Custom PC Build

Building my own PC, who would have thought! With my Lenovo ideacentre not pulling its weight anymore and not finding any prebuilds that had everything I wanted kind of forced me down this route. I’m not averse to a challenge and usually if someone says ‘ I bet you..’ then it just has to be done. That is how I found myself staring into the black depths of Hell or a terrifying and very expensive mistake!

The reasons behind a new computer land solely on buying a new camera, a Nikon Z7 who’s file sizes my Lenovo just couldn’t handle and if your taking the photos you at least want to see them and it just wasn’t happening. In my previous post there is a list of everything I bought, this is how I built it.

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Unboxing was so traumatic as I have never even seen the inside of a computer before, starting with the motherboard and you dont want static when your touching this or its toast. How interesting, all of the connection points and stuff, I took a really hard look at it and in its own way it is a thing of beauty. I chose AMD Ryzen 7 for my CPU and that was a trauma to fit, dont touch the pins, fit it in the right way or else, find the triangles, which are SO small you need a magnifying glass to see! Next i fitted the Corsair SSD and there were NO additional screws in the box, the case anywhere, thank heavens for computer geeks who live near by. The Ryzen & comes with an RGB cooling fan so that went on next which was so fiddly trying to get the arms locked in place without pulling anything off or bumping anything but this was my first achievement, go me! The second was getting the motherboard into the case.

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Several YouTube videos later, a replacement part and several days I managed the 16GB memory, which was 2 x 8GB Corsair DDR4 memory, which was a snap to fit, as long as they are in the correct slots! Cooling was something I had to research as the kids always say their computers are running hot when they game and I wanted to avoid this if I could so I chose Corsairs Elite performance triple fan pack and put two on the front and one above the CPU, with an integrated fan at the back of the case, one on the CPU, two on the Graphics card and one on the power supply, I think there is enough. I then fitted the Nvidea Geforce RTX3050 graphics card, the hardest part to that was screwing the plate back in at the side, three hands needed! Seagate Barracuda HDD and a 750W MSI power supply went in, I turned it on and ….. nothing. Say what! Confusion, I’m sat there scratching my head wondering and hoping i’d not just blown £1.500 when my daughter came in and saw me and my puzzled face, SHE was the one to figure out that just because its turned on at the back doesn’t mean you don’t have to turn it on in the front too! BINGO, it worked!!!! Definitely a sweaty palms moment and it is soooo pretty.

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I had a moment as I couldn’t get the PC to recognise the monitor but hey kids don’t know everything, my son had plugged it into the wrong port and when plugged in properly opened up the Bios, a scary place if you get it wrong, I then tried to install Windows 11. So let me tell you a story, when purchasing your PC operating system bare in mind whether you want to install it from a CD or as a download, I bought a CD! It has no CD player! Off to buy a 32GB memory stick so I can use a kids PC to download it and put it on my computer. Windows 11 is brand new, so new that my computer kept telling me that it was not compatible, pull hair out in big clumps, so Windows 10 it had to be which I downloaded off the internet where I should have got Windows 11 from anyway. The install went so fast and after installing a few driver updates I was finally able to install Windows 11 and Adobe Cloud and Lightroom and PhotoShop and the photos that had caused the trauma in the first place! Opening LR was such a SHOCK, seconds instead of minutes, have you seen the Sky advert for internet with the minions, they open the laptop and all of a sudden are airborne because of the speed? That was me!

Apart from one or two hiccups I now have a lovely new computer, I’m not too sure about the monitor as I’m used to the glass screen on my Lenovo, I may add it as a second monitor just to check picture quality though I have been reassured I will get used to it, there are several persons who would gladly take the monitor off my hands if I don’t. I purchased a wifi keyboard and mouse too, the keyboard is fine but the mouse is rubbish so I will once again head over to Amazon and see what I can find/afford, I’m not paying stupid money if I can help it.

So that’s it, I’ve built my own computer and it works! GO ME!

My website dilemma

I’ve never been sure if i should have a website dedicated to showing off my photography, i use flickr and Viewbug to show some of my work but i don’t pay, by choice, for the privilege. In fact i object strenuously to having to pay for a website because i dont think i actually use them to their best advantage. I think my money is used in better ways, like for food, than hosting a website i forget to post on. I have had several attempts at building a website on different platforms, wordpress, wix but i never can make my mind up how they are supposed to look, which coloured background is the best, which font and dont get me started on Google Analytics! How do you use it?

