement in the oilseed rape was more than I’d realised and my HDR plan was out of the question. To merge the shots they need to match up perfectly or ghosting would appear. This was the same problem with my panorama plan. Again stitching the shots would not really be possible due to the movement between each shot. I instead concentrate on the best exposure from the wide angle shots.

Stage 1 was to process the RAW file for which I use Adobe Camera Raw. I adjusted the exposure settings to get as much detail out of the haze and fields. I don’t do much sharpening at this stage so there was not too much to do.

In Photoshop I converted the shot to LAB mode and ran a shadows / highlight filter to try to rescue some detail from the haze. This did a fairly pleasing job and I moved onto a curves adjustment to colour correct the scene. With this complete I sharpened the lightness channel using a simple USM sharpen of about 80%. Zooming into the photograph I started to clear some minor dust spots that showed up due to the small aperture I was using. I also cloned out some power cables that ran across the scene. I then selected the hill area and applied a levels adjustment layer to bring out some more detail from the haze. I used a mask to apply this to just the hillside and then made some a minor adjustment to the saturation of the blue in the sky.

Adobe Camera Raw 3.4

Steve Gordon — Thu, 11 May 2006 21:10:00 GMT

Adobe have released version 3.4 of the popular Adobe Camera Raw software for digital RAW file processing this week. The new release features support for 8 additional cameras including the recently released Canon 30D.

Newly Supported Cameras

- Canon EOS 30D
- Leaf Aptus 65
- Leaf Aptus 75
- Olympus EVOLT 330
- Olympus SP-320
- Pentax *ist DL2
- Samsung GX-1S

Visit the Adobe Website to download version 3.4 of Camera Raw

Magnificent Motors 2006 Photographs

Steve Gordon — Mon, 01 May 2006 10:49:00 GMT

Yesterday was the 3rd annual Magnificent Motors show held on Eastbourne's seafront. I attended along with my 20D to capture some shots. The weather was not at it's best with some very changeable light, short periods of drizzle and some plain grey skies but I was able to shoot some satisfying photographs of some well kept old tin.

I got to the event at 11:30 shortly after the showground opened. The light was poor so I took a look around without getting out the camera, just to get a feel for the vehicles on show. After a break for a bad coffee and a stale cream cake at the Wishtower Restaurant (where I won't be eating again!), I got out the camera, put on the 17-85mm lens with polarizer and photographed some cars. The close packed nature of the displays meant that the 50mm was not really suitable. Also I do not own a polarizer for it yet which would limit what I could do with the reflections.

I stayed at the event until about 4:30pm when things were starting to close down. I managed to photograph most things that interested me but the crowds did block some shots which was a shame. I was hoping to head back today to cover the other shots but the weather is far too horrible to contemplate that!

I've finished the processing of the shots from the event and included them in my Magnificent Motors 2006 Gallery.

Gurston Down Processing Complete

Steve Gordon — Fri, 28 Apr 2006 21:35:00 GMT

I have now finished the processing for the Gurston Down Speed Hill Climb Gallery. It contains 124 photographs from the event.

Also I will take this chance to update you on my plans for the weekend. A slight change now means that I will be attending the Dunlop Great and British Motorsport Festival at Brands Hatch tomorrow. I will once again be using a borrowed Canon 100-400mm L lens since my Sigma has not made it back to me yet.

Magnificent Motors

Steve Gordon — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 19:10:00 GMT

This bank holiday weekend looks set to keep me busy with my photography if the weather stays nice. On Saturday afternoon I hope to get out for the first time in a while for some local landscapes. I've started noting locations as I come across them but unfortunately most of them are not to easy to get to. The distances really require me to drive but often there is nowhere suitable to park to take the shot. Driving back from Wilshire and the Gurston Down Hill Climb last Saturday I saw some great points along the A27 that I need to get back to in the right light. This weekend I hope to get to a few spots suitable for me to do some panoramic shots.

I've decided that I may have to take up cycling again. It would be a good way to get to the harder to reach unique locations and take some more original photographs. My fitness is not what it used to be though so I can't bank on riding to far!

Anyway, back to the original point of this post... On Sunday and perhaps also the Monday I would like to get to Magnificent Motors which is held on Eastbourne's seafront. This is an annual display of over 400 classic vehicles from Austin 7's and London buses to army vehicles and motorbikes.

It'll be the first time I make it to this popular event and I intend to make the most of it if the weather plays fair. I will be concentrating on static car shots, including some detail work but I'd also like to do some more general shots to capture the feel of the event. Last year it pulled crowds of 25,000 so I may have to fight my way through them to get the shots!

More Gurston Down Photographs

Steve Gordon — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 08:15:00 GMT

There are now 106 photographs in my Gurston Down Speed Hill Climb Gallery.

More to come later today.

Gurston Down Speed Hill Climb 2006

Steve Gordon — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 20:56:00 GMT

I finally got some motorsports photography in today at Gurston Down in Wiltshire. This was the first hill cimb I'd visited and I had a pretty good day.

I was quite an early start at 6:30am to start the 115 mile drive through four counties. The roads were pretty quiet and I made good time, arriving at Gurston Down just before 9am. My AA directions serving me well to find the farm on which the hill cimb is located.

I met up with two other motorsport photographers, one of which was kindly loaning me his Canon 100-400mm L lens for the day since my Sigma is still off being repaired. We started the day with a wander around the paddock viewing the extensive array of cars on show. The entrants ranged from Austin 7's to Lotus Elan's and a whole heap of things in between.

