The last few days have been relatively uneventful when compared to the first few days here.  We walked to Old Harry’s Rocks a couple of days ago. It was a very tiring walk over extremely steep cliffs and hills and by the time we got to the top, we were really exhausted. It took us a good 15 minutes of lying in the grass before we could start walking again. While walking, I took some occasional pauses and during these pauses, it felt like time had stopped. With the wind blowing through my hair and having absolutely no sound except for the whoosing of the wind, I found out what the sound of silence is like. We had to walk for another 30 minutes before got to the tip of the rocks. The view from there was quite nice and I spent a little while taking lots of photographs.We went down to the South Beach after that and had a late lunch at a small open air cafe there. After the meal, we spent about 45 minutes playing around as we waited for the bus back.

We went to the lighthouse near Durlston yesterday and several places along the way. It was raining every now and then and was quite windy and wasnt the best weather for a walk but we still had fun. The sea was wild and we couldnt feel the time fly while watching the waves thrashing and smashing  against the rocks.

I bought 2 cameras yesterday, both of them were a bargain so I grabbed the offers. One of them is a 110 film camera called ‘Hanimex Loadmatic’. I’ve managed to find some online sellers of the 110 Film cartridges but they seem to be more expensive than what I paid for the camera. The other one, is a Cosina CSM with a Cosinon 50mm f/1.7 M42 Mount Lens. It has a split image focusing screen and is completely manual with a manual aperture ring and provides for a totally new and interesting experience. I plan on processing the film tomorrow to see how the images have turned out and I hope they come out alright.

I went to Wareham today and spent a couple of hours randomly walking around town and taking photographs as usual. I sat by the river for a considerable amount of time watching the ducks swim by and people fishing. There was a calm breeze and it felt like bliss to sit there and enjoy the atmosphere. I couldnt feel the time pass by, but the bus screeching next to me reminded me that it was time to get home. Once I got back, I sat by the beach for sometime enjoying the cool breeze and slowly realized that it was 7pm but still bright due to the Daylight Savings time change today.

We’ll be leaving tomorrow for Seaton and will be staying in a Caravan. We most probably will not have any internet connectivity there and therefore, I shall update my 365 Day Project only after I get back which is next Sunday.

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I got up for sunrise for the past 2 days so that I could get some photos of the sun by the sea. The sunrise day before yesterday was not that great since it was cloudy but I managed to get some good long exposure shots of the rocks on the beach. Yesterday’s sunrise was simply spectacular and I had a couple of friends who accompanied me so it was a fun experience and I also managed to get several great photographs.

Day before yesterday, we had a nice long walk to Durlston through Townsend which had a wonderful view of the town and its surroundings. We had lunch at ‘The Lookout Cafe‘ and enjoyed the panoramic view of the sea it offered. After this, there was a slight drizzle but we walked on and continued to Peveril Point which literally stretches out into the sea and is the farthest point you can go out towards the sea. We spent a considerable amount of time there walking over the rocks and by the cliffs. Following this, we had fish and chips by the seaside and then had fun at the local arcade playing 4-player Air Hockey after which we walked home.

Yesterday, we sat around for a few hours at Peveril Point watching the sunrise. We felt hungry on the way back home so we stopped for breakfast at the only cafe that was open at 8 in the morning. In the afternoon, we had a slightly tiring but fun 2 hour walk to Corfe Castle. Before going to the castle, we had 3 course lunch at a tea room next to the castle. We went for a easter egg hunt at The Model Village after lunch where we managed to find 9 eggs out of a total of 11 but still got a cream egg each as a reward.

The Model Village had a 1:20 scale model of the entire village of Corfe including the castle and all the models were very precise and exquisite. It was so detailed that it had a model of the model of the castle. We spent a bit too much time at the model village since we didnt have time to get a good look at the Corfe Castle but can probably go there another time. After that, we got the Swanage Railway Steam Train back home and was quite fun. The journey was about 20 minutes to our station and once we got out, we played with an Aerobie (a Frisbee-like ring) all the way home across several fields and it felt great to play like a kid again.

The trip has been great so far and we’ve got lots of exciting things planned for the upcoming week.

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We arrived at Bournemouth Station at about 4 yesterday evening, we then had a 40 minute drive to Swanage. The most exciting part of the drive was the fact that it snowed for about 10 minutes. I was quite satisfied with witnessing this brief but heavy snow but I recently got news that there was heavy snow at the University which makes me slightly bad that I left there early and also slightly envious of the people who were there. I saw some photographs of the snow there, and it looks like that they’ve had plenty of snow.

Coming back to local news, we went to a local pub last night to watch a band called ‘Lady Winwoods Maggots‘ who did covers of classic rock songs and were quite good. And even though the place was small, it had a nice atmosphere and we could enjoy the music.