Poppies

My attempt on Wix was, i think, my best effort to date but i had to pay for the website and the domain name, the first year was cheep, the second year was not, i designed the thing and then forgot to post anything on it, so it went. WordPress is free but you need to pay for a domain name, I’ve made a couple of different websites but they got forgotten because of ‘life’. It makes me wonder, do i really need my own website, well actually i do and i need to get it seen by people and shared about. What’s the difference this time you may ask, well two things really, the first is that i have more time to myself now, my Mum passed away in December last year and having nursed her through cancer i now have so much time on my hands, the second is, I’ve found i have access to a FREE website builder, yes FREE and it’s the bees knees!

New Brighton Lighthouse

I use Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom and have a photography subscription which allows myself and my aspiring artist daughter use of lots of different Adobe programs for our art. In the package is Adobe Portfolio, its free and you can get a domain name through namecheap where i managed to get a .com domain name for something silly like £8 a year. Its a lovely website builder, easy to use but its quite limited which is actually a good thing for me, i dont get bogged down in trying to decide which looks best for my site. I am building it slowly, i have to decide which photos are good enough to be shown and that is hard! I also find it difficult with all of the metadata, keywords, long keywords etc its so time consuming but i am making myself do it this time.

This amazing FREE website is www.spikeymousephotography.com and i am really quite proud of my efforts so far. If you would be so kind as to go and look through it yourself and leave a comment and share i would be very grateful, thank you. My answer then is a resounding YES i need a website, just as long as its FREE!

seascape; sunset over hilbre island from the spartina grass mid way between west kirby and red rocks

Posting in the form of a story.

Do you story tell? It really is something you should think about. Is your story from the heart and interesting, will it strike a cord in other peoples heart or lives?

But what will your story be about?

I have an interest in photography, have had ever since I went to art college. I had one of those tutors that was kind of a hippy I guess you would call him, very into the beautiful young students but happy to help everyone and share his knowledge.

I learnt my photography on a Pentax K1000 and Ilford film and darkroom techniques from wonderful technicians. My first camera was a Zenith TTL which was so heavy and robust you could drop it from a height and it would still work.

However I was never ‘good enough’ at the technical side so I kept my photography as a hobby which eventually died a death. It wasn’t until I borrowed a Canon D60 from a friend that I finally ‘got back into’ my hobby some 20 odd years later. And now here I am wondering what the hook is going to be for my new photography blog.

Colour splash Effect in Photoshop CC

I had the idea for an image that was nagging me, so on Saturday while it was lovely and sunny i dragged Chris out to Willaston to go and photograph the old train station. I ended up with 70 odd images hoping one would be ‘the one’. Today, after i pried my laptop from my daughters pre-teen fingers, i decided to tackle my idea. Then realised i didn’t have any idea how to go about it. I visited my favorite ‘how to’ blog (thanks Russel Ray) but couldn’t find what i wanted there so ventured onto youtube and found it first time! http://youtu.be/AvKXaCXZKWs flyingicestudios. So after a try or three i finally managed to figure it out and after three hours managed to come up with this image.

This is how it started life.

Which one do you favour? I like both but am particularly please with the black and white one and with myself for achieving it!

Autumn appeared in some unexpected places but nowhere nice to photograph

So we have had the longest day and it is getting darker earlier as we head into winter. Did i get my ultimate autumnal photograph? Well in a word NO! I have looked and looked, there have been some beautiful trees here on the Wirral but they were in totally the wrong places. I would drive along the road and see lovely colour, yellow, gold, brown, red but at the side of a boring road or in someones front garden where it made an uninspiring image. So i will have to be content with the images i have managed to get and wait 12 months for next autumn. I gave it a good shot and tried different places and these are what i think are my best.

 

 

 

 

There are others i could choose but i like these, especially the leaves. I am now going to turn my camera lens towards Winter images, so bring on the cold, frosty mornings, oh yes and the snow!

What makes an image?

A good question. Does it mean, what is in the image, who took it, what did they take the image with, how did they process the image or how did they ‘see’ the image?

