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The End of the Football Season

Posted by photodivauk on May 18, 2012
Posted in: Dartford, Football, Sport. Leave a Comment

It’s been a rollercoaster over the past couple of weeks. First, there was the semi-final Play-Off match against Basingstoke.

Pre-match tension in the tunnel

Pre-match tension in the tunnel

The tension was palpable. Dartford’s determination paid off, and they won that match. To be honest, now that I look back on it, its hard to remember all the drama.  But Dartford’s confidence paid off.

Celebrating that crucial goal

Celebrating that crucial goal

Then, there was the Final against neighbours Welling United, for promotion to the Blue Square Premier League. It was a home match, the Dartford stadium packed to capacity (4080) and I’m told they could have sold many more tickets. I have never before seen the stadium packed like that. There was, of course, no possibility of fans changing ends at half time.

I kept hearing “If” we win, “If” we score the first goal.  I couldn’t let that negativity into my thoughts. For me, it was ‘When’, and I reckon there was enough positive energy in that stadium to fuel the players. And I wasn’t disappointed. It was hard to hold the camera steady at points!

There was only one goal in the match, scored after 4 mins by Lee Noble of Dartford. That turned out to be crucial.

ee Noble for Dartford with the ball

Lee Noble for Dartford with the ball

After a hard-fought 90 mins, Dartford were victorious.

Victorious Dartford Celebrate in style

Victorious Dartford Celebrate in style

Now begins the preparations for next Season. In the meantime, I mocked up a poster, the proof version below. So there’s not that much time to prepare for the pre-season matches, discover any additions or changes to the team and then step up a gear for 2012-13.

My design for the Thank You poster

My design for the Thank You poster

Choc Chip Cookie

Posted by photodivauk on April 21, 2012
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a Comment
Nigella Lawson's Choc Chip Cookie

Nigella Lawson's Choc Chip Cookie

 

In an attempt to become a Kitchen Goddess, I love Nigella’s cookery.  I tried a recipe for  chocolate chip cookies from her book, a huge tome that I got in Smiths for a tenner.  Made with unsalted butter, sugar, egg, flour and 70% cocoa plain chocolate chips.  Yum.  Made almost a dozen. Lovely BIG cookies, the sort you get in Costa’s Coffee for a couple of quid each.  I reckon the cost is about 50p each. A triumph as I’ve never had much luck with biscuits. A step up the ladder toward Goddess-ness.

Kent Senior Cup Final 2012

Posted by photodivauk on April 20, 2012
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a Comment

Its almost time for the 2012 Final battle for the Kent Senior Cup. Dartford FC will play Hythe.  Hythe Town are a Ryman league team, but they’ve battled and fought their way to the final so they are a team to be reckoned with.  As their Manager says:

SCOTT PORTER believes his Hythe Town team have all that it takes to turn over Dartford in Tuesday’s huge Kent Senior Cup final.

Hythe have a rich history of recent cup success and just last year they became the first Kent League side in over 50 years to reach the FA Cup first round.

Turning over Conference South Dartford on their own patch (7.45pm) is a tough ask but confident Porter believes Town have all the attributes needed to pull off a famous upset.

Porter said: “The Kent Senior Cup is the biggest cup competition in Kent and we’re in the last two – it’s a massive game for our club.

“All the top teams entered it and we have a big chance to win it after picking up two massive scalps on our way in Dover and Ebbsfleet.

“Dartford are a Conference South team but we’ve shown we can beat teams like that. Dover put out 10 first teamers and we managed to beat them 3-0.

“It’s a lovely place to play football up there and it’s a big occasion for the players to show what they can do.

“We’ll go out there knowing we can beat them and pull of a shock. We always believe we can upset people.

“I will tell the players to believe that anything is possible. It’s 11 players out on the park and it doesn’t matter who they are.

“The players have to win their battles and they thrive on playing bigger teams. There’s a lot of belief in the dressing room that we can do it and I have no reason to believe we can’t.”

Dartford were confident winners at last year’s final, beating Bromley.  They will no doubt be keen to keep the trophy for another year.  Should be an interesting match! Shame its on Tuesday night, under floodlights, as that makes good photography quite challenging.

Kent County Photographic Association Annual Exhibition

Posted by photodivauk on March 16, 2012
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a Comment

This year I’ve had two pictures accepted, both of them footie pictures, which is nice.  Getting to be a bit of a theme. One was the Darts celebrating their Kent Senior Cup win, and the other the young lad leaping to save a goal.  Well pleased with that, looking forward to seeing the exhibition.  This year its at the Maidstone Museum & Bentlif Art Gallery. Its pretty hard to get accepted, they get about 1200 entries and some 200 acceptances.

