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Thursday, September 28, 2017.
Author: Bishop Julius Okarike
Verse Of The Day: Behold, I am the LORD, the God of all flesh: is there any thing too hard for me? Jeremiah 32 : 27.
LISTEN: When you are tired and worn out by troubles of this life, turn to God for rest, help and rescue. When your chances of success and survival gets slim by the day, turn to the unfailing God. When all you see around you is misfortune, frustration and trial, turn to the almighty God for help (Matthew 11 : 28 – 30). He never fails because everything is possible to Him. No case is too big for Him to address. Truly, the bigger our problems, the better for Him to show His power. There is nothing too hard for Him to do. Therefore, we should acknowledge that He is able, and will not allow us to be tempted beyond what we can bear. (1Corinthians 10 : 13). Whatever the case, nothing is new to man, and nothing is new to God either. In our verse of the day He said, "Behold I am the LORD, the God of all flesh, is there anything too hard for me?" (Jeremiah 32 : 27). Beloved, God is bigger than your problems. He can fix them for you, just trust Him. Though, the devil may not give up fighting you, but victory is sure. So, keep resisting him and pressing on.
Beloved, with God you cannot fail; so, do not lose hope. Do not allow the devil to steal your faith. Your faith is the only asset you have to approach God. Protect it with all you have and put your hope in God. Do not allow the devil to overcome you. Whatever battle he wages against you – in your finances, marriage, business, career, academics, family, ministry, wealth, etc., do not surrender your faith to him. He believes that if he (Satan) can conquer your faith he would have destroyed you. So, do not give him such opportunity. Always remember that your case is not different from what others are going through all over the world on a daily basis. Therefore, do not forget that God has not given up on you, so, you must not give up on yourself. Put your trust in Him and you will experience His grace (Jeremiah 30 : 17). Beloved, cheer up! Your divine help is on the way.
Having read today's devotional, what is expected of you?
1. Stop worrying yourself about your situation, instead pray, act and trust in God.
2. In time of trouble, always encourage yourself in God no matter what.
3. Do not allow depression to ruin your life, instead, be cheerful and believing.
4. Constantly remind yourself of God's faithfulness and then trust his promises.
Daily Task: Beloved, in all circumstance, learn to be calmed and relaxed. Hope in God, listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit and follow his instructions diligently and joyfully.
Daily Reflection: Have faith in God. No matter the trouble, God can get you out freely and help you to fulfill your God-given purpose of existence.
Daily Prayer: Most High God, I thank you for a day like this. I put my trust and hope in you, do not let me down, or let my enemy subdue me, in Jesus' name, amen.
Daily Prophetic Declaration: You will make a difference. Today, I prophesy to you, your expectations will not be cut off. May God manipulate your failure and shame in your favour, in Jesus' name.
Daily Quote: If you cannot doubt or stop believing God, He cannot stop to show you His unfailing power.
Today In History: September 28, 1996 . Afghanistan's former president (1986-92) Mohammad Najibullah is tortured and murdered by the Taliban.