My secret, ‘shhh’ is that i ‘see’ the image i want to create, only in my head. I think it stems from art college and being told to ‘see’ the image i wanted to either draw or paint. So this means i have to travel around the Wirral, where i live, trying to ‘find’ my image. Once it is ‘found’ i then set about recreating the image from my mind and i may do this by ‘bracketing’ my exposures and using photomatix to merge the images or waiting for the ‘right’ kind of weather conditions. There may be a bit of post production using photoshop, or not. I use a Nikon D3100, so i manually bracket the exposures, occasionally i may get a good image with my phone camera, they do go through photoshop as they are generally either over or under exposed.

I feel sometimes that unless you are a ‘name’ then it doesn’t matter how good your images are and its a kind of snobbery, if you haven’t had the exposure and your name isn’t known then no one will take a chance and say ‘ well hey, actually this image is pretty good!’ This is a shame as there are plenty of unknown’s out there waiting to make their ‘name,’ its such a slow process.

Here are two images of the same lighthouse, can you tell which is the bracketed image and which not?

I want to be able to recreate the image my eye see’s rather than just a flat replica of what is in front of me, so i have been experimenting with what makes an image and i have decided that i ‘like’ the end result of ‘bracketing’ exposure’s and combining the images. The images seem more alive, they have more depth, so for me, at the moment, what makes an image? is best answered as ‘being able to see the image, using exposure bracketing and then combining the images together with photomatix and a little bit of photoshop too.’  It’s a bit more complicated than just point and shoot but i think it is so worth my while. I just wish people would buy my work!

If you are interested in bracketing exposures and how it works, this is a great article.                       http://www.thephotoargus.com/101/how-to-use-bracketing-in-your-photography/

An experiment with ISO

Today the house is quiet, (apart from the plumber as we are having a new bathroom installed) so i decided to have an experiment with the ISO settings on my camera. I have an image in my mind that i am working towards, i think i need more experience behind the camera before it will come out, please keep in mind i have only been using a digital camera for the past 10 months, so i have been taking bracketed photos of my hearth at different ISO to see what would happen. (I do know, i just want to SEE it)
So for those in the know, skip this part or add your own comments. What is ISO? Not to make me look stupid i went to http://www.geek.com/digital-camera-buyers-guide/iso/ and asked them. Their reply was ‘Simply put, ISO is the measurement of a camera’s sensitivity to light. The higher the ISO number the more sensitive the sensor is. A higher ISO number means that a camera will be able to shoot images in conditions with less light. ‘ But we know that a high ISO means noise BUT can that noise be useful in a photograph or not? Below i have five photos of my hearth each bracketed to a correct exposure, -2, +2 and using a different ISO setting. I then loaded them into photomatix and used the tone mapping and creative button.

This image is at 100ISO

 

 

 

 

 

 

This image is at 200ISO

 

 

 

 

 

 

This image is at 400ISO

 

 

 

 

 

 

This image is at 800ISO

 

 

 

 

 

 

and this image is at 1600ISO

 

 

 

 

 

 

The images become more and more ‘noisy’ especially in the blacks, so i guess that is why we always use 100ISO if possible!

I used tonemapping as i want to get as close to the image that our eye see’s as possible, this is why i am experimenting, i want to be able to produce HDR images that look like the real deal, not something thats been tinkered with in photoshop. I think i am getting there, i know that at some point i will need to update my camera for one that automatically brackets the exposures as you do get movement when you do it manually. But for know i am content to experiment and hone my skill with what i have.

Finding the flavors of Autumn

Sunday and Chris and I are off driving around Wirral on a lovely sunny day, we wanted to find the flavors of Autumn, the colour, the crispness, the floaty leaves, the beautiful reflections. Cough cough, can someone tell the trees in Wirral its time!
We went to Rabymere, its owned by the Angling Society people so you cant walk around it and anyway the trees were still green, we went to Dibbinsdale Nature Reserve, green trees, we went to Portsunlight in Bromborough, better but not great, we went to Caldy (mega rich big houses, i could tell you its where my Dad grew up but the wrong impression would be gained. He did grow up there but was the gardeners son 😉 ) We went to Arrowe Park which was also ok. BUT not what i wanted. Am i too early for autumnal colour? Will it happen or is it going to be a ‘damp squib’, come on trees put on your Autumnal shades, Canada and America will not outdo us! anyway i can’t afford to go there just now. I think i will leave it a little longer and try again, you never know it may be we are just having a late Autumn.
If that is so, one thing, why are the trees alongside the roads changing colour? Pollution?