Following the paddock tour we started the trek up the hill to catch some of the practice session at Ashes Bend. It was a good chance for me to get used to using the 100-400 before the main runs later in the day.

After lunch the competitors had two runs each to set their times. I stayed in the general area of Ashes Bend but varied my location to try to find some different angles. There's not a great lot of choice but I manged to find some that I liked.

I had a worying issue with the 20D at a few points where my shutter wouldn't release. I'm going to keep a good eye on that when I get my Sigma 100-300 back. Hopefully it won't be another piece of kit that needs to be sent for repair!

Because the event finished quite early I've had a chance to do a rough process on some of the shots from the event already. This doesn't include all of my usual corrections but should give you a feel for the event. I've managed to get the first 51 online here

Lost My Lens

Steve Gordon — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 12:37:00 GMT

Last week I waved goodbye to my Sigma 100-300mm as it went off for repair. The previous weekend I made a trip to Brands Hatch for the British Superbike qualifying. During the day I shot in excess of 300 shots with the lens and thought I noticed problems with the focusing.

On return I copied the shots over to the PC and reviewed them at full size. Each and every one was soft. Now, while I am not yet an expert with motorsports photography I do expect a better success rate from that many shots. While an 'off day' was still possible I decided to shoot some controlled test shots to check the quality of the lens.

The first set also showed signs of softness even when used on a tripod in bright sunlight. Needing better confirmation of the problem I carried out another test where I shot some printed text attached to the wall from various focal lengths. I used mirror-lockup and timed release to ensure that camera shake wasn't the issue and checked the results.

I was still noticing definate blurring to the left edge at 100mm and at 200mm+ the right edge was showing similar issues.

Not happy, I rang up Warehouse Express who supplied the equipment and they happily agreed to accept a return under warranty. Last week a courier arrived to collect the lens and today I had confirmation that it was being sent to Sigma for repair.

I've yet to get an expected return date but hopefully it will be before the end of the month.

New Digital Darkroom

Steve Gordon — Thu, 30 Mar 2006 17:26:00 GMT

Firstly, I’d like to offer my apologies for the lack of proper updates recently. Things seem to have been keeping me a bit busy and I really haven’t had a great deal of time to process photographs and to make updates here. Hopefully I can start to get this back on track over the next few weeks with some newly processed shots.

Anyway, today’s announcement is about my new digital darkroom, which should be delivered tomorrow. Having struggled with a slowly deteriating PC for months now, I decided it was time to upgrade the weak link in my photography workflow. I was after something affordable but with enough power to improve the batch processing and image workflow for my photography.

So after many hours of thought I chose the components for the new system…

AMD Athlon 64 (Venice) 3200+ Processor
Asus A8N-E Socket 939 Motherboard
2GB Kingston PC3200 DDR Memory
256MB Sapphire X800 GTO2 PCI-E Graphics Card
Maxtor 300GB SATA Hard Disk with 16MB Cache
DVD Burner (For Backups)
New Case and Upgraded 500w Silent PSU

I’ll also be installing my current 100GB, 40GB and 15GB IDE Drives for additional storage. The 15GB Drive will act as a dedicated Adobe Photoshop scratch disk, while the 40GB drive will be the OS and programs drive.

While these are not top of the range components when compared to my current system they are considerably more powerful and as a whole should make for a pretty speedy system.

This will all be arriving at some point tomorrow, so hopefully by the end of the weekend I will have it all up and running. As part of the upgrade I will also be modifying my workflow system to improve efficiency and traceability. This will then help me to publish my motorsports images more quickly.

14 More Rally of Kent Shots

Steve Gordon — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 18:35:00 GMT

I've added 14 more shots to the Stage 1 Gallery from the Rally of Kent. Sorry it's taking so long but I am getting there!

Busy Times - Rally of Kent Update

Steve Gordon — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 13:30:00 GMT

I'm a little behind with my processing for the Rally of Kent images. I'm slowly working through them but other commitments have slowed my progress. I also haven't added much other content recently for much the same reason. If you are after specific shots then please do contact me.

Next week I have a break from work where among other things I hope to get a bit caught up with my backlog. Should the weather be nice I also hope to get out and start getting my first proper landscape shots for this year.

Rally of Kent 2006

Steve Gordon — Mon, 13 Mar 2006 13:09:00 GMT

It was a long and tiring day yesterday spent in the forests of Kent. After a 5:30am wakeup call we spent 30 minutes getting ready and were on the road by 6am. I’d plotted my own route that was expected to take us about 1h 30 minutes to reach Challock for the first two stages. The journey time turned out to be pretty accurate. By 7:45am we were parked and preparing the equipment and ourselves for the day ahead.

Our first target was a spot on the map where a section of Stage 1 and Stage 2 came very close, both with tight corners. As they were running two stages together this seemed like a good place to be to be able to get some shots from both of the stages. Unfortunately after unpacking the camera and finding a safe spot on the outside of the corner the marshals asked the crowd all to move. It seemed a little overcautious as we were all well away from the corner behind a line of trees with room to escape to is required but we moved. There were no other decent angles on that corner so we hiked further up the road looking for a better spot. The next corner was also being a bit too safety conscious with the crowd and offered not angle onto the outside of the corner so I picked a spot on a slight curve between two of the main corners. Although it didn’t have the action element of a tight turn I was able to get low shots as the cars flew by.

