Andy Whale

From the Blog

Apr

Great Day … Shame About The Weather

Posted by andywhale at 9:24 am

Motorsport Photography tuition with Chris Enion was always going to be a great experience, but I haden’t quite allowed for how useful it would be, to start with a few small tips, and the shots were already picking up.

I’m not going to lie, Chris is good not a miracle worker and so quite a lot more practise is still required, but that’s certainly true of any aspect of photography, and having never really attempted serious motorsport photography before, I was not expecting miracles. I’ve added a few of my favourites below.

It was just a shame the weather made for quite a soggy day, but Chris and Joe (from the YRC team) made the whole day a great experience, including meeting Ollie Jackson, and Max Coates, and getting up close with some of the cars.

Apr

Bristol the City of Ideas

Posted by andywhale at 9:32 pm

May sees the annual return of the Festival of Ideas, based mostly around Watershed, the Arnolfini and St George’s. To hallmark the announcement of events me & Kate have been studying the guide thoroughly and picked out a few must see items for us, and I thought I’d post them up in case anyone fancied coming along, or just wasn’t aware of the festival, and wanted to check out the full listings – let me know if you’re off to something I have inadvertantly missed. (all Festival of Ideas content on this site is copyright them, and reproduced for informational purposes only).

The Blind Giant: Being Human in a Digital World

Nick Harkaway

15 May 2012, 18.00-19.00 Watershed, Bristol

An age of isolation, warped communication, disintegrating community. Where unfiltered and unregulated information pours relentlessly into our lives, destroying what it means to be human. Or an age of marvels. Where there is a world of wonder at our fingertips. Where we can communicate across the globe, learn in the blink of an eye, pull down the barriers that divide us and move forward together. Whatever your reaction to technological culture, the speed with which our world is changing is both mesmerising and challenging. In The Blind Giant novelist and tech blogger Nick Harkaway draws together fascinating and disparate ideas to challenge the notion that digital culture is the source of all our modern ills, while at the same time showing where the dangers are real and suggesting how they can be combated. Ultimately, the choice is ours: engage with the machines that we have created, or risk creating a world which is designed for corporations and computers rather than people. This is an essential handbook for everyone trying to be human in a digital age.

Link

The Higgs Boson and Paul Dirac

Peter Higgs and Graham Farmelo

16 May 2012, 19.30-20.30 St George’s Bristol

Two of the giants of modern physics were educated in Bristol’s schools. Paul Dirac, who co-discovered quantum mechanics and predicted the existence of anti-matter, always regarded the excellent education he was given in Bristol – in physics, mathematics and engineering – as crucial to his career. Dirac’s success inspired the young Peter Higgs, who attended Cotham school, and later predicted the particle now named after him and the subject of worldwide attention. Graham Farmelo, author of The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac is in discussion with Peter Higgs and Robin McKie, science editor of the Observer.

Link

News International & Me

Tom Watson MP

20 May 2012, 17.00-18.00 Arnolfini, Bristol

Tom Watson MP has led the pursuit of News International in parliament. His new book tells the full behind-the-scenes story of the phone hacking scandal, revealing the connections between News Corporation, the police and politicians, and explaining how they became unravelled. With unique information and access, Watson shows what went wrong with some very prominent British institutions and marks the moment when everything began to change.

Link

Darwin’s Ghosts: In Search of the First Evolutionists

Rebecca Stott

20 May 2012, 18.30-19.30 Watershed, Bristol

Rebecca Stott’s Darwin’s Ghosts is a masterful retelling of the collective daring of a few like-minded men who had the imagination to speculate on nature’s ways and the courage to publish at a time when to do so, for political as well as religious reasons, was to risk everything. Just one month after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin received a letter that deeply unsettled him. It accused him of failing to acknowledge his predecessors. For all the excuses that leapt to mind, Darwin knew he had made a grave error in omitting to mention his intellectual forebears. Yet when he tried to trace these natural philosophers, he found that history had already forgotten them. More than a tale of mummified birds, inland lagoons, Bedouin nomads, secret police files, microscopes and curiosity cabinets, Darwin’s Ghosts: In Search of the First Evolutionists is the story of an idea that would change the modern world.

Link

Mar

Westonbirt Sprung

Posted by andywhale at 8:50 pm

Due to a bout of unseasonable weather for Kate’s birthday we were able to take an extended wander around Westonbirt, taking in both the Old Arboretum and Silkwood, a really great way to spend a day. Here are a few of the shots taken, including some wildlife shots from a distance (increasing the need for an extended lens). Also the Magnolias were out in force! We also managed to divert from the seasonal route to take in the 2000 year old lime, prompting a lookout for the other 50 trees dedicated during the golden jubilee.

Feb

A few winter snaps

Posted by andywhale at 10:35 pm

It’s been too long since my last post, but finally we approach the tail end of winter, and so I thought I’d throw up some photos taken over the winter period.

