Published!

So I've been pretty rubbish with the blog recently.  Hartpury was actually the last "event" that I went to, but I have been taking plenty of other pictures in between.  More on these to come in some more posts later.

However, the more immediate and exciting news is that today I got two of my photos published in the local papers in Liverpool - one in the Daily Post...

And one in the Liverpool Echo...

The Post runs a double page centre spread of about 5 images from it's Flickr group every Tuesday, and this week mine was one!  The Echo publishes one picture from its group on its letter page every day, and today's was mine!  

Very exciting, and I think it shows me that I'm going in the right direction!

Understanding Exposure

I bought a copy of Bryan Peterson's Understanding exposure earlier this week, in an attempt to finally get my head round f-stops, ISOs and so on.

So far I have read through the general stuff at the beginning, and am about to embark on the first of the specific chapters, being Apeture.

This book is really helping me already and I have started taking some photos on manual mode; I have been using shutter priority a lot at the horse shows, but hadn't yet quite made it round to M!

Anyway, here are some of the results of my first experiment using that M setting....

 

Flickr Stats

I'll happily and readily admit that I am completely addicted to Flickr Stats.  Ever since I upgraded my account to Pro, I just can't get enough of them.  For someone like me, who always did like numbers and graphs, and is a tiny bit obsessive, they're just perfect.


Every day you get a full breakdown of how many people have looked at which of your photos, and how they got to see that photo in the first place (well, where they were referred from, on the web).  And you get a graph showing your total views by day for the last month or so.  Brilliant. 


I think the reason that I like them so much is probably about three fold:


(1) Let's face it, it's all about popularity.  And we all want to know that our photos arewell liked.
(2) It's something of a challenge, every day, to see if you can manage to beat the previous day/any other day that you choose (and you can easily compare, thank you graph).
(3) The Flickr community often throws up some surprises.  I am beginning to find that I am pretty useless at choosing which photos are going to be most viewed/popular/interesting.


Take the photo at the top of this post, for example.  This is my most viewed picture for today and yesterday (and, I only shot and posted it yesterday).  I like it, but compared to some of the other shots I managed to get from my day at Liverpool on the Waterfront yesterday (if you're really interested, see.... http://www.flickr.com/photos/ruthwareing/sets/72157624403261159/), I don't think it is altogether that good.


I'm actually beginning to think that maybe it isn't amazing, and views actually just equal curiosity.  For example, if you saw the picture above as a thumbnail, you might struggle to work out what it is.  Or, of course, it is possible that I have just tagged it so much, or put it in so many groups, that enough people have just stumbled across it, rather than actively choosing to view to view.  I think this is possibly true in the case of the shot above as nobody has left me a comment or added it as a favourite.


Whatever the answer, I'm sure there's probably only one way to work it out - more time looking at the stats!  Well that's what I'm telling myself.

Skipton (2) Horse Trials

Here's the first of my entries on the events that I've been going to in order to practice the equestrian side of my photography.

I went over the Skipton on Saturday for the horse trials there.  They were running BE100 and BE90 events on the Saturday.  It was a lovely event, with a really nice atmosphere, and well organised.  It was lovely to see a lot of spectators there, and the organisers making the weekend into a real local event.

As usual at the one day events I got a look at all three elements of the sport; dressage, show jumping and cross country.

The cross country is possibly the element that most people are familiar with, and that which is associated most with eventing.  I thought that the course at Skipton was lovely to watch (not being a good enough rider to even consider riding a cross country course, I'm not qualified to comment on that!); it made good use of the farmland that it was set into, with the competitors crossing through wooded areas, water, and through exisiting gates.  There was a big hill towards the middle of the course as well, and if you were to stand at the top of it you could see a lot of the course.

The only problem came when I was sitting on the ground at fence 13 in the afternoon - I was waitng to try and get a shot of the next competitor going over the fence, and all of a sudden they came absolutely charging through the gate at a massively high speed!  There were no strings to mark the course at this point, and as I was sitting down I was feeling particularily small and vulnerable to being trampled on!  The way of the course meant that the horse looked at me as it came through the gate, and seemed to be coming right for me, before straightening up and getting over the jump.  There was a very scary moment though where I thought the rider wasn't going to be able to turn him, and he was going to end up on top of me!  They did get over the jump, though.  Even the fence judges remarked on how fast they were going though!  I did manage to get a shot (just!), but it wasn't my favourite, so I have used it to play around with a silhouette idea...

So that was this week's event. I'm kind of planning on heading off to Hartpury next Sunday for the international eventing there, but that trip is dependent on a few factors, because it is based around 2 and a half hours drive from where I live.