Hi As well as moving back to the UK I’ve also moved my blog onto my own server.

You can find it here http://photographyinitaly.com/blog/ and from now onwards I will only be updating that site.  Please change your bookmarks and sorry for any inconvienience.

Once back in the UK I have to keep myself busy.
First gig on the list will be the resurrection of my annual week away event in March 2010.
In 2010 it’s going to be held in the Peak District near Buxton in a fabulous house on the moor.

It has thirteen bedrooms and some beautiful rooms for photography in.

I’ve already got one model booked and looking for at least 2 more. Skyy has already confirmed and having worked with her before I know she’s going to be stunning as usual.

If anyone wants more details please have a look here

We are going to be covering Wedding, Portrait, Glamour and Fine art Nude photography, software workflows using Lightroom2 plus marketing and sales – essential during periods of small growth to maximise your business potential. Real life problems faced with real life people.

UPDATE  We’ve now got 19 people promising to book for the event so I’m sure we are going to have fun.  If you are interested you need to be quick to book your bed.

I’ve also set up a facebook page here

Regular readers will know that I moved from the UK to southern Italy in December 2007.
This was a trial move to see if we liked the area to live in as much as we did when we just visited for holidays and to see if we could survive on our fairly small pot of money.
I have to say that I’ve absolutely loved my time here but mainly because of the horrors now emerging about the banking system my Sterling Shilling just doesn’t stretch far enough for us to stay here any longer. The exchange rate against the Euro is a third down on what it was when I did my sums so doing them now tells me to cut and run before my pot is empty. Sad but true.

I’ve now got to go through the nightmare of getting the cats back to the UK. Definitely not using British Airways, of course, after their last fiasco. See my archive “British Airways screw me again!”. This time I’m trying ThomsonFly from Naples to Manchester direct. I’ll keep you informed how it goes.

The cats have loved it here as well. From being not allowed out in the UK they have become outdoor cats in a big way. We had one of the Maine Coons with dark brown hair had to be shaved in the high summer to keep him cool but the silver one didn’t need it.

They even became friends with our new dog, Mishca.

Wolf’s hair soon grew back for the winter and he will be returning to the UK with his warm coat firmly on.

Just an update.  The cats travelled back to the UK with ThompsonFly on Friday the 3rd April and got back safely.  A long trip for them.  2 hours by car to Naples airport with a THREE HOUR wait there – presumably to make sure they didn’t blow up or some such security threat check – a 2.5 hour flight and then another one hour delay at Manchester airport -  presumably waiting for their bags to come around the carousel and then a one hour car journey back to their UK home.  I wonder what they are thinking now.  I know I’m missing them already!

Yesterday I did a join up of three images taken with a 25mm lens on the Nikon D3. Nothing clever in that, of course, but I had an otherwise quiet day.
I’m not sure it will look it’s best on here at this small size and I’m not sure how to upload so it’s clickable to go to another page at full size. If anyone can tell me how to do it I will.

A cold Sunday morning

I then started thinking about the 18mm lens and how some people in blogs and reviews I’ve read complain about it showing reflections from the sun. Of course it does because it’s a wide angle of view up and down as well as sidewards and so you have more chance of getting the sun in the lens than you have with a less wide lens. I don’t think the internal working of the lens is bad it’s just the angle is so good. If this pano shot had been taken with the 18mm lens the sun would have been in the shot so the flare and internal reflections would have been forced to be worse.

Unless someone can show me the same shot with a different make of lens but the same angle of view without internal flare. Any offers?

I also just re processed a shot I did ages ago using Lightroom2 – it’s shot on a D2X with the lovely 50mm f1.4 lens. I wonder just how much better it would have been on the D3.

Red Nails

Hope you like it.

I got around to taking a couple of images today using the D3 (of course) with a new 18mm f2.8 lens.
I used to own a Ziess 18mm with a Contax RTS that I took to war many years ago and loved it so I’m really chuffed to have this Nikon one now. I really like the view with the 18mm. Here are a couple of images from it.