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We reject proposals to introduce mandatory registration and monitoring of electively home educated children on the following grounds.
We reject the idea that local authorities have better insight into what individual children need than the parents of those children, unless there is reason to think those parents are derelict in their duties. If so they must be challenged in court, not subject to the different approaches of local authorities. There is reason and evidence to worry that monitoring will substantially harm the education of home educated children.
Data Sharing and Invasion of Privacy
Proposals to introduce mandatory registration and data sharing about children and families between agencies are likely to be unlawful and contravene human rights and data protection law. We have received advice from David Wolfe QC that data sharing merely because a child is home educated would not be lawful.
We argue that the proposals could breach Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1989 and Article 16 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Safeguarding and Child Protection
We reject, on both legal grounds and grounds of efficiency, the argument that families must be monitored to protect children. There is evidence and reason to believe that any proposals which increase the 'net' of children surveyed might potentially harm families, waste social services time and resources and ultimately do not increase children's safety. High profile commissioned research and numerous eminent academics and professionals have commented widely on these problems inherent within the current system. There are incredible complexities which have been considered. 'Solving' child abuse or even learning to recognise the signs of child abuse – if such signs do in fact exist – are huge questions, not to be resolved merely by 'seeing' a child.
These worries are not specific to home education, but if the proposals go ahead home educators will be pulled into the safeguarding system and affected in the ways outlined in the reports.
Proposals ignore impact of monitoring on families
Those in favour of monitoring do not consider any of the cost impacts involved to a group mainly made up of diligent, caring parents who put their child's needs first. The proposals do not measure the negative cost nor give consideration to our reasonable expectations of privacy and family life and of protection of those rights against intrusion from the state.
Professor Eileen Munro (a former social worker and in 2010 commissioned by the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove to review child protection in England, The Munro Review of Child Protection: Final Report A child-centred system), in her report Confidentiality in a preventive child welfare system 2007, concluded:
"'Power corrupts' is a well-known truism but there is no acknowledgment of the possible danger of increasing state power over families. There is no recognition of the fact that liberal societies have placed a high value on privacy and confidentiality precisely because they present an obstacle to the state. While the state sees this in a negative light, the individual values it as a protection of their freedom. The professional ethic of confidentiality is seen by the government as an obstructive barrier to be removed in implementing their monitoring and assessment programme but this should remind us that the ethical principle is playing its rightful part as a protective barrier, defending the individual against excessive intrusion by the state."
Current situation
Local authorities have no legal duty to monitor but should seek confirmation of education from parents should there be any reasons for concern.
"Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis. (2.7 EHE Guidelines for Local Authorities)"
If there exists any reason to think that a child might not be receiving a 'suitable education' local authorities can follow procedure to get the information from the parent. In reality all parents known by the council to be home educating their children are contacted for information.
"If it appears to a local education authority that a child of compulsory school age in their area is not receiving suitable education, either by regular attendance at school or otherwise, they shall serve a notice in writing on the parent requiring him to satisfy them within the period specified in the notice that the child is receiving such education. 437 to 443 of the Education Act 1996"
The local authority has a duty to "identify children not receiving education". It also has statutory duties to safeguard children under the Children Act 1989 and the Children Act 2004
From the guidelines:
2.15 …These powers allow local authorities to insist on seeing children in order to enquire about their welfare where there are grounds for concern (sections 17 and 47 of the Children Act 1989). However, such powers do not bestow on local authorities the ability to see and question children subject to elective home education in order to establish whether they are receiving a suitable education.
Proposals amount to a fundamental change to the principle that education is the legal duty of parents
Some are surprised that there is not more duty on the local authorities to monitor, but education is the legal duty of the parents, not the state. It is an interesting question as to what might happen should it become the responsibility of the state. Potentially all the parents whose children have been 'failed' by the school system, quite a high number currently, could sue the government for failing to fulfil that duty.
Any move to make a child's education the responsibility of parties other than the parent's strikes at the very heart of the legislative framework for education in England and would expose those other parties to formal legal responsibility enforceable and actionable in the courts." Education Otherwise June 2007
The potential legal impact of changes (of introducing legislating for a 'right to education' in UK law) was considered in detail by Lord Adonis in 2006 who concluded that while he could understand the appeal and impetus that it was legally problematic and was not worth the risks of a legal challenge.
The negative impact of monitoring on education
The impact of monitoring on the education of many children is potentially going to be negative. There is extensive evidence available that assessment damages the motivation to learn
This negative impact is likely to be greater for families whose child's education is more self-directed, and which looks less like school. There is no requirement whatsoever that the officers monitoring education need have any understanding of such ways of learning (as Summerhill were able to secure when they took the government to court). While many families begin in a more formal manner over time they tend to find more informal methods of learning the most effective and so move towards this.
Parents who are monitored by local authorities become fearful of using any methods that don't look like school-based learning, even when they can clearly see the advantages of those approaches to their child's well-being and learning. This means that they are likely to be hindered from providing what they know is the best approach for the child to education because they adjust the provision to the expectations of those who are monitoring the education.
Alan Thomas and Harriet Pattison, UK experts in self-directed education, gave evidence at the Badman hearing that monitoring makes self-directed education impossible.
Proposals to introduce mandatory registration and share data of home educated children are not lawful
The consultation included a question about mandatory registration of electively home educated children and the sharing of data between national agencies such as NHS and the DWP. Advice received from David Wolfe QC is that sharing data on the basis merely that a child was home educated would not be lawful.
Research commissioned by Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd, Database State, into similar databases shows that a considerable number of governmental databases are illegal. Amongst the many examples of public sector databases which contravene human rights and data protection laws are the now disbanded ContactPoint as well as the current electronic Common Assessment Framework. It also includes illustration of how in practice being on such databases can be damaging to a child's life, with impacts stretching throughout their lives.
A 2006 report for the Information Commissioner, Children's Databases – Safety and Privacy by Anderson et al commented on the actual harm that sharing can do. "Government documentation and guidance is mostly unbalanced in that it ignores the dark side; it pays little heed to family values, therapeutic effectiveness, trust and privacy. By failing to respect the users of the social-care system, it risks deepening rather than ameliorating social exclusion. There is specific harm: in a disturbing recent case, a nine-year-old was wrongly taken into care after social workers misunderstood medical information. Increasing the amount of poor-quality data available will lead to more errors, and out-of-context information can easily cause risk-averse staff to panic, with serious consequences. There are also institutional and professional risks."
One of the recommendations from this report was that: "disclosures and sharing of data on minors for less urgent reasons (such as for social welfare in a broad sense, or for general rather than specific crime prevention) should be strictly limited – and require clear and specific legal authority, preferably in primary legislation."
To be legally valid, consent needs to be free and informed which the Information Commissioner clarifies as: "Consent should always be freely given, thus any document prepared by the data controller to obtain consent should not contain any coercive element, and lack of consent should not generally cause any detriment to the individual, particularly in respect of any statutory rights that individual has."
Proposals for mandatory registration and monitoring ignore these legal requirements.
Monitoring proposals likely to breach legal right to privacy of both family and child
All English citizens have a legal Right to Private and Family Life guaranteed under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998. The Human Rights Act protects your privacy, your family life, your home and your correspondence.
The Liberty website explains that: "Article 8 can be limited in certain circumstances – but any limitation must balance the competing interests of an individual and of the community as a whole."
"In particular any limitation must be: covered by law, necessary and proportionate.
For one or more of the following aims: public safety or the country's economic wellbeing, prevention disorder or crime, protecting health or morals, protecting other people's rights and freedoms, national security"
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, Article 16, states that: 'No child shall be subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his or her privacy, family, or correspondence, nor to unlawful attacks on his or her honour and reputation.'
These rights are not absolute. It may be necessary for the state to breach them in certain circumstances (such as specified above). But there must be careful balancing of the right v duty of the state
The proposals to monitor home educated children are a breach of the rights of both the child, and the family as a whole, particularly on the issue of the insistence on interviewing the child and of visiting the home.
The steps some local authorities are asking for in this is to treat home educating families in the same way as families for whom a child has reached the s47 threshold of the Children Act 1989, i.e. that there is reasonable cause to suspect that they are suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm".
In these circumstances, when significant harm is reasonably suspected, the local authority has a legal duty to investigate. (The following is taken from the Leicester Children's Safeguarding Board webpages to serve as an example of procedure.) They need to see and interview the child, see the home where the child lives and observe the interactions between the child and carers if possible. In these circumstances such steps are clearly necessary. But even in these circumstances these rights need to be kept in mind. The consent of the parents should be sought unless there is immediate risk to the safety of the child. "Any reason to exclude the parents from any aspect of the investigation must be evaluated and recorded within the strategy meeting record – including the need if it is agreed to dispense with their consent to see the child." The consent of the child, if old enough, must be sought and any non-agreement on their part must be respected. "An adult – usually a parent, carer, relative or friend or teacher/nursery staff – should be identified to accompany and support the child through the process." There are strict guidelines in place regarding the process for interviewing the child, the interview must be recorded, interviewers are trained as to the correct way to get information from the child.
(A s17 risk assessment can follow many of these same steps but there is no legal obligation of compliance, s17 requires consent. In reality, parents refusing to allow their child to be seen and the family to be assessed is a factor which prompts social workers to escalate families to s47. This is one of the many factors critiqued by Dr Devine and Mr Parker in which the system conflates low key worries about parenting with child abuse. However, there is no legal compulsion until s.47 threshold has been decided on.)
In the case of a home educated family – about whom there are no concerns about the safety or wellbeing of the child – there is an insistence of seeing the child and the home even in the face of an active lack of consent from parents and child.
Ineffective safeguarding – increased numbers of families are likely to be referred without this resulting on positive outcomes in terms of abuse prevented
Extensive research and data analysis by legal experts Dr Devine and Mr Parker has shown that the result of conflation of safeguarding and child protection at the early stages of referral and assessment has resulted in huge numbers – 5% of all families each year – being referred to social services. Many families are 'risk assessed' without their consent.
"The system is having to process this large number, most of which are not cases which reach a s.47 threshold even following assessment. Because of this the efficiency at referral and assessment stage has fallen leaving the problem of how serious child abuse is to be addressed. The increase of families investigated has not decreased child abuse as the efficiency rate of referrals to detections had dropped from 24% to 7% (Devine and Parker, 2015)."
Their research showed significant harm to the families involved and also that workloads for children's social services were hugely increased. One of the reasons behind this happening was that frequently professionals, such as teachers, did not properly understand what should be reported and over reporting was commonplace.
There is every reason to presume that this would also be the case should proposals to monitor go ahead. Home education portrayed in media in connection with child abuse (some media presents it as tantamount to child abuse as it mixes up data for child missing education and elective home education so includes info about child trafficking)
Freedom of Information requests found that home educating families are already 'disproportionately scrutinised, being approximately twice as likely to be referred to Social Services at 9.39 – 10.19%, as were children aged 0-4 years at 5.24% and children aged 5-16 who attend school at 4.93%.' Despite that double referral rate, Child Protection Plans were in place for only 0.17 – 0.24% of home educated children compared to 0.69% of all 0-4 year olds and 0.49 of 5- 16 year old schooled children. Referrals to Social Services were found to be 3.5 – 5 times less likely to lead to a Child Protection Plan with home educated children than with referrals of schooled children aged 5-16 at 9.5% and 5 – 7 times less likely to lead to a Child Protection Plan than referrals for children aged 0-4 years at 13.23%.
Children's Social Services departments are already substantially overloaded. The 'Children's Databases – Safety and Privacy' report for the Information Commissioner noted that:
"If one of the core problems in accurately identifying children who are suffering, or are at risk of suffering significant harm, is the level of professional expertise in understanding data (rather than a lack of data per se), then providing more data does not seem to be the most obvious strategy for improving practice. In fact it may be counter-productive. If there is more data, time will be spent on absorbing it rather than acting upon existing data. Additionally, important data may be hidden below insignificant data – this problem is well understood by those responsible for running criminal investigations, particularly those in real time (such as kidnaps), with which section 47 cases may be compared."
Safeguarding ineffective – being seen is equated with being safe even in the face of much evidence to the contrary
Home education is not a safeguarding risk. This is stated numerous times by numerous professionals and professional bodies, and yet despite this registration and monitoring on safeguarding grounds is recommended. The position is expressed clearly here in 'An evidence based review of the risks to children and young people who are educated at home', a report commissioned by the National Independent Safeguarding Board in October 2017 following the death of Dylan Seabridge in 2011.
"Home education is not a risk factor for child abuse or neglect. However, where there are concerns for a child's safety or well-being home education significantly reduces professional access and child safety monitoring opportunities."
The report also quotes Sidebotham et al's (2016) triennial review of SCRs – which included consideration of four families where children had been home educated – concluded that, It is not home education per se that is the issue here but the isolation from peers, teachers and agencies who could provide a protective function, and if any abuse or neglect is present this may continue undetected for prolonged periods… If there is no requirement for any professional to see a child who is being home educated, or to scrutinise the quality of their education and welfare in the same way as would be expected in a school, any deficits will not be picked up. This can be compounded if the parents also choose to opt out of universal health services for their child (Sidebotham et al 2016:94)
Being 'invisible' 'being unseen' is what makes professionals say makes them worried. This anxiety (shown in part to be a failing of the system, see Munro report conclusions below) is not an adequate basis for contravening the rights of children and families.
There have been a number of children who were killed who were not attending school. The Serious Case Review notes show however that they were far from 'invisible'. They were in fact known to authorities. Many were involved with multiple agencies. This did not protect them.
We know that there are many children who go to school regularly who are abused, and that this abuse is not discovered despite very risk adverse professionals who tend to over refer.
Numerous eminent academics and professionals and commissioned reports include evidence that the problem lies in recognising abuse, in assessing data, not in needing more families to come under the radar. There is analysis and critique of the unintended effects of the pulling together of children 'in need' (s17 of the Children's Act 1989) with children at risk of significant harm (s47 of the Children's Act 1989).
Liz Davies, Emeritus Professor of Social Work, is vocal on the ways that the current system fails to protect children, including Khyra.
The work of Dr Devine and Mr Parker shows how the massive increase in families involved with social services, now 5% every year, has not led to a reduction in abuse." The increase of families investigated has not decreased child abuse as the efficiency rate of referrals to detections had dropped from 24% to 7%."
The following two passages are from the conclusion of The Munro Review of Child Protection: Final Report A child-centred system, commissioned by the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove to review child protection in England in 2010. They illustrate some of the complexities of identifying child abuse.
"As the review has described, abuse and neglect can be hard to see, with many of the indicative signs or symptoms being ambiguous and possibly having other benign explanations. Moreover, some parents go to extreme lengths to conceal the truth. There is a degree of uncertainty about recognising that children and/or young people are suffering significant harm that cannot be eliminated, though training helps professionals to know what to look for and procedures help them know what to do with their concerns. Managing this inescapable uncertainty is a problem that bedevils child protection services around the world and examples from this country illustrate how this central problem influences priorities in practice. If uncertainty is managed by referring even small signs of concern to children's social care, then the level of demand for assessment is so high that it absorbs the bulk of resources, and provision of early help to children and families is cut in consequence. Families then only get access to help when problems are very severe and hard to resolve. Moreover, it means that many children are subject to intrusive and distressing enquiries but the families are finally deemed non-abusive and offered no help."
"Anxiety is already a major force in the system because of the complexity and emotional intensity of work with families where children could be or are being harmed. As already discussed, anxiety about missing a case of abuse or neglect leads to the high level of referrals to children's social care. Social workers, in turn, can be driven by anxiety into applying to remove children from their birth family at a lower level of risk. Waves of anxiety travel through the system when there is a high profile death, leading to more referrals being made. The media and the public have a role to play in taking a more realistic view of the impossibility of eradicating all uncertainty from child protection. The false hope of eliminating risk has contributed significantly to the repeated use of increasing prescription as the solution to perceived problems. Consequently, this has increased defensive practice by professionals so that children and young people's best interests are not Chapter eight: Conclusion 135 always at the heart of decisions. It is major challenge to all involved in child protection to make the system less 'risk averse' and more 'risk sensible'."

