High Force

Children playing in the sun at High Force waterfall, North Yorkshire.

Angus

A well cared-for angus yearling shelters from the cold winter in Wallhouses, Northumbria. If you open it full-size you can even see a tear in its eye. Aw.

The Conspiracy

The other cows would laugh and call him names.

War Memorial

Newcastle upon Tyne

Cemetery, Blyth

Newcastle

Facebook’s free ride is finally over

As Facebook announce plans to filter out unpaid promotional posts, small business owners are left wondering how on earth they’re going to generate free traffic in the future.

Paddy Freemans

Wedding Day

Barcelona

Heathrow Terminal 5

Marsden in Black & White

Google's impressive grasp of penis euphemisms (NSFW)

I was so impressed with Google’s grasp of my crude and somewhat gruesome search query, that it prompted me to write a blog post about it… which is saying something, as it's been more than a year since I found time to write anything worth reading!

This afternoon, during a brief break away from my client work, I was pondering the plight of that poor chap who had his manhood amputated (allegedly) by some local gypsies in Mordor Middlesbrough after he slept with one of their girlfriends.

So I Googled it.

St. Mary's Lighthouse

Cullercoats

After yesterday's disappointment, I decided to try again this morning, this time in Cullercoats. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't on my side, and the sky was flat and grey, so no light at all. This black and white image was the best I could muster under the circumstances.

South Shields

This morning was my first trip out with the camera in months, due to a busy work life and a lack of energy for early summer mornings. I was very rusty, and it shows. These were the only three images I managed to rescue.

EXIF: 50mm : f/1.8 : 24secs : Canon EOS 5D Mark II : Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50mm f/1.4 : Lee 1.2 ND : Lee Big Stopper

 

I'd picked an uninspiring spot along the South Shields coastline (I won't be going back), so I opted for some close-ups of the rocks instead. This kind of thing irritates me, as it gives no sense of place, but then I guess it's better than coming home empty-handed!

EXIF: 50mm : f/1.8 : 15secs : Canon EOS 5D Mark II : Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50mm f/1.4 : Lee 0.9 ND Soft Grad : Lee 1.2 ND : Lee Big Stopper

 

There's something I find extremely fascinating about wide-aperture long exposure, that I'd like to explore more. Long exposures are usually shot at very narrow aperture for maximum depth-of-field, and to increase the amount of time the shutter can be held open.

EXIF: 50mm : f/1.8 : 25secs : Canon EOS 5D Mark II : Carl Zeiss Planar T* 50mm f/1.4 : Lee 0.9 ND Soft Grad : Lee 1.2 ND : Lee Big Stopper

 

I've been experimenting with extreme neutral density (11-stops) to get a reasonably long exposure time, yet with a very narrow depth-of-field, which leads to some interesting and unusual shots. I just need to get them looking good now :)

Click on any of the photos to see them full-size against black, and please do leave a comment below if you like the photos.

50 Problems in 50 Days

Maybe I'm late to the party, I'm not sure, but I just stumbled across this and wanted to share it. 50 Problems in 50 Days is the brainchild of Peter Smart (by name and by nature) who is "on an adventure to explore the limits of design's ability to solve social problems, big and small".

Ad-overkill ruins ITV player UX

I was delighted to see Econsultancy pulling up the ITV Player for its overuse of frankly irrelevant and inappropriate pre-roll advertising. In this day and age, I would expect an organisation of the size and heritage of ITV to have a far better grasp of both technology and user experience, but it seems that the need to drive advertising revenues has overshadowed the fundamentals of providing an engaging experience for second-screen audiences.

Top 5 Trends Influencing UX in 2012

An interesting question about the state of UX in 2012 was raised on Quora last weekend, one that I actually found quite difficult to answer, given that there are so many cool things rocking the UX world at the moment.

Whether or not my top five influences will be the top five or not remains to be seen, but these are certainly five trends and movements that will have a massive impact on UX over the next 12 months and onwards. This post expands on my answer on Quora, which was written at about 11pm on a sunday night, and so probably wasn't an insightful read.