Night photography?

Last night i got ‘itchy feet!’

I wondered how i would manage taking photos at night, in the dark. So, as Chris (my husband is @clawfish) was at work and i had said i would pick him up at 9pm, i decided to wander down to West Kirby early and while waiting go and take a few photos, in the dark!

I had spotted that the Wro restaurant had plenty of people in, so decided to go there first. I had an idea of what i wanted to accomplish so set up my camera on the tripod across from the restaurant. I figured that if i started with a 3 second exposure and work from there, bracketing the shots, then i would surely have something to work with as i had decided i wanted to have an HDR effect for this picture. So just as i am setting the shot dont a gaggle of giggling women just have to walk in, around, under and over my view point. Sorry’s all around as they click clicked across the road and finally i can take the shot. I wanted car lights in too so i waited, didnt have long, and took the shot. (There is the cereal killer thing again) I have processed the pictures now and have come out with a b/w and a colour HDR picture.

I then wandered down to Marine Lake as i had an idea for the promenade that i wanted to see, if, it would work.  As i walked down to the sea, well river Dee, i began to realise just how dark  it actually was. Im not one to get spooked easily but when i heard multiple young voices i began to wonder if i was doing the right thing, going into a dark place with my camera equipment, on my own.  But it was a group of supervised kids walking through West Kirby, once through the gaggle of gossiping kids i then walked to the water and immediately what comes to mind? Sharks and wasnt it a good job they dont come out on to the land but the image of jaws jumping out of the water and snatching me off the walk way wouldnt go and i wasnt anywhere near the water, such is my imagination.

I set up to take some timed exposure shots of the promenade down towards the sailing club on the water side of the lake, i started with a 3 second exposure and ended with a 30 second exposure, i bracketed the exposures and after processing i have ended up with these.

As it was really dark i found it quit difficult to focus the shots and processing them i know i have ended up with quite a lot of noise, that is something i need to figure out how to clean up but overall i feel pleased with what i have accomplished and i am definitely going to  be going out in the dark again, though next time i may just take Chris!

Escaping the mad house

I had an urge to escape the mad house i call home, i craved the peace and quiet of my own company, a letting go of the responsibility of  being a wife, mother, carer. So i grabbed my camera and my new tripod, the other one fell to pieces after only a few months. Side line, i bought a Manfrotto tripod which is pretty neat. And i headed down to Gilroy Rd nature reserve.

Over the last 12 months or so i have been photographing specific scenes there, a gate which i find fascinating, a stand of trees, the pond, all at different times of the year and using varying techniques.  The sun was shining and it was a lovely day, not overly hot or cold either, the sky was a deep blue and the clouds interesting shapes, how i was looking forward to solitude and my own company. First up was the gate, i had decided to try a multiple exposure HDR  technique as i was pretty sure it would look really great and just as i am setting up for the shot, well lets just say all of the dogs on my side of the Wirral decided to take their owners for a walk. I HATE taking photos when people are watching me, i feel like my privacy is being violated, so i waited and taking my time took the shot, sounds like a cereal killer 😉

I dont know about anyone else but when i am in photographer mode i look at things in a different way, all of a sudden even the smallest of things took on a different view and i was quickly taking  photos of anything that took my eye. I wandered down paths and around bends stopping at interesting views and looking at the wildlife flashing past too fast for me to photograph. I was so enjoying the peace and tranquility that i was very startled when a young lad walked around the bend in the path carrying his fishing gear, nearly tripping over me as i am kneeling down, butt up, trying to focus my camera. I dont know who was more embarrassed, me or him! It turns out a dozen lads had decided that the day was too good to waste on computer games and thought it a good idea to fish the pond, even though they know, im sure, that the pond is a no fishing pond. Still, they were not disturbing anyone other than the fish and i dont think they were all that successful anyway.

Several wonderful hours later i wandered back home to my responsibilities again, i felt so much better after my ME time and i knew i had several good shots, i only had to pries my laptop from a childs hot sweaty hands and i could transfer them off my memory card and ooh and ahh over the images.   I decided to use photomatix to merge the images and photoshop to tweak them, its an ongoing thing but i am very happy with what i got out of the afternoon. Below is a sample of my work, there are other images on my flickr page http://www.flickr.com/photos/klawrenceuk/ if you want to see them through the year, I hope you enjoy them, if you do, or not, please leave a comment.