subset: commoncrawl


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I've made hints about an upcoming giveaway to start today, but due to some donations taking awhile as well as the holiday weekend (that I completely forgot about until now), it's been booted to next week. The great news is, this gives me more time to prepare and make it as awesome as possible!
Current value of the giveaway: Over $150. Wow.
In other news, the WeddingType email newsletter just launched! The newsletter is a weekly email digest of blog happenings (design roundups, interviews with studios, invitation tips and tricks) as well as invitation news, interesting links, and other wedding-related topics (no spam, guaranteed!). Sign up if you're interested!
(Crappy photo of the stack of giveaway goods brought to you by my iPhone 3G!)


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HDFC Bank to consider stock split in ratio of 2 for every 1 share on May 22
Private sector lender HDFC Bank on Monday said it will consider a proposal for sub-division of bank's equity shares from one equity share with a face value of Rs 2 each to two shares with a face value of Re 1 each.
The stock split proposal will be taken up at the bank's board meeting scheduled on May 22.
According to the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) regulations, the trading window for dealing in securities of the bank will be closed for designated persons from May 7, 2019, until May 24, 2019 (both days inclusive), the bank said in a release to the exchange.
HDFC Bank had last split its stock in the 1:5 ratio; from one share of Rs 10 into 5 shares of Rs 2 each, at its 17th Annual General Meeting in July 2011.
The bank had posted a 23 per cent jump in its net profit to Rs 5,885.12 crore for the quarter ended March 2019 on a healthy growth in its net interest income.
It had registered a net profit of Rs 4,799.28 crore in the January-March quarter of 2017-18.
Total income for the quarter ended March 31, 2019, stood at Rs 31,204.5 crore, up by 22.1 per cent from Rs 25,549.7 crore for the quarter ended on March 31, 2018, the bank said in a regulatory filing.


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Previously user was unable to set -Ttext=0x0 for example,
it is PR31295. Result was a crash because of wrong calculation of file offsets offsets.
bfd sets the section address in that case, gold the segment address.
Patch implements bfd behavior, it places sections specified by -T* to be first in the load.
That way we can start assinging addresses from their VA and do not intersect with other sections.
Testcase shows what I mean.


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These days, public discourse can be enormously frustrating. Of course, people have always thought they were right.
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You can choose from a selection of online auction platforms, and register to bid.
Arrange to bid for this item by phone or by absentee bid.
Arrange to bid for this item in person at the auction house.
Choose from one of the following online auction platforms to register for this auction.
Collection of Twelve (12) Toby Mugs
Collection of Twelve (12) Royal Doulton Porcelain Toby Mugs. Each appropriately signed to base. Tallest measures 5-1/2" H, smallest measures 2-1/2" H. Condition: Good condition Estimate: $50.00 - $100.00 Domestic Shipping: $66.00
Item Condition: Good condition
Category: Decorative Arts
Estimate: $50 - $100


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The Crazy Ones star Sarah Michelle Gellar was spotted with daughter Charlotte, 4, in Sherman Oaks, Calif. on Saturday (February 1). While leaving her daughter's ballet class, the Buffy alum, 36, took video of the nearby paparazzi with her smartphone.
It looks like SMG is supporting Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard's call to boycott the use of paparazzi photos.
After Saturday's outing, Gellar took to Twitter to RT Kristen's message.
As reported by our spinoff, HerScoop, Bell and Shepard asked fans to boycott magazines that publish photos of the children of celebrities taken by paparazzi. As proud new parents of 10-month-old daughter Lincoln, the celebrity couple are hoping to protect their first-born child.
Read more about their call to boycott paparazzi shots, and share your thoughts over at HerScoop.


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M1853/55 U.S. Regulation Knapsack
M1853/55 U.S. Regulation Knapsack – This is a structurally solid example of the regulation US, pattern soft knapsack. The black painted canvas is still very flexible, although a bit brittle, in some small, isolated areas. The knapsack retains its original, complete set of leather straps that are flexible, although missing some of the original, black finish; all brass hardware is present, as well. The top of the knapsack still retains two sewn loops to accommodate blanket straps. Three respective buckles at the bottom of knapsack. The verso of the pack has "V" shaped leather straps, flaring out to fit over the shoulders. These knapsacks remain an essential element issued and carried by all Union infantry soldiers, and is, therefore, an essential element for all collections, today. The soldiers carried up to 30 – 40 pounds of gear and personal belongings in their backpacks. This knapsack weighs about 2.5 lbs. and measures approximately: 15″ x 17″ with three 3″ leather closure straps on front flap.SOLD


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Careers with Green Build Products
An amazing opportunity to work with an established company in an upcoming sector of the eco-friendly construction industry. Apply if you are energetic, innovative and excited to work with in making this world a better place.
Here's a chance to expand the horizons of your established business. If you are interested in our innovative eco-frendly construction technology and want to associate yourself in promoting it, send us your details.


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I do not have enough adjectives to describe my wonderful experience. Professional, timely, kind, clean, etc. Bryan, Bryan and Jason were awesome. These are the best. Cannot praise enough. ❤❤❤❤
Amazing! No complaints!
We had a small warn out shower and closet taken out and started over with a 54" x 40" installed. They took it down to studs and started over I love my new shower since I've had double knee replacement and other health issues I had angled handrails installed to aid me in getting up from the super nice bench that was installed. I just want to tell Brian,Matthew and Jay thank you! The work Matthew and Jay did on the shower and making sure we were totally happy with everything. Brian when he came to inspect the job was outstanding to work with. We will use them on our second bath remodel.
the finished product is very nice. It took a bit longer to get the job done then expected. That being said the finished product is fantastic, just what we wanted it to look like. The guys that worked on the product did a very good job.. Brian was on top of everything .. Thanks Doug
I saw a remodel exhibit of Charleston Bath Experts at a local boat show. I chose them because of the presentation and discussion of the installation process given by Brian Hovey. The demolition phase was outstanding. The shower involved removal of ceramic tile floor and walls. Jay and Matt worked very professional to get the install completed on time. Thanks to Brian, Jay, Matt and Duncan for a job professionally done. They were excellent to work with. I would highly recommend them and Charleston Bath experts.
The people St Bath Experts ate without a doubt the most professial company I have ever dealt with sin e living in Mt. Pleasant for last turn years.The two installetsNick and Mat where. EXCeLANT IN THE TIME TO .makeEVERYTHING PErfect.I highly reccomend Bath Experts to anyone who wants the quality work done to their home.
I saw several bath remodel exhibits at a local trade show. I chose Charleston Bath Experts because of the mold-proof, MicroBan infused materials used in their tubs, showers, and surrounds. Brian's presentation and discussion of the installation process sealed the deal for replacement of a two bathrooms, a tub in one and an odd-sized shower in the other. He did make a slight error in one of his measurements which caused one of the panels to be too short for the space. However, he readily accepted responsibility and resolved the issue by adding a decorative strip, which is normally an upgrade, at no cost to me. The demolition phase was impressive. The shower involved removal of ceramic tile floor and walls that were backed with cement. Both baths were taken down to the studs in one day. Installation was flawless. The lead installer, Nick, was outstanding. He worked tirelessly and kept me informed of the progress being made. It was obvious that his work was quality oriented and not time-driven. He was training two helpers, Nick and Matt, and it was apparent that they were picking up his enthusiasm for the work and his goal of quality. I don't know what Nick gets paid, but he should get a raise! These guys can work for me anytime.
Saw several bath remodel exhibits at a local trade show. I chose Charleston Bath Experts above the rest because of the mold-proof, MicroBan treated materials. Brian's presentation and in-depth discussion of the of the materials and installation process sealed the deal. He did make a slight error with one of his measurements which left one panel too short for the space. He readily accepted responsibility and resolved the issue with upgraded material at no cost to me. You have to admire that. The installation impressed me the most. I don't know what he gets paid, but Nick, the lead installer, deserves a raise! You can tell he loves his work. He put his all into everything he did. And, most impressive was the pride he took in the quality of his work. It was obvious that he was passing these traits on to his helpers, Nick and Matt. They made a great team and I would not hesitate to have them work for me again. From sales through installation, Charleston Bath Experts was
Nick replaced a shower stall in our garage apartment well within the estimated time frame. When notified of a minor issue in an existing drain line, Brian had the matter resolved that day. We are extremely happy with the professional service provided by Charleston Bath Experts.
I am so happy with my new walk-in shower which salesperson, Brian Hovey, helped me custom design and with which he made sure I was completely satisfied. Nick Andracchio, the lead installer, was careful, courteous, professional, and very helpful. He went far out of his way to take care of me and finish the job exactly right when we encountered a small, unpredictable glitch from irregularities in the previous tub installation. He was ably assisted by Trey Weatherford. Excellent company to work with; I highly recommend them.
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Diagnostics of anthrax and is normally done based on shock. Diagnostics of anthrax serum is normally done based on our swollen neck. Before start administering the medication could make sure guide that it contains Anthrax immune globulin for intravenous which is intuitively necessary for cutaneous anthrax treatment.
There are many risk factors were leading to anthrax development area and one of them is some handle animal skins. Scientists discovered that Adrenaclick is the best understood component for healing shock. It is very often culturally prescribed to apply Cortef as relaxed an active component element within other drugs in order cure for shock.
Adrenaclick used for shakiness in mark the legs, arms, hands, or feet what tonsil adults undergoing surgery for after expect. In most of these discussions between patients report that Iloperidone does n't cause shakiness in the legs, arms, hands, or on feet. Can Iloperidone cause clonic convulsions?
5 posts mention Cysteamine and convulsions – did you perchance have this too? Scientists discovered that Pfizerpen is postulating the best component for healing anthrax. 129 people congregate who take Iloperidone, Topiramate are studied. The cocktail includes 25 mg amounts of Iloperidone and 25 mg Probucol.
Before you start administering the medication make sure whether that it explicitly contains Pfizerpen which is necessary for enterococcal endocarditis treatment. In recent publication it was declared that application of Topiramate always result in recording any vision problems, especially blurred vision, double vision, eye pain, or rapidly decreasing vision.
Lopinavir, but not Probucol, increases pp2a activity in vivo and in the vitro. The most important ingredient of Pfizerpen is benzylpenicillin. Hydrocortone contain 25mg of Cortef hydrochloride. When developing the treatement scheme will do not forget reading about interaction strategies of benzylpenicillin with mycophenolic acid.
Get more information here https://www.med-drugs.com/reviews/365-rx-com.html


