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chrisleighphotography.com

Jan 29, 2009
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I have recently launched a new photoblog at chrisleighphotography.com partly as a way to stimulate me to start posting again and also to allow a shift in emphasis in my posts. I hope that putting more accent on the photo will allow me to write less but with more focus and that should help me to blog more frequently. Anyway, why not make the jump and see if you like what I've done so far.

Animoto.com

May 8, 2008
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Here's a quick practice video using animoto.

Self portrait

Apr 29, 2008
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Self-portrait

The other weekend I went to a big spring fair at Highnam House just west of Gloucester in aid of Gloucester Cathedral and a charity called Pied Piper. Pied Piper support all sorts of projects but have just visited my wife's special school and presented them with two minibuses. There were lots of things going on - morris dancing, brass bands, flower stalls, facer painting - all sorts. And of course you could go round the extensive grounds which have lots of flowers, lakes and especially lots of wooden sculpture. I really liked a group of yew trees which had died but instead of chopping them down they had been carved into beautiful sculptures where all the variegation of the wood comes out. There was also an exhibition of vintage cars along with a few cars like the DeLorean from "Back to the Future". I took a few photos of the cars, trying to get something slightly more interesting than the usual shot. In the middle of taking these shots I noticed my reflection was in a lot of the shots, so I decided to deliberately take one where I made sure I was actually looking at the camera. So I took the shot above with the camera held at waist height. Hope you like it!

Latest photos

Apr 19, 2008
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Here is just a sample of some of the photos which I have been uploading to my flickr account recently.

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This was Cadet Corps parade - the first one of the new term, so obviously some of the kids had forgotten their uniform, or couldn't find it, or put it in the wash,or.......The certainly didn't seem too pleased to be on parade! I took a series of shots with all the cadets looking various shades of miserable.

Later on they cheered up as they got on with the afternoon's activities. Some of the RAF were doing a command task - blindfold challenge - but that didn't stop one boy from posing as soon as he saw the camera.

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I've also uploaded some pictures from my holiday in Spain. This one is from a series of two boys play fighting on the beach - again they seemed to respond well to the camera.

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I've also added some old photos - here's one of some students on a Duke of Edinburgh Award overnight walking expedition in the Cotswolds. This was 2005.

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Finally I used fd's flickr toys to create a mosaic of photos featuring my wife.

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Happy Easter

Mar 24, 2008
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I had a great Easter although it was rather busy. I was on the production team for my church's Easter celebration which was held at Cheltenham Racecourse's Centaur conference centre. That meant rolling up at 7am to get all the kit out and assembled ready to go at 10.30am - well actually earlier so that the band can have a run-through.

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First problem was that the big central screen which was supposed to be in position wasn't - it wasn't even there. So find the screen and then erect it - easy? The screen is 20ft x 12ft and is hung from the lighting gantry, so Pete and Dave had to go up on the Picker and climb onto the gantry, rig pulleys and ropes and get the screen up.

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So that brings us to problem number 2. The projector was also hung from the lighting gantry but too close to the screen so the picture didn't fill the screen. No probs says Pete, we'll just fiddle with the screen resolutions of the PC and the iMac (and the dvd and the cameras) so that they fill the screen. No, the computers didn't want to play, so Pete tried stretching the image on his magic video controller system. Unfortunately, that didn't work terribly well either,but hopefully most people didn't notice the black bands down the sides sometimes. Actually during the early part of all this I was looking after a lovely little boy who belongs to our team. He's very bright, he was playing with my camera and worked out how to change the playback image and how to zoom in and out.

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While that was going on, Dave was trying to rig all the lights with a picker truck which had decided that it wouldn't move! And the band were doing sound checks and trying to get organised. Not only that but the audience began to arrive and get in the way - not sure why people were arriving quite so early!

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Oh, and the power on the video desk tripped out perhaps because of a faulty computer screen which we had to replace. And the comms system wasn't working properly so that Pete couldn't tell Al on the sound desk to turn up the sound when he played the welcome dvd.

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Of course, by about 15 minutes late, everything was working fine - amazing. It seems that no matter how early we start getting ready, there will always be problems which mean we are praying hard right up to (and past) the official start time. Perhaps it helps keep us humble.

"Neither a Borrower nor a Lender be"

Mar 15, 2008
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I should give up lending things to people - or should I?

Over the last few days I have lent a USB drive, a video camera, a digital camera and a tripod.

The digital camera came back on time with no problems, and the student who borrowed it had taken some photos for me, which was great. However, the tripod came back broken due to an accident (we think!). The video camera came back a day late after I had sent various messages and had to get cross with the student who had borrowed it - and then there was no apology. The USB drive also had to be chased up and came back about a week late. Unfortunately, I had foolishly lent a drive with some of my files on - and when it came back the files had disappeared.

