Archive for the ‘Photos’ Category

Elina and I recently headed over to Ilkley Moor to take in a bit more nature. Afterwards, we went to lunch at the Cow & Calf pub, which turned out to be the exact same chain as when we ate at the Roundhay Fox the day before.

Having a bit of time before before Elina headed back to Finland, we headed over to Tropical World and Roundhay Park where you can observe nature from the safe distance of behind 20mm of glass.

The first Sunday of August saw Leeds Pride 2011. Everyone likes to see a parade, particularly when it comes right past your house, so as with last year I took plenty of photos. I was a little disappointed by the floats this year, but it was an enjoyable day nonetheless.

You can see more photos from the event on Atheist Stock.

Last week, I took Elina for a romantic night’s food shopping. Came back from Marko with 16 steaks, 30 bottles of Kopparberg and a box of chocolate bars. Job done :D.

Another great thing about meeting Elina’s mum was she had even brought me some presents over from Finland! Apparently, each year the reindeer shed their antlers, and then people collect them up and turn them into useful things like bottle openers, stopper and cork screws. It’s the cycle of nature beautiful.

Having travelled round Europe last week I saw some amazing architecture, especially in Milan, Salzburg and Verona (where which both myself and Heather Nova now dream about).

However, thanks to the hard efforts of myself and Elina, Leeds now equally has its place among the great architectural works of the world, with our newly constructed Kopparberg tower.

Although I really love my Canon EOS 450D, one thing I have noticed recently is that I’m not taking as many photos as I would like to because it’s particularly convenient to take my camera clubbing or to gigs where they search your bags using ambiguous policies.

To counter this I decided to get my self a cheap camera which could serve such a purpose. I finally settled on the Sony DSC-W350 which for under £100 gets you 14 megapixels (two more than my 450D as it happens) and easy point and click operation in something that will easy fit into my pocket.

Size was really my primary concern when making the decision and the W350 holds up well. It’s about the same size as a credit card so if you’re thinking “wow, it’s only slightly better than a paperclip” I should point out that that is a very big paperclip lol.

It comes in at a depth of 17mm, just slightly shy of being twice that of my iPhone 4 at 9.3mm. That seems a little bulky in comparison but it is perhaps an unfair test to compare it to the world’s thinnest smartphone, and it manages to come in thinner than most of the competition I looked at with most of the slim cameras in it’s price range coming in at around 23mm.

Picture quality is mediocre. It is significantly better than my iPhone 4 but having shot with nothing but a DSLR for two and a half years now, my quality expectations have come to rest somewhat high. Just viewing the photos on my 23″ monitor you can see the photos aren’t quite perfect but then for a compact under a £100, you would have to be very demanding to expect them to be – if I need print publication-quality photos, I’ll take my real camera.

What I do like is that the wide-angle lens produces usually warm images in comparison to my DSLR and as the camera’s main use will be taking shots of my friends while we’re out, this actually makes for more than adequate results for what I need it to do.

On Sunday, there was a trade union march through Leeds city centre.

While the front of the march seemed quite sensible, there point was somewhat undermined by the back of the procession with parties around Revolution just yelling obscenities through a megaphone rather than making any kind of serious political point.

Got up on Sunday morning to find George has been busy snapping away the night before.

On returning from the beach, we headed down to takeaway road opposite the university to grab some dinner. However, upon arriving there, we found an emergency in progress.

Police had apparently been called out to Luckys takeaway. Indeed, the incident was such an emergency that the police hadn’t even had time to turn their lights on to indicate they were attending an emergency.

After about five minutes they eventually emerged carrying what must have been evidence. However, due to time pressures they had been unable to get any evidence bags and were forced to use Luckys takeaway bags.

We’re still not sure what exactly the emergency incident was, but clearly, it required them to be in a huge rush. After all, what other reason could there be for them parking on double yellow lines, in a bus lane?