What a Suprise!

Guess what? Yep, this site is looking very unloved. What a hell of a surprise that is!
To be fair I have actually typed out three posts, but just haven't posted them here, which I guess is actually worse than not posting at all!

Having been caught up these last few weeks with a new lady friend, a death in the family and expected funeral (not a lot of fun...) a trip to Krakow, plus new camera gear to play with I haven't really spent a lot of time online, let alone time to post here. Such is life, and considering no one reads this page anyway I'm not to guilty about it. Still, that's not an excuse, hence this post tonight.

So the trip to Krakow went very well. Still have to post the photos online, but I managed to get some shots I'm fairly pleased with. Aside from that fact, I was also able to explore a new European city and sample the local foods, and more importantly - VODKA'S!! One of the new people I met for this trip had been there before, so we had to try the Mandarin one she remembered. A pleasant little tipple with a fiery afterburn. Definitely not one for the kids!
Some of the highlights include wandering through the city and its amazing architectural buildings, exploring the quarry where Schindler's list was filmed (with many parts of the set still onsite - check the photos on Flickr!) spending time with random strangers who become interesting friends, doing a little bit of urban exploring on some local building/scaffolding. Would gladly go back for more time there, as three days just wasn't long enough to get out to the concentration camps or the salt mine. Guess theres always next time though, and there is word of a future road trip through Europe doing various Urbex activities!

As mentioned, I have spent a bit of time playing with my camera recently, and have come up with some new changes in the only way I know how - hacking and modding!
Having recently bought a 50mm 1.8 prime lens I have been itching to try the bokeh effect, so devised a way of holding round cardboard discs on the front of the lens and its come out with surprisingly OK results.
I also saw at one of my cheap online retailers some ring LED lights. Wondering what they were Google informed me that they are used for car modders who stick them on their cars for giving them "eyes". All I could see was a useful and cheap ringlight, so I bought a couple to try out. I have also been lucky enough to pick up a cheap lens hood from ebay which will be very suitable to mounting the ring light into, so look forward to that exciting future post with photos!