The Two Truths (aka Maati)

Heyho!

Sorry; despite my best attempts I have still lost track of this place & have moved almost entirely to Facebook.

Since I last posted...

In November I had a good photography month, shooting four events all of which I pretty much enjoyed. I have a few good leads to follow up, in order to get even more business this year.

In December I had an operation in hospital, removing about 20-30cm of my small intestines and fixing the more severe damage from my Crohn's Disease (including two obstructions and one fistula).

That op meant that I had to take things easy for a while; it was mid-January before I went back to work and I was not able to do any heavy lifting etc during my first couple of weeks back... hence why there are no photos on Flickr since my op (3+ kg camera gear).

Throughout the remainder of January I have been organising the Imbolc festivities, preparing for Beltane, plus a couple of other BFS associated things.

I am now on a drugs trial to use 6MP (immunosuppressant) as a preventative medicine, in order to stop my Crohn's from coming back again. The last couple of weeks I have been a bit ill and I worried that this is reaction to the 6MP - or - it could be a continuation of my Crohn's. However it may alternatively be because I have not been very sensitive to what I have been eating.

Since my op I have been working up to a full and wide diet - however - I am now going to restrict myself partially again ... avoiding insoluble fibres (e.g. sweetcorn / peppers), yeast extract, MSG, and chilli. For the time being I will be avoiding alcohol as well.

I have my next check up at the start of March. If I keep being ill despite restricting my diet then I may well be taken off the drugs trial.

Amanda Palmer at the Cabaret Voltaire
Tuesday 30th September 2008


Please click for my photo set from Amanda Palmer's gig on Tuesday night.

(Or click here if the slide-show does not show properly on your browser.)

I started looking through the list of friends on my user info, thinking to myself "who are these people?" So; I did that thing that people do so often on LJ, I culled the list down somewhat.

My apologies if I have insulted anyone by removing them. My main reason for removing anyone was simply that I have no idea who you are!

Taken
This film is much alike to the Bourne films, including that the main character is a US secret agent who is very much alone as he takes on impossible numbers of heavily armed bad guys. I would have rated it four stars except for a few glaring faults;

( ... )

The Wave
This is a German film (subtitled) about a school project looking at autocracy (a la Nazi Germany). In order for the teacher to persuade his pupils that autocracy remains a real threat to democracy, he persuades them to take part in a class dictatorship. The key difference between this and your average school classroom is that he convinces the pupils not just to obey but also to want his every command. Of course the project turns bad and things get scary.

( ... )

I am amused by how many people have cough/cold bugs, whilst I have none! The reason for my amusement is rather twisted; I am on immunosuppressants and have to have my white blood count routinely checked to ensure that it is not dangerously low. If it were low then a mere cold or cough bug could be extremely dangerous for me.

During the last few months whilst I have been on these, my white blood count has never been low. In fact it has been consistently high, something which has always puzzled the doctors.

Strange but true!

How is everyone? It has come to my attention that I know very little about so many of you who read this.

Kate asked me to link her to the following article -> Complexity of Crohn's disease revealed

I am not an Adobe person myself, out of principle because their software is always extortionately expensive & you do not get what you pay for.

However an interesting thing is about to happen next week;

Adobe's next incarnation of their imaging softare (CS 4) will support CUDA, Nvidia's programming language that utilises the raw number-crunching power of their GPUs (8- series, 9- series, Quadros, and Teslas). This should mean ludicrous speed increases for demanding image processing tasks, such as performing 16-bit HDR from 24MP images, or even just for batch processing a large number of RAW images (with a suitably fast RAID drive set up).

The software is out on 23rd September & I am very interested to see where the photography industry goes from here. Personally I am looking out for what Bibble does more than Adobe. Unfortunately Bibble has only just caught up with Adobe by offering 64-bit and multi-core support.

Reading up on the BBC's world news this morning, I was outsanded by the amount of articles that were about governmental corruption. It seems like every government is corrupt and I have no doubt that includes ours.

I believe that we should use a National Lottery-esk system of government;

( Please read on... )

I weigh at least two kilograms more than I did at the start of this month; 75kg on my GP's weighing scales. The last weight taken on those scales had me at 72kg, whereas the one a week before that put me at 73kg. In February, the same scales had put me at 65kg.

(These were all taken whilst I was fully dressed, fed, and hydrated... which adds about two or three kilograms.)

It's all good! Firstly it shows that I am still gaining weight. Secondly it means that my rate of weight-gain is reasonably healthy and not *too* fast.

My target is 80kg.

I have just finished processing & uploading my photos from May's Balkanarma... which was somewhat of a mammoth task (there being 130 of them!)... so go look!!!


May Balkanarama

I really do not like Npower, who I have now been with for over two years. I much preferred Powergen.

What I dislike about Npower is their poor customer services; their casual "opps, oh well" attitude about every error that they have made and then failed to correct, despite all of my attempts over the past two years. I dislike the twenty minute call waiting times, and the non-existent "call back" service that puts you back in the queue every time you try to use it.

The problem is; Npower are cheap.

