Busy few days

Had a busy few days in the past week.

 From a photographic point of view last Wednesday went with some friends to Banham Zoo in Norfolk. "Wildlife" is one of my least favourite subjects as I feel no connection at all with the animals. I have never taken an interest and therefore have little awareness of their behaviour patterns making getting the great photograph pure chance even in captive conditions. Banham Zoo is a great believer in heavy wire mesh, with one or two exceptions, making even getting a photograph difficult. Having said that it was a good day out and I did manage to get a handful of passable images and resolving the problems of the cages and the environment made me more aware of the workings of the camera.

Friday I went to London where Joe McNally from Kelby Training was holding an all day seminar on 'Location Lighting Techniques'. A really great day and I learnt a lot. Currently I have a Speedlite 580EX flash that I have only ever used on camera. I had some awareness of the value of bouncing the flash but totally lost on how, or why, it interacted with the camera.  At least now I have the information to make some progress in using it, particularly off camera. I am not sure that I would ever be tempted into the world of stands and multi-units with the vast range of diffusers but who knows! Certainly the whole range of possibilities was demonstrated. Perhaps the key lesson that I came away with was 'try the set up out' starting simple and moving in incremental steps to the more complex and "stick with it". Don't become discouraged. Joe McNally's strength is tenacity (his words not mine).

From a Course point of viewI used the Banham visit to work up my knowledge and understanding of colours. I hope to post my colour wheel in the next few days (seems to have taken for ever) and follow up with the next exercises in a reasonable period of time.

Had fun with my printer. It suddenly decided to start printing an unusual range of colours that were nothing like the screen. I worked out that it was not printing photo black at all. The cartridge was shown as very low but not empty. I changed the cartridge and tried again- no difference! I have only had the printer a couple of months so I thought long and hard and came up with the idea of a nozzle check (the blindingly obvious!). Found the manual on line (oh for the days that the manual came with the printer) and worked out how to do the check. Bingo - photo black was not printing. Something called a power clean carried out and success. Lesson - start from the simple (seemed to have heard that somewhere before).