26 July 2010
- There is now a new Okavango Gallery to house the best of my photographs from a recent trip to the Okavango Delta, visiting Chitable, Duba Plains and Savuti. A new Nikon 300s proved its worth, in particular predictive focus-following and seven frames per second: sounds good, and works well!
11 July 2010
- Added a picture of a Six-Spot Burnet Moth and caterpillar, enlivened by a small beetle at the end of one antenna!
- The site now has a custom error page: if you request a page which no longer exists because it has been deleted, or if you mistyped a page's URL, you will automatically be redirected to the site's Home page.
12 June 2010
- Finally, every page displaying an image for sale as a print now displays a drop-down menu of available sizes, and PayPal "Add to Cart" and "View Cart" buttons.
2 June 2010
- Added four new African Penguin pictures from Boulders Beach, near Cape Town. Africa's only penguin, formerly known as the "Jackass Penguin" is endangered, but it is possible to get quite close to these nesting birds without causing any disturbance.
1 June 2010
- A giant image! This picture is 35,997 x 10,518 pixels, but thanks to krpano, loads quickly because only the parts that you zoom in to are loaded.
This is a partial panorama of Cape Town in the afternoon from Signal Hill, with a horizontal field of view of about 170 degrees:
- An African Penguin from Boulders Beach, Simon's Town, near Cape Town:
11 May 2010
- QuickTime virtual reality 360 degree panoramas in the QTVR Gallery now show more detail and load faster than before.
Flash is still used, and not Quicktime (not installed on as many computers). The new method uses krpano, which like Zoomify splits large panoramas into many small files: only what you need is downloaded, allowing the panorama to be much more detailed, but to load even faster than before.
A new camera control permits changing the view in any direction, and incorporates the zoom control. Panoramas can still be moved by dragging with the mouse; they also slowly auto-rotate. An on/off button allows rotation to be toggled on or off. A full-screen view option can be toggled on or off with a button in the lower right corner.
A panoramas contextual menu allows the user to change to a variety of different projections, including a "Little Planet" view.
14 April 2010
- Changed two QuickTime Virtual Reality panoramas for new ones taken recently in Hong Kong ( QTVR Gallery).
12 April 2010
- Added a misty evening panoramic view of the Hong Kong Island seafront, and two other pictures from Hong Kong to the Pictorial Gallery.
12 April 2010
- Gallery pages have been improved by preventing the transient display of bordered placeholders for thumbnails when a page is loaded for the first time: with a slow connection, this can be obtrusive. Thumbnails are now displayed only after they have all loaded. The Gallery Tutorial page has been updated to include this change.
22 March 2010
- Began implementation of more conventional purchasing arrangements for prints, with a menu to select from a list of available print sizes, and PayPal buttons on each page. The Pictorial and Ultrawide Galleries have been converted.
16 March 2010
- A new view of Buttermere, in the English Lake District, taken from close to the panorama below:
12 March 2010
- Replaced a panoramic view of Fleetwith Pike and Buttermere, in the English Lake District, with a more recent one:
8 March 2010
- Added a large panorama of a BMW showroom:
6 March 2010
- PayPal integration has been improved to incorporate a shopping trolley.
4 March 2010
- Added two pictures of Fulmars to the Wildlife Gallery,
and an extreme-wide-angle picture of the Tyne, taken on the Millennium Bridge.
3 March 2010
- Updated the gallery design tutorial and corrected two errors, so it should now make more sense.
- Added two pictures from Angkor Wat, a high-resolution panorama, and a view through an archway.
28 February 2010
- Added two B&W photos of Tojeiro-Buicks at Ouston in 1963, one of which was driven by Jackie Stewart.
26 February 2010
- I have written a tutorial showing details of how my fast, floating, auto-scaling, resolution-independent thumbnail galleries are made. No scrolling required, ever!
3 February 2010
- All Gallery pages now have the new liquid layout with scalable thumbnails. Half of the previous number of picture files are needed. Galleries now download faster, and fit any screen resolution without scrolling. Most of the motor racing thumbnails are now much smaller than before.
30 January 2010
- A new Gallery page layout uses larger thumbnails, without pop-up previews, and halves of the number of picture files used. Page load times have fallen by around 40% (cache empty).
- The new layout is "liquid": thumbnail pictures occupy a fixed percentage of the window height, and scale and so that they are all are visible without scrolling, at any screen resolution or window size. The layout has been tested with screen sizes between the lowest resolution used by any visitor to the site (1024 x 768) and the commonest (1920 x 1200), and eliminates scrolling unless a window is made very narrow and very tall.
26-27 January 2010
- Two new QTVRs, one from the summit of Mount William, the highest peak in the Grampian Mountain Range, Australia, and one of the tourist hordes who congregate to eat and drink and watch the sun setting at Uluru.
20 January 2010
- A new view on a freezing late afternoon from the High Level bridge between Newcastle and Gateshead (in both the Panoramas and the Northumbria Galleries).
17 January 2010
- Some thumbnails and pop-ups are smaller and load faster. The Contents Page should be a little easier to navigate.
14 January 2010
- Assembled a new Northumbrian Gallery, including panoramas, QuickTime Virtual Reality tours, and others.
1 January 2010
- Changed the Bentall Arcade zoomable to a more festive version.
31 December 2009
- The last of the Fuscias huddle together on New Year's Eve.
30 December 2009
- A new menu design looks like the old one but adds sub-menus giving a less cluttered appearance.
19 December 2009
- Changed a Zoomified Edinburgh view for one taken through the snow on Newcastle's Quayside with more interesting detail.
17 December 2009
- Another Australian panorama, misty coastal scene near the Great Ocean Road now also has a larger version.
14 December 2009
- An Australian panorama, sunrise at Ayre's Rock now has a larger version.
13 December 2009
- Two of the Highgate Cemetery panoramas (which still appear in the Zoomable Gallery) have been replaced with new panoramas from Australia, one showing a sunrise at Ayre's Rock with photographers, and one of The Olgas (now deleted), and there are two additions to the Zoomable Gallery: a view of St Mary's Cathedral and surroundings from the Sydney Tower, and one of the interior of a shopping mall in Kingston, Surrey.
8 December 2009
- Altered the initial view of zoomable pictures to show the whole picture, because it was not always clear that the it was much wider than it looked. Very wide panoramas now appear letterbox-shaped, but the full-screen button will always give a more useful view.
7 December 2009
- Added a zoomable picture of Paris from the Montparnasse Tower.
4 December 2009
- Added three pictures from Australia: Blue Gum Trees, a Bungalow in Hall's Gap, and the Anchor of the Marie Gabrielle, