So… i built that new Apple and i mentioned i intended doing more video… well…. i have been working on some video….

orlton…. It was Feb 2008 when i first dabbled with apple macs, on a trip to NY my aging dying laptop finally packed in, anyone who has ever been to the 5th avenue apple store will know that it is pretty difficult to leave without buying something “Designed in Cupertino, Built in China” from one of the over-friendly hipster types that are there… so i bought a Mac Book Pro, and…. well  I never really became a raging Mac fanboy – there were somethings i loved… but there were also things i hated… like Aperture – i really really hate Aperture. But there was no way i was going to Vista

But over the years its just started to get clunky – i keep my 494gb of Raw photos off on a 1tb drive, but even indexing these in Lightroom takes up 11gb – and on a 120gb HD in my Mac Book Pro things were getting slow and clunky.   Recently I have started to work a little with video in Final Cut Studio and, well things were bordering on un-usable once i had a few apps open.

Unfortunately my current situation does not lend itself to
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This is something new I am working on, combining audio with my pictures to try to bring something more to them – its something that over the past year I have seen done fantastically well over at duckrabbit and other sites and i have been keen to try out – its a little rough, not least because the audio was recorded ‘on hoof’ rather than in a quiet space and added afterward. It would also probably benefit from being edited down a little… but here we are!

The subject is not one i would have chosen for my first foray into this kind of thing but I have been very concerned of late of the moves to build on a part of the Mersey Valley that means a lot to me, I’m not so much against football pitches, but the land grab has to be stopped somewhere, first football pitches then what? Anyway, for this I have identified several stakeholders i want to talk to about this particular part of the valley and ask them what makes it so special – first up – local naturalist, Dave Bishop.

Interesting commission this week, to witness and photograph the final stages of construction of a wind turbine on the site of a chemical plant in South Wales…. yes, truly this is the real glamour photography, but it is quite interesting in a nerdy way and certainly very very impressive, check the slidesshow:

What I like about this picture is that in all the time i have been in Manchester and all the times i have climbed on Snowdonia I never knew that the range could be seen from Manchester… or in this case, East Manchester / Stockport.  The power plant is Fiddlers Ferry in Widnes, and to the left in the background you can see the mountains of Snowdonia

From a recent PR shoot for a local civil engineering firm….

There is a great advantage to lugging round a fast sports camera like a D2x to family events…..

yes, this post is really an excuse to play around with yet another gallery ’solution’ on this web site – i don’t think any two are the same – i kinda like that – it keeps you, the viewer on your toes…

Helvetica is a great font – one of the best, it does exactly what is asked of it, and it does it damn well…. but… well it is everywhere, its default, it inspires rage in people who have too many things to worry about… only comic sans should inspire rage – anyway no matter how much you hate Helvetica, it’ll always be trumped by Arial… anyway – - business cards and site design – to use Helvetica or not?

but there are better fonts out there

For more on Helvetica, this is the best film about a font you will see:

I know George from the allotment, known him for a while now. George is originally from Limerick but lived here in Manchester since he was 18. For the past 39 years George has had a smallholding somewhere between the river Mersey and the M60 motorway, on wednesday I went down to see him….

i’m not sure George ever really did leave Limerick, or whether he brought Limerick over with him but its a great site, in the middle of this industrial city as the electrical substation pulses on one side and the roar of the motorway is on the other there is a man pottering about his business, lost in a world of pigs, goats, cattle, chickens and a polecat… its great.

Thank you very much to George and his wife Kay for allowing me to sit and talk rubbish and take photos with them

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