One Man's Notes

Beach Blooms

The beginning of summer beings blooms into life on Shoreham Beach’s shingle beach habitat.


The #beach in bloom…


Morning #beachlife


Wrong on so many levels. #marmite


Stormy Adur


Smashing!


Berlin breakfast


Back in #berlin


Nostalgia, saturation and digital photography

Two walkers in the hills near Hay-on-Wye

One of my projects this year has been to get on top of my digital photograph archive. Up until recently, it was across several libraries on different computers. I’ve been busy consolidating and de-duping those libraries, and the properly processing all the photos within.

Right now, I’m working through 2002, my first full year of digital photography. I’m really enjoying two things: culling the photos down to a tight selection, and improving them with modern technology.

The culling just makes for better albums. You look through, and photos which seemed so important at the time, clearly don’t work with a decade’s distance. Chucking them away makes what’s left stand out so much better. But it’s the latter - bringing new tech to bear on old images - that’s really making things fly. It’s become clear that the Minolta digital impact I was using back then fairly consistently undersaturated the images. That, along with some careful exposure work, is making images which I thought fairly average really come to life, despite the low resolution by today’s standards. Here’s another example:

The hills above Hay-on-Wye in 2002

Nothing earth-shattering, but pretty impressive for a digital camera that’s 13 years out of date by today’s technology.

The shots are from a walk in the hills around Hay-on-Wye that Lorna and I embarked on with the London Mountaineering Club back in 2002. It was both a wonderful and disastrous weekend. Wonderful because the weather was great, the scenery stunning and the company great. Disastrous because the the organisers were rather too ambitious. Three of us sensed we wouldn’t make the entire route - so turned around at the lunch break - while the rest eventually ends dup calling us for a pick-up to get them home.

But it was still one hell of a walk.

Walkers on a bridleway in Herefordshire

We never managed to go on another walk with the club, which I regret to this day. But it’s lovely rediscovering these images after over a decade, with the pain and exhaustion long forgotten. It makes me itchy to put my walking boots back on…



Taking the iOS WordPress app for a spin

This is basically just a quick test to see if I can make the fancy photo display on my theme work from the WordPress iOS app.


Resolved: time to move my blog

For the third time this year, I’m unable to access my blog because of a problem with my web host.

Time’s up. I’ve blocked out a section on time in my diary for next week to finally move One Man & His Blog to a different web host. After that, I’ll look at the WordPress migration.

And I’m publishing this here, because I can’t get to OM&HB to publish it there…


Spring: sprung

Today, the sun was shining, the trees were opening, and children (including my daughter) were playing in the park.

Spring is - finally - here.


Finally got a decent coffee in NYC


One evening in New York City

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I’m in New York again, doing some training. It’s another 48 hour quick jaunt - so this evening was my only proper evening in the city. I grabbed my camera, and took a more scenic walk back to my hotel.

God, this is a lovely city…


Hazel’s getting the hang of this coffee grinding malarkey…


Views from the Adur Ferry Bridge

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Two mornings a week, I walk over the Adur Ferry Bridge to take my little girl to nursery. And then, in the late afternoon, I do the same again.

Sometimes the views are just stunning. Here’s my favourite five images from the walk this month…


IKEA does cosplay

[youtube www.youtube.com/watch

IKEA does cosplay. The mainstreaming of geek culture continues…


Spring commute

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A series of images I grabbed on my commute to London last Wednesday - the first day that really, really felt like spring might be here.


High Tide

High tide on the Adur from Emerald Quay


Stormy weather…


Hazel’s breakfast (first course) #fruit #food #breakfast


Sunrise over the Adur - #sunrise #river


Yum. #burger #newyork #fries #latergram


Afternoon coffee at @trufflesbakeryltd at Shoreham Airport