dustydingo

Always thought David Hamilton did it better . . . I was a much younger man then I might add . . . 😉 DD

Slightly OT, I think it's a great image for a front page . . . made me look twice and wonder about it, to the point of clicking on the information link, more than any image that's been up for quite a while has done. DD

I have a Manfrotto MT055CXPRO3 full-sized carbon-fibre tripod (aka tall enough that my 6' 1" frame doesn't have to bend over to use it ) . . . if I need it, I need it, regardless of where I am in the world, so if I travel, it travels with me. Does that count as a travel tripod? . . . DD

Hmmm . . . I've just had cause to contact Alamy and I too received an automated response . . . BUT . . . included in that automated response, second sentence in fact, was the line "This is an automated response, but if your question has been answered below, we’ll assume you’re all set and we won’t clog up your inbox with a reply. If it hasn’t been answered then you can expect a personal reply from us very soon". Was that quite reasonable and appropriate line somehow missing from your reply? DD

Screenshot? DD

Not entirely true IMO. Careful playing around with manual defringing in the lens corrections tab in Adobe Camera Raw often works wonders, IME. DD

There is indeed Mark, and it's actually not hard to find . . . it's more to do with ignoring the "do you have a license" (or words to that effect, it was more than a few days ago so I've forgotten . . . ) question and just carrying on with the download 🙂 DD

Hi Marianee, thank you for the reply. And yes, we are back, and yes yes, Estonia was indeed lovely at Christmas--actually, I'd hazard an educated guess that it's lovely all year around, but especially so at Christmas 🙂 I ended up taking some good but plain ordinary woollen socks--my boots are waterproof and combined with the socks, not a problem. I kept my left hand in a "normal" woollen glove and my right "using the camera's fiddly bits" hand kept warm in a pocket with a chemical hand-warmer pack. Strongly agree with having a warm hat, always pulled down over my ears, and a scarf for pulling over my face when the wind got really icy. And jacket was water and wind proof and had a hood. Otherwise it was a breeze for a bloke born and raised on the edge of a (mostly) treeless sun-baked desert and who had temperatures of 40, 41 and 40.5 Celsius on the three days immediately prior to flying to Estonia 🙂 Oh . . . and I highly recommend the quickly-adopted strategy of drinking glögg at regular intervals during the day . . . DD

"Is there anything to watch out for as far as HDR images and QC are concerned?" . . . ummm . . . the end result? . . . Sorry. DD

Thanks again for all the tips before we left for Estonia and Turkey and the unknown (to us) pitfalls of shooting in the cold . . . in the end the coldest daytime temp we had to deal with was minus 5 (in Tallinn), and New Year's Eve in Freedom Square it got down a couple of degrees lower, but even that was more than manageable: Turkey was a toasty (and sometimes wet) 8 or 9 degrees, not the slightest whiff of snow. Long Johns as many noted, a good jacket, totally water-proof shoes and woollen socks, left hand in a simple woollen glove, right hand (between photos) in pocket with chemical hand-warmer pack. As we were heading home would tuck camera up under jacket near warmed pocket to let it thaw a bit. Luckily in Tallinn we noted almost every buidling we entered had its heating set at _just_ warm, not super-toasty, so condensation on camera lens only occured once. We were told that was so that people didn't necessarily have to totally strip off all their warm clothing every time they went inside--not sure if that's the reason but it certainly worked that way 🙂 Nikon D850 didn't seem to mind the cold at all; Nikkormat EL purred through it all too. Only the Nikon FE occasionally decided to give its light-meter a rest. Didn't have to call on the back-up D700. Now, a little bit of sorting and editing awaits . . . DD

Petri tortillas? DD

Thank you Paulette, the stock of plastic bags is on the increase. Zodiacs probably not in the plans at this stage DD

So sorry we can't squeeze Liverpool into our long-planned itinerary, it would be very cool to meet up again. Of course, who knows what the rest of next year will bring 🤞 Dd