I got my first proper view of the sea today morning from my windows and it looked absolutely fantastic! We spent most of morning lazing around and went out to a pub for lunch. After lunch, we had a long walk by the beach. The sky was great and I got some really good photographs but I shall be uploading them only after I get back to Essex.

The place is really beautiful and I could spend hours sitting and admiring the various sights. It has a certain charm to it that Essex lacks. I’ve fallen in love Dorset and its going to take a 100 wild horses to drag me to back to University from this beautiful abode. We still have a lot more sightseeing to do in the coming week and I think it would be safe to assume that all of them will be equally, if not more beautiful.

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Last week has been quite hectic with essays to give in, last minute paper work to be done, etc, before leaving for the Easter break. We have one solid month of vacation which is pretty good although can also be a reason for boredom. I, however, will most probably manage to rid the boredom since I will travelling to different places around the United Kingdom over the next 2-3 weeks.

I had to write and submit a 2500 word essay for Politics which was okay. I got the results for my Economic Analysis test and Intro to Economics assignment results and I got 99 and 72 respectively. I had to attend several society annual general meetings since it was the end of term. I was elected to the position of Vice President for the Politics Society for next year.

After a bit of a hassle, I received my printer yesterday. It is a Canon Selpy CP 330 and is truly portable in the way that it has a battery and can be used to print directly from the camera wherever you are. Its quite compact and is pretty fast too. It is a Dye Sub printer and uses a thermal technology to print instead of inks which is what makes it portable. It can print upto 4*6 which I think is enough for quick prints. The print quality is excellent too, with vivid colors and sharpness.  And on a side note, I have to thank ebuyer.com for their excellent service since they collected the first faulty printer I received and sent me a new one the next day.

I watched a couple of movies, ‘The Fifth Element‘ and ‘A Scanner Darkly‘ and both have their own positive and negative points. ‘The Fifth Element‘ had a pretty crazy storyline but I still liked it a lot, it had a good blend of Sci fi and comedy which is something you dont see often. And with Bruce Willis added to that, there is now way it can go wrong. ‘A Scanner Darkly‘ had some really amazing visuals, great work by the animators. They had to edit each frame of the movie individually and it must have take a lot of effort and dedication to do it. I cant say I liked the story too much though, it was okay, but a bit too weird for my liking. ‘The Fifth Element‘ is a must watch for any Bruce Willis or Sci Fi fan while people who like movies with a new feel will enjoy ‘A Scanner Darkly‘.

University life has been good the past term and probably better than the first term since I’d met so many more people and was involved in several activities. I’m looking forward to the vacation, one, for the break (deserved or not) and two, for the vast photographic opportunities.

Have a Good Friday and Great Easter!

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Few of you may have read a post I wrote almost a year ago about ‘5 Features we can expect in future cameras‘. I must admit I was quite a newbie to the technical aspects of photography that time and really didnt know much about the practicality of photography. I was an excited new photographer wanting to try out all the possible different forms of photography in the easiest way possible without really paying much attention to each type. As a result, the list contains things that are probably not particularly useful to the professional photographer but are useful for the everyday photographer who is satisfied with a simple and easy method of photography. That being said, I thought an overview of the list would be useful to see how it could be modified, what things are already achieved and what are on their way.

Photo Copyright of Boris Sverdlik

1. GPS and Google Earth Integration
This was one of the features I’d wanted in cameras before. I cant imagine why I would have wanted because practically, it does not have much value. You can indeed still buy GPS addons for cameras but I dont see any reason to have them built-in. It would only increase the price of the camera unnecessarily for everyone while being useful for the few people who would actually use them. It *might* become a part of cameras but I dont see any need for it.

2. 3D Models
This is the feature of a software rather than of hardware. Indeed, it would be pretty cool to have a 3D model of places like Microsoft’s Photosynth but it doesnt have much to do with the hardware of the cameras but rather a software which should be able to read the visual content of each photograph and link them together.

3. Direct Internet Upload
Eye-fi, a new announced but yet to be released SD Card with build in Wi-fi can do this. It sounds promising and will be quite useful for people. And since newer dSLRs like the Canon 450D accept SD Cards, the Eye-fi card will also be useful for semi-professionals. Read more about the Eye-fi card here. And for the professionals, the Canon users can get the wireless file transmitter which, although costs as much as a camera, might turn to be useful for transferring photos while shooting in the field to the base station for instant review. Nikon users need not give up hope as they also have the option of adding a similar wireless file transmitter to their cameras.

4. Built in HDR Optimiser
HDR or High Dynamic Range photos constitute a small proportion of the world of photography and are sometimes quite controversial regarding their nature since they are highly manipulated photographs. HDR photos do look good, but only if processed correctly. I’ve seen hundreds of HDRs which are really ugly to look at since they werent tone mapped correctly. Therefore, to make a HDR photo look good, you have to spend a decent amount of time getting the processing right. One click processing is definitely not the way to go for HDR and therefore, the so-called HDR Optimiser would be useless. Exposure bracketing is probably the most help a camera can do in the making of a HDR image.

