Lecture to Heswall Photo Soc

Just had a nice meal at the Boat House pub in Parkgate on the Wirral. I'm giving a lecture to Heswall Photo Society tonight, kick off is 8 pm so a bit under 2 hours to go. Left home at 9.30 this morning, calling in at Bob Rigby in Bollington to buy a tripod for Jan. Then over to Knutsford for dentist, not my favourite event of the year.

The rest of the day was for photography but the dull light didn't help. Started with Beeston Castle, near Chester, just some distant shots before heading for Wirral. Hoylake was the first stop. Good rock formations and pools of water and miles of beach. Didn't like the thin layer of mud on top of the sand in places.

No further pics, light went fast. Had a walk at Parkgate then made a b-line for the pub. Expect to be home by 1am, may have a lie in tomorrow.

New Images of Sydney

The first set of Sydney images have been added to my web site Recent Gallery pages as well as Cities Gallery. Click the header to go to Recent Gallery and click here for the permanent link to Sydney images.

 

Pitt Street Christmas decorations and the Oz Tower

The Monorail on Pitt Street. A double exposure. I exposed the stationary train for 10 seconds and then exposed it for another 10 seconds as it left the station. Fortunately, my Mamiya 7 cameras allow for multiple exposures to be made on one frame of film.

Sydney Opera House roof tiles.

The Opera House at night.

New Marlow Image

I found one new image of Marlow that I scanned several months ago so I have edited it and added it to the site too.

Marlow suspension bridge and church at night

New images of New Zealand

These are the first images from New Zealand In November last year. They are mostly around the Mount Cook area of South Island and the odd one from Wanaka and Queenstown.
Click here for the direct link to South Island New Zealand images.

Mount Cook and Hooker Lake

Mount Sefton reflections near Mount Cook

Sealy Tarns skyscape near Mount Cook

Lake Wakatipu and Queenstown from Ben Lomond (not the Scottish one, you can't see that far!)

Glendhu Bay reflections in Lake Wanaka

Milford Sound images will appear next.

New Hong Kong Images

 I have been hard at work over a a hot computer editing the images I scanned a few days ago. The first ones are in the Recent Additions Gallery for the next few weeks then after that can be found here:
http://davebutcher.co.uk/gallery/cities?place=Hong%20Kong

I started with 15 images of Hong Kong and here are 4 of them.

Hong Kong skyline from the Peak at night

 Hong Kong from Kowloon

 Hong Kong from Kowloon

Buildings in the banking sector of Hong Kong

Image Scanning for Web Site

I have just finished scanning the last of the first batch of New Zealand pictures from the October/November trip last year. I have also completed the Hong Kong and Sydney images too. Now I just have to edit them all and send them over to be added to the site. Editing takes two ore three times as long as scanning so it will take a while to complete. I also found 14 images of Denmark (mostly Copenhagen) that were scanned but not edited and these have been added to the queue along with 9 images of the Kinderdijk windmills in Holland. I thought I had already done the Danish ones but on checking I was mistaken and they are not on the web. Looks like I will be even busier. Watch this space.

Sunny Peak District

After a rather damp weekend today has turned into a sunny, crisp winter day with blue sky and white fluffy clouds. We could have done with this Saturday afternoon when we walked in the rain over to the Goyt Valley and down into Whaley Bridge and the Shepherds Arms (just the 8 real ales on hand pump). The Jennings Snecklifter was in fine form.

Looks like today is a computer day. I have lots of scanning of my recent film negatives to do. Probably Hong Kong first.

I also updated the web site over the weekend to make the new lower priced and larger Silver Print range available and expanded the descriptions to try and make the changes obvious. Hope it worked!

Spring Fair - Home at Last!

The big trade show for the gift industry at the NEC Birmingham, Spring Fair, finished yesterday after 5 days. We made it home about 8.30 pm yesterday and celebrated our return with an Indian takeaway and a bottle of wine. We know how to live it up!

Lots of hard work still to do though, chasing up leads from the show. We spoke to so many galleries and retailers, as well as card and calendar companies.

We showed the new range of Silver Prints that are made from digital files of my negatives and printed by Ilford Lab Direct onto traditional silver gelatin paper. We had 30 x 24 cm and 70 x 70 cm prints on display. There were also examples of my Original Prints and Limited Editions. I now have to add the Silver Print range of sizes and options to my web site so that customers can buy them.

Here are some images of the stand, all taken by Jan, so that you can see them in full colour, if I had taken them they would of course have been in black and white!

People queuing up to talk to us and Jan is taking photos!

 Calm before the storm. Waiting for the show to start.

 These 2 shots show the stand.

Spring Fair Setup

Yesterday was a long day. Picked up 2nd batch of prints from Ilford Lab at Ilford factory in Mobberley. They managed to do all 10 of the images that I dropped off on Tuesday. Then over to Sheffield to pick up graphics panel for stand. This describes what we do, plus a few pictures.

The rest of the day was spent preparing the Ilford prints for display, either framed or sleeved for the browser.

Also pulled everything together for stand ready for loading in car this morning. We were away by 11.30 am and setting up by 3pm. Took a while but we were finished by 6pm and ready for the pub.

Back in Walsall (staying in hotel here) the pub was just over a mile walk away and was serving Timothy Taylors so it was a good end to the day.

All go from 9am tomorrow, the busiest day of the 5 day show. Fingers crossed it's a good one.

Spring Fair Preparation

I'm working flat out to prepare for the Spring Fair trade show. We set up our stand on Saturday and the show runs from Sunday 5th to Thursday 10th February. Jan and I will be there the whole time and we are launching a new range of prints - Silver Prints. These are printed by Ilford Photo Lab, at the site of the factory which makes the film and papers that I use. I scan my negatives, edit them with Photoshop to look much as they would if I printed them in the darkroom, that digital file is then sent to the Ilford Lab who use a 'Laserjet' laser exposing system to make prints on resin-coated silver gelatine photographic paper. No dyes or pigments, just silver!
I popped over to the factory in Mobberley yesterday, just over half an hour away from here, to pick up the first batch of prints to launch at the show. They look great. There are 3 sizes to start with and we can add more if we need them. That expands my range of print products to 3; in descending price order they are - Limited Editions (printed by me) - Original Hand Prints (printed by me) - Silver Prints (printed by Ilford).
They can also print larger than I can in my darkroom, although initially I have limited them to 70 x 70cm (28 inches) maximum image size. They can go up to 1.2m (48 inches) square.
We are in Hall 3 stand D21.
 
Tried to post this several hours ago but my broadband router is playing up, it has an intermittent fault, so it delayed me. New one arrives tomorrow. Hope it's easy to set up.