UglyKidJ0e

Well after nearly a year of inactivity I thought i'd finally get my arse into gear and start taking some photos again.  Unfortunately i haven't taken a single one yet but there is still hope on the horizon.  In about a weeks time i'm off to china, hopefully for 12 months, so there will be plenty of new material and thus photographs to come.  
Unfortunately though i can't take a tripod (although i rarely use it anyway!) but more importantly i'm only taking a netbook with me which is not powerful enough to really do much editing so they may be a little raw to say the least.  

I'd like to say thanks to all the new adds, favs and comments.  I apologize for the delay and what looks like laziness but it was in fact a combination of lots of work and being very lazy!

That's all going to change from today...or maybe tomorrow.  Today i picked up my camera and to my horror had almost forgotten how to use the thing! Even worse the sensor looked as though i'd used it as a shovel.  So out with the rocket blower and sensor swabs.  After a quick blow (keep it clean people!) it still looked as though it was raining ash in my photos so i gave it a swab but alas not much better.  So swabbed again.  This time it was a lot better but there was an annoying little mark in the top left so would always appear in sky lines.  One more swab and...*dum dum dum* (dramatic pause)...Some how it was now worse than when i started! Hairs, dust, water marks, a piece of chicken, it was all in there! And to my horror i only had one swab left and not enough time to order some more if the last failed!  

With my heart racing, my hand shaking, i dripped three drops of the cleaning fluid onto the swab, the instructions said only two but i was feeling brash.  A quick wipe to the right, another to the left...one more for good luck.  The lens went back on in a flash.  I took a few snaps of a lit white screen and...(if you're still reading by this point i highly commend your patience!) it was clean, or as clean as it was ever going to be!  

Now i'm all set for china (although another lens wouldn't have gone amiss)

I'm a nineteen year old male, shopping is most certainly not high on the priority list, so when I do venture out it's a quick in and out; a well rehearsed manoeuvre.  Today was the day I dreaded; having to buy some new trainers.  After finally admitting to myself my current pair, with only half a sole, were no longer of any use. James (my next door neighbour) and I wandered out into the treacherous forest that is known simply as Leicester City centre.  With no particular pair of trainers in mind, but a style I wasn't going to let go of, shopping was very hit and miss.  We started in TK-max, a firm favourite but no luck there.  Size 11 seemed to be out of fashion.  Next, a discount shoe shop but after wading through about a dozen boxes I couldn't find my size in the model on display, nor could I in fact find anything that even resembled the pair.

Our final destination was sports world.  It was the wild card, I had never been in before but it came highly recommended from James.  Low and behold amongst the racks and piles of chavtastic gear there was in fact a rack of acceptable and very well priced footwear.  I took down a shoe and inspected it, perfect! Now, to actually buy them.  This, in my experience, tends to be the easiest part of the ordeal but not today, not in sports world.  After tracking down a member of staff he duly went and fetched a pair of size 11s.  After trying them I was disappointed so replaced them and found another pair.  By the time I had turned around the member of staff had disappeared.  On to number two, this time it was a young woman who did not look best pleased when I asked her for a pair.  She called some staff on a radio and told me to wait where I found them, 15 minutes past and I was still stood there holding a size six while James lay comatose on the floor.

We decided a tour of the shop might yield some benefit, so we wandered off in a random direction.  Amongst the racks of the far east corner of the shop, where many a man would have feared to trespass, we found another member of staff crouched and trying to look busy.  Third time's the charm; he once again disappeared to fetch me a pair and told me to meet him where I had found them.  On the mammoth trek back to the corner of the store we must have walked past about 8 members of staff, one who I believed to be the manager, all doing absolutely sod all and with customers all waving shoes in the air.  

This pair, luckily, fitted the bill.  I thanked our staff member duly and he took the shoes to the checkout but before I could even speak he had disappeared behind a wall of sleeveless tops.  Now onto the final hurdle; paying.  This is where I give the shop money, so you'd have thought they may have been slightly more eager but alas no, the lady in front of me was handed her receipt and then the woman on the checkout turned around and walked off leaving me standing there gasping.  I was now tempted to make a run for it but trying not to exacerbate the hoody wearing teenager stereotypes I decided paying was probably the better course of action.  I waited and waited and then eventually the woman returned, apparently not to serve me, but she reluctantly did after my glares.   

One hour and £20 spent; one pair of trainers gained.  I left the store feeling I had really accomplished an epic task.  Alas, that is Sports World for you and the future of British Retail!

Well…well…well…I went to London this week.  What a city! Having not been for what feels about 5 years I had forgotten how amazing the city actually is! My main reason for being there was to collect a Russian Visa, which involved queuing for 3 hours to drop it off and then for another hour to just pick it up (it's almost like they don't want me to visit! Lol)

I decided I'd take this rare opportunity to do some photography down there and having recently become the temporary owner of a Nikon FE-10 I thought it would be a good place to try it out.  

I packed my digital as well (as a back up) but was planning on only really shooting in 35mm.  Time constraints meant I didn't even manage to get through a whole film, but I believed I had taken some good shots and was happy so headed home with the film still in the camera…upon arriving I fired off a few more shots to finish the film but it didn't stop…I went past 24 exposures…then 30…then 36…then the window ran out of numbers! Something was wrong, very wrong.  Risking exposing any photos I may have actually taken I opened the back…to my horror it looked exactly as it had done when I closed the back.  It's times like these when I really wish I'd read the instruction manual before I started using the bloody thing.   

Although i can safely say from now on i'll never forget to check to see if it's actually winding on!

Sold my very first print today! woop! some poor fool actually bought one of my photos...only joking! they've got a great eye! lol it was actually me, yeah i was trying to make myself look popular hehehe and taking advantage of the discount before it's too late!

So apart from that, it's all quiet on the western front! Forgot to bring me camera back to lesta with me (they'll be tears before bed time!) and waiting for a new lens to arrive from hong kong! woop! so in my utter despaire and increasing boredom i actually started to write my dissertation today, yes that's just how cool i am! It's not going too well at the mo, probably because i'm writing this, but i've only got a year left to finish it so i might just get it done.  

Well that's it for now, what a life!

Well it's been a while since I uploaded anything new or did anything in fact so I thought I'd write something epic!

Where to start? Some would say at the beginning but unfortunately I can't remember that at the mo so I'll work backwards.  I'm currently sat listening to 'September - Cry for you' on repeat while attempting to revise.  Such an addictive song! Although it does my street cred no good so I will completely deny liking it in public lol Final exam tomorrow morning!!! Woop! Can't wait!

Got a new camera today, woohoo! A Nikon D80, although it cost me an arm and leg so I'm currently re-mortgaging the rest of my body so I can actually buy a lens for the thing, I heard a rumor some where that they're kinda important but I'm hoping it's just a lie.  I've also moved backwards in time and started shooting with film again, and I have to honestly say I love it compared to digital! So much more fun and rewarding, shooting both 35mm and 120 at the mo, although running out of 120 and going to invest in a new 35mm body so going to concentrate on B/W 35mm and processing it myself.  

Well like I said, an epic journal entry, and it only lasted 3 repeats of this bloody song! lol I need to get a life!