August - a write-off

September 7th, 2008 Chris Beaumont

In August, the following happened:

  • I moved in with my girlfriend.  We found a nice flat in Dalston and took the plunge.  It’s worked out lovely in the end, but it’s been remarkably disruptive.  The flat we’ve moved into is a new build, so we’ve had to deal with a tonne of niggling teething problems, almost all of them centred around utilities companies refusing to believe you exist because your post code doesn’t show up an address in their computer systems.  British fucking Telecom have been the worst offenders.  We moved in on the 26th July, and yesterday, the 6th September, we had our Internet finally turned on.  Trying to get BT to do anything was a total nightmare.  It was only after Natasha, silicon.com reporter and afore-mentioned girlfriend, threatened to write a negative story about our experience that they finally pulled their finger out and sent an engineer round to install a new line, a service they charge a staggering £130 for.
  • I had my appendix removed!  On the evening of August 5th, I developed what I thought was just bad wind, but upon doing several loud farts the pain refused to subside and by the time I was doubled over in agony at about 2am I conceded that something more serious might be up.  I went down to A&E and within 24 hours they were knocking me out and cutting me up.  That put me off work for 2 weeks and it’s only now that I’m starting to feel OK again.
  • I stopped smoking.  I’ve smoked Marlboro’s since I was about 15, which is near as damn it half my life.  Well having gone into hospital, where smoking is somewhat frowned upon, I decided that having had the break in habit forced on me, I might as well give quitting another go.  So far it’s been pretty good - not a single puff in 5 weeks.  However, my body has gone into shock in the last week as it pushes 14 years worth of tar and toxins out of my lungs and I’ve had a really bitching head cold and cough.

Now why are you interested in any of this, you may quite legitimately be asking yourself right about now, and the answer is that you probably aren’t and that I should stop waffling.  I just thought I should explain why my newly created blog has had such a tumbleweed feel to it for the last few weeks.

August was a write-off.  Events overpowered my ability to do anything productive and I’ve done very little but move house and then get better.

Well, I’m back now, and of a serious mind to start making images again, so expect more regular updates from here on in :)  I hope you had a better time in August than myself.

Video Tutorial - Fake Tilt Shift

August 18th, 2008 Chris Beaumont

I have made a video tutorial!  For me this is tromendously exciting.  For you, less so perhaps.

Anyway I would love it if you could have a look and let me know what you think, give me some constructive feedback (I know that I sound like a bell end so there’s no need to point that out) then that’d be super awesome.

I picked a nice easy technique to make a tutorial about to start with - faking tilt shift using Photoshop.

Video Tutorial - Fake Tilt Shift (Quicktime MOV - 1024×768 - 92mb)

Things I have noted that I need to work on in the future include:

  • I don’t actually explain what Depth of Field is, I just sort of assume that people will know what I’m talking about - this is probably bad.
  • When explaining what tilt shift is via the wonder of wikipedia, I click on a link that I’m looking at for the first time during the tutorial - it’s pretty obvious that that’s what I’m doing, I think, and I sort of pause and stumble a bit when I’m doing it.  This also is probably bad.
  • The cursor doesn’t show up very well in Photoshop when I’m trying to explain things by motioning with it - could probably do something about that.
  • The sound clips nastily a few times - need to run a limiter and normalize!

A slip of the clone tool

July 13th, 2008 Chris Beaumont

If you’ve seen this http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/in-an-iranian-image-a-missile-too-many/index.html?hp

Then you’ll probably find this pretty funny …

Iranian Clone Tool Crisis

Found here via the John Nack on Adobe blog

To all you Nap Nazi’s out there … How To Nap

June 23rd, 2008 Chris Beaumont

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/naps/

Napping is a physiological need! It’s not because I’m lazy! I neeeeed it!

Nothing to see here

May 20th, 2008 Chris Beaumont

If by some bizzare internet trickery you’ve managed to end up at this site, and you are in fact and actually looking for information about me and my goings on then please bear with me while I transfer to my new web host and get my site redesign up and running in a manner that pleases me.

In the mean time if you subscribe to the feed then I promise to bring you what I’m hoping will be a UK slant on the world of AV (photography in particular) production, mixed in with production techniques and tutorials along with my musings on the industry’s machinations.

I can’t promise any of it will be any good, but goddamn it I’m going to try my hardest, and you can’t ask for any more than that now can you.

Come back soon now, y’hear!