Derwent Valley

I went hiking in the Upper Derwent Valley with a friend on Saturday. It's the first time I've been hiking in quite a while. Since I took up photography, in fact. I rarely have an opportunity to shoot rural landscapes so I relished the chance and got some decent photos, quite possibly some of my best, despite still suffering from lens artifacts. I'll do the usual of trying to clean up the source images before pushing it through the HDR process again and I'm going to invest in a proper camera cleaning kit (or just pay a professional to do it for me).

HDR and freckling

A colleague who is similarly photographic suggested we go out of an evening to take some HDR shots. I think she knows I do quite a bit of HDR and was keen to see what it was about. I got some good results but my I'm struggling with freckling in some many shots taken later in the evening. The HDR process exacerbates the problem but I can see the marks on the source images. I've cleaned the lens and am certain it's spotless, I've even cleaned my mirror but the freckling still occurs. So it could be my sensor or failing that, I'm left with the terrible prospect that it's dirt inside the lens itself. Whatever the cause, it needs to be sorted before I go away for new year. I'll try to test the theory by taking a shot that freckles on my wide-angle lens, replacing the lens and seeing if it still occurs. If it does, it's the mirror or sensor in the camera body, if not, it's the lens. At least that'll give me a better idea of where I stand.

Unless of course it's both lenses.

Zombie

One night last week I attended 2.8 Hours Later, a 'zombie chase game' through the streets of my home city. Essentially, you report to an abandoned mill (something we have in abundance) and are sent off in teams at 80 second intervals with a map and a grid reference to get to next. There will be a scenario with actors at the grid reference the outcome of which will include your next destination and there are zombies en route/at said destination. The zombies got me right before the end and thus I was made up as a zombie for the party at the end. The resultant drinking assisted me zombie impersonation for this portrait I took when I got home (taken on my wide-angle lens, no less) but assisted my photography skills less. Nonethless, it's a decent self portrait, augmented with a vignette in GIMP. The event repeated every night until Sunday but unfortunately I was atypically busy and so didn't get to lurk and take photos of others playing the game. Here's hoping they repeat it next year.