The Author – Bart Busschots
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Oct
1
Two Nice Photo Editing Tips for the GIMP
Filed Under Photography on October 1, 2007 | 1 Comment
Those of you who actually poke around my Photo Gallery may have noticed that I’ve had a section for desktop wallpapers there for a while now. You may have wondered why I’d never blogged about it before. Well, the reason is that I wasn’t happy with my wallpapers. They all looked a bit flat to me. I spent a few hours this evening tweaking them and now I’m finally happy enough to announce them. They are still far from perfect. I still consider them amateur creations, but I’m not ashamed to announce them any more. So, here’s the link.
While trying to get these wallpapers into a descent state I came across two very cool GIMP tutorials, one which really lets you boost the colour intensity of your images, and another that lets you create really cool partly colourised black and white images.
[tags]GIMP, Image Processing, Photo Editing, Wallpapers[/tags]
Sep
2
iPhoto 7 – A Closer Look
Filed Under Computers & Tech, Photography on September 2, 2007 | 7 Comments
In a follow up to my initial thoughts on the new iLife I want to have a more detailed look at the new iPhoto now that I’ve had some time to really get to use it. Although my overall impression is that this version of iPhoto offers significant improvements over the previous version, it is not perfect. One part of my work flow has become less intuitive in one sense, yet more intuitive in another. There is also still one very annoying omission from iPhoto.
[tags]iLife, iPhoto, Apple[/tags]
Aug
6
Nikon Zoom-Nikkor AF 70-300mm Lens – Initial Thoughts
Filed Under Photography on August 6, 2007 | 14 Comments
So my new toy finally arrived. It’s taken me ages to get my hands on one of these lenses but since Allison has the same one and is really happy with it I wanted to get one too. My very first reaction was one of disappointment. This lens doesn’t do auto-focus. Mind you, had I actually read the spec properly before buying it that wouldn’t have come as such a surprise 🙂 I was a bit worried about the lack of auto focus for about 5 seconds, till I gave the lens a go! I’ve been using manual focus for years on my old Olympus OM1 so it’s not a problem to use it again. I think I’ve been a bit spoiled by the great 18-55mm zoom that came with my D40 though.
[tags]Nikon, Zoom Lens[/tags]
Jul
31
The Wonderful Barn
Filed Under Photography on July 31, 2007 | 10 Comments
Continuing my efforts to photograph historic buildings in the Maynooth area I set out to visit the Wonderful Barn in Leixlip (it’s about 6km from Maynooth). When I set off the weather was good but by the time I arrived it had started to rain a little so the pictures are not what they could be. However, they are still better than nothing.
You can have a look at my pictures of the Wonderful Barn in my gallery. The rest of this article contains more information about this very special building and some related links.
[tags]Photography, Ireland, Leixlip, Wonderful Barn, Granary, Dovecote, Famine Relief, Folly[/tags]
Jul
11
Pictures from Letterkenny & Owenreagh Wind Farm
Filed Under Photography on July 11, 2007 | Leave a Comment
It was my brother’s stag do last weekend and he chose to spend it in Letterkenny in Donegal. I took my camera with me and got some nice shots around Letterkenny town on the Saturday morning while the rest were still in bed. Then on the Sunday on the way home Dad took a detour via the first wind farm he ever developed, Owenreagh in Co. Omagh.
[tags]Donegal, Ireland, Letterkenny, Omagh, Owernreagh, Wind Farm, Wind Power[/tags]
Jun
30
Some of the Sights Around Maynooth
Filed Under Photography on June 30, 2007 | 2 Comments
Despite what we were promised by the weather man the weather was wonderful this afternoon so I went off for a cycle around Maynooth. I decided to take my camera with me and try to capture some of the sights I met along the way. In particular I stopped at Taghadoe Round Tower and Connolly’s Folly. You can see all the pics here.
[tags]Round Tower, Taghadoe Round Tower, Connolly’s Folly, Photography, Ireland, Maynooth[/tags]
Jun
24
James Webb Space Telescope in Dublin
Filed Under Photography, Science & Astronomy on June 24, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Ireland has been honored as the only country in Europe to get a visit from a full-size model of the James Webb Space Telescope (the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope). At the moment the model is in the grounds of the Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham in Dublin. It will be in Ireland for a few weeks yet but it may be moving around. For information on where and when you’ll be able to see the model contact the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies. If you’re going to see it in Kilmainham my advice would be to park in Heuston Station from where it’s only about a five minute walk.
The museum itself is a beautiful building in beautiful grounds. Had the weather been better I could have happily spend a few hours there. As it was it was dull and raining on and off. Regardless of the rain I did take some pictures which you can see in my gallery.
[tags]Dublin, Museum of Modern Art, James Webb Space Telescope, JWST[/tags]
May
18
First Light of my New Nikon D40
Filed Under Photography on May 18, 2007 | 5 Comments
My new Nikon D40 Digital SLR arrived today. My first impressions of the camera are excellent. It is easy to use, ergonomically well designed, and it takes great pictures. What more could you want from a camera!? Because I bought it over the net the only manual that came with it is in German so needless to say I haven’t read it! But, TBH, I saw no need to read it because in just a few minutes I was taking pictures as if I’d owned the camera for years. The UI guys obviously did something very right with this camera.
Needless to say I just had to put the camera through it’s paces so here are the results of my first experiments (not original resolution obviously).
[tags]Photography, Nikon, D40[/tags]
Aug
19
Image Magick on an Intel Mac
Filed Under Computers & Tech, System Administration, Photography on August 19, 2006 | 2 Comments
I'm a huge fan of ImageMagick . I think it's great but I'm constantly and continuously disappointed by their lack of proper support for the Mac. It took them ages to get a binary release out for the Mac at all and even now, a year after the announcement of the Intel Macs and after Apple have compltely stopped selling PPC Macs the only binary release available for the Mac on the image Magic site is still for PPC. You can of course get the source and build it yourself but that's a bit of a mine-field because of the amount of libraries that you need first if you're to end up with a useful ImageMagick install. In the past I've wasted a lot of time and effort getting ImageMagick compiled properly on OS X. When I had to install it on an Intel Mac for the first time today I nearly cried when I saw that there was no binary release! However, my prayers were answered when I cam across this blog entry. I still had to build the lot myself but this took all the pain out of it!
[tags]ImageMagick, Intel Mac[/tags]