Lazy Robot

Took a few snaps between work and the train station today, just because. Trying out some settings. WRVS Candle House from Aire Street 47 Aire Street Princes Exchange steps Princes Exchange Escalators

Because sometimes life needs to slow down.

Valley of the Giants , a photo by craigand on Flickr. Ever decreasing pylons at sunset as viewed from the Woodhead just outside Tintwhistle. A common view for those travelling toward Manchester from the north of Sheffield, and one I've been meaning to stop and photograph for a very long time. Tonight the conditions were just right, I had my camera with me, and I had chance to stop. So I did.

I recently uploaded some holiday snaps to Facebook for everyone to have a look at, and noticed something a bit amiss. I made sure to check the "High quality" checkbox. I made sure I exported the image at a size suitable for Facebook without it having to be resized. And yet the amount of noise added by Facebook's "high quality" image algorithms to produce exactly the same image is mind-boggling. This is the original, weighing in at 102KB: And this is the one Facebook delivers to viewers, weighing in at 40KB: Can you tell the difference? Even when zoomed in? No? Well, I can, because I'm a persnickety perfectionist. And so I did an experiment. Taking each image, overlaying one on top of the other and using a "difference" filter, I produced an image detailing the places where the images differ. Quite a lot of noise considering it's supposed to be delivering high quality images. But wait, there's more. If I use the Levels slider...

The sun was out for the first time in living memory, so I went for a short walk up the Wortley road off the A61. The sky was very blue, and the grass was very green. The light was spectacular, the colours of the mid-day sun with the saturation of the golden hour. See the full set in the Road to Wortley gallery.

Not sure what's going on with the weather tonight, but it's pretty spectacular. Check this out.

We have been sprucing up the old photography skills of late with Practical Photography's Camera School series. I figure that everyone can use a bit of back-to-basics now and again to blow off the cobwebs to think about the craft more clearly. So to this end we headed up to Burbage this fine, blustery day to see about module 1 of Camera School; Landscapes. See the full set at the Burbage Edge gallery.