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It was fun. Arrived at Denbies at 6.15 or so and pottered around chatting with the other five photographers who were there before the first Samsung PR lady arrived, followed by Will Cheung (editor of the magazine). We then set out in convoy to the top of the hill for the best vantage point. Pre-dawn, the skies were fairly clear though the mist was starting to build - it looked great.

After a quick briefing we went our separate ways to get our shots. Dawn arrived and I thought it looked really, really nice and boded well for the morning. Sadly, as soon as it came it went again and this is the last shot I got before the sun disappeared and miserable, grey murk descended.


Denbies IV by cedarsphoto, on Flickr

It's at this point I realised I'd lost a lens... my 55-250mm lens. Thankfully I found but not after much sweating, swearing and running up and down hills! I then pottered around looking for interesting shots and found an epic tree covered in mushrooms - I'll post a pic of that soon - before heading back to base for breakfast. I was soaked but it had been a brill morning.

More Samsung reps had arrived and we were given another task - plus a competition - to get the best shot using one of their new touchscreen Android cameras. Sadly I forget the name but the camera itself was better than I expected it would be. As a first attempt at a concept it wasn't bad and I'll be interested to see how they develop it.

All in all, though I didn't win the camera or the main prize of SSD drive + a stay at Denbies, I had a lot of fun, met new photographers and got some nice photos out of it. Not to mention trench foot... note to self, buy wellies.

Jewels - 294/365 by cedarsphoto, on Flickr

As an aside, another shot from the Denbies shoot I quite like.


Denbies II by cedarsphoto, on Flickr

Reserved for this, as soon as I find out which memory card it's on

I like breaking the rules of camera club photography, look at those bright corners

I'm also impressed I hand-held this 4 second exposure!


Stationary - 296/365 by cedarsphoto, on Flickr

Also added day 222 wayyyy back on page 56 but it's nothing worth getting in a flap about, ignore. Added for the sake of completeness.

davidc wrote:I like breaking the rules of camera club photography, look at those bright corners


Stationary - 296/365 by cedarsphoto, on Flickr

Eek!

davidc wrote:
I'm also impressed I hand-held this 4 second exposure!

I find that difficult to believe. Do you have a special technique? Or special powers for that matter!

No secret, just my massive guns... Mr Left and Mr Right. Boom!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cedarsphot ... 8564/meta/

Here's the exif if you don't believe me though I can't obviously prove I didn't use a tripod. I can give you other shots that prove I did wobble of course!
Leaned against something and used techniques a former US special forces sniper learned for rifle shooting, they work quite well for photography but make you look stupid and applied liberal amounts of trial and error. It's the first time I've had it work over 2 seconds and pixelpeeping revealed it was a bit blurry but sharpening has helped a bit.

http://www.pentaxforums.com/reviews/lon ... ction.html

Caution - contains images of someone using a Pentax camera.

Sunrise over London with Canary Wharf in the distance.

Taken from the top floor of where I work


Waking Up For Sunrise Is Getting Easier - 297/365 by cedarsphoto, on Flickr

Slightly out of order I again handheld this just as the last of the light was leaving the sky. I wanted to deliberately pick out the bright lights of the occupied floors and highlight that even after all this time since the shard was built it's still mostly empty.


Twin Peaks - 295/365 by cedarsphoto, on Flickr