Glastonbury

Over the weekend I braved Glastonbury with 174,499 other wellie boot wearers. (Yep - that is 175 thousand people through the gates!). Sure it was muddy. Sure it rained. Sure getting home on the train was painful. But who cares - it was an awesome weekend. Some highlights. Seeing rufus wainwright, arcade fire and bjork back to back on Friday night - from the fifth row. Discovering my tent didnt leak. Discovering pear cider. Not falling over in the mud. Watching the sun come up with tent neighbours (who when they found out I was Australian questioned me endlessly on Neighbours !). Discovering pear cider (yes ... it is worth mentioning twice). Four brilliant days wandering around surrounded by a huge variety of sights and sounds. Biggest regret. Not taking more photos on Friday night - grrrr - oh well - too busy enjoying the music. Anyway ... it is now time for the obligatory photos.

Waiting For The Rain To Stop


Rufus Wainwright


Arcade Fire


Bjork


Chemical Brothers


Billy Bragg


English Optimism


Tent City (one camp site of many ... !)


And Of Course ... The Star Of The Show ... THE MUD !!!




Tent Fever ... Waiting For The Rain To Stop

Greenwich

Greenwich

Event Horizon

These photos are of a new "installation" on the Southbank of the Thames by Antony Gormley. Very simple concept - place 31 life size statues on various buildings - but the overall effect is very cool. He is also responsible for the statues on Lake Ballard in WA. Further info on Wikipedia for those interested ....

2 Years Ago ...

... I was in Melbourne enjoying the "wonder" that is Eurovision, with only a couple of weeks left in Australia. Where does the time go ?

Well, I'll be back around Christmas for a couple of weeks (I promise !!!) .

Anyway, I was digging through the archives the other day and found this rather scary photo of me taken in Warsaw (i.e. nearly 2 years ago) after a veeeery long bus ride, followed shortly by getting horrendously ripped off by a taxi.



I post so few photos of myself you've probably forgotten what I look like - so here is a reminder.

Quelle Horreur!

Bizarrely today I got to go to Paris for the day for work. Literally, for the day. Leaving at 7 in the morning on the Eurostar train and arriving back at half ten in the evening. The weather was gorgeuous but unfortunately I was in a meeting for most of the day. We did get a quick tour by car of the city centre before heading back to the train station. I have been to Paris before, albeit over ten years ago. I didn't remember how impressive the city centre was though - perhaps it helped that this time it was in the warm spring sunshine rather than the cold winter of Christmas '96 !!

It's Been A While ...

Over a month since the last post, but hey, I've been busy - mainly with work. A lot of late nights and deadlines. All the usual fun stuff.

Some exciting news on the gig front - I managed to snaffle tickets for one of REM's "rehearsal" shows in Dublin in early July. Should be interesting - more info here.

And, even more exciting, I got a ticket to Glastonbury. Armed with my laptop and PC side by side I managed to get a ticket after about half an hour of timeouts and busy pages. The whole festival sold out in about an hour and a half. I can't wait. It means I get to see Arcade Fire for the third time this year (Last gig at Brixton was probably the best gig I have ever been too. period.) and, at last, I get to see bjork !!

And as if that wasnt enough good news - I went to the Walthamstow dogs Saturday night and managed to make enough winnings to pay for my pints. The satisfaction !

This Life Revisited

I posted a few weeks back some photos of the building where I thought This Life was filmed. Well I finally got a copy of This Life and DVD and took a screen capture showing Egg and Millie walking up to the house. The building in the background (with the red van outside) is where I work. Cool huh ?

The City

Went for a wander in "The City" Sunday and took a few shots of the architecture.

V&A Shadows

Photo taken at the V&A on the weekend while doing the London Flickr Scavenger Hunt.

Aaaaaargh .. Windows You Suck

Aaaaargh ... there is nothing like doing a couple of hours work and then succumbing to the Windows blue screen of death ... without saving first of course. Lady, can I borrow your mac ....

And now a shot from my visit to the Natural History Museum on Sunday as part of a Flickr Scavenger Hunt. That Earth thing is seriously weird.