After the stage was over it was a fairly brisk walk back to the carpark as I wanted to get to Bedgebury forest for stages 5 & 6. There was an hour and 20 minutes between the stages and I had an estimated journey of 1 hour. We made good time and followed what we thought was the sign for the carpark at Bedgebury. It turned out to be the service road for the emergency vehicles and rally cars. After getting stuck in the mud and having to push the car out of it with the help of three kind guys who stopped we found a spot to park and trekked into the stage. Having lost some time I wanted to find any decent corner I could for photography as the cars had already started out on stage 5. I found a reasonable left-hander where I was at last able to stand on the outside of the corner. It wasn’t quite the action I was hoping for but it was pretty good and being near the start of the stage before the split it meant I could catch each car twice. The changing light conditions meant I was changing between ISO 100, 200 and 400 for the entire session. After each car I found myself checking the histogram and adjusting the settings for the next shot.

Between stages 5 & 6 and 11 & 12 there was a 2-hour gap, which we used to have some lunch and warm up in the car. Setting off again about 30 minutes before stage 11 was due to start we walked right along the stage looking for the best angle that was going to be hindered by marshals moving us on! I right a nice 90-degree right-hander a fair way into the stage that once again would give me two shots at each car. There was plenty of protection on the outside behind a line of trees and no yellow jackets in sight. This proved to be a nice spot, despite being showered with gravel and stones a few times! The light was pretty poor though and I had to bump the ISO up to 800 for almost all of the session.

Everything was over by 4:30 and we began the long walk back to the car. Bedgebury is closer to home but it was still 7:30pm before we were in the door. I copied over the photos but since my PC was not playing ball I decided to abandon the processing for the evening. I intend to start work on the shots tonight so there should be some online later today.

If there are any particular cars you’d like to see then contact me and I’ll try to process those first.

UPDATE - The results for the event are now available on the Rally of Kent Official Website

Photographs
Stage 1 – Challock
Stages 5 & 6 – Bedgebury – Coming Soon
Stages 11 & 12 – Bedgebury – Coming Soon

Rally of Kent 2006 Plans

Steve Gordon — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 12:36:00 GMT

I have pretty much confirmed my plans to attend the 15th running of the Rally of Kent in Bedgebury and Challock Forests this Sunday. Unless the weather goes terribly bad I will be hoping to make as many stages of this event as possible.

It should be a worthwhile event to attend and being reasonably close to home it means the journey isn't too bad. Currently there are 60 entrants confirmed to the rally so there should be a reasonably good showing. I believe at least 10 of those are Ford Escorts which I particularly enjoy photographing.

My plan at the moment is to set off early to catch stages 1 & 2 in Bedgebury forest and then depending on how good the angles are, either wait for stages 7 & 8 or head on over to Challock Forest for stages 5 & 6. Viewing either of these should allow me time to view the final stages 11 & 12 in Challock. I’ve printed off the stage maps and have been trying to plan the best points for photography. Not knowing the landscape I will most likely try to get to the stage early and give myself time to walk the route and find a decent angle or two.

If you are interested in attending this event you can find information about it here.

Look out for photographs from this event under the motorsport page after the event.

Time for a New Lens!

Steve Gordon — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 17:59:00 GMT

I've been peering through the virtual glass window for a couple of months or so now, wanting, nay craving, the Canon 50mm F1.4 prime lens. I've been thinking of it during the day, during the night and in my dreams; okay perhaps that's a bit over dramatic, but it's true that this lens has been often in my thoughts. Why? Because it's a damn nice piece of glass and it fills a gap I've got with my setup very nicely.

Anyway, yesterday I cracked; I caved like a house of cards in a gale force wind and confirmed the order. The search was a bit of a pain with all the email replies and phone calls leading to a 'sorry we're out of stock' reply. My final resort was Jessops. Hurrah, 'In Stock' but oh no '£279.99' was the price tag. Changing tack I rang their sales team and after plenty of haggling, almost begging, I got them down to a more competitive £240. I bumped that price up a little by ordering the lens hood (which I really think should be included by Canon for that price).

So on Monday I should take delivery of this shiny new lens. The final piece of kit for me for a long while (I hope!). My plans are that this lens will be my low light and portrait lens. It's the one of the areas of photography that I'd like to get into but have as yet been unable to due to lack of equipment. The large aperture on the 50mm 1.4 will allow me to get a very shallow depth of field and create some nice portraits, even indoors with only natural light to work with.

The lens is made up of 7 elements in 6 groups and features 8 diaphragm blades which produce very nice bokeh (Out of focus area). It's reputed to be very sharp and therefore should get some use as a landscape and architecture lens as well.

Previously I had a brief try with a borrowed 50mm 1.8 and that produced some nice results. The 1.4 version is meant to be much better, so I'm looking forward to seeing the difference.

Rallye Sunseeker 2006 (SS4 & SS12)

Steve Gordon — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 22:29:00 GMT

After an early wakeup at 4:30am on Saturday I headed out to my first proper rally event. Rallye Sunseeker 2006 was the 21st run of this event, held in the forests near Bournemouth. It is the South of England's largest Rally event with 110 cars registered this year.

After over 2 and a half hours of driving and one stop on the M27 to join two other photographers in a convoy to carpark D we arrived. The day was looking good, with clear skies in all directions. Having purchased some proper waterproofs and walking boots I was prepared for the cold wind and wrapped myself up in 5 layers!

Our first stage was going to be special stage 4 in Wareham forest. We trekked for what seemed like miles to find the rally track and picked out a nice spot on a sharp left hand bend. I decided to stay put while each car took it's turn on the stage. I was happy with the location and got some nice shots as the cars threw up gravel and slid around the turn. I used an off center focus point to allow myself to better compose the shots. I took about 120 photographs during this stage.