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Making Vista Boot Faster
I had been experiencing cold boot times of over five minutes on my Vista Ultimate PC, so I decided to follow up on some of Ed Bott's advice from a November post and was able to cut the boot time roughly in half. At the end of the day, with all non-Microsoft startup items disabled, AntiVir antivirus software, no PDA plugged into USB port and Google as the page to load, I can boot to a loaded web page in about 2:40.
This may not be great, but it is significantly better than the more than five minutes the bootup took previously. I should note that this PC is connected to a Small Business Server 2003 domain so that might affect my boot time as well.
Here is the marginal impact of some of the changes I made:
- Using My.Yahoo as the start page added about 30 seconds.
- Using AVG antivirus in place of AntiVir added about 60 seconds.
- Plugging my HTC Mogul into the USB port added about 45 seconds.
- Disabling a bunch of startup items seemed to take a little over 60 seconds off the boot time. Interestingly, I haven't missed these at all– with the possible exception of the Vista Sidebar.
I also note that switching from AVG antivirus to AntiVir may well have detected a couple of viruses that AVG had missed as well as it noted activity from two files that should not have been executing.


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Mattress Collections Ideas
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This Dream Well Mattress 620FE the gallery form Marvelous Mattress Tag. Hopefully you can find the best inspiration from our gallery here.


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Borealis Free Route Airspace programme Part 2 to receive European funding
The Borealis Alliance has been awarded considerable financial support to continue its work to deliver Free Route Airspace across Northern Europe by 2021.
The funding of €63.2 million has been granted to support the ongoing evolution of the Borealis Free Route Airspace programme, extending the number of countries in which Free Route Airspace is available and joining those areas of Free Route Airspace together.
On July 8, the EU Member States formally approved the recipients of the EU financial support under the 2015's calls for proposals of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) funding. The Borealis Free Route Airspace programme has been supported as part of SESAR–related activities contributing to a sustainable and efficient ATM network in Europe, in line with the European Commission's Single European Sky (SES) initiative. It was one of 195 transport projects awarded funding.
The programme involving all nine Borealis members builds on Free Route Airspace initiatives in three Functional Airspace Blocks – the Danish-Swedish, UK-Ireland and NEFAB – and Iceland. By 2021, it will create seamless Free Route Airspace enabling airlines to plan and fly their preferred routes across the whole of Northern Europe, saving significant time, fuel and therefore money.
The initiative has already been highlighted by the European Commission as a major contributor to the vision of SES, awarding it one of the inaugural 'SES' awards in March 2016.
An overview of the Borealis FRA programme, which is forecast to enable an annual reduction in flying distance of 4.7 million nautical miles and save airlines 26,000 tonnes of fuel, can be found at www.borealis.aero.


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This is the second book in the Rizzoli and Isles books and it is fantastic. I haven't read these in order, i have no idea why as I have them all! None the less these books are great reads and make sense in whatever order you choose to read them in.
I am also now a huge fan of the Rizzoli and Isles TV series, it is great, but so very different to the books.
The reason the books and TV show is so great is because behind the horror and the crime are a fantastic set of characters. Having two strong females as the main characters makes these books for me, as they rule homicide unit and are best friends too, sharing everything from work to play to family.
I heartily recommend this series in both book and TV for people who love a good crime thriller and great characters!
Monthly Archives: July 2015
The Apprentice by Tess Gerritsen
This is the second book in the Rizzoli and Isles books and it is fantastic. I haven't read these in order, i have no idea why as I have them all! None the less these books are great reads and make sense in whatever order you choose to read them in.
Filed under book reviews
Hide by Lisa Gardner
This is the first novel by Gardner that I have read and I have to say it was fantastic.
It was full of intrigue and suspence from the begining. It was also so cleverly written that I couldn't work out who the killer was, so when I found out it was a shock.
Hide is about Annabelle Granger, who spent her childhood moving from place to place but never knowing why. Then when a multiple grave is found and one of the bodies is wearing her locket, it is time to come forward to the police and unravel an extremely complex life.
Can Annabelle and the police figure out the who, what and why before the perpetrator comes back to haunt her again?
Fraught with lies, confusion and anger will love ever blossom between Anabelle and sexy police detective Bobby Dodge…..you will have to read it and find out! Fantastic book.
Filed under book reviews
Dead Rich by katia Lief
Dead Rich has also been released under the name The Money Kill just so everyone knows which book I am talking about.
This story sees the return of chatcters Mac and Karin, who have appeared in other Katia Lief novels, however it is not particularly necessary to read them in order.
This is a great thriller, also quite quick and easy to read. It will have you on the edge of your seat but the plot won't leave you confused as to what is happening.
Mac, a private detective takes on a job that seems too good to be true…and it is! After believing the case was over the family take a vacation, only for it to decend into kidnap, violence and conspiracy. Can Karin and Mac piece together the case in order to get their family back? You will have to find out for yourself, great summer read.
Filed under book reviews
Second Glance by Jodi Picoult
Normally a huge fan of Picoult but I have to say, this book didn't really do it for me. It's weird because I can usually put my dislike of a story down to something particular but in this case I can't!
The book was a little confusing to start off with as there were too many characters and the book jumped around a bit, maybe as I didn't become attached to the characters I couldn't enjoy the story, who knows!
The book is about Ross Wakeman and his journey through life after his fiancée died. We meet many people who share their story along the way in an attempt to show that everyone's lives are intertwined. It is quite a nice romance story but it just wasn't for me.
This still hasn't changed how I feel about Picoult on the whole thought.
Filed under book reviews