The pictures

Dartford FC win the Kent Senior Cup 2011

Dartford FC win the Kent Senior Cup 2011

Fingertip Touch

Fingertip Touch

UK Drought – Water shortage

Posted by photodivauk on March 13, 2012
Posted in: drought. Leave a Comment

We’ve had a dry winter.  Fair enough.  Now the water companies are panicking that we are getting dangerously low on water supplies, particularly in the SE of the country. They threaten a hosepipe ban in April! TV is full of glum environmentalists moaning about how low the rivers and streams are. Has it escaped everyone’s notice that in 1976, the year that’s been referred to as ‘the worst up to now’ that the UK had a population of some 56 million people.  The immigration policies of the last Labour government has seen the population rocket to 62 million in the period 2001-2008. The growth rate is the highest since 1962, during the “baby boom” years. The Office of National Statistics says the UK population has increased by 3.1 million people between 2001 and 2010. The House of Commons library recently estimated that the figure could exceed 70 million by 2026, three years earlier than previous official estimates We are building more and more new houses, particularly in the South East. Every spare plot of land seems to be given over to some sort of housing.  I read the other day they demolished cooling towers at a site near Rochester, Kent, 300 acres no doubt ready for prime housing development. This is all part of the Thames Gateway project, much of which has been accomplished. Did it never occur to those ‘strategic’ planners that more people mean more resources, including more water usage?  I don’t think you need a degree from Oxbridge to work that one out.  And what is the latest wheeze?  Provide incentives to house builders so that they can build even more new homes … Since the average home uses somewhere in the region of 150 cubic meters of water a year, the 1500 new homes at the Bridge, near Dartford, will be consuming an additional water supply that equates to nearly a quarter of a million (250,000) cubic meters of water EXTRA, and that doesn’t by any extent include all of the new homes in the area.

By the way, a quick way to convert cubic meters of water into liters of water is to multiply by 1000, i.e. add three 000s to the number. So 250,000 cubic meters as above, becomes 250,000,000 litres (now we’re really talking telephone numbers Bankers Bonuses!)

Bewl Water Reservoir, managed by Southern Water, is reportedly just 42% full, rather than its normal 88% at this time of year.  According to the figures, that is about 12,000 mega litres (that’s 12,000,000,000 or twelve billion). My rough calculation indicates that Bewl equates to 4% of total water requirement.  Residents in Sussex are equally unimpressed by the Water Companies.  Either way, all these extra properties and extra residents are putting an undue strain on an already badly managed water supply. South East Water has approx 2 million customers (that’s 300 million cubic meters of water a year) and has published a drought plan. Whew!  In the SEW Drought Plan Non-Technical-Summary, you see there is an objective to install water meters into 90% of homes by 2020.  How that is supposed to help, I don’t know!

Another contradiction that puzzles me: we are told that paving over our gardens in some way ‘wastes’ the water that rains on our gardens, but its OK for the developers to build massive housing estates on previously brown-belt land.  We are also villified for watering our gardens if we don’t choose to cover over the green stuff.  Either way its wrong.

Its not that we are wasteful of water, its not that we are putting the sprinkler on the garden or washing the car with the hose pipe, its that all these extra people are using a resource and that is putting pressure on supply.  How come the water companies have so many burst water pipes unmended?  Just the other week, roadworks locally seemed to be the cause of yet another massive loss of water.  Poor management is to blame.  Let’s hope they are not going to palm off the cost onto the residents – or is that just pie in the sky?

Update: spoke too soon.  In the Metro on 14 March we read that water bills will rise, some by 8%, way above inflation, just days before the restrictions kick in. Southern Water will charge 8.2% extra, meaning an average extra of £20 a year.  Even more galling is that the water companies are making about £1.5 BILLION in profit, despite a report that shows that of the 14.6 billion litres of water provided EVERY DAY in 2011-12, a quarter of it was leaks. The leaks account for FIVE times the amount that will be saved by a hosepipe ban.

Thames Water leaked 673 MILLION litres of water every day, (a whopping 245,645,000,000 a year) yet its CEO Margin Baggs earned £1.6 MILLION last year – old money-Baggs, eh?  They are bleeding us dry so their profits and pay remain liquid and healthy.

Oh, and there’s the little issue of the 2012 Olympics.  It is estimated that 5.5 million visitors a day will come to the London area over the Games period. And they’ll want a bath.  I think I’ll start buying bottled water now before the price rockets.

I find myself speechless at this point – I need a coffee if I can afford to run the tap to fill the kettle.

The Big Egg Hunt, London

Posted by photodivauk on March 13, 2012
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The Big Egg Hunt presented by Fabergé has placed over 200 painted and decorated egg sculptures all over central London from 21st February until the Easter weekend. Its not unlike the Elephant statue event of 2011.  Some of the eggs are in the same places.  I’ve seen a few on my way to and from work.   The placement of one that made me smile (behind St Martins in the Fields)

Sausage and Egg

Sausage and Egg

Another one, this time on the  South Bank, a colorful statement amongst the grey concrete of the South Bank Centre, called Sarah.

Sarah on the South Bank

Sarah on the South Bank

There were a few assorted eggs on the South Bank on the dank, grey, wet morning I was there.  One wonders about the artistic content, though.

Black and borning

Black and boring

This one is the opposite, monochrome against the vivid colored poster.

Yet another, this time inside a perspex case.

Egg on the South Bank

Egg on the Southbank

A Ganesha egg in St Martins Lane, just laid.