After this stage our schedule for the day was completely thrown off and we had to adjust our plans. We decided that we would head to Staplehill to wait for special stage 12. With a 4 car convoy our group set off in search of car park C. With the aid of satallite navigation in the lead car we had little trouble finding it and settled down for our few hour wait for the stage to begin.

After much food and talking we started our second trek of the day into the forest. The track was closer this time but it was a while before we found a suitable location for photography. We eventually settled on a 90 degree right hander and started hunting for good spots to shoot from. I used a couple during this stage and was pretty happy with the results. The lower angle made for some interesting photographs.

With stage 12 complete it was time to set off for the return journey. I made it home by 7:30pm, by which time I was more than ready to put my feet up and rest!

My photos from the 2006 Sunseeker Rally event can be found here...

Special Stage 4
Special Stage 12

Canon EOS 30D Announced

Steve Gordon — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 18:32:00 GMT

Yesterday Canon USA announced the much anticipated successor to the Canon 20D semi-pro dSLR. Rumours have been circulating for months as to what the 30D would bring and there have been many wish lists appearing on the Internet from photographers. The feature list for the 30D however is not quite as exciting as many had hoped and rather than a new release this camera feels more like a slightly tweaked and updated Canon 20D.

The Canon 30D uses the same 8.19 megapixel CMOS sensor from the 20D, has the same 9 point auto focus system (not the 45 point 1-series system as many had hoped) and still shoots at 5fps. The 30D will still support EF-S style lenses and with an almost identical body, will be compatible with most of the 20D's accessories, such as the BG-E2 battery grip.

Changes include a larger 2.5 inch 230,000 pixel LCD screen, ISO changes in 1/3 stop increments (like the 1 series) from ISO 100 to 1600, an improved 3.5% spot metering system and new burst amount of 11 RAW images, 30 JPEG images or 9 RAW + JPEG images. One improvement I do like the sound of is increased folder capacity from 100 to 1000 shots when images are saved on the storage media. This will make importing files a little easier when compared to the 20D.

The Canon EOS 30D is expected to be available in the UK in March and current pre-order prices are at £1099.99 for the body only. One of the kit lens options for this camera is likely to be the newly announced EF-S 17-55mm lens, which I will discuss in a later blog.

EOS 30D Feature List

8.2 Megapixel CMOS sensor
5fps 30 JPEG (11 RAW) image burst
2.5' Wide Viewing LCD screen
True 3.5% Spot Metering
High Precision 9-point AF
1/3 Stop Adjustable 100 - 1600 (H:3200) ISO Range
Picture Style Image Processing
Shutter durability of 100,000 cycles
DIGIC II Image Processor
Digital Photo Professional software
Magnesium alloy body
E-TTL II Flash system
Compatible with all EF/ES-S lenses and EX Speedlite flashes

My Thoughts
While the 30D does incorporate a few decent changes I can't really see where Canon were going with this camera. It seems to be very similar to the 20D and I can't imagine many 20D owners selling their cameras and upgrading to this, I certainly won't. It just doesn't offer anything particularly special. There are some nice tweaks and I've no doubt that this will perform very well, but it simply isn't the 'new' camera photographers were hoping for. Canon haven't pushed the boundaries with this release and I personally feel this is more of a 20D MKII than a 30D. Don't be totally put off by what I'm saying, if you don't already own a dSLR then the 30D would be a fine choice for semi-professional users. Hopefully over the next few weeks there will be more information on the 30D and perhaps some pre-release reviews. I'll post any useful links I find in this blog.

Read more about the Canon EOS 30D at Canon USA.

Adobe Lightroom Beta 2

Steve Gordon — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 20:04:00 GMT

Adobe has now released Beta 2 of their new Lightroom software. Lightroom has been designed for digital photographs, providing a single application where they can organise, tag and edit their photographs. With it's built in raw functionality based on Adobe Camera Raw and a range of commonly used photoshop features, Lightroom looks to be an imressive tool. Beta 2 now includes among other things the ability to straighten and crop images within the application.

I've yet to use the software since it currently only works on Macs but once the Windows beta is available I will certainly be interested in giving it a try. You can read more and download the Mac beta here.

Lack of Photography

Steve Gordon — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 18:29:00 GMT

Over the last couple of weeks I've been able to do a limited amount of photography. Besides the South Down's Stages Rally at Goodwood I've not been out with the camera. The main reason is that the weather has been awful for a while now. Most weekends have either been rained off or just dull and murky. Although I do intend to do some rain shoots at some point, this time of year is just too cold and wrestling with waterproof covers in the wind seems pointless.

Each weekend I hope that I'll get the chance to take a walk and shoot some new scenes, or revisit some that I want to re-shoot and improve. The weather is still poor this week but I'm keeping my fingers crossed for some better weather at the weekend.

I've added a couple of events to the events list page that I hope to attend. On the 25th I hope to get down to the Sunseeker Rally near Bournemouth to get some proper forest rally shots. (UPDATE - Rallye Sunseeker Shots) I missed the Wyedean Rally this weekend due to the distance and lack of proper clothing. I aim to go to the shops this weekend and buy some waterproofs and walking boots.

In March I also hope to get to the Rally of Kent. I found out about the event by chance but seeing as it's quite close I should be able to get to it. It's held somewhere near the Bedgebury forest area I believe, not too far from Tunbridge Wells.