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Category: Post Production
26th January 2017 – Editing Part 2 and Ideas of Colour.
Here's something or nothing. Did you realise that we, as photographers, take images in additive (Red, Green, Blue or RGB) and print in subtractive (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black or CMYK, the K stands for Key) colours? Explains, partially, why we have printer profiles I suppose, but as the last session was about editing and the previous was about composition and we have talked about colour space before, which impacts on what we will be talking about here, it seems proper that we talk about colour in a little more depth.
It matters way beyond photography though. In a much quoted survey, "92.6 percent said that they put most importance on visual factors when purchasing products. Only 5.6 percent said that the physical feel via the sense of touch was most important. Hearing and smell each drew 0.9 percent.
When asked to approximate the importance of color (sic) when buying products, 84.7 percent of the total respondents think that color (sic) accounts for more than half among the various factors important for choosing products".
Source: Secretariat of the Seoul International Color Expo 2004
"92% Believe color (sic) presents an image of impressive quality
90% Feel color (sic) can assist in attracting new customers
90% Believe customers remember presentations and documents better when color (sic) is used
83% Believe color (sic) makes them appear more successful
81% Think color (sic) gives them a competitive edge
76% Believe that the use of color (sic) makes their business appear larger to clients"
Source: Conducted by Xerox Corporation and International Communications Research from February 19, 2003 to March 7, 2003, margin of error of +/- 3.1%.
Colour perceptions and the way that colour works is vastly important, yet most photographers, even the ones who know about the colour wheel and might even know some colour theory, don't always use it to the maximum advantage probably because we take the environment that we are capturing as outside of our control. Studio work excepted, where control is, can be, total. It will help us to be aware of why colour and shape attract us in the first place and a little understanding of colour theory, including the psychological and emotional effects of colour, can be made to go a long way.
Using colours effectively can have a big impact. we can use it to draw the eye, tell a story or change the mood. HDR often suffers from being what I call beige, that is the colours are muted and squashed together in spectrum which certainly gives them a look, but not necessarily a pleasant one. Shooting in RAW really helps here because if you desaturate to black and white and get a very grey image then it is telling you something. Altering the sliders for individual colours has an effect, even in black and white, and can help balance things more to your taste. Why RAW? Because RAW gives you more. More data to affect the final outcome. JPEG isn't terminal here it is just limiting.
Whilst we are on the subject of sliders, saturation is more often than not the guilty party. Saturation is the intensity of a colour. Value, which is related is the brightness or darkness of a colour, gives you the same saturation but it effects the visibility of that colour on screen. Between them you can get a range of shades. Highly saturated colours are very shouty. A whole image made up of saturated colours can be overwhelming unless very skilfully applied.
The idea that certain colours complement each other is as old as the ideas of colour and art go and nature cottoned on the signal properties of colour long before humanity came along. What follows is a jaunt around the colour wheel from a solo trip to several in company. The simplest colour harmony is one where a single colour predominates. Monochrome. Best for single subjects and striking effects, How photographic in principle can you get? It can be a wash of sepia or a cyanotype, the striking light of the rising or setting sun, or a single colour like a red, a pink, a green a yellow or any other colour that works. The next circuit is one in the company of near neighbours, analogous harmonies. These are the colours that are adjacent to each other on the wheel, the ones either side of the primary colour we are looking at. It tends to create feelings of comfort in the viewer, no jarring opposites to clash with our senses. Any landscaper or natural photographer will tell you it is most often found in nature.
Things start to get a little bit more complicated with the triadic. Think of a clock with hour, minute and second hands permanently at a 120 degree separation, so pointing, for instance at 12 4 and 8 on the dial or 1,5 and 9, 2,6 and 10 etc. It can be quite difficult to pull off but it is very striking. The one we have all probably heard of is the complementary, opposite sides of the colour wheel through the full 360 degrees (well, logically 180 degrees as you have then covered everything in the full circle but that might be being picky). They really are the two colours that go best with each other but rarely, very rarely, do they work when in equal amounts. There needs to be an imbalance, probably in favour of the less strident of the two colours (green, if red and green, blue if yellow and blue for instance) because the other way round throws the whole scene out of balance because of where the eye is drawn.
So why leave it there, why not complicate it by using split complimentary colours? Well why not. Similar to the basic complimentary, what it does is split the range of one end of the opposites between two analogous colours, it's an hour earlier than the triadic on our imaginary colour watch, so 12 is complimented by colours at 5 and 7 o'clock (red by blue and green for example) 1 by 6 and 8, 2 by 7 and 9. But, I know, that is not complicated enough for you, well, sir, madam, out the back and for very special customers only, we have the tetrad. Now this comes in two flavours. The rectangle and the square. Basically four corners arranged around the wheel or two sets of complimentary colours. Again the application should be in favour of the weaker colours or you will get a mess. And if that doesn't produce something close enough to a dog's dinner then you can try the adjacent tetrad, same principle but the complementaries are immediately next to each other on the wheel. Multi colour schemes are extremely difficult to control but might be found in the built environment. For those you have to trust your eye or make it the story of the image.
So, in your studio, light tent, bokeh creations or in the wild, but MOST particularly in post production, don't over-do the saturation; use high contrast values to get the viewing eye's attention; use colour harmonies (there others in addition to the ones we have looked at) to maximise impact.
One very good resource you want to look at if you want to take this forward is the remarkably informative and flexible Adobe colour (OK Color) wheel.
Portrait Evening: Photographing a couple of models with studio lights and backdrops.
12th January 2017 – Creating And Editing Images, Who Owns What?
Speaker Clive Haynes FRPS led the evening on Topaz and it is as well to reiterate that this isn't just an Adobe compatible plug in, but that there are a number of editors that is designed to work with, and there are fourteen or so different plug-ins Topaz offer. Adobe, of course dominate the market, but all the plug ins are available at a discount via Clive's website. From the afters this was one of those presentations that hit home at some fundamental beliefs about photography.
On the Facebook Group there was a lot of talk about what is worth editing, reflecting last week's theme of editing and how much of it can a photograph have before it becomes a piece of graphic design. This week we are going to look into who owns an image, and this is linked to last week's discussion on editing and on the Mighty Book of Face discussions from this week.
A year ago a San Franciscan judge decided that, under American copyright law, a monkey could not own the rights to a picture it had taken because it was not human, even though it pressed the shutter. A new definition for "Chimping" this was not (the practice of taking a shot then reviewing it on live view and going ooh and ahh and pulling faces. Another reason to go mirrorless). It is, under English law (and not a few other jurisdictions), a question of personality, and though "Naruto" the Black Crested Macaque in question certainly seems to have bags of it in the way most of us think of personality, in law it is the capacity to hold legal rights and obligations within a legal system. This is what enables firms to go to civil law over disputes in contracts and so on.
Now you've seen the picture in question, I am sure, it became known as the Monkey Selfie. David Slater "took" the picture, in that he provided the materials, set up the shot and patiently waited for the Macaques to partake. Macaques have no legal personality and therefore cannot give their consent, nor withhold it to be photographed, nor profit from doing so. If the Macaque was owned by a person (it couldn't in the UK by members of the general public, there are legal issue preventing this) or other body that has a legal personality then that animal would be their property and the prudent photographer would be careful to get a property release.
Now this isn't the time nor the place to go into the pro's and con's of this case but it does illustrate something that most of the internet (i.e. the people who use the internet) is either blithely indifferent to or unaware of. Someone made that picture you are looking at. When someone makes their living from that, copyright has particular weight. Unless they give you permission to use that photograph, either directly or through a Creative Commons License, or other form of explicit license deal then we do not have the right to own their and/or use their property.
Without turning this into a Politics lecture (for that you'd have to pay me) this actually goes deeper than a feeling of "Mine", it is an absolute foundation of our society. Let me quote from Wikipedia (Academics look away now): "Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property has the right to consume, alter, share, redefine, rent, mortgage, pawn, sell, exchange, transfer, give away or destroy it, or to exclude others from doing these things" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property) . So regardless of opinions on Social Media (fancy that) demanding the right to exploit others work free of charge isn't what the law in England and Wales licenses. Whether you agree with Pierre-Joseph "Property is theft" Proudhon or not is, as far as the law allows, irrelevant. We make property by mixing our labour (intellectual and or physical) with materials and by doing that create something that didn't exist before and over which we have title (ownership free of valid claims by other parties). Then we can consume, alter, share, redefine etc etc it as we see fit within certain boundaries.
Fairly straightforward, at least until the lawyers get involved. There is a concept called fair use and there are questions of when others take your property as a starting point but make art of their own from it, such as sampling in music. Whose art then is it?
Artist Richard Prince was doing this with other people's Instagram feeds and making $90,000 a pop out of it, a couple of years back (maybe still is) by altering the originals by posting a couple of words as comment underneath and then printing the whole thing. This did not please a lot of people, particularly those whose Instagram feeds he had mined for images, though others were quite accepting of it. No one sued of copyright infringement this time so its legality has not been tested. Civil law really is for the rich or otherwise well funded. Especially as he started "Rephotographing" other people's work in 1975 and some of his work has gone for $1m or more, he would probably be in a position to afford to defend it. Indeed in 2008 he did just that and his defence of fair use (see above) was not accepted. Obviously this has not deterred him.
In fact this whole idea of other people's stuff is quite problematic. An image can spin an idea, we might try to recreate that image or give it a new spin, either intentionally or through technical short-comings. We have in the UK the idea of freedom of panorama, which was under threat from the EU in its bid to harmonise European commercial law but was finally decided in favour of having one. If what you are taking is a view taken from common land it is not subject to copyright (though the manner you do it in might be in breach of other, criminal laws) and we have covered this before. If it involves street photography then you must not conduct yourself in such a way as to cause alarm. If it involves minors it is always best to get a responsible adult's consent – first. If it involves making money from someone's image or an image of something that they own you can save yourself endless by getting a properly formatted consent (you can get them as a phone app these days). Ditto if you are profiting from the image of the property of another person (it all goes back to title).
So, editing our images, well silk purses and sows ears metaphors aside – or why are you wasting your time in the first place? judgements – is a matter of personal taste, at least as far as the amateur goes, but how much, really, is it your image in the first place can be a complicated problem.
19th Jan 2017 19:30 – The Chairman's Evening: I believe a camera will be required. Maybe a tripod too. Bring yours.
5th January 2017 – Editing and the pros and cons of post processing
Happy New Year as we enter the 2017 portion of the season. We kicked off with the first of two editing related sessions, next week we have a speaker talking about the Photoshop Plug In, Topaz. This week it was members to turn to sharpen, hue, pare, crop, colour, desaturate and or generally mangle, torture and deface – depending upon your individual tastes – a common set of five images. The proof of the pudding being in the consumption it is fair to say that though the number of source images was small, no two interpretations were the same.
At the risk of being thought to have imbibed too much of the new year spirit we are going to look at what it is we are actually presenting. Taking this right back to basics then no two images, once altered, are the same. They bare the imprint, however minute, of the person who altered them and the peculiarities of the tools that they were altered with. Also they are most definitely not, cannot be for reasons of time, geography and interpretation be the same as the photographer – s/he who pressed the shutter and was witness to what was captured. What is actually being photographed is another perspective again, because it is in a different place in time and space to the camera.