My London Photo Map

Just killed an hour putting all my photos from London on a Flickr map. Kind of cool - check it out here. Just a shame they dont put them all on one page ....

Battersea Park Under Snow ...

Heavy Snow Foreast For London

Starting 3am tomorrow morning through to lunch time. Up to 10cm. Considering that 2cm a couple of weeks ago caused train havoc it should be interesting. But its okay because ....

"Transport for London said it had 72 people, 34 lorries, three quad bikes and 4,000 tonnes of salt on standby to grit the 580km of main roads in the capital. The mountains of salt, located at seven depots, are enough for 15 days of bad weather. " (source)

Thank god for the quad bikes, otherwise we would be doomed !!!

You gotta love some of the headlines

UK faces chaos as snow hits
7 INCHES OF SNOW TO PARALYSE UK
Motorists urged not to travel in snow
County primed for icy blast
Snow set to cost economy £400m
Winter's heaviest snow heading in

And for a reality check, someones rather amusing view on the "chaos" caused by the 2cm we had a fortnight ago.

Anyway ... hopefully it will bring some good photo opps. The only question now is ... where !!

Arcade Fire

Went to see Arcade Fire play at the Porchester Hall last night. Awesome gig. A lot of the songs they played were off their unyet released album - Neon Bible. Fortunately I had had a chance to listen to a few of them already so it wasnt totally new. The band are brilliant both on and off stage - the final song, Wake Up, of the encore was performed acoustically right in the middle of the audience, about two metres from where I was standing. Brilliant. Cant wait to see them again in Brixton in March.

"This Life" Exterior on Southwark Bridge Road

This Life

Around Christmas time they screened a reunion special of This Life on tv. The media hype ahead of the reunion special piqued my nostlagic interest and I hired a couple of DVDs of the old series. Still very cool - Anna is by far the best ! Anyway I work in Southwark and I knew that the series was filmed in Southwark somewhere. After watching some of the old episodes I thought that the row of houses opposite my bus stop for work looked very familiar. Turns out that that was where they used to film This Life - how cool is that. Will take a photo tomorrow and post it ....

Take A Deep Breath ...

After constantly running out of hard drive space on my laptop I bit the bullet and copied all 24 GB of my photos from my laptop onto an external drive and then made another backup onto my main PCs hard drive. And then I hit delete ...

Happy Australia Day

Not quite here yet - but to those folks in Oz where the action is at - "Happy Australia Day". Enjoy the fireworks knocking back a Little Creatures or two.

More Snow Photos ...

No. No more snow this morning - a couple of photos taken out the bus window on my way to work yesterday morning. (Okay - I admit - the snow doesn't make that much difference - any excuse for a shot of Battersea Power Station ...)

Out the Bedroom Window

Snow In London

Woke up this morning to find snow on the ground outside (after doing a double check when I heard it on the radio first.) It was very cool - even after having spent a winter in Toronto I still love snow in the city - makes everything nice and clean. Sadly, it didnt last long and most of it was gone by the time I got to work.
Anyway, here are a couple of quick snaps before I headed to work.

Well its been another long wait between posts. Thought I would at least make a post to get the rather morbid cemetery photos of the top of the page !!!
Have been at home sick the last couple of days .... starting to get cabin fever. Should be fine to head back in tomorrow though - nothing too serious.
Have decided to get serious about selling some of my photos to pay off my camera gear, so started to read up on "serious" image processing. I had no idea it was so complicated. I thought I knew a fair bit about levels and histograms and white balance etc but there seems to be a helluva lot more I dont. Lashed out and bought a color profiler for my monitors - bought the Monaco OPTIX XR. Just after I placed the order I read on the 'net it was being discontinued. Oh well. Think it was delivered to work today so should get to play with it tomorrow.
One last question ... why does photoshop vary soooo much in price depending on where you live. Especially considering you can download it. Here are the different prices converted to Oz dollars. Go figure. Anyway - its too damned expensive in any currency -think I will stick with elements and some decent raw workflow software.
US : US$649 (~A$820)
UK : #569.88 (~$A1425)
OZ : A$1125