The Winter Wonderland at Cardiff

Every city and town has their own way of celebrating christmas, and this year is no exception for Cardiff with the return of the Winter Wonderland next to Cardiff's magnificant City Hall. I've always planned on photographing the scenes but have never actually gotten round to it due to personal commitments plus the feeling that my photography was not sufficiantly developed enough to take the kind of pictures I would want to display.

This year however should be different. I believe my photography skills have developed sufficiantly, and my personal commitments are worked out, meaning that I may finally be able to take the type of pictures I want to for christmas. This is a first for me, being able to take christmas photography, but also gives me some unique opportunities involving long exposures, motion photography and scenes specifically involving people. Whilst this gives me some incredible opportunities to develop new photography skills, It gives me some unique challenges. The biggest question now is weather any of the photos will make it onto the site.

Latest News 29 November 2008

I have begun the mammoth task of updating all of the pages to CSS however this really is more of a task than I realized. When I created the site, each page had it's own style sheet, meaning some styles conflicted. I've converted the home page to a style sheet, but the others are going to take a long time to integrate.

In other news I am now able to create new 3D landscapes and images faster than before. Thanks to my current employer donating an old Xeon CAD workstation they had which is now serving as a rendercow for Vue D'Esprit, allowing me to split my render jobs over two computers, and use one very powerful machine for the bigger jobs. Expect to see more 3D digital artwork soon, and of course my 2008 christmas and new year images which are traditionally 3D digital images for me.

In other news, after discovering various bugs with the way that IE 6 processes style sheets and JPEGs as well as much research, I have decided not to update the site to be compatible with redundant versions of internet explorer. This site however is fully compatible with all current internet browsers that use flash player.

 

Latest News, 10 Nov 2008

Since Updating the gallery for the portfolio section, some users have been experiencing very slow loading times. Unfortunately, as many people had requested for higher resolution images, there is no way to correct this, when using the Piclens / Cooliris Lite applications.

Please be patient.

I can however confirm that users of the Cooliris / Piclens Full browser plugin (as shown here on the left) experience NO delay in images loading, as they are processed on a 'while you wait' basis. Another good reason to get the Cooliris / Piclens plugin for your browser.

Users of Google Chrome cannot currently use the Cooliris / Piclens browser, however I am told there is an update coming soon that will support it.

In other news, a Code Change will be implemented in the next few days to remove the header information from the page source. This will enable faster page load times as well as keeping the sites sources more secure.

Latest News 09/11/08

Coming Soon to the site, a blog!. In order to replace the blog components on both my live video account and DeviantArt. Thanks to the latest updates and the new enhanced framework, I'm now able to work on this, so stay tuned....

In other news, the sites gone a little christmassy, if you havn't noticed the new banner already! Happy Holidays to everyone that visits the site. More details can be found on the changelog. Have a Happy Christmas folks!

 

 

New Images Added To The Portfolio 09/11/08

New images added to the portfolio.

4 new Macro techniques are displayed, after I took apart an old computer and an old hard drive.

The images include my first attempt at backlighting something for an effect. Something that seemed to turn out pretty well in my opinion.

There's also my first attempt at bringing fire into an image. A process that although a little scary, was definatley worth it. I plan to do more of these in a series called, organics.

 

 

 

Latest Update: 08/Nov/2008

New Images Are On Their Way Soon, Stay Tuned!

Scheduled maintance was completed as planned. Details of any further changes to the site will be detailed in the change log, which can be viewed on the about page, or by clicking here

New Photos Added : 26/05/2008

Eight New Photos Have Been added to the Photo Gallery

The Photos include a re mastered version of my Fireworks images
viewable on deviant ART, as well as some sunset images taken in
Phuket.

There's also a few Black & White photography shots taken at the
Black Country Museum in Birmingham.

These pictures are also viewable on deviant ART and can be ordered
as prints either through deviant ART or by emailing me.

 

 

News Update : 25/05/2008
Since the site has been up only a few days, the response has been overwhelming, and I thank everyone
for their kind comments, I am still bug fixing a lot of the site, so any faults you find, please email them to
admin@thelongmile.net

I'd also like to use this as an opportunity to link you to one of my friends.
Gerben or hyperized as he is known on deviant ART, is one of the most influential
photographers I have seen of recent times. He is responsible for my choosing
PicLens for the original gallery design of this site, and in many ways, his work
is what I aspire to produce. You can view his web site by clicking here

 

 

Welcome to the brand new the | longmile.net

We've got a few new features in store, and we're going to be using this as the main page
for the news and blog sections. So stick around for more updates, and lot's more news. OH!
Just one other thing. We have a completely revamped portfolio section, just for you, after so many requests
and it uses PicLens.

 

 

So over the past few months, the blog has been removed, (joomla, whilst good, didn't give me the flexibility
I needed), the horrifically slow flash galleries, are now GONE! which I know will come as a relief to most of you, and the contact forms are now a single page or email address.

I think I've done good!. As well as welcoming you all back, I've made a few changes back end to make this site easier to update. Whilst it's all home brewed and in HTML (apart from PicLens) practically everything on this site is a psd in photoshop, and horrifically easy for me to update. That little picture stack on the left is also a psd, and so easy to update and play with it's unreal. The banner at the top is quite easy if
not as easy, but it's certainly easier than before.

The biggest problem I still have is the galleries. Every new image means the gallery has to be rebuilt, which
limits me to what I can do. But I'm working on that. and no, I will not embrace coppermine. I'm so pleased at how
this site came out, that it nearly brought a tear to my eye. But it's certainly a lot cleaner, more functional, and
far easier to update than before. So please, send me your comments, and views, as always on
admin@thelongmile.net