Even with Alex leaving the oven & boiler & half the lights in the flat on for extended periods of time, they still work out cheaper than anyone else. Their annual £80 discount is still the best offer around for us.

I would love to switch to someone else - but - I cannot find anyone to switch to!

So, yes, Beltane 2008 has been and gone.
I would describe this year as being "two-steps up, one-step down".

I made a few mistakes which I regret (most of which I made the year before too);
1. Over-recruited - twelve photographers, including six newcomers.
2. Commitment was not prioritised enough; other members didn't take on enough of the workload.
3. Underprepared for rough weather; some members suffered water damage to their equipment.

The combination of the former two factors meant that I was overburden with workload that I could not keep up with, as a result of which holes kept appearing. One of those holes was the lack of weather preparation, whilst another was a slackness about inventory, both combining to produce what could have been a financial disaster.

Whilst it was not a complete disaster, the end result was that at least three photographers underacheived compared to their potential. The simple fact was that I could not provide them with the training, support, and practise that they needed to fulfill their potentials.

Unfortunately, the photographers who did the best were mostly those who had their skills perfected already and thus could have helped those newcomers. It's a pity that there wasn't very much in the way of skill exchange between members, and that is something which I will be addressing much more in the future.

The sad thing is that because of the over-recruitment we still had about as good results overall as the previous year --- except for the bits that suffered because of the downpour --- that was not something we could really avoid.

However, what went right was thus...
1. We made big leaps forwards with several of the performer groups (particularly Nightwatch and some of the elemental groups)
2. The guidance from the Blue Men and other groups was on the most part more positive and constructive for us.
3. Our group became more like a Beltane group ---
(a) we had our first Away Weekend, camping in a private patch of woodland near to Biggar
(b) we wore full facepaint & our new cloaks were far better than the ones we made last year
(c) the membership was less technically-orientated, with a wider spread of talents and ambitions
(d) we had our first "big bash" post-processing weekend, which was a partial success
(e) we went to the party afterwards!
(Albeit only two of us made it to the after-after-party, which was mostly because the rest of us were skeptical about the weather.)
4. I didn't break any lenses!

We are still in the process of sorting out all of our photographs from the night, however, all of them are online (mostly on flickr) - and - most of them are on an external hard-drive. Right now we just need to decide which will be going onto http://gallery.beltane.org, which we would have been doing last weekend if it were not for my falling ill.

The great thing is that (unlike last year) all of the photos on that hard-drive are processed & full-size, so therefore I do not need to continuously chase people to get hold of their images for publicity or prints, etc.

Next up --- Caledonian Challenge! We will be providing a team of photographers (and ushers) to cover the event, and will be raising money for next year's Beltane!

Please let me know if you want to get involved (even if you've never used a camera before!)

This is a thankyou to everyone who commented on my last couple of posts... I truly had no idea that anyone was really watching this journal any more!

(Note that I am also on Facebook too.)

1. I just noticed that Amazon offers delivery to British Forces, wherever they happen to be. You just enter their name, company, etc and the package will go to wherever they happen to be. Apparently this is certainly not the same for US troopers.

2. My aspirations for Beltane 2008 are fluctuating between highs and lows...

Frustratingly; all of the most advanced photographers from last year may not be there next time around. Some now have families, others may be traveling, etc. Even more frustrating has been my difficulty in finding new ones. If I end up with a bunch of beginner to intermediate photographers then my life will be a tad stressful.

I am reasonably confident that we will have a better gender balance this year. I have found it much easier to recruit female photographers since after Beltane 2007 than I had before. I would not say that the split will be equal but it will certainly be more gender-balanced than is the status-quo amongst the photography crowd.

My old PC is now in place at the Beltane Office, as a training computer for post-processing (mainly RAW workflow and noise repair). Allowing me to use their office as a base was a much-needed sign of support from the committee.

Another major stumbling point for us will be "other media people" - videographers and press photographers. At last Beltane, a series of miscommunications resulted in the field largely being left up to us, as no press photographers were given special access. However; at Samhuinn there was a small army of other media people, who were all given special access. This meant that my photographers spent the night falling over the other media people, many of whom were disorganised and ill-prepared. It is my intention that their numbers should be strictly limited, same as ours are.

3. Christmas was not a disaster!!!! I decided that I would put my full effort into getting presents, and I think that paid off somewhat. Basically; I got a lot of smallish food-type presents from a wide range of places, and added to that a few key presents for different people. My old dSLR (and 17-70 lens) is now on permanent loan to my parents, so one of my presents to them was a couple of okay-ish memory cards, heh.

4. My own presents back were fine - trousers which don't have holes in them, an inflatable matress for camping, and some good olde money. However I did sneak in an ultra-fast memory card, plus a HD projector and hybrid-HD DVD player. My part-justification for the projector is that I can show my photos on it (my camera even has a HDMI socket). I also need to get a pair of semi-shoe-boots, as both my boots and work shoes are worn out.