First up, a trip to Westonbirt (2 shots) with my new Tripod (Manfrotto 190CXPRO3) a fantastic piece of kit, I would thoroughly recommend giving it a try, and the light weight feel is great. There was then a trip to York (3 shots), with Kate taking us on a guided tour of the snickelways, then on to Thixendale.

A beautiful sunny day along the river in Bristol (2 shots), with the SS Great Britain, saw another photo opportunity (again with the tripod).

Finally on to a location I cannot recommend enough, we had an amazing weekend in Stratford, visiting the birthplace of Shakespeare.

Nov

Autumn Colours in the Arboretum

Posted by andywhale at 6:04 pm

Another wander at Westonbirt, this time approaching dusk. Hopefully one of these shots will wind up copetition worthy.

On the same note, you too can enter the Westonbirt Autumn Photo competition: http://www.flickr.com/groups/autumn-westonbirt-competition/ and if you need a day for it, then I can vouch for the fact the amazing colours will definetley still be there tomorrow.

: Heavy Autumn Shower

: November Rain

: Autumn Spectrum

: A winter scene in Autumn

: The Hanging Autumn Leaves

: Park Bench in Autumn

: More Maple Reds

: Heights of the Maple Loop

: Water Droplets on the remaining greenery

: Forest of Mushrooms and Maples

: Maple Reds

: Thoroughly into dusk

Oct

An early morning wander to Westonbirt

Posted by andywhale at 10:13 pm

Having finally got hold of my new car, what better way to try it out and take advantage of the extra hour on offer than an early morning trip to the beautiful Autumn colour display on offer at Westonbirt Arboretum. It really is looking amazing, and I would say you’ve probably got another couple of weeks available to see the best of it, so get your walking boots on and get on over.

Oct

Stourhead in Wiltshire – every bit as breathtaking as people will tell you

Posted by andywhale at 10:10 pm

As National Trust venues go this is the most astounding I’ve ever seen, a truly beautiful walk around a gorgeous lake set in and around some of the most amazing autumn colours you will ever see (bar Westonbirt Arboretum of course). I had to grab some photo’s as the perfect blue sky couldn’t help but top off the perfect burst of primary colours.

Oct

Bristol Zoo with Mark Carwardine

Posted by andywhale at 10:07 pm

An inspirational photographer and judge of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year, I don’t imagine their is a better person to be wandering around the zoo with, pointing out some of the best ways to get to grips with wildlife photography.

The lectures really helped in getting to grips with how to compose a good wildlife photograph (I’ve just got to try to put it into practise).

Here are a few of the shots taken on the day at Bristol Zoo.

Oct

Pro Plastering Website

Posted by andywhale at 9:09 pm

This week saw the “go live” of www.goplaster.co.uk for Pro Plastering (my soon to be brother-in-law’s plastering firm), they are a plastering firm based in Bridgwater but operating allo ver the South West and the UK, he wanted to showcase some of the plastering/renovation jobs he had undertaken as well as giving potential customers an overview of what his business offered.

A screenshot of the Pro Plastering website

In order to give the site a slightly sleeker look I have added a few extra’s to the quite simplistic site layout.

Improved Font Usage

I have in the past made use of sIFR but I have found it to be not exactly user friendly, that’s not to say it’s not a brilliant tool in it’s place, but I prefered to cut out flash entirely if it’s only going to be used in very limited quantity. So I decided to give embedding the fonts a go, as I knew this would be a safe option, as it degrades gracefully where unavailable, i.e. a normal font would be shown in place and so it would not ruin the site layout.

Embedding the font into the page through CSS

Above is sample code showing the small addition required to add your font into the page, here we can see the ttf (true-type font file) would be uploaded to a folder called my_fonts within the same directory as your style sheet, it would then be used to display your <h1> tags (1st header).

Gallery / Image Styling

I have long been a fan of the jQuery javascript library and tend to at least make passing use of it within most web projects, as it tends to just add polish to an interface, in a useable and compatible manner. For this project we wanted to showcase Nev’s plastering/renovation jobs and allow these to be easily accesible to the user; the best for this seemed to be through the use of thumbnails and a lightbox plugin.

Code required to add the fancy box plugin to the page

There are several good jQuery lightbox plugins but the one I keep coming back to is Fancy Box (at time of writing on Version: 1.3.4) (mostly due to it’s amazing flexibility for content). This was going to be ideal for this project as it allows for grouping of images into galleries within the page, and is very straightforward to plugin.

Fancy Box within the page

Social Networking

Additionally we wanted to allow an additional marketing angle, the addition of Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons, I will discuss this area in greater detail shortly, but if you have any thoughts on this area then please leave a comment after the beep.

Oct

Westonbirt Wandering

Posted by andywhale at 9:12 pm

A venture around the Arboretum at Westonbirt in the rain showed up a few photographic opportunities.

