The wind was blowing a fair bit but that didn’t stop the riders going high, long, upside-down, round-and-round or without a front wheel!

As always, click for bigger versions.

As always, click on the pictures for bigger versions and click here for the full set on flickr

Sunset over Brighton 20/04/2010

This is from one end to the other of an under-road tunnel that links Saltdean to the beach. This area has a few notable bits of art-deco building (mainly the Saltdeal Lido) that I have always liked the style of.

Tunnel at Saltdean, dusk

The observatory and telescopes were interesting too see for anyone a little nerdy or that likes to dream about the stars. One of the telescopes is over 100 years old and still going strong! My highlight of the evening was seeing the rotating roof of the observatory in action, it was like being in the bad guy’s hideout on a James Bond set! The floor also raises to allow access to the telescope, which at ‘normal floor level’ is about seven or eight feet up. Unfortunately there were too many of us in the room (too much weight) for the floor lift to operate
The science centre was fanastic for the Scouts, lots of hands-on fun to be had for children – a highly recommended day out for families.

I love the Holga’s simplicity, it’s controls are, essentially, a vague focusing ring and shutter release button. In a world of digital cameras with massive zoom capabilities, face recognition, automatic panorama stitching, vibration reduction etc, I like to be reminded that what is basically a box with a hole in it can capture moments just as effectively and, to me, add more excitement to the process. you’re never quite sure what the final result will look like until you have the photo in your hands – no quickly checking the LCD display on the back! Of course sometimes photos you were looking forward to seeing are ruined by a light leak or other ‘feature’ of the Holga, but others that would be dull are made more interesting by these quirks. Don’t get me wrong, I still love the beautiful crisp photos my DSLR is capable of taking too – viva la difference!

Unfortunately the weather was against me, I had been hoping for some winter/spring bright sun all week but when the day came it was overcast. Most of the resulting pictures are OK, but I feel I can do better – it’s all a learning curve I guess.
This was also the first proper outing for my new lens, a Tamron 17-50 f/2.8
Anyway, on with the pictures!

And a few bits from the museum…

Vintage lightweight race motorcycle detailing

Crazy aeroplane engined vintage race car, still used at the Festival Of Speed and Brighton Speed Trials!

Very old, very expensive Bugatti radiator top and badge

No stealing the guided missile exhibits!

Inside a WWII bomber

Deformed and damaged WWII bomber recovered from Loch Ness

As always, please click the pics for bigger versions, and there are more pics from the day here – flickr set: BMC at Brooklands

Local rock-a-skiffle band Bad Bad Whiskey opened a rockabilly live bands night at the Prince Albert pub, Brighton last night so I dragged my camera down for its first outing to a gig.  All pictures were shot with a Nikon D5000 and kit 18-55mm VR lens.
Please click on any of the pics to be magically transported to flickr where you can view larger sizes.

The blog has recently become a neglected lump of intarwebz serving no purpose other than clogging up the information-mega-tubes.  I am hoping to change this situation, and the renewed enthusiasm has come from a recent purchase – a Nikon D5000

I have been interested in photography for a long time but had not been able to afford a DSLR, after a LOT of saving my pennies I had enough to buy one ^_^
I also have a small collection of other, far more low-tech, cameras which I hope to feature here.  I’m planning on making a DIY lightbox like this one – DIY lightbox, Strobist – to photograph them in.
I’ve managed to get excited and start waffling on about equipment here which is not the point of this update, I’ll write some dedicated posts for gear.  The point of this post is that I hope to use the blog to display some of my work and, hopefully, get some feedback to help me improve my photography.

So, heres to the new face of Burningflan – reassigned as a photoblog and (hopefully) updated far more regularly!

I haven’t ever been to a comic convention or product launch before but seeing as I am a big fan of Apple’s products, owning a MacBook and my now indispensable iPhone, I thought I would show my support, head out to the opening event and become a real fanboi!

The event was well put together, arriving 10/15 mins before opening we joined the queue that was snaking its way around the mall and waited for the doors to open.  At 10:00 the shop staff worked the crowd up, cheering and waving before running along the whole queue dishing out high-fives!

Queue for the Apple store

We made our way to the front of the queue in good time to be welcomed to the store by more high-fives from very happy (and hyper) Apple employees and a free commemoration T-shirt – w00t!

The welcoming committee!

Complimentary commemorative cotton-wear

High-fiving dealt with for the day and we had made it inside!  The shop is REALLY nice (in a nerdy way, of course).  When it’s not crammed full of people it will have a nice amount of space to wander round and drool over all the shiny products.  If you need help or support with your Apple product there is a genius bar (which had no free appointments today!) and the store will be running some classes on everything from using your iPod to creating masterpieces with Logic Pro.  I would stick a link to the Brighton store page here but it seems to be down at the moment.

All in all I enjoyed the opening, it had a daftness with all the running round and high-fives that only Apple could really pull off, I don’t imagine the Bear Factory or Virgin Cosmetics had a shop launch like this!  It’s also good to have a ‘proper’ Apple store in Brighton that carries all the product lines, accessories, the genius bar and that will be running classes – it’s nice to have the reassurance of official support nearby, should it be required.  Plus I got a free T-shirt.