5. I am on Facebook (here). I joined because there were a lot of Beltane people there, and they kept nabbing my photos. Now I can put my own photos up there. I have looked for everyone I know there but if I have missed you, please feel free to say hello.

Seriously;

The world has gone wrong when a man is committed of sex offences for videoing a beach with children playing on it, whilst an award-winning photographer is held without trial for 19 months by US security forces, UPDATE in England, police ban a photographer from taking photos of the Christmas lights being switched on.

Whatever your fears are, either of pediophilia and/or of terrorism, both of these types of stories (which are happening ALL THE TIME now, by the way) make it a tad scary to be a photographer.

Soon enough; photographers might refuse to take on business involving children of any kind, and there may well be created a "safe list" of public sites and/or events which are safe to shoot without imprisonment / prosecution.

The idea that photographers should required to obtain licences, and that there should be strict identification procedures, before they are permitted to shoot at public events / in public spaces means that many of the millions of cameras sold today will become obsolete. Their owners will simply not have the necessary permission to use them!

Photography may become confined to private studios, with photographs stored on encrypted hard-drives, and only shared amongst secret circles of hie-hard fans. Thus forth, the general populace will lose all connection with this craft, and will slowly creep back into the dark ages.

It has taken myself and my folks all weekend - but - we are nearly finished. I have gotten rid of a lot of clutter, and we are cleaning up in all the cracks and crannies left behind. My flat is looking a lot nicer already :o)

Just got to shampoo / steam clean the carpets now...

I fancy a re-flat-warming soonish... must ask Alex if he'd be up for doing that...

My flickr just hit sixty thousand page ("Photostream") views. It's been up for just over nineteen months, so that makes over three thousand views per month. My top two hundred images were each individually viewed an average of 250 times each, which means that means that virtually every visitor has had a look at one of those pictures.

I notice that my last photography entry was my visit to the zoo, after I got my new lens, some time ago. This lapse has not been due to any inactivity on my part, quite the opposite...

(Click on any image to see a larger version, on a black background.)

Henry's Cellar Bar
Sony Alpha 100 with 1.8/135 ZA @ 1/20sec, F2.0, ISO 1600

Memorial concert in honour of Michael Lester-Cribb
Sony Alpha 100 with 1.8/135 ZA @ 1/25sec, F3.5, ISO 800

Dusshera Fire Festival
Sony Alpha 100 with 1.8/20 @ 1sec, F8.0, ISO 200

Rhythmic World
Sony Alpha 100 with 1.4/50 @ 1/250sec, F2.0, ISO 800

And, then, I got my new camera... the Sony Alpha 700. Only tried it out once so far but I love it :o)

Zombina and the Skeletones
Sony Alpha 700 with 1.4/50 @ 1/20sec, F2.8, ISO 1600

Made a tad few mistakes that night, heh, but it was my first time so I am allowed to fud a bit.

Tomorrow night is the Samhuinn Fire Festival. With it, I welcome winter...

3:10 to Yuma Wild west heroics with an unusual twist.
Good (beginning) to okay (end).

Daywatch Sequel to the brillaint Russian good-vs-evil supernatural fantasy film, Nightwatch.
Very good!

Atonement War-time drama about a man convicted of a crime he did not do.
Okay (beginning) to poor (end).

Breach American special agent action flick about FBI double-agents.
Generally good.

The Hoax Biopic about a hoax biography of Howard Hughes.
Generally good.

The Simpsons Movie Extended episode of the Simpsons.
Okay except for the in-film ad.

Michael Clayton Detective / crime drama following a law firm "fixer" (George Clooney) who gets in the middle of some corporate nastiness.
Very good!

Shoot 'Em Up Gun action film in the style of "Sin City".
Very good!

Resident Evil III Triquel to Resident Evil. Resident Evil meets Mad Max.
Poor. This is like Chronicles of Riddick was compared to Pitch Black.

War Martial arts action flick.
Poor. The martial artists try to do "acting".

The Invasion Remake of a classic sci-fi - alien body-snatchers try to take over the world.
Very Good.

The Kingdom Gun action / current affairs drama in the style of "Traffic" except with more guns.
Okay (beginning) to Poor (end).

The Bourne Ultimatum Secret agent action flick. Triquel to Bourne Identity / Sequel to Bourne Supremacy.
Excellent! As good as the first and better than the second.

Black Sheep Zombie flick with a twist; zombie sheep.
Good. Very funny with quite a lot of gore.

I went to Edinburgh Zoo again... with Alex, Kate, and Sod... I took with me only one lens... can ya guess which one it was?

Please click for more piccies!

(... that'd be the Zeiss 135mm F1.8 ZA :op)

I would like to proudly invite you all to:

The Autumn Equinox Party
The Forest Hall (above the Forest Cafe, Bristos Place
Friday 21st September, 9pm 'til 1am

There will be an ecclectic line-up of live bands, storytelling, and djs - plus - a raffle with some pretty prizes :o)

This is a fund-raiser for the Samhuinn Fire Festival.
It is free entry - but - donations are extremely welcome.
It is also Bring-Your-Own-Booze!

Please come, and bring lots of your friends!