Our first Manchester Photo-walk was epic !!

 So our very first Manchester Photo-walk has just passed and what an epic day that was. 

Here is some of the shots taken from the actual day / night.   Also you know you have had a good time shooting street photography when A)  you meet up with the group at 2pm and B)  You finally get home just before midnight on the very last train :)

My first thoughts on flying FPV.....

So as some of you know I've moved onto the next level when it comes to flying drones.   Yes, this means that I've been flying one of my drones via FPV.

If you don't know what FPV stands for then it means " First Person View ".  Basically it is like sitting in the cockpit of your drone and looking out it's windows whilst you are flying.  Or to put it another way then you are Piloting your aircraft with only it's instruments for your navigation, example an artificial horizon, altitude, speed indicator, compass, fuel gauge etc....

So what exacly have I learnt then, with regards to flying FPV, well quite a few things to be honest with you.  Stuff such as

• You have more precision when it comes to navigating around things e.g. trees
• You tend to quickly learn more how much pressure to apply to the controls, e.g. how much pressure it takes for the drone to start pitching forward and how much pressure it takes before the drone starts to roll to the side etc...
   

Even though these are very positive things for me to of learnt recently, but there is also some negatives that I have quickly learnt at the same time too.  That is to say.....

• My live video feed does experience quite a bit of lagging / drop outs when flying... which means that if my video feed does freeze / drop out for a few seconds, then I am in effect flying blind in that time frame.  Something you don't want to do if you are flying fast.
• Staying with the video feed side of things.   Then I've also learnt that at times the video feed will " lose connection " altogether, that is when you are flying far away.  Yes, you still have control of your aircraft via your controller, but again you are in effect flying blind.  As unlike your controllers signals, then the video signals transmission distance falls well short, when compared to the range of your controllers signals distance.

There is no doubts about it flying FPV is a really fun experience for a drone pilot to experience. 

However, searching for your drone when you crashed it over 900 Meters away into a tree branch is then not so much fun.  This is because you are A)  going to be going home with your drone or B)  going home with out your drone.

To finish this drone posting with then, FPV is very much something for me.  It is something that I am going to pursue to the next stage in the future.   As again I feel that FPV is a great way for a Pilot to get to know their aircraft and it's limitations more. 

So if you are a drone pilot your self and have not yet tried flying FPV, then I really recommend that you do start doing so.

Manchester Photographer's Meet UP: 14 August 2016

Date: 14 08 2016

Meeting Time: 2 PM @ Neros Coffee Shop Piccadilly Gardens aka Berlin Wall

Description of Event: 

You are invited to attend a photographers meet up event on the above date and time in the City of Manchester.  

The nature of this event is then simply for photographers to all network together and to get to know each other more.

We will start the day by taking a walk around the City, so you must ensure you have adequate footwear for this.  From here we may drop in to the odd coffee shop or two.  After we have finished shooting some Street Photography, then we can if you want to simply chill out in a bar ( Weatherspoon's ) and swap our photography experiences / stories over a pint or two.

If you are interested in attending this event then simply just turn up on the day at 2PM meeting at Caffee Nero, Piccadilly Gardens, Manchester M1 1RG ( This area is also known as the Belin Wall ).

 *  This Event has been organised in partnership with UK Highland Photography

The Route:

1)  We will all meet and the set off from Piccadilly Gardens.
2)  We will make our way to the Triangle area of the City
3)  We will make our way down towards Deansgate direction and will have a break in a Coffee Shop.
4)  We will make our way towards the Albert Memorial
5)  We will make our way to the GMEX Aera
6)  We will make our way back to Piccadilly Gardens and then have have a quick pint or two in Weatherspoons.

 

I meet up with the forum member Anwara

On the 30 07 2016 I meet up with the Camera Talk ( UK ) forum member Anwara and her beautiful daughter Samirah. 

We were just about to set off to visit a location.  A location which I was keeping secret in order to surprise both Anwara and Samirah when we got there. 

Any way just before we set off then one of our close friends ( who we have in common ) rang Anwara and asked her what she was up to this day ?  Anwara replied and said that she and Smariah was hanging out with my-self for the day as we were going to 

• Teach her the basics of shooting a DSLR. 
• Watch me fly my Drone and shoot some aerial photography.

By the end of the telephone call our friend in common was then on route to us to meet up with us and then we all headed over to Errwood Reservoir together.

The weather was awesome this day and the location was an ideal place for Anwara to start learning about how to use her new Nikon D5100 with regards to Landscape Photography.

As soon as we arrived on location then Mo ( our friend in common ) and Samirah headed off to throw stones and make ripples in the water.  I was busy setting up drone as I wanted to get video footage of the surrounding area for my Fox Recon project.  However, things were just not going to plan for me.

This is because I was facing some pretty troublesome " connection " issues.  Yes I was doing everything, restarting the drone, restarting the smartphone, restarting the controller etc... etc...

Once the connection problem was sorted out I then faced an incorrect flight data setting.  Which I have to say I was pretty lucky with really.  As if a gust of wind would of caught my drone then I would of had a fly a way.  As my drone was programmed to fly to slow, which means it would not of been able to fight back any strong winds.

So once I landed the drone and redialed in the correct flight settings.   I then took off again only to realize that my video feed was giving me the " jello " effect.   Which means the entire flight would now be useless as I wanted to shoot video, but not shoot video that was going to contain the " jello " effect.

As you can see I did not have a good start to my drone photography work.  So I basically landed the drone, then moved onto teaching Anwara more about the basics of photography and how to shoot landscape photography.

We covered the following topics

• Rule of the Thirds
• Shutter Speeds ( Slow = Blur / Fast = Freeze )
• Aperture ( Wide = Blurred Background / Narrow = Detail in Background)
• Metering ( Spot, Dynamic etc... )
• Isolating your subject.
• ISO etc... etc....

From here we then moved on to a new area of the reservoir, so it was back in the car and and a quick drive to another carpark further on down the road.

Once there I then decided to give the drone one last go, I knew that my chances of shooting video was long gone.  I knew that in order to fix the " jello " effect.  Then I was going to have to carry out further maintenance on the aircraft it's self when I got back home.

Now once I got the Parrot Bebop back up in the air again, then I soon realized that it was now acting in a more stable operational manner.  So as I was now full of confidence in my aircraft, so I then took it out over the water in order to capture these awesome stills of the Errwood Reservoir as you do see below.

Bringing this to an end, then it had been a very eventful day with all it's " up and downs ".  However, in the end it turned out to be a really great day for all of us involved.

Also when I got home then I was able to fix the jello effect in my Bebop Drone, so I'm happy about that too...

Here is some more photographs from my Bebop Drone taken from our day out at the Errwood Reservoir.

 

EDL: Manchester City Demo: 07.03.2015

On the 07 March 2015 the EDL held a demonstration in the City of Manchester. The UAF also held a counter demonstration in Piccadilly Gardens.

However, I was unable to document the UAF side of things, due to the fact that both sides were at the opposite ends of the City and I can only be in one place at any given time.

This documentary was shot on my standard definition Sony DSR 500 WSP Camcorder. And as you can see it's helped me to tell you the story of that day from my very own journalistic point of view. So really who needs High Definition camcorders these days to tell a story here on Blogger ?