I can’t say I have same sense of whimsical humour that one felt for the elephants.  These are, after all, just ovoid shapes and what anyone who buys one intends to do with them is beyond me. I suppose The Elephant Family and Action for Children will benefit from this  egg hunt across Central London.

Archant Newspaper Wrap for Dartford FC

Posted by photodivauk on March 8, 2012
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a Comment

I was asked by Dartford FC to design the back page and inside back page of a local newspaper wrap campaign shared with the club’s main sponsor, Breeze Residential (who did the front pages).  Below is the published outcome, following a brief from the club, with some creative interpretation and my artwork and footie images combined which I think makes a good impact. The club’s colors are black and white, so it was a done thing to use that combination for the back page.

Archant Newspaper Wrap for Dartford FC

Let’s hope it hits the spot for the club.

Black and white portraits

Posted by photodivauk on February 19, 2012
Posted in: Portrait. Leave a Comment

I decided to use my Elinchrom studio lights which I think create superior light to the speedlights but are not so portable.  Taken in the same place as the previous portraits, but this time with soft boxes rather than umbrellas.  My husband recently had a birthday so this was an opportunity to get a rare portrait of him dressed up for a lunch out.  It was to my mind to short a period to get a series of shots, but his attention span for this sort of this is pretty limited.

male portrait

male portrait in mono

I think this works well for him, an informal capture, almost Bond-esque.

Here’s another mono, this time of myself, with the same lights.

photodiva mono portrait

photodiva mono portrait

The quality of light from the Elinchrom is much better than the speedlights, but their lack of portability and reliance on a power source restricts their use to indoors.  Speedlights are more portable, easier to set up outdoors, and certainly a valuable addition.  But for me, Elinchrom every time.

Peckforton Castle, Cheshire

Posted by photodivauk on February 3, 2012
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We visited a friend near Nantwich, and stayed at Peckforton Castle in Tarporely.  We found a good price for the room on LateRooms.com and were pleasantly surprised when we arrived.  The location is in the middle of nowhere (even the sat nav couldn’t locate it).  The entrance is by an imposing gate house, up a narrow wood-lined road and into the castle under a portcullis.  The place is quite stunning.  It was completed in 1851, and although not a ‘genuine’ medieval castle, is built to the same standards.  The architect went to a lot of trouble to create the size and scale and use suitable materials.  The outside is made of local red stone which glows in the evening sun.  Unfortunately we arrived just a bit too late and most of the sun had gone off the building, just the tower still ‘lit’ up.

Peckforton Castle at Sunset

Peckforton Castle at Sunset

The Castle was equally stunning when lit up at night.

Peckforton Castle

Peckforton Castle at night

We had some refreshment in the Brasserie, a nice cosy room, if cosy is a term you can apply to a castle!

Tea at Peckforton Castle

Tea at Peckforton Castle

The TV lounge was a comfortable room to catch up on the news on the big TV, the room equally imposing with its architecture and book case.

TV Lounge at Peckforton

TV Lounge at Peckforton

Our room, one of 48, was on the same scale as the rest of the building.  The bed was huge, room enough for 4 people!

Bedroom at Peckforton

Bedroom at Peckforton Castle

The detailing in the rooms was nice. I loved the carving over the bed.

Bedhead carving

Bedhead carving

We went out to see our friend in the evening, and it was dark and cold.  However, I couldn’t resist a shot of our jalopy parked outside.

Soarer at Peckforton Castle

Soarer at Peckforton Castle

We had an sumptuous English breakfast in the morning.  There were quite a few people staying and the restaurant was quite full.  After filling up, we were ready to be off.  Outside the Castle has a number of birds of prey which they promote as an entertainment and offer as part of Wedding package too.  There was one super white owl, but he stayed in his cage.  Some were outside in the bright sun when we loaded the car so I couldn’t pass up a chance to shoot a couple (with the camera!)

Bird of prey at Peckforton Castle

Bird of prey at Peckforton Castle

I’d recommend Peckforton Castle as a place to stay in this part of Cheshire.  What a find!

Portrait evening at Walk Tall

Posted by photodivauk on January 30, 2012
Posted in: Uncategorized. Leave a Comment

My camera club, Dartford and District Photographic Society, gave our time one evening for a portrait shoot at Walk Tall, in Northfleet, Kent. Walk Tall is a registered charity that promotes understanding, by helping people to develop confidence, self-esteem & behaviour to succeed and achieve.

First up was accountant/comedienne Genny Jones. Self-styled Confidence Queen, a lovely outgoing personality, not what you associate with the profession of accountancy, how refreshing.

Genny Jones

Genny Jones at Walk Tall

Genny Jones 'on stage'

Genny Jones

Another model for the evening was Sarah Jackaman, who made the modelling look easy.

Sarah Jackaman

These shots were taken on their ‘stage’ with constant theatre lighting, not ideal, especially since Sarah found it hard to see the photographers.

Sarah Jackaman

Sarah Jackaman

Sarah Jackaman

Sarah Jackaman

Finally, we had vicar David Scott, some pics of him to follow.  It was a fun evening, hopefully helping to publicize and assist a local charity organisation which is suffering from the current round of funding cuts.

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