"Here Comes the Summer" sang The Undertones, well, far too long ago but although the Ulster five-piece fronted by Fergal Sharkey is just a distant memory of a time when pop music was original and innovative the Summer comes round every year beginning sometime around Cup final day and ending as the last overs of the cricket cup final are played out out in the September half light.
With the advent of low-cost air travel, international trains and flexible working the ever popular annual holiday doesn't necessarily have to involve hours waiting in departure lounges for the Spanish air traffic controllers to reach a settlement or dealing with a steaming radiator somewhere on the A303 around Wincanton or waiting in a tent for three days at the foot of Skidaw in the hope that the low pressure will pass over as forecast by Michael Fish. .
Or maybe you are staying at home this year, got tickets for The Test, Wimbledon or Glyndebourne ? or maybe all three Who's is the smart money on at Henley and Ascot this year ? Will you be going low-cost long-haul all-inclusive ? Will you need more than a bright smile and a welcome drink to get you over the in-flight movie ? Will the hotel be built ? Will the plumbing be up to standard ? Can you get Premier League football there ? Will the person in the next seat say something interesting ? Will Geoffrey Archer be once again the No. 1 holiday read ? Will anyone make a sun cream that actually works ? And will you find what you've been looking for ? to paraphrase Dublin's finest U2.
Whatever happens This Summer we all have one thing in common - we have to tell someone about as they'll all want to know. Modern technology has come to our rescue here and thanks to freely available software, The Internet, Digital Cameras / CD photo development we can share our holiday stories with whoever wants to know at less than the cost of a day's car parking at Luton i.e. about 20% of a single ticket on the Heathrow Express. But there are so many options and what do they all do ? If you buy a book at the airport or service station everyone will think you are a nerd so read a bit before you go and worry about it when you get back.
We've been doing this for years here at NDBO of course and what people like is an obscure email at a funny hour of the morning telling some stupid story we also find that adding some of the lingua franca gets you noticed particulay if it is in the subject of the message. Just think of someone who has spent the last hour steaming with road rage in order to get to work only to find an email with a scanned photo of a beach scene and some tall story of a night to remember. Remember the time difference as it is worth getting up early - the only problem is that you don't get to see the looks on the faces of the recipients. be careful who you send them to - perhaps it is wise to reogranise your address book before you go away as as it has been shown that these simple but costly mistakes become more common as the thermometer level starts to rise.
There are plenty of books on the subject of course and we recommend The GIMP Official Handbook and Grokking the GIMP but we recommend Paintshop as it is far easy to get started and produce something and is almost free and runs on Windows. The thing to do is keep it simple at first and the fastest results can be obtained by using the brightness/ contrast controls and of course the clipping rectangle. Try the sharpness filters to get rid of haze but try and avoid trying to reproduce the deep blue sky of the postcards unless you know what you are doing. With regard to composition we like to make every shot count as we are on a budget and feel this is good discipline. Having said that don't be afraid to experiment as half of the images on this page are the result of us trying a new filter out. Another reason not to spend too long on them is that monitors and browsers vary so much in there depiction of colour that a subtle change may well be a waste of time. With regard to compression we aim to get out JPG down to around 50 k each but the new flat screens are less forgiving so compress to an acceptable level then reduce back off 10 - 15% double this margin if you are using a traditional CRT monitor. The compression effect is more pronounced when there is a blue sky so allow more for these type of shots.
We prefer cheap cameras - some of the photos on the site were taken with disposable cameras which are excellent. The main environmental impact is from the development chemicals rather than the plastic which is about the same as a milk carton. It well worth taking one along for a night out and we went through a phase of never being without one.
One of my favourites. The anonymous cyclist in the middle just makes the shot as it is always good to have one subject. You can see from the puddles that it had been raining hard but by use of the brightness and contrast I was able to draw out the sunlight. The sharpness tool drew attention to the shapes of the bikes.Lough Derg Co. Limerick, Ireland. As took the shot someone on the bridge shouted out that it was too dark implying that I had spent too long in the pub. Clever use of brightness and contrast showed that she was only half right.