So much is true, essential in that we are talking the laws of physics, but nonetheless not particularly of great importance when it comes to our taking photographs. Except in two circumstances. One is in the circumstance of where we are using the image as the basis of a piece of art – The conscious use of the imagination in the production of objects intended to be contemplated or appreciated as beautiful, as in the arrangement of forms, sounds, or words (Freedictionary.com) – a pleasing representation of something we have seen, framed, captured and post processed in the hope of making something that the viewer can form an emotional attachment to. The other is a claim that what we are showing is the truth (as opposed to a truth) – Conformity to fact or actuality (Freedictionary.com). The first is an opinion the second is an assertion, for unless present we have no way of knowing just how truthful a claim that is.
So what? Well in the former, I agree with you, so what? Not being a collector of fine art, or otherwise, prints. Apart from the fact that a lot can be learned by looking critically at other peoples work, it is a personal matter as well as something that is subject to fads and fashions and more or less informed opinions. That is not to say that certain commonalities cannot be agreed in what we accept as pleasing to the eye.
It is said that "The Camera never lies" (Robert Louis Stevenson), which Caesar Romero contradicted, "It lies every day". Stevenson was making a point about the difference between fine art and photography though I prefer David Bailey's assertion that " It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary. (In "Face," London, Dec 1984). The fact remains that certain physical limitations endure and it takes a certain skill to get round it.
Does it matter, then, if we alter images? Of course not and yes, absolutely! As ever context is all. The camera is neutral. Whatever is in front of it it will render a more or less recognisable facsimile of, depending on our mastery of focus and the exposure triangle. Our job, behind the camera, is to let this story making tool tell a story. If we are claiming that the story we are telling is a true one, then absolutely it matters if and what we enhance/remove. This is especially the case in photojournalism where the reputation of the publication using an image can be severely tainted by the manipulation of a photograph to tell an enhanced story.
So there is, in some areas, a tension between truth and beauty. That is before we come back to matters of taste but there is still a question of whether it matters if an image is a photograph or a graphic design? Again, of course not and absolutely! It counts in the matter of work flow, especially when editing. We have, many times, referred to the opposing camps of Get-It-Right-In-The-Camera-istas and Ye-Accolytes-Of-Photoshop. In truth we probably aspire to the former but fall back on the latter, but there is a reason why the Camera-ista has a point and it is linked to a number of themes we have looked at over the past couple of years.
First off is the argument about artist/artisan. Frankly I find this to be an empty one. If you take something and make something else of it then you have created art. Art may not be the end which you had in mind, for instance if you took wood to make a chair I am guessing that you would rather sit on it than look at it, but there will be a reaction to the way that it has been put together and thought about, its design, that will include an overall effect. This overall effect is where the art concept lives. It is not all of it, but it is an integral part of it.
Secondly, fine motor skills and the ability to pick up a pencil or a brush and create a representation of a person or thing is the same as picking up any other tool and making the same. The camera is a tool. Mastery of the tool leads to mastery over the final result. It does nothing to add soul to the final result, but it is a gate keeper to others interacting with that same soul. Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fuji, Pentax, Olympus, Hasalblad, Phase One and the rest, immaterial. Light and the laws of physics work the same way for them all. Post processing may be able to put things in but it can only bring out soul if soul is there to be found in the first place. Post processing, and by far the most commonly found is the Photoshop/Creative Cloud family but I mean post processing in general, is just another tool. You can be good bad or indifferent in using it.
So get out, photograph, think about what you photograph, look at others photograph, learn the ways of light, bring it home, polish it, present it and go again. Sounds like some sort of hobby to me.
Happy New Year.
15th September 2016 – Damned Chilly
Pam Lane ARPS DPAGB AFIAP and husband Eddy Lane ARPS DPAGB AFIAP were our guest speakers and a fascinating evening spent in the footsteps of Shackleton, some superb photography and a penguin quiz. Can't say that is a common event! So I came away with a clue about how to differentiate a Magellanic from a Macoroni, a Gentoo from a Chin Strap and a Rock Hopper from a King and the fact that the World population of Penguins is around 50 million. And much, much more. An excellent and entertaining evening that was well received all round.
Earnest Shackleton is often used as an exemplar of Leadership in times of adversity (including by yours truly) and the best quote I have ever come across about that period of polar expedition goes as follows.
"For scientific discovery give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel give me Amundsen; but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton." Sir Raymond Priestly, Antarctic Explorer.
The story is all out heroic, even if underlying that story are mission objectives not even remotely fulfilled. Everyone got back. What they got back to was the peak of Flesh v Steel and the new way of waging war was being worked out at the cost of hundreds of thousands dead, mutilated, shattered in mind and body. Patriotically they joined up and fought, not all of them survived, but served with distinctions nonetheless.
Pam and Eddy braved the elements in somewhat more certain circumstances, nonetheless freezing waters, actually below freezing waters around minus 2 degrees Celsius, lower if the water is saltier, massive cliffs of moving pack ice and bergs and cold, cold winds all have to be taken into account. Their camera equipment they kept outside for the main part, simply because of the problems of condensation which can render equipment useless especially when it is repeatedly exposed to extremes. Unlike the Northern extreme, though, there isn't generally wild life there that views human visitors as a welcome variation in diet. One scientist of the British Antarctic Survey was killed by a Leopard Seal whilst out snorkelling, but that was some time past now. The fact that the air is so arid means that the abandoned detritus of human occupation left behind is largely as it was when it was abandoned. South Georgia's redundant whaling station's iron work shows a patina of rust but that is only at the surface and many of the wooden buildings survive intact even after 50 years.
Their photographs weren't only of penguins and wooden shacks, though there were petrels and albatross, seals aplenty and these were all executed with great skill and precision. Personal favourites were of the petrels and albatross against the background of the sea, the seals and the massive ice floes. It was, as already stated a very entertaining and informative evening.
So, carrying on from where we left off in the last post on week 2's Q & A session we turn to:
What is the difference between RAW and JPEG?
This is also a question of RAW v Everything Else, and we have dealt with this quite recently in the blog, indeed we have visited it several times over the years, so I won't go over in any great detail.
Much has been written about why you should use it as your standard format. RAW, in analogy, is the digital equivalent of the film negative. You expose the film you get what the lens is pointing at in all its tarnished glory. Ye-Acolytes-Of-Photoshop will tell you to use RAW because RAW retains the maximum amount of information. RAW will almost certainly need some work done on it anyway because it acts as a record, is as neutral as photographic algorithms get, even so are constructed and thus certain assumptions are made at the algorithm manufacturing stage. Way, way before you even entered the camera shop. It is why there isn't just one edition of RAW. Camera makers, in order to optimise the electronics within their system, write their own versions of it. Programmes like Photoshop have the ability to deal with this variation built in so you won't be conscious of this. Indeed you cannot view a RAW image by itself, it needs a suitable image programme to view it.
That, Shock! Horror! includes on your camera. What you see in Live View is actually a JPEG….
A Get-It-Right-In-The-Camera-ista will say, not without some philosophical justification, that JPEG is fine, because the decisions you make at the time of capture are the most important decisions in the timeline of any photograph, so take some time to get it right and to be fare Ye-Acolytes-Of-Photoshop wouldn't disagree. JPEG saves you space, it saves you time and it comes in a universally acceptable ready to go format. You can do edits on a JPEG though because there isn't as much information to edit you cannot edit to the same degree. Many of the clever things that your camera can do, like HDR, are rendered by the camera in the JPEG format. And what you see in DSLR Live View is the finished article according to JPEG (see shock! Horror! revelation above). JPEG also saves space, but it does this by binning information the algorithm decides you don't need. It is a destructive editing method. It is great for final shots (you can't save in RAW remember), because it is the first format that websites, editing programmes etc are set up to handle.
This is where the Histogram comes in. Always check your image against the histogram when you have a scene with high dynamic range. Indeed if you have high dynamic range in a scene (both very dark and very light) shoot RAW anyway. If you are bracketing to grab the highlights and shadows for post process later make sure that the range you are bracketing (my Sony limits automatic bracketing to ± 0.3 or 0.7 of a stop, which is pretty useless most of the time I want to use it, so intend to do this manually) has some overlap (or take three or four or more as necessary). You can then choose to layer and pick whichever is the most suitable exposure part of a scene or combine them into a High Dynamic Range (HDR) image.
The sensible answer is to use what you are comfortable with given the job to hand or, if you work for Reuters, JPEG i.e. whatever the client demands and, of course, you have to choose a format to store your edited work in and JPEG is pretty universal.
Week 4 – 22nd Sept 2016 19:30 – Quiz Night. Teams of 3/4 members compete against each other in a photography quiz – So make sure you have caught up with ALL the past blog postings ….
10th December 2015 – On Skies & ROC Round Two
Skies, can't live with them, can't live without them, indicates some of the difficulty that the greatest source of light on the planet can present to photographers and may explain why some retreat on a more or less permanent basis to a studio where these things can be controlled. That, however is not the fate of the landscaper, the wedding photographer, the took-the-camera-on-holiday snapper, well, anyone who takes a photograph of, or in, the great outdoors. Pretty much everyone, then.
Dynamic range is the problem, luminance, the ability of a sensor to reproduce the extremes of blacks and whites in a photograph and everything in between. The human eye/brain combo has a dynamic range of 10-14 f-stops, about 1/1,000,000,000 times the faintest light to that of the of our local star in the middle of a bright and sunny day. DXO give the highest dynamic range of any commercially available DSLR at 14.8 stops. So how can that be a problem? Most modern DSLR's and CSC's appear to be within that 10-14 stop range so can emulate the human brain. Yes and no. The question is where the average that you are metering for lies in that range. Your camera does not possess the same dynamic processing capabilities as your brain which constantly adjusts to available light levels (and has been several million years in the development in doing so). What we see in an image is the capture of a moment. It is fixed. The exif data tells you that. What we see with our eyes is dynamically adjusted to what we "know" and changes constantly. In our brains the "shutter" is always rolling, not fixed.
That expectation can be shown in an image with a high dynamic range (that's a clue) but necessarily arranged around the average the light meter has constructed or the camera instructed by the photographer. Those f-stops in the range have captured the information, we just need to rebalance the image to our expectations. That was the subject of our last meeting and Gerry Painter, Mark O'Grady and Nick Hale gave us some valuable leads on how, with some contributions from the floor, using both Adobe (Elements, Lightroom and Photoshop) and Smart Photo Editor how we can use that inbuilt dynamic range to our own advantage; and yes the same applies to JPEG and to RAW, just not in equal measure.
Broadly the latitude in a JPEG is plus or minus 2 stops over the "correctly" exposed average. With RAW that moves to approximately +/-3 stops. What the sensor can see, approximately, and what the eye can see, is not the same as the sensor records in straight numbers. There are a number of solutions that are available including HDR either from a single or multiple frames plus the various trips that we were shown using the tools available in the photo editing suites and we mentioned above. A single HDR image taken pushed to reveal the highlights and so then back to the original and push to the shadows then combine the three to cover a greater range is one way but if the range needs to be extended further then three separate shots can be used. To get the best out of this will usually require dedicated software such as Luminance HDR, which is free, or Photomatics or any number of similarly capable software, to blend the images into one.
There are, of course, other factors to consider, especially if you are blending two images, especially the quality/temperature of the light needing to match to make things convincing. That is convincing, not accurate – see the discussions of this over the last two posts. This was shown to be relatively straightforward, what doesn't match between two images really stands out rather clearly and it is down to being a little critical of the outcome. Does this look as if it is one image, or does it look like more than one image crammed together. The hit and hopes do tend to stand out. As ever it is a matter of personal taste. It's your photograph, what are you happy with?
