Kerbal Space Program

A game that has kept me greatly amused over the last few days, build a rocket and get your giuys onto the moon and then home again. A lot more difficult than expected. At the moment i have stranded 12 guys on the moon, with no fuel or means of getting home:( 

Today however, I got them safely on the moon and then home :)

Here's some screenshots from the moon and home again.

The final stage survives intact and lands on the moon

take off again using RCS

Ignite engines for the lift into lunar orbit

Burn for home 11 million km away

11 million km lunar orbit achieved

Kerbal's gravity grabs the ship and after a little anti burn, orbit is acheived

descend rapidly in time warp

going very fast back towards Kerbal's atmosphere

deploy parachute for landing

various bits fell off, but the guys are still alive and safely back on Kerbal,
if a long way from home

An afternoon in Kuching.

Went forr a trip into town yesterday (Sunday April 1st...no really!) with the intention of shooting the skaters and bikers who were in town for a 'convention / meet'. Sadly I had the days wrong and they were already packing up when I arrived. I decided to have a wonder around town anyway and take some shots. I had a few ideas in mind already.
One was the idea of a stage, e.g. find a location and shoot the people as they fill it, I already had the location in mind, which turned out better than expected as I was able to combine that idea with another of my favourite shot types...the reflection. I stood in the narrow passage called Jalan Mosque and pointed my lens at a conveniently placed mirror mid way down the passage.

I'm also fond of what I would call textures (usually of architectural features) and wondering round looking up gives one a different view of Kuching's architecture than if one purely focuses on street level, so I've included a few of those shots below too.

It's hard to photograph Kuching without the State Legislative building, with its golden top, being in there somewhere and the weather at the time was being very accommodating and providing a nice backdrop.
 
Then the weather took a turn for the worse in a big way, so I headed back to the car and saw the dark foreboding clouds highlighting the buildings near by, the Central Kuching mosque being the most prominent.

My first food shoot

A friend of mine, who owns a bar / restaurant, has been asking me for a while to photograph some of her food for a new menu and new look she wants to start doing. This being well out of my comfort zone, I was reluctant, but enticed enough, that I eventually gave in. I recruited the help of Mr Gerry Fox whose work can be seen here and here who has been an inspiration and great help during my recent adventures in photography.

We used a single off camera flash fitted with a soft-box and then used all manner of impromptu diffusers and reflectors to try to get the light right. We had arrived at the restaurant with three hours of afternoon daylight left, but sadly didn't get to shoot the food for a while. In the meantime Gerry took control of the camera in the kitchen and he got a few shots of the guys in action and I held the flash and other silly things to get some light in.

Eventually we got round to shooting some food but the light had taken a turn for the worse as bad weather had moved in. We did our best anyway and shot a selection of the new dishes from various angles. The owner was very keen on overhead shots, which I'm not a big fan of, but followed her wishes and then I shot some more that were more to my liking and style. Overall I suppose I'm happy with the results and and very grateful to Gerry for all his during shoot assistance and post shoot processing guru-ness. NB the shots below have been processed by me as I forgot to actually take a copy of the shots once we'd finished processing them round at Gerry's, so any amateurish post-processing is down to me. Here are a selection of the shots anyway. I hope they make you hungry. Please note, as mentioned above, that the man behind the lens for all the kitchen shots was actually Gerry, so while they've got my name on the bottom, they technically belong to him. Thanks again mate, much appreciated.

Hello.

It's been a very long time. Due to many things, like Skyrim, Eve-Online, holidays, Tumblr and largely just taking too many pictures and loving photography more and more. etc etc.
I will try to get this blog up to date over the next week or so. Since my last post I've visited Singapore, KL, Bangkok, Ko Chang, Penang and Tioman. I've done a lot of macro work due to the inspiration of my mate Anthony Ratcliffe over at http://anton-off-the-beaten-track.blogspot.com/ and http://www.nomadicimagery.com/gallery/macro-1949 who came to visit for a while and we experimented with off camera flash, extension tubes and eventually stacking techniques to further our macro work.
I've also jointly put on a photography exhibition with 3 friends here in Kuching, Sarawak.
So lots to talk about, lots of pics to post, I'll try to get started ASAP.

Here's a couple of pics to start you off, a month or so ago I went out with my mate Gerry Fox to basically act as his assistant while he completed a few assignments he had to do with street photography and portraiture. He was using a semi-studio setup but on the street, and in between him shooting, I fired off a few shots without flash using my 100mm macro lens that also takes great portraits.

Alec is a cobbler who has a small stall at the end of India Street in Kuching. He is a great character and while not exactly comfortable with being the centre of attention, he allowed us to spend an hour or so taking lots of shots.While this shot is not the most flattering for him, I think it brings out the character in his face, he is normally very happy and smiley.

And here he is in action.

Lots more soon...promise