: A wet fern at Westonbirt Arboretum

: A leaf in the rain at Westonbirt

: Contrasting leaf colours at the Arboretum

May

A Poetic Journey in Wales

Posted by andywhale at 7:43 pm

Kate and I decided to take a long weekend out in Wales, and settled upon the home of Dylan Thomas – Laugharne. It truly is a beautifully picturesque little town, if you’re looking to simply relax and get away from it all, then a simple wander around the area that inspired Thomas’ “Under Milk Wood”, and continued to draw him back.

The beautiful castle really underlines the landscape and gives a spectacular skyline to the town. Not far from Laugharne sees the lovely coastal town of Tenby, well worth a visit. Although most stunning of all was Rhossilli which we took a detour out to visit and were not disappointed with the most picturesque coastal walk I have ever ventured upon, and certainly an area of the world I will re-visit (recently featuring in Torchwood of all things).

May

Countryside Shots

Posted by andywhale at 5:24 pm

A few days of wandering in the countryside gave me the opportunity to take some macro shots of various flowers and insects, these included a day at Westonbirt Arboretum. If you have never found the time to visit I seriously recommend it, we visit regularly and things so frequently change, especially worth a visit in the autumn for some truly breathtaking vistas.

Westonbirt is an historic, Victorian picturesque landscape and an internationally important tree and shrub collection. It is managed by the Forestry Commission and supported by the Friends of Westonbirt Arboretum.

The 16,000 trees (3,000 different specimens) come from Britain, China, North America, Japan, Chile and other temperate climates.

Children running on a path through bluebellsWithin the 17 miles of accessible paths and five national collections, children become young adventurers, adults connect with trees through guided walks, workshops, self-led trails or volunteering.

Visit the forestry commission’s Westonbirt website

Apr

Walk with the Lemurs … jump and leap and squawk … well maybe not

Posted by andywhale at 8:35 pm

Having finally got an additional lens for my camera, it was time to test it out, and that meant getting in close with no walls between us and the animals. Given a choice I think safari may have been my first preference, however we were on a budget and only had a weekend to spare that meant a journey slightly more local. So we packed up a picnic and headed off toward Oxford and hit the Cotswold Wildlife Park, which is fantastic, for getting up close and personal with the animals, specifically the lemur walk, where you can join them in their enclosure.

First up, let me introduce the newest addition to the SLR kit, the Nikon 55 – 200mm, after some months of using this now I can testify to this being a very good lens, but initially took some getting used to, although I would add that given the price reductions the 300mm would certainly be worth opting for.

Back to the venue and I really would recommend a day out to this place, especially if you have small people (children, not dwarfs), walking with the lemurs is a great opportunity they’re very social creatures and especially amusing to watch sunbathing.

Apr

Easter in York

Posted by andywhale at 7:44 pm

Easter 2011 saw a trip to York to visit Jill & Graham, fortunately we saw some good weather and managed to fit in a trip to the beach – the beautiful expanse of sand at Fraisthorpe, complete with Second World War defensive ruins – along with several Frisbee matches.

We also managed to fit in a trip to Rowntree’s park, and a walk along the river, see some of the shots below.

: Not at Easter but from an earlier visit to the city

Sep

Holidaying in the South West

Posted by andywhale at 11:04 am

A holiday in the South West, we had the sun, we had the sights, and we had a great time. These included taking in cream tea’s, ice-cream, wildlife and the amazing gardens of Dunster castle and Dunster village.

: The market in the middle of Dunster village

: A close up shot at Dunster castle gardens

: Hand shot windmill on the somerset levels

We also took a trip on to the Somerset Levels, well worth dropping by if you’re passing.

Jun

Mum’s Birthday

Posted by andywhale at 8:55 pm

For mum’s 50th birthday Kate made a series of amazing birthday cakes see them here, here is a photo (along with another snap in the garden).

: Yellow flowers in mum & dad's garden

: Cupcakes by Kate for mum's birthday

Mar

Westonbirt Post Engagement

Posted by andywhale at 9:20 am

On March 26th 2010 I proposed to Kate at Westonbirt Arboretum – in the pouring rain – and after some deliberaton (or internal battling, she’s never confirmed which) she said yes. So that has cemented our connection with this amazing woodland area, and long may it continue.

I have attached a few photos from visits to the arboretum around that date.

Mar

5000 years ago – yeah that is a really long time

Posted by andywhale at 9:04 am

A trip along the Nile in Egypt is without doubt a once in a lifetime holiday experience (unless you do it more than once, which I sincerely hope to one day); but that does not in anyway lessen the impact of this destination, and I will strongly recommend to everybody to take a trip to Egypt to put the human time-line and “ancient” in perspective.

Remarkably in spite of the age of so many of these great monuments they have remained more preserved than expected, due – I suspect – to hot dry climates. In protected areas coloured dyes even remain really giving you an impression of how it once was.