Oliveto Citra, Italy market day

Fruit and Vegatable market, Oliveto Citra, Italy

Roman Aquaduct, Oliveto Citra, Italy

I really enjoy using this lens. Maybe there is some flare when pointing into the sun – but thank goodness as I really like it! There is a bit of chromatic aberration as well but it’s easily got rid of using Lightroom2.

I’ve just spent a couple of hours setting each of my lenses up on the D3 by fine tuning the focus.

I must add here my thanks to the Pentax Blog site rather than Nikon. I downloaded and printed out the charts from the Pentax blog site and found them really useful setting up the Nikon.
All but one of my lenses needed a bit of tweeking and not all the same way – some needed plus the other minus correction.
I’ve only taken a couple of images since the changes but they certainly made a difference on the test charts so I’m hoping for great things during serious use.
If anyone wants any further details just leave a message here and I’ll answer it ASAP and if anyone has anything to add to this again, please leave a comment and I’ll answer it when I can.
Added 26th Jan. Have just received my new 18mm f2.8 lens for the D3 so have another one to micro adjust now although not sure that an 18mm one will need the adjustment with all it’s DOF. Still, best to check.

It’s now the olive picking time in this part of Italy and the locals are all hard at work. Here’s an image I took out of my office window.

Taken on the D3 with 200m f2.8 lens and worked on in Lightroom and photoshop.

The weather here is still warm during the day but the nights have dropped cooler now.  Still much better the England though!

It’s a shame the image size has to be reduced for here as this image is really quite stunning at full size.

I’ve also been reworking some images taken about 4 years ago and a Nikon D1X using Lightroom2.  Here’s one making full use of negative clarity and the retouching brush – nice effect, I think

jaedyn

Again, shame this is only small but I think you should get the idea.

Why no posts at the moment?

Because I’m back in the UK for a 6 week contract.  I drove from Oliveto Citra to Rotterdam and then caught the over night ferry to Hull. 1500 miles in 2 days is a bit of a long drive and I think I’ll take 2 overnights to go back starting on the 27th December.  Promise I will post more once I’m back in Italy – oh how I’m missing it……

A couple more images from the shoot I did last week of the model Skyy Lane.

Skyy Lane in Italy

and one taken late in the evening in Oliveto Citra on the D3.  The D3 is just fantasting at high ISO settings isn’t it.

Skyy in Oliveto Citra at night

For those of you who like video’s instead of stills – here’s one I did earlier. To see the full width of the video please click the red title at the top of this column and then turn up the volume….

Have been trying for some time to get both monitors on a dual system to be matched but always failed.  Have just been going back to basics in the theory of it all and realised that it can’t be done.  Will someone else just go over this thought process and see if I’m right?

OK – 2 monitors A as main and B as secondary. Profile the main and save profile. Change B to main and profile it and save the profile. Change to A monitor as main and B as secondary and check both are looking at their own profiles in windows.  Ok, are you with me so far?

Now when you open a profile aware program like Adobe CS3 or Breezebrowser this is where it all goes wrong because, and you can check this with a program like Breezebrowser, when you open the program it loads the profile for the main monitor only.  Once you drag the program over the 2 monitors and set the thumbnails in one window and the full screen in the other the program still thinks, and only has programming for – the first profile.  Even Lightroom 2 does the same and the second monitor is then working on 2 profiles – the one windows loads (in this instance profile B) and then the one the program is working to – Profile A so the second screen is dual profiled therefore the wrong colour.

I’m sure this is what is happening – has anyone else seen any documentation on this or got any thoughts on it? It might stop me going mad.

ANSWER FOUND – OK, so after days of searching and reading up on this I’ve now found out that it’s impossible.  For the reasons I put in the previous post when windows opens up a profile aware program it also loads the main profile in to that program.  If you drag that program into your second monitor the original profile remains in the program therefore you are getting the wrong colours displayed.