Torwood Castle

December 29, 2016

Finally a break in the storm allowed me to get out for a few photographs of Torwood Castle after Christmas. The Castle is a ruin near the village of Torwood in the Falkirk Council area of central Scotland. It has been estimated as being built around 1566 for Sir Alexander Forrester (so the local stories of Robert The Bruce staying there before the battle of Bannockburn are slightly off by about 200 years). The castle is a Scottish Baronial style castle.

The castle is undergoing a slow restoration, now under the auspices of the Torwood Castle Trust, but there is not much evidence of this going on.

Christmas Market

December 24, 2016

Seeing as it's Christmas I thought I would post a selection of photographs that I shot at the Christmas Market at Edinburgh's Princess Street. I hope everyone reading has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Here's hoping for a prosperous 2017.

Belated Canadian Thanksgiving

October 20, 2016

Thanksgiving Day (Canada) occurs on the second Monday of October, our M.Sc. class celebration was a little belated but this didn't stop the celebration going ahead on the 16th of October instead.

I took a few candid photographs during the evening and these are the shots that are safe for public consumption. I'll apologise here for the shocking standard of these photographs but to be fair there was a lot of whisky and wine going around (but at least I didn't take part in the 'buck fast tasting').

It was a nice evening to mix with the new class as well as catching up with my own class from the M.Sc. course. It's great to hear where my fellow classmates are now working and their new experiences at the forefront of GIS.

Snapseed update

July 22, 2016

Snapseed recently updated to version 2.7 on the iPhone. It is generally my 'go to' application for quickly adding some pop to photographs on the iPhone. It has a nice clean minimalist interface thats intuitive and can easily share photographs to other applications on the phone (think Instagram). The update came with a really nice new feature though, it has added a section called "Insights".

The insights feature provides short tutorials on how to add different effects using the application. It also has photographer interviews, which are really good for finding out about how they got into the business. The insights feature is a nice addition if you need some inspiration.

The photograph I have added shows the "Detailed Black and White" insight, added onto a photograph I recently took of Edinburgh Castle. It's a bit more 'effect' than I would apply, depending on my mood of course.

Dissertation writing up...

July 9, 2016

The last time I had to 'write up' a large body of work I had a job in the university library. Actually I had about four jobs in the library, which basically funded my beer, accommodation, and cheesy pasta that I apparently lived on. The jobs I had in the library were amazing, they were never terribly busy and I was always sat at a computer. This allowed me to type up my work, think about my work and run downstairs to the journals if I needed to look something up. Of course now I can find any journal online... Of course, I also served people when it was required ;-)

Still, I miss having those jobs right now as I have been finding writing up more difficult this time, hence being up since 4am (which is when it gets light) having slept very little last night. This dissertation come in two parts, a scientific paper and a technical report. Thankfully the paper section should be finished off for review today and i can start finishing off the technical section next week.

It has been interesting getting back into a subject that has always interested me (Glacial Lake Outburst Flood's) and it has been great applying new skills learned during the M.Sc. to that subject. My results have been interesting, lots of histograms and images of glaciers with polygons around their pro-glacial lakes! :-)

Well, it's almost 6am and the rain is steadily falling. Time for some tea I think.