South Downs Stages Rally (Update)

Steve Gordon — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 22:38:00 GMT

After many hours of work I've processed most of the shots from Saturdays trip to Goodwood for the South Downs Stages tarmac rally event. There are 157 shots in my gallery. The gallery contains at least one shot of each car taking part in the event, but I do have other shots from the day that I haven't processed for various reasons (including shots being too similar) so please contact me if there's something else you'd be interested in seeing.

South Downs Stages Rally 2006

Steve Gordon — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 17:13:00 GMT

On Saturday I got up nice and early for the 53-mile trek to the Goodwood Motor Circuit for the 2006 South Downs Stages event. This is a tarmac based rally that takes place on the full Goodwood circuit. The course was modified for each stage using cones, tyres and wooden pallets to create some rather sharp chicanes and hairpins.

It was thanks to a fellow motorsports photographer that I even heard about this event and seeing as it was free to view and I had nothing else planned I decided to give it a look.

Arriving just after 9am I assembled my gear, made sure the settings were appropriate for motorsports and set up on the start finish straight, where a nasty chicane had been assembled. The event had already started so I went straight into shooting the cars as they approached the chicane and made their way through it. I never shoot on burst mode (spray and prey as it's nicknamed), because I prefer to control when the shutter releases. Still I was able to get two or three shots of each car as it made it's way through the corners, manually triggering the shutter as each shot appeared in the view finder.

It was bitterly cold and once again my lack of winter gear took its toll with my hands being the first victims. It was once they started turning blue that I started to worry! In between cars I kept them warm by stuffing each hand up the opposite sleeve. When your fingers are practically numb it can make pressing the shutter quite tricky, but I battled through like the professional I am!

We stuck with the start / finish straight for the first two stages and then moved off in search of a catering van. By this point the much-needed relief of warm coffee and something to eat was very welcome.

After our quick break we moved around to the Paddock Chicane, which also had been modified for the event with some temporary tyres. It was a nice angle to shoot from as the cars were quite close and the tyres offered some background context. Not all the drivers pushed it through the chicane but those that did offered some nice lean on the car. A dynamic car always makes for a better-looking shot in my opinion.

During the long one and half hour lunch break we took a brief sweep through the paddock area. I switched to my 256Mb CFII card that I received free with the 20D (An almost pointless size, offering only 26 shots in RAW at ISO 200). This was to save room on my 2Gb card for the racing, hopefully avoiding the need to charge cards during a stage.

After lunch the start finish straight was our location for the next stage. The track had been reversed so we shot from the disabled viewing area. The sun came out for a short period, which meant I could finally drop below ISO 400, but due to angle of the sun there was quite a bit of glare on the lighter coloured cars and glass. The sun soon hid away again and it was back to ISO 400 for the rest of the day.

For the end of the day we moved along to the Paddock Chicane area where the tyres were being moved to create the final stages. After watching the marshals haul the tyres around for a while we realised that we were going to be in the wrong place to get the cars going head on around the hairpin they had created. I decided to scurry over to the over side of the corner which meant a short hike along, then under and then around the circuit to the other side of the chicane.

The angle was not the best and focusing was tricky because I only had a short time to pick a spot to focus on and track each car. Each one seemed to take a different line around the corner making predicating their paths quite difficult. Throughout the session I changed my angle and tried some low down shots as well.

For the final stage (a repeat of the last) I headed back the other side of the track to capture the cars as they came out of the hairpin into the chicane. This was a nicer angle. I ran out of space on the 2Gb card so had to switch to the slower 1Gb Micro drive on loan to me at the moment. It's noticeably slower when saving a sequence of shots that the Sandisk CFII media.

All in all it was a good day. An unusual event but good practice ready for the proper track events later in the year. I hit a pretty good success rate with the shots. I shot around 330 and have only scrapped about 50 so far. Due to a hiccup during processing I lost the work I'd done on 20 shots so I'm going to work on those now. I have 75 complete so far and they can be found in my motorsports gallery.

OpenRAW Survey 2006

Steve Gordon — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 12:57:00 GMT

I have just completed the OpenRAW Survey to share my views on the RAW format. The RAW format is used by digital camera manufacturers to produce files that are exactly as the sensor captured them, with no compression of processing applied. This provides an image that can be processed with much more control than the JPEG format and with less damage to the image. The problem as it stands is that there is no standard for this format; with each camera manufacturer using their own proprietary formats. This raises some concerns over the longevity of the images produced in RAW. You can read more on the OpenRAW Web Site.

OpenRAW Press Release

On January 31, 2006, the OpenRAW initiative launched an international survey on its Web site to collect information about the experiences, requirements, preferences, and concerns of digital photographers and other interested parties regarding RAW imaging technology — a concept that many writers are comparing to a "digital negative".

RAW Technology Issues

As the digital properties of RAW image files have become better understood, many digital photographers have embraced RAW technology as the best means to obtain maximum image quality for themselves and their clients.

However, during the past year many photographers, photo archivists, and others involved in digital imaging have become concerned about the absence of a robust, common standard for RAW image file formats. Faced with a proliferation of proprietary RAW format— often different for each successive camera model from each camera manufacturer— imaging professionals and devoted amateurs have experienced significant disruptions in their digital image workflow and limitations in their choice of software tools.

This expansion of the sheer number of proprietary RAW formats and the adoption by camera manufacturers of the practice of encryption to conceal information stored in RAW image files have increased fears about the viability of RAW formats for the long term archiving of photographic material. Some manufacturers whose cameras produced proprietary RAW files have already gone out of business, with unknown consequences for future access to those images. Many photographers are concerned that RAW files from current camera models may not be accessible in the future when those models are discontinued.

