The Daddy Long Legs

Also known as the Crane Fly Alot of people think these are 'the most poisonous' creature in the world, when in actual fact the have no venom or poison at all. They do seem to be good at creating terror - where a few times I've heard screams of "arghhh get it out of here !!" as one is flying around someones head.. Taken with a Canon 50d, 3 AF macro extension tubes, 50mm f1.8, Macro ring flash light. F7.1 1/4 second exposure ISO 200

A visitor to the concrete jungle..

Woke up to such a lovely sunny day today I decided that I would go out the garden and see what was there to photograph in macro, at first I just found the usual ants/spiders/woodlouse etc, then I moved an old jerry can noticed this little fella doing his best to stay still in the hope I wouldn't see him..

Carefully picking him up I positioned him onto a suitable surface and he amazingly stayed still while I took a few shots :)





And also one of the first spiders to set up home out the garden



Considering that my entire garden is concrete/asphalt its amazing just what kind of critters you can find there.. Hoping the weather warms up now so that more critters come out for more photoshoots :p

Looking at the world a little closer

Back to my blog after another extended break... 5 months of being ill/injured certainly takes it out of you as far as creativity is concerned, but now I'm back on it with some new stuff :D

I recently bought myself some extension tubes for my camera so I could do some proper macro shots, I find macro photography amazing, the details you don't see in things you see every day is quite an eye opener !

A woodlouse (Porcellio scaber)



Giant House Spider (Tegenaria duellica)

Green Bottle Fly (Phaenicia sericata)

 Moment of ignition of a match head

These were my first few days of using the tubes so its still a learning curve , I'm awaiting my new ring light to arrive so that I can use a lower ISO and faster shutter speed in the hope that the quality of the pics improves :D

An assortment of pics

from the last few months..

WRC comes to town

This weekend the World Rally Championship came to town, so of course I had to grab the camera and go see if i could take pics of my passion.. unfortunately high winds, torrential downpours, huge crowds and the fact the only stages I could get to see were the night stages - meant that pic taking opertunities were slim to none :(

I did manage a few however...

mist fail

Fireworks night.. ARGHHH!!! I was hoping to get some good shots of the firework show at Caerphilly Castle, got there nice n early so i could get a good spot.. set up the camera and took a few test shots - sorted. It was bloody cold tho - quite near 2'c and the hour or so wait until they started felt long, anyway - 7pm hit and the countdown to the fireworks 5-4-3-2-1 wooooo , everyone moved forward to get a better view and this is where it all went wrong - it seems the body heat from all those people was enough to make the camera lens fog up to the point of it being impossible to shoot , i tried my best but only managed to get a few shots..








think i'm gona invest in some anti-fog stuff for my lenses for future winter shoots:)

Halloween

Just a quicky with a few edits from a Halloween party I went to over the weekend..






SL + RL = very good... and getting better :P

The day of the epic fail

4am wake up call by the " there's no way you're fucking sleeping thru this " alarm on my phone.. slammed a pint mug of tea down my throat and several cigs until I was awake enough to grab my camera and stuff needed for the London rolling road trip this was going to be an epic day.. JC's Toyota Supra ( one of the Nightwalker team ) had spent alot of money and time making what could be a 800bhp monster streeto/drift car and I was to trailer it to the rolling road in Surrey..

It was 0'c outside so heaters at full blast we made our way at 6am in an attempt to beat the traffic and get the car off the ramps before the tuning specialist arrived

We stopped at the services about half way there for a bite to eat and a quick rest..



A quick check over the straps etc to make sure everything was still attached and off we went for the final leg of the journey.

Finally arriving at just before 10am we got the car off the trailer and started to get her ready.. turned the key - nothing, no life in this car.. looked at the fuel pressure and it was zero, it needed to be at least 3 bar pressure so bad wiring was diagnosed and repaired and fuel finally flowing to the rail.. then this happened



One of the Banjo bolts that feeds the turbo was leaking badly and while we had been trying to start the car - decided to piss the oil all over the floor. A quick change of bolt and 10 minutes later there was no more leaks :D but STILL it would not start , now the hunt began to find out why ( which would take almost 6 hours to discover! )
Eventually it was discovered that the injectors had been wired into the coilpack loom and vice versa , the problem with this is the injector loom goes thru a resistor pack and lowers the voltage - which when fed to coilpacks makes the voltage too low to create a spark which means car refusing to start. At this point i'm in the van trying to warm up and suddenly hear the car burst into life - crazy time ! it lives !! so now all hands on deck to get it to the rolling road to get a base map on it ready for tuning, and this is where it all went bad really quickly...

Laptop plugged in to install the base map


The car on the rolling road


It will suck you in if you get too close to this fan
L]

THE only arty pic I took all day due to being freezing cold and busy helping to fix the car...


After a few rev range runs to get the base fueling he gave the throttle a poke and just as the turbo started spooling up - something went wrong , backfire and spluttering and we noticed a 'mist' around the engine bay - but by now we were all tired and cold and frustrated from the whole day and after a very brief look about the engine bay concluded that it was fuel being forced past the injectors.. oh how fucking wrong we were!! another short dyno run and we noticed the turbos 'cold side' wobbling about!! one immediate shut down of everything and we discovered this

]



Moment of failure


thats one brand new Holset HX40 turbo less than one hours use , custom made , and very expensive, now rendered useless ( see jagged edges of the blades ) by a clip (2nd pic) coming undone on the back of the housing and being forced off by the boost.. so that was it , all of the day wasted , done , finished and sorta wasted.

The verdict was "fuck it lets get her on the trailer and go home" and in record time we were back on the road homeward bound, but no ! the problems didn't end there - about 70 miles from home some woman was along side us hanging out the window of the van shouting something about the back of the van, pulling over hoping it wasn't anything to do with the Supra we discovered this



DAMMIT , we got a blowout on the trailer and don't have a spare.. so the plan now was to take the back tyre off and move it to the front so we could at least get home albeit slowly then double disater !



The fucking jack broke !! so now we have a broken tyre, and a broken jack holding the trailer in the air with no way to get either off and we're stuck in a dark lane in the middle of fuck-knows-where and JC's phone battery dead and mine unable to ring the AA to come tow us.. So right about now I've gone 'fuck it' and got back in the van drove the damn van and trailer off the jack - sod the damage and proceeded to drive very slowly on 3 wheels to the next services which was about 14 miles away.

We finally arrive in the services where JC rings the AA - we're in luck ! a guy is coming back from london with a flatbed truck ( exactly what we needed ) and would be there within the hour so , a nice big juicy burger and drink later the nice nice man in a big yellow van arrives :D



With the trailer loaded we head home.. I finally got to my house just after 4 am - 24 hours straight of driving or fixing cars I was completed and utterly knackered.. :/

Riding the edge..

Well I woke up this morning and felt really edgy, more than usual - I was fidgeting all over the place and generally feeling shite so I decided to go to one of the few places that makes me calm again - the beach, something about being next to the sea relaxes me.. I stop fidgeting and stressing, I even have a good nights sleep after being there!

As usual Lady Canon came with me but today was more about chilling the fuck out so only 1 pic today... :P

There is no spoon....

I haven't really got alot to say today.. just one of my quiet days where I stare into space - which makes a change from my mind running at the usual 1000mph sending me 100 thoughts a minute none of which make any sense, probably the calm before the (mind) storm :/

some more pics :)