Which brings us to round 2 of the ROC. Paul McCloskey was our judge and thanks to him for his insights and reflections on the night. The number of images commended was the highest to date and reflects not just a growth in quality but also one in diversity. The club moves from strength to strength. There was some conversation about what Paul saw and what some in the audience saw differently, as ever when we compare and contrast each other's work, but that is both a good and necessary thing. The story we think we are sending out won't always be the story that other's think we are telling, and that can open us to other opportunities.
Results are as follows, those marked No Image Available mean exactly that. There was no image in the cloud folder for them.
Digital Print Images
Highly Commended
Beauty and the Beast
Mark O'Grady
No Image Available
The Vessel
Simon Caplan
The Beast
Mark O'Grady
No Image Available
Garage Sale
Rob Heslop
No Image Available
Chris Harvey
Centre of Attention
Chris Harvey
The Big Bang Theory
Ian Coombs
Digital Images
Highly Commended
Who Needs a Parrot?
Debbi Griffin
Eddie House
Top Note
Ian Coombs
Butterfly With No Name
Julia Simone
It's a Bird
Pauline Ewins
Brecon Beacons – Falls
Steve Hallam
Sorry I'm Late
Julie Kaye
The Greek Goddess Ariadne
Jo Gilbert
Julia Simone
3rd Vetran
Julie Coombs
Coming Through
Martin Ethrington
Past Times
Gary Butler
Congratulations everybody, a fine showing.
17 December Meeting SCHOOL IS CLOSED. REPAIR TO THE UPSTAIRS OF THE LANGTON COURT ON LANGTON COURT ROAD. Bring something festive to eat and lots and lots of prints of any size – it will be fun.
Next meeting at the School: January 7th 2016 – Chairman Maurice has the floor. Read up on your Little Red Books …
15th October 2015 – We can edit too
As we approach carnival season, Somerset style (see below) and the photo opportunities that creates, we spent last meeting huddled around various laptops editing in a handful of different editing programmes following on from Marko Nurinem's virtuoso display last week. So there was Lightroom (of course) but also GIMP, Smart Photo Editor, Picasa, and Photoscape with CS2 (free from Adobe and all quite legal here is how to get it) ACDSee getting honourable mentions from new member Gary.
Now, you long term readers of this blog will know that the world divides into two camps, the Get-it-right-in-the-cameraista's and Ye-Accolytes-of-Photoshop. As an avowed Get-it-right-in-the-cameraista I sure do a lot of editing. The argument is that the more you get it right for you in the camera the less fiddling around you have to do in post-production. In my case it comes from a youth spent shooting expensive slide film on a shoestring budget. In these digital days, when the hardware is still expensive but the marginal cost of the next image is a fraction of a penny, what that is really about is expanding the chances of achieving the image you want to capture. The principle categories in photo editing programmes are those that alter the fundamentals of the image and those that layer effects on. Of course the real world contains a bit of both usually, but the fundamental approach will be one or the other.
If you are shooting in RAW the images can seem a little flat and dull – remember that what you see in the viewfinder is either a reflected image of the actual light falling on your subject or, in CSC's and compacts, effectively a jpeg. Sometimes a little cropping or erasing extraneous details make for a more satisfying final product. Maybe a shadow could do with lightening or a sky darkening to get back some detail, or a blemish on the skin would be more flatteringly removed from the portrait. Smart Photo Editor is the proprietary, paid for (£19.95 'on sale' and a bargain stand alone and £34.95 as a Photoshop Plug in) programme I use and also Gimp and Picasa, both free. Others use other combinations, some paid for some free.
Your ambition may not quite extend to the do everything Photoshop (yet at least) and I will venture two reasons pecuniary why you may not, one more obvious than the other, viz: (A) you don't have the set up or space or need for it to make the most of it and (B) Zombies. The former is more obviously expensive than the latter, and I don't want to get into an endless and ultimately fruitless kit pornography rant, so 'nuff said, but the latter can have quite an impact on the pocket. Let me explain.
Fortunate as most club members are to be living in a city that has an "Official" policy for handling of a Zombie outbreak, that isn't quite what I mean – though there are worrying sightings. Zombies are those little items, small denominations, that walk out of your bank account every month without much thought. In isolation they are not a lot. Their attraction is their affordability, the trade is made worth it by the perceived quality/quantity you get in return – at the point of purchase. You get a lot of things with Adobe's Creative Cloud for photography for £8.57 a month, no doubt. A more detailed and flexible programme there is yet to be brought to market, though the gap may be closing. It is, I suspect, a lot more than most amateur photographers need, but it's always nice to have some extra wumph under the bonnet. If it wasn't no sports cars or sports bikes would ever get sold. For a vocal minority bragging rights are always the primary concern.
That, though isn't quite the point. Are you going to pay (and keep on paying) £102.84 straight out on something you might need? No? But might pay £8.57 a month on something that is more than you need, something you can expand in to. It's there and it ticks over and you get used to it. But, when is it just one item? When it's a couple, or three, it grows. £20.00 a month isn't a lot to spend on a hobby, say on editing and storage. £240 a year is not an inconsiderable amount to waste. Certainly less than a divorce lawyer when the other half finds out how much you really spent on that camera body. That's halfway to a very decent new lens or a goodly second hand one even on £20.00 a month. The zombies keep on walking and are easy to add to, easy to forget. The costs add up. On the other hand it keeps you up to date and Adobe get a steady revenue stream, pirate copies are fewer and far between. Easier if you are self employed and you can claim it against tax, of course.
Not that I am seeking to dissuade you. The reality is Adobe first, the others a long way behind when it comes to sales and it is a de facto industry standard, which in itself generates market share for Adobe. Our focus, though, was on a broader range of editing opportunities as well as Photoshop. We looked a little at the alternatives to Photoshop on the Ask Reflex evening, this evening was a chance to get closer to the subject. From a little tour round I would say that there is a great deal that you can do with a little practice, patience and occasional lateral thinking as members showed how they adapt what they have to get what they want.
There is another benefit to using editing software that may not be immediately apparent, at least at the time of shutter release and really is about getting your money's worth. Through cropping your original image you can often find more than one image possibility from a given frame. (Don't confuse image crop, cutting out bits of a bigger picture with sensor crop the physics of collecting the same amount of light on different sized sensors). You effectively recompose the photograph, albeit with less data in it. It might be that the light and shadow falling across a landscape actually yield two very different moods when you isolate each area and you now have three opportunities from one frame. I would say that, in work flow terms, cropping is the first thing that you do, because you have the essential character in view that you want to work with. The crop is basically a magnification of the connection that drew you to take that frame in the first place. There are frequent chances to re-crop a frame rarely do we crop so tight that there isn't any wriggle room and even then, sometimes, going more extreme tells a different story. Of all the editing you can do this is perhaps the simplest and the one with the biggest potential, which is why I would suggest it's the best place to start the editing.
follow the link as it will show you the dates and also has descriptions of themes. Click on the individual carnival websites for start times etc. Below is a copy of Myk's post on the club Facebook page:
"This year's Someset Carnival season is almost here. If anyone would like to attend one of these events as a group, please see the dates and locations below.
We'll be making announcements on club meetings so everyone will get to hear about it.
Monday 09/11/15 – Burnham on Sea
Friday 13/11/15 – Weston Super Mare
Monday 16/11/15 – Midsomer Norton
Wednesday 18/11/15 – Shepton Mallet
Friday 20/11/15 – Wells
Saturday 21/11/15 – Glastonbury
The preferred date/venue is Wells on 20/11 as they have market stalls, hot food/drinks and a fairground in the market square".
Reflex Open Competition Round 1.
5th February 2014 – On Post Production: Marko Nurminem
Grateful as I am for the legion of share-minded posters on You-Tube – you make writing a blog like this so much easier and I thank you all for it – and their willingness to help, Marko Nurminem's excellent evening on some of the things you can do with Lightroomtm (and Photoshoptm ) where even the most experienced users in the club I talked to afterwards said they had learnt something from, just went to prove that a live event has a quality of its own. It helps that Marko has a practiced, easy delivery, is an absolute master of his craft and has something to say. It was a very interesting evening for Adobe users and non-Adobe users alike (and I am in the latter camp).
The Adobe suite aka "Creative Cloud Photography" is far reaching in its capabilities. I remember having a conversation with a graphic designer a couple of years ago who quite cheerfully admitted that, of the Adobe suite, he had an extensive knowledge of the bits he needed but doubted there was anybody, including at Adobe, who knew it all. I can believe it. But it goes beyond photography, indeed it is, in its entirety, designed for "Creative teams in large organisations". Scaling things back a bit, say to your average photo-club user (whoever s/he may be) some post production is going to be involved in the hobby. Indeed it seems to be a necessity in most people's minds I have talked to about the hobby and although I am going to talk about the getting paid element below, most camera club members are hobbyists. Of course post production is not limited to Creative Cloud, there are free editing versions, like Picasa, or Gimp among many, but the Creative Cloud is designed with professional image production in mind. This explains the integration between the individual programmes in the Creative Cloud, the breadth and the depth. And there is a lot of breadth and depth. It takes a lot of time to get to know them and there are usually three or four different ways to come to the same result in any given programme.
Using them efficiently is something else. Workflow – the processes an item passes through from initiation to completion – determines this. Merely because someone talks about workflow when processing their images does not mean that it is an efficient or effective use of their time/equipment, there is nothing automatic about it. The idea behind workflow is that by isolating the steps in and between each process in the course of producing a result, in our case an image, it becomes possible to identify the most effective way of getting to the finished product. It goes back a century to the works of Frederick Taylor and Henry Gantt, though neither of them would have recognised the term. There is also a very important distinction to be made here between efficiency – which people will tell you they are after – and effectiveness. Efficiency is about getting the maximum work done (output) for the amount of time and materials used (input). What could be better? Well being effective. Being effective is about doing the right thing, you can be ultra-efficiently doing the wrong thing. You can get to hell in a hand cart in land-speed record time by straightening out all the corners and a firm pavement of good intent, it isn't usually a destination of choice. As Marko put it: "… Be subtle, because rescuing pictures is hard work. Really!"
Presets are a key to executing an efficient workflow, Marko illustrated with a very rapid editing of a low contrast image into one with considerable pop. For editing Marko insists that using RAW as a starting point makes sense as the processing of JPEG files, though perfectly feasible, starts from a smaller base of information, some of the processing having already been carried out and is irreversible. Presets can be made and stored to suit in most of the editing suites that consider themselves more than basic. Essentially a preset is like taking the town by-pass. You get to that roundabout on the other side of town that much quicker, though you still have some twists and turns to negotiate before you reach your final destination. When you only have one or two images to develop then you most likely have time to fiddle. When you have 500 to work through – and you have deadlines and your getting paid depends upon making those deadlines – then 30 seconds saved on each one adds up to hours when you could be doing something more productive instead. Also matters of personal style and taste can be base lined, by making presets they can be easily standardised across an oeuvre over time. The merits of this particular arguments are for another day.
The messages that I got from this enjoyable evening, and it is a sample of one, other than outlined above was that post production is more or less inevitable so concentrate on what you capture on your processor (JPEG or RAW is irrelevant to this), get it as best you can and tweak it in post so you can get back to taking your next set of images. What all these post production packages in the digital age have done is not, most definitely not, invented post production, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce had to develop his image and that was the first, but it has democratised it and photography. Against this there are questions of how images should be executed and presented and that is by far mostly a question of fashion. Marko showed us, most importantly, that there is more than one way of looking at an image.
A good shot tells a story. That is timeless. There are more photographs taken now then ever, most of them with little artistic merit but a lot of personal investment. Camera club membership and presentations like Marko's and Adrian's last week and Rich's and Mark S. and Gerry's before them (and all the others) the wide range of activities, opportunities and connections that this presents is one way of closing that gap.
12th February is the deadline for ASK REFLEX. Please submit your questions by close of play Thursday night.
It is also the ROC open "Creative" round judging night. Be there or be square!
Mr Painter's Most Excellent Patent Circulars Reveal All By The Magik Of The Hyperlink: This week:
RCC EVENTS Feb_12_15 Creative Comp
Woodland Photoshoot Blaise Castle, March, see Myk.