I don't mend lending things to people but it really irritates me when they don't come back on time and I have to go chasing them. It's not just students who are bad returners, it's staff as well, which can be quite awkward. Perhaps I should institute a system of deposits or fines? Or should I just stop lending things?

School Photo-Gallery

Mar 12, 2008
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PhotoGallery

After having shown you some of my flickr photos over the past few posts, I thought I would show you something of what I do at school. I spend a lot of time taking, collecting and uploading to web galleries photos about all aspects of school. The school web gallery is at http://deancloseschool.info/photos and you are welcome to go and take a look. Not all the photos are taken by me - some are taken by students and other staff. Strictly speaking, it is internal - there is an outward-facing marketing website and photo gallery. Mine is aimed at students and parents and is more candid and less strictly controlled than the marketing site.

The website is coded by hand in html and css, but the galleries themselves are created using a Mac program called Galerie, fed from iPhoto and uploaded using an Ftp program called CyberDuck. I have been using a MacPro since last September and have found it gives me a much more efficient and much faster workflow than I had previously on a PC where I used Photoshop Elements, PicSizer, Picasso and Filezilla. I do have PhotoShop CS3 on the Mac but mostly I can do everything I need to do using iPhoto - straighten, crop, adjust exposure, contrast and colour - and even remove offending items like car number plates. And of course, delete all the unsuitable images. Our parents sign agreements for us to take and use photos but I do try to be careful that photos are appropriate, and we don't identify any of the youngsters.

Parents and students alike seem very appreciative of the galleries and they are extremely popular with an average of 3000 page views a day and 250 unique visitors a day. There can be 4000 hits an hour and a gigabyte a day download - not bad for a school of some 450 students. By the way, my hosting company is Siteground who give me 750Gb storage and 7500Gb bandwidth for £3 a month roughly, so I've got plenty of room left. I actually have four websites with them, one for online learning using Moodle with nearly 150 courses; this one for photos and videos, one for backup and testing of Moodle, and a fourth one we use for Drupal (for the school theatre), Wordpress (for a student blog/cms) and Gallery (for a new version of the photo gallery).

Flickr Beach and Surf

Mar 4, 2008
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In my last three posts I have covered photos I've taken which relate to trains, people and flowers. But under the heading people I excluded all my beach and surfing photos since I have so many - mainly taken last summer during a visit to my son in San Diego, California. So now's my chance to share some beach and surf photos. I hope you enjoy them.

The first few shots are surfing and skimming:

Those a re just a selection from the hundreds of shots I took last summer - most of which are on flickr. Some have had lots of views, some not so many; but (sadly I think) quite a number have not had any views at all. Of course, before you can stand up on your surf board you have to get out there, so are a few more:

And now for some of my favourites - the ones on land:

Catch some more on my flickr account! Or look at my "Best" collection which has sets automatically created by dopiaza's set generator.

Flickr Trains

Feb 28, 2008
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In previous posts I've shared some of my favourite/most popular photos from my flickr account. We've had flowers and people. I think getting good pictures of flowers is relatively easy, people slightly more difficult, but I can't say I feel at all successful taking photos of trains. The pictures generally don't seem to portray the raw power of the huge beast, or the romantic flavour of the smoking, steaming, hissing creature. I shall keep trying, but I hope you like some of these I've taken over the past year or so.

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The three photos above are 92203 Black Prince at Cheltenham Racecourse station in Gloucestershire; 30777 on the Great Central Railway at Loughborough, and an engine under restoration at Loughborough, England.

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Diesel railcars taken at St.Ives in Cornwall, England and at Mayrhofen in the Zillertal, Austrian Tyrol. The next one is an electrically powered inter-city train at Jenbach in Austria.

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The next two were taken on the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway in England and feature 92203 Black Prince and a prairie tank 5542.

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This one was taken in the Zillertal, near Mayrhofen in the Austrian Tyrol. Most of the trains were diesel but a few trains a day were steam hauled old-fashioned passenger cars.

Wengen-Eiger

This is my favourite photo from a trip on the Swiss railways and was taken at Wengen near the famous Eiger mountain. The train goes up to Kleine Scheidegg where another train goes to up to the Jungfrau Joch, the highest railway station in Europe.

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The engine above is 26043, a class 26 diesel I and others have been working on for the past six years, trying to restore it to full operational status. Last year I did a lot of work painting it (the picture shows it before painting!). The controls are being finished now, and it is being prepared for a topcoat of paint, ready for action in the summer, working on the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway in England.