Why a Survey?

Although these topics are being discussed in many photography forums, we have very little systematic information about the experiences, requirements, preferences, and concerns of photographers regarding RAW imaging technology. One thing is clear— many photographers and archivists believe that camera manufacturers are making important decisions about RAW image technology with little or no input from the people who buy and use their equipment or who are involved in the preservation of photographic works. The OpenRAW survey will give photographers and other interested parties an opportunity to have a voice in the further development of RAW imaging technology.

The online survey questionnaire will be available for eight weeks beginning on January 31, 2006. The date was chosen to coincide closely with the 168th anniversary of an address by William Henry Fox Talbot to the Royal Society of London in 1839 describing a process of "photogenic drawing" (the collotype) based on a paper "negative" that would permit unlimited copies of an image to be made.

We encourage everybody with an interest in RAW image formats to visit the OpenRAW website at http://openraw.org/survey/ and to complete the survey questionnaire, which will take approximately 10-15 minutes. All responses will be kept completely anonymous and confidential. The OpenRAW organization and survey have no connection with any business or commercial interest. The purpose of the survey is to give professional and amateur photographers a means to express their requirements, preferences, and concerns which will be made available to camera manufacturers, software development firms, and other key participants in the digital imaging industry.

Results of the survey will be reported at the OpenRAW Web page. We believe good decisions by the digital photography industry should take account of the needs, requirements, and preferences of the photographers who make their living or pursue their artistic vision through this medium. We will share the survey results widely in the hope that the future of the craft will benefit.

For more information please visit the OpenRAW Web Site.

Adobe Release Camera Raw 3.3

Steve Gordon — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 12:38:00 GMT

Last month Adobe released version 3.3 of Adobe Camera Raw, a plug-in for Photoshop CS2. Adobe have added support for 17 new cameras including the Canon EOS 5D and Nikon D200. Over subtle changes have been made to the algorithms behind the software and JPEG, TIFF and PSD files will now contain IPTC data as well as just XMP.

Newly Supported Cameras

- Canon EOS 5D
- Canon EOS 1D Mark II N
- Canon EOS 20Da
- Fuji FinePix E900
- Fuji FinePix S5200 / S5600
- Fuji FinePix S9000 / S9500
- Kodak EasyShare P850
- Kodak EasyShare P880
- Mamiya ZD
- Nikon D200
- Olympus E-500
- Olympus SP-310
- Olympus SP-350
- Olympus SP-500UZ
- Pentax *ist DL
- Pentax *ist DS2
- Sony DSC-R1

Other Updates

- Improved redraw speed at some zoom levels.
- Added warning dialogs when attempting to cancel or reset the dialog when there are changes to non-selected images.
- Tuned Bayer demosaic algorithms.
- Fixed DNG decoding for some camera models.
- Write "legacy" IPTC data block (in addition to the existing XMP data block) to TIFF, JPEG, and PSD files saved directly.

The update can be downloaded from Adobe.

A Look Forward into February

Steve Gordon — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 17:24:00 GMT

With January more or less past I can look forward and make plans for February. The days are starting to grow longer and it will give me more chance to get out and take photographs. My day job keeps me busy from 8:30am until 5:00pm and over the winter months that means no chance for weekday photography. In the last few months I've seen many great sunsets and evening skies from my office window that I've had to miss because I'm working, but as we head into February that should start to change.

2006 will be my first full year with the Canon EOS 20D and I intend to make the most of it. I plan to make many trips around the south to capture the great landscapes and architecture we have on show. As the evenings get longer it will give me plenty of time to head out after work and shoot the beautiful Sussex countryside. I already have a list of locations I'd like to photograph and I'm adding to it on an almost weekly basis. This should see my galleries grow at a much quicker rate than they have done over the winter.

This month will see me working on a new digital filing structure for this year so that I can organise and process my shots more quickly. As part of this I am also developing a new backup scheme for my photographs, archiving copies to DVD incase of hardware failure. Taking the leap to RAW shooting has increased my processing time and as this year marches on I will be working on my processing workflow to improve my efficiency. This is particulary important when it comes to processing the hundreds of motorsports images I intend to shoot in 2006. One of my aims for this year is to reduce the amount of time it takes for me to get the photographs of a motorsport event online. I'd like to try and get most events processed within 2-3 days at most.

A friend has pointed out that there is a stages rally event taking place at Goodwood this Saturday. I'm currently hoping to make it as it should offer some good photography. The event is free which makes it event more enticing!

Version 1.12

Steve Gordon — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 17:22:00 GMT

Yes, another update! In my continuing effort to improve the features and functionality of this site I've uploaded version 1.12 of the site. This one contains a number of small fixes and tweaks, a couple of new pages and one rather major layout change for the gallery. The gallery change was brought about by a comment I recieved regarding the previous release, so please do keep sending in your suggestions and I will try to implement them.

Version 1.12 Update Change Log

- Added an events page which will list upcoming events I will be attending
- Added a terms and conditions page detailing copyright and image usage rules
- Added a detail view with thumbnails to the gallery index page for the latest and most views image list
- Removed all rollover links from the site and reverted to static coloured thumbnails
- Images included in blog posts will now be centered
- Various fixes for code bugs and layout glitches in IE.