5. Live LCD and Video Recording DSLRs
Before getting a dSLR, I was quite worried about the fact that most dSLRs dont have a Live LCD. But after getting one with Live LCD, I’ve realised that once you use the optical viewfinder, you fail to see the need for a Live LCD. Live LCD is useful certain situations but I can live without it. However, for those who still insist on using a Live LCD, Sony’s newest dSLR, the Sony Alpha 300 and 350 both have a very effective Live View system which can rival a Point ‘n’ shoot. You can read a quick review of Sony’s Live View system here and the mechanism of how it works over here. As for video recording, dSLRs are meant to be the best in shooting stills and if you introduce video recording, you may have to give up some of the quality of still images. Maybe a simple video recording system wont hurt and I’m sure that it is being researched right now.

And there you have it, a complete update of my old post after acknowledging the requirements of photographers and the practical uses for the features. If you havent read the original post, you can read it here.

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University of Essex vs. University of East Anglia.

40 Matches. 800 Participants. Two Universities. One Winner.

Derby Day is a huge sports event held once a year between the University of Essex and University of East Anglia. The event is held at both the universities alternating every year. This year, it was held here at Essex and all the participants from East Anglia came down here.

I was assigned to photograph all the hockey matches but ended up taking photographs of a majority of the events. The first hockey match was the mens and kicked off at 11AM. Essex won with a spectacular score of 8 - 3. This was followed by the womens hockey at 1PM which Essex lost but up a great fight and managed to get a decent score of 4 -2 even though East Anglia’s Women Hockey team was three leagues above ours. The final hockey match of the day was the mixed match and was quite entertaining. It was a very light hearted match and you could see that most of the players were having fun. We won this match too with an excellent score of 9 - 6.

In between all these matches and during the half times, I went over to several other matches to take a look at the scores and also to snap some photographs. One of the first ones I saw was American Football/Rugby which was quite exciting with a lot of action in the match and a huge crowd cheering them on. They won with a decent lead and while they were celebrating their victory, I headed down to the football fields and got a quick photo of the Womens Football team. I was running out of space in my camera so I came back to my room to upload the photos on to the computer and also made myself a simple lunch.

After that, I went down to the Sports Centre and got photographs of the womens volleyball which we unfortunately lost by a rather small margin. Once the volleyball got over, I went back to the football field where there were 2 mens football matches going on simultaneously on adjacent pitches. Both the matches were quite good and had a large supporting crowd who kept the matches alive. The teams managed to win one match and draw the other one.

We had a quick stop at Womens Netball and after a couple of photos, took a break and went down to the bar. We got ourselves a free meal each since we were volunteering to help out with Derby Day. After the meal, I headed downstairs into Sub Zero to watch boxing. The audience for boxing was beyond what I’d imagined and the sound of the cheering could be heard all the way to the top. The fights were a bit bloody but still very enthralling as could be seen by the roaring sound of the audience every time a powerful punch was thrown.

I came back to the flat for a hurried meal and went back to the Sports Centre for cheer leading which was pretty good, I must say. It was one of the final event of the day with only mens basketball remaining. As of now, I think Essex should have won Derby Day but we cant be sure until the final results come out. However, I do expect Essex to win since we won a majority of the sports including Athletics, Horse riding, Pool, Cricket, Basketball, etc and the scores when I last saw them were about 17 - 11 to Essex.

Photographs are being processed right now, I shall upload them as soon as I can.

Update - I have received confirmation that Essex has indeed won the Derby Title with a final score of 21 - 18.

Update 2 - I have uploaded the best photographs from the events, you can view all of them here.

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I’ve uploaded all the HPS videos which were on this site to YouTube so that you can view the videos without having to download them to your computer. The videos will continue to remain on this site so that those of you who wish to download them can still do so.

In addition to the existing videos, I have added a new video titled ‘Eagles Forever’ which I had originally planned to be screened at our graduation ceremony. However, that ceremony never happened and I was never able to show the video to my classmates. I had given a few of my friends a copy of the video but hadnt released it ‘officially’ only because I had not completed it. I still havent completed it and it probably will take awhile before I complete and therefore, I decided to release it today.

The video is a montage of some of the best memories at school. For some of you, it may only be a video but for some of us, it is much more than a video. It is the record of an experience that has gone by us. An experience which many of us will never forget. An experience which will continue to be one of the best. And this video was made to exist as a witness to that fabulous experience.

Anyways, enough chit chat, I shall link you to the video now. You can download the video here and watch the video on YouTube here. Feel free to give any positive or negative feedback.

EAGLES FOREVER!

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