David Woof

We nipped across to Chessington Zoo for an hour this afternoon. A very cold visit, but got one or two nice shots…

Well, most of the Christmas celebrations are now over, so the time is nigh to post photos from over the holiday season…

We start on Christmas Eve with a walk down into Lower Morden to look at the lights adorning all the houses down there - the road in question makes a huge community effort, and collects loads of money for charity through their efforts each year.

Christmas day, we opened some presents at home in the morning, then in the afternoon, went across to my sisters for Christmas dinner, and more presents.

Boxing day, we had Jan & Russell over in the morning for yet more presents, then everyone else over to our place, for yet another Christmas dinner in the afternoon, finishing the day with a huge family “Guitar hero - World Tour” session!

Finally, we have some shots from the next morning, when we went out with Francesca on her new bike for the first time. Click below on the photo to get to all the images….

For those interested, the lighting for all the indoor shots you see here was done with 2 or 3 (depending on location) SB800/600s on lighting stands, pointed straight up at the ceilings in the corners of the rooms, with a wide zoom setting (24mm). The ceiling bounce from multiple directions gave good lighting from any location in the room, with enough shadow from pretty much any angle to ensure things were still interesting. For example, in the following shot, two flashes were set up, one behind the subjects to the left of camera, and one behind the camera (also to the left). The wall to the right acted as a huge white reflector, providing a nice level of fill from the other two lights. The rear one also acted as a rim-light, with the main, soft light coming from the light behind the camera (which you can see in the reflection in the glass doors - sloppy framing on my part!)

If you want to read more, I used this Strobist article as a basis for my setups.

We went across to Carshalton, to the park in the centre of the village, on Sunday. As well as the usual assortment of ducks and geese to feed around the pond, this park has a huge number of extremely tame squirrels, who will come straight for you if you have any nuts (which we did!)

Top Gear live at Earls Court - the exhibition of cars at the MPH Show, and shots from the live show itself.

I went up early to take some pictures, and Louise would have joined later, except someone decided to throw themselves in front of a train on the District Line, so Louise was stranded for a couple of hours in the rain, and I had no trains running to get back to her… When public transport fails, it really scr*ws you!

We had a great day at Chessington World of Adventures today. I haven’t been for about 15 years, and Francesca was incredibly excited! Bumped into a few friends while we were there as well… Click on the image to see the shots.