A Weekend of Landscapes

Steve Gordon — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 20:15:00 GMT

As I mentioned yesturday, we've had our first decent weather for January here in Eastbourne. Fortunatelly I was able to take advantage of it and spend a few hours scouting around for some landscape locations. Yesturday I concentrated myself around the Cuckmeer river areas. I found two interesting spots that offered some good views.

This was the first outing with the new tripod and I was very pleased with how it performed. I'd class the day as more of an experimental shoot and location finding excersise. I want to visit both spots again when the light is better and I have more time to set the shot up exactly how I want it.

I also experiemented with a couple of panaoramic shots. I really like a good panaorama, as it can often convey much more about the scene than a single shot. I still need to work on my technique but was pleased with the first results. Using the tripod made the job much easier than the handheld ones I've done in the past, although I will eventually need to purchase a new tripod head for the job, as a ball head is not really suited to the task.

Today I took a couple of hours to look around for other future locations and to spend a bit of time practicing with techniques and filter combinations. I headed to the Seven Sisters and set up the tripod close to the cliff edge facing the mouth of the Cuckmeer River. Again the light was not even close to perfect but it gave me the chance to try out the mirror lock-up function on my camera. The purpose of this is to reduce the vibration furing the shot as much as possible in order to achieve a sharper image.

I intend to write up some more detail on the techniques I've tried so far and also to present some examples from the shoots as and when I get the time.

Brooklands VSCC Driving Test Day

Steve Gordon — Sat, 21 Jan 2006 18:29:00 GMT

Just a quick annoucement to say that yesturday evening I finally uploaded my 123 photographs from the Vintage Sports Car Club Driving Test Day at Brooklands. You can find the gallery here

Additionally we've had our first good weather today for the first time in weeks. I took advantage of it my heading out to some new spots around the river cuckmeer and South Downs. I got to try out the tripod and briefly my new Cokin filters. I'll do a full write up about the trip and add some photos early this week.

Version 1.11

Steve Gordon — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 17:59:00 GMT

Thanks to everyone who has given me their views and ideas for the site. I'm taking them all onboard and scheduling new versions to apply the changes. As of this evening I've updated the site to version 1.11 where I have made some small changes to the pages and laid the groundwork for future updates.

Version 1.11 Update Change Log

- Added to additional fields and tables to the database in preparation for some future updates (Db)
- Updated the homepage to include quick view lists of the latest blog entries and photographs (Home Page)
- Added a link to the Contact Form on Menu bar for all pages (All)
- Fixed a small bug with the code for retrieving the latest additions lists (Home and Gallery)

These changes should improve the site and make it easier to use. Please contact me with any other ideas for new features or with information on any bugs and problems you discover while visiting the site and I shall add them to my list for incorporation in the next versions.

Brooklands VSCC Driving Test Day

Steve Gordon — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 21:16:00 GMT

The Driving Test Day at Brooklands organised by the VSCC is a unique event in the motorsports calendar. Vintage cars from around the country gather at the Surrey circuit for a day of short tests designed to put both car and driver through their paces.

I arrived at 9:15am to light skies, a cool breeze and the rumble of elderly engines on idle. The drive to Brooklands was unexpectedly quick and easy. At a quarter to 8 in the morning there's very little traffic and I was able to do the limit all of the way.

I started the day with a look around the assembly area. A lot of cars were already in attendance. I will admit now that I'm not up of my identification of vintage cars so I was a bit lost as to what each one was. Shortly after I was joined by Glenn (a fellow motorsports photographer) and it was time for the wake up juice. Suitably caffeinated, we began our tour of Brooklands.

Our first stop was part of the remaining section of banked corner. Here they were just starting a test where the driver would drive forwards, reverse in between some cones, before racing for the finish line with a quick stop half way there, all against the clock. This was designed to test car manoeuvrability and pace. For the first time in months I attached the Sigma 100-300, turned to AI-Servo focusing mode and snapped away.

My first results weren't too good. I could see blur and bad focusing when reviewing the shots. I slowed myself down, concentrated on what I was doing and started to hit a higher success rate. We moved down to another section of the banking where a similar, but longer test was taking place. As well as the stops and starts, this one involved some turns on the bank. The light was dropping slightly at this point so I bumped the ISO up to 200 in order to maintain my shutter speed of 1/320th. By the end of our time at this test I had bumped it up even further to ISO 400.

Continuing our tour we headed past the nearly restored Concorde, over to the test hill. On this test the cars were expected to climb a long 1 in 5 hill, which steepened, to 1 in 4 by the end. I'm surprised how many of the cars made it up, as I'm sure my Fiesta would struggle on that sort of slope!

The final area we stopped at before lunch was at the start of the remaining banking. This was my personal favourite of the test areas. I climbed up quite high up onto the banking and crouched right down to get some low angles along the concrete. I think my best shots are from this location. Having no proper barriers or real limitations on where you could view from, it meant that I got to be a bit arty with some low angles.

We timed the tour pretty well and got to see each of the test areas before lunch. This signalled time for another coffee. Fighting our way through the crowds at the café we eventually found a seat outside in the cold. Lunch lasted about an hour, during which time Ag (another motorsports photographer) turned up and so did the rain clouds. The light went completely and covers were put over the cameras just in case of rain. Fortunately we got away with only a brief drizzle of rain.

During the afternoon we visited all of the test areas again. Each had been rearranged slightly to create a different route for the cars. Some drivers clearly found this confusing, opting to take their own route around the cones and except the penalties. Most of the afternoon was heavily overcast. ISO 800 was needed for a lot of shots, which unfortunately means more noise. I just managed to avoid having to go up to ISO 1600 but it pretty close even at F/4. Shooting with a long lens at F/4 means that I had a pretty short DOF. I tended to concentrate my focus on the front of most of the cars, which will mean the back end will be blurred slightly.