Some Dutch bulbs but with an artificial looking sky because of the strong (saturated) yellow colour . This can be fixed using colour filters which we will try with this year's batch of bulb photos. We always like symmetry and perspective - don't worry if everything is not perfectly lined up you can always fix it with clipping and rotation.
Taken on a very hot hazy day in Rotterdam. We had to work very hard with the brightness, contrast and sharpness tools to make sure that the viewer is drawn to the main subject. The old railway bridge.Don't be afraid to experiment. This one was taken on the shores of Lake Geneva There were some fallen leaves lying around and it just kinda happened. Some delicate post-processing brings out the colour.
We were inspired by Paris and this one of the Eurostar and Thalys at the Gare du Noord was taken with a disposable camera under difficult light conditions. We use a selection to highlight the two trains and brighten them up while lowering the contrast of the background. Hard to believe this was taken with a disposable camera and shows how things have improved. Once again concentrate on composition and if you do push the envelope be prepared for disappointment..
More experimental. We took this Paris metro sign and rotated the colour map so the sky went purple. We did another one in greens and blues that looks a bit like a Monet. Some theoretical knowledge is required for images of this type.
Very silly but if you have been to Paris you will understand it. The image of the Eiffel Tower is everywhere on T-shirts, coffee mugs, posters etc. so we had to do one better. Once again we rotated the colour map and used a lens filter to get the distortion. If you do use fancy French titles for your JPGs try and get the spelling right. Ours is a mixture of French and Dutch.
We were pleasantly surprised with the clean air in Paris and when the weather is like this it means less work afterwards though sometimes the images can be too bright. We tried to draw the eye into the axis formed by Les Champs Elysees by use of selections and sharpness. The trick is not to push the boundary too much as the viewer will smell a rat.
Our first attempt at arty indoor photography and we went to FietsRAI as a challenge to see how far we could take it and were very pleased with the results. Here we used Bezier 9curved) selections to outline the motorbike and blur the background. Note that unlike the earlier beer shots the foreground isn't blurred. We can improve the effect further by the use of gradients which increase the level of blur the further you are away from a given point or line.
The same technique used again this time the a fountain outside the RAI centre in Amsterdam.
Being a bit silly here one Winter Sunday we came up with this impression of the Sky Television results service by use of the gas plasma filter merged in with a photo of a real TV - well it seemed a good idea at the time. Note the JPG compression doesn't handle text too well.
We tried a few things from one of the books and came up with this. The water is a gradient, we added ripples then took a copy of the sail, flipped it then merged it back with the water, added a few clouds and the yellow Sun which just made it. See it does pay to visit art galleries from time to time.
Some more advanced techniques to bring out the colours in the Dutch freshwater lakes on the way to Zandvoort. We selected the sky then ran the "Curves" tool to subtly reduce the level of the colours in the sky but only in certain ranges of intensity. We did the same for the water resulting in this image. Fortunately you can save what you did but of course the light conditions will never be exactly the same. It was probably a waste of time as no two screens are the same but good practice anyway.
One of our beer shots from Zandvoort. We like these because they effectively say "The End" of the story and round off things nicely. You can see we used the same technique as the bike but picked a boundary in the grain of the wood of the table for our selection making the effect more subtle and harder to spot initially. As we say there is still room for improvement here.
We always look forward to getting our photos back but find ourselves disappointed by the initial results. But by the time we get home we see it as a challenge to try and get the photos on the CD into what we saw and how we intended them to fit together. It is incredible what you can do with a bit of stubbornness and tenacity but it is very intensive work, learn when to stop and be prepared to walk away rather than get too stressed out. Oh and don't worry if everyone slags you off - It's just brilliant when you prove them wrong but there no money in it I'm afraid.
Have a good Summer from all of us here at NDBO.ORG.