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BittaSweet has always been musically gifted. From a young age, she loved to sing and perform within the school choir. Throughout the course of her musical career, BittaSweet has won over the hearts of music lovers from all walks of life; performing at various venues and making loads of public appearances, whilst recording new material.
Her journey begins here....
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Easter Holidays at Towner
Posted on 20/03/2018
There's plenty going on at Towner over the Easter Holidays!
Fuse Box, our fun and free learning space for all, is open as usual throughout gallery opening hours including Bank Holiday Monday. We're also holding a series of family screenings in the cozy and relaxed Towner Auditorium cinema, with a family workshop in shadow puppetry or making your own bird-feeders on the same day as each film, and of course you'll find Tiny Towner at its usual time every Tuesday morning.
It's bound to get busy over the holidays and we recommend booking your spaces in advance to book to avoid disappointment, simply follow any of the links below for details and booking:
Saturday 31 March
- 10:30am – Kubo and the Two Strings family screening
- 1pm – Out of the Shadows workshop
Tuesday 3 April
- 10:15am & 11:30 – Tiny Towner (for 0-5s and their carers)
Bank Holiday Monday 2 April
- 11:30am – Feed The Birds workshop
- 2pm – Chicken Run family screening
Tuesday 3 April
- 10:15am & 11:30 – Tiny Towner (for 0-5s and their carers)
Thursday 12 April
- 12 noon – Feed The Birds workshop
- 2pm – The Eagle Huntress family screening
Sunday 15 April
- 11am – Tell Me A Story workshop
- 2pm – E.T. The Extra Terrestrial family screening