The day ended and there was time for one more coffee before leaving. I'm pleased I made the trip, as apart from the low light conditions it was a good day. I shall hopefully have the processed shots online later this week. Until then here is a sample of what is to come...

Off to Brooklands

Steve Gordon — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 19:52:00 GMT

The sun never did show it's head again so I've remained in doors all day. I guess I'll have to hope that next weekend is better. By then I'll have my new Cokin filters to test and play with as well.

I've made the decision to give tomorrow a try. A friend and fellow motorsports photographer has convinced my that the trip will be worthwhile to see some rare cars on the historical circuit and the weather is not looking too bad at the moment. The event starts at 10am so I'll be setting off at around 8.

Wish me luck that the weather plays fair tomorrow!

Grey Skies

Steve Gordon — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 12:35:00 GMT

Here I am, not taking photographs, but staring at the sky like some sort of UFO nut! The sky hasn't complied with my plans (how rude!) and is a rather boring solid grey at this second.

I did have a exciting moment of action when the clouds started to break earlier and the car was packed with my camera bag. A short stop off on route and when I went back outside the sun was gone, so I sulked my way home instead.

I'm keeping an eye out for a change in the skies as there are a few hours left were things could improve. We shall see.

Here's Hoping

Steve Gordon — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 21:00:00 GMT

Here's hoping for some good weather this weekend. I have two free days without specific plans which means I might get some photography in. If Saturday is bright I'm hoping to get out with the new tripod to test it in the field, probably quite literally, for some landscape shooting! I'm not sure where I want to head first but I think the Cuckmeer is beaconing me.

If Sunday stays clear and nothing else comes up I'm planning to head to Brooklands for my first racing event of the year, the VSCC Driving Tests Day. I've not yet been to Brooklands but it doesn't sound too bad of a drive. A trot along the A27, up the M23, one junction of the M25 and a chance to get lost on the final stint! I've been missing my motorsport fix so it'll be good to get up there.

That's it from me except to say that I've uploaded a couple of new (well old) shots from my backlog. These are from my Fuji S7000 days but are shots I quite like. They can be found in the black and white gallery.

Contact Me

Steve Gordon — Mon, 09 Jan 2006 09:47:00 GMT

It appears there was a small bug with the contact me code that meant none of the emails sent through the contact form were being sent. If you have sent a message from this form please resend it.

Version 1.10

Steve Gordon — Sun, 08 Jan 2006 15:07:00 GMT

Here it is! The site is all at version 1.10 now. What does this mean? Well I can now tentively say that SJG Photography should display properly, or close to properly in all major browsers. I've personally been able to test it in Mozilla, Firefox, Opera and IE. I've had to make a few comprimises with some of the features but in most case it's as I wanted it to look. If you still notice display problems in the browser you view this site with please do use the contact form to let me know and I'll look at fixing it in the next version.

Version 1.10 Update Change Log
- HTML and CSS modified to provide better cross-browser support (All Pages)
- Minor bug fixes with image detail display, i.e. original widths (Gallery Page)
- Minor bug fixes and changes to my Management pages.
- Improved data access in some areas within database (Db)

I have a lot of plans for future updates and will be adding them throughout the year. I plan to make some big changes within 6 months to the look and feel of the site and will add some much improved Management and User based functionally as time goes by.

Happy New Year!

Steve Gordon — Thu, 05 Jan 2006 19:08:00 GMT

The busy Christmas period has passed and I'm getting back on track with SJG Photography.

I've almost completed my work to make the site more browser compliant. All but the main gallery page have been updated to work more reliably on non-IE browsers. Hopefully the next few days will give me enough time to get that final page finished as well. Once complete I can start to advertise the site some more and release it officially.

I was out over the holidays on a couple of landscape shoots. One just after our recent slow flurry. I just need some spare time to process the shots! As soon as they're complete I'll upload them. Over January and February I hope to pad out this site with many more from my backlog of photographs from 2005 and of course shoot some new content as well.

I've been spending a bit of my time working on processing the huge backlog of motorsports images I collected last year. There's so many I've yet to process I can see it taking some time. I aim to finish most of them before the 2006 season gets into full swing though. Once complete they'll get added to my motorsports gallery at fotopic, until I complete my plans to build v2 of SJG Photography with a built-in motorsports gallery.

I treated myself to a late Christmas present this week with a purchase of a Manfrotto 190ProB tripod. I've been wanting to get one for some time so that I can improve my landscape work and have finally done it. Seems very robust and stable from my quick inspection so far! Hopefully the weather will brighten soon and I can get out and test it.

That's it for now. I'll be updating here as much as possible over January to get this place up to scratch. Please do keep checking back!

SJG Photography is Online!

Steve Gordon — Wed, 07 Dec 2005 09:44:00 GMT

After many hours of coding and testing over the last 4 months SJG Photography v1.00 is complete and online (and only 6 days behind my schedule)!

I set out with v1.00 to create a reasonably good looking, but mainly functional site for diaplying my photography online. I've personally designed and built the gallery and blog engines that this site uses and have many plans for future improvements. I hope to find the time to evolve this site often, with new functional elements, user interface improvements and of course more photographs.

I hope that all visitors to this site will have a good experience and enjoy my work. If any aspect of the site - layout, controls, functionality - causes a problem please use the Contact Form to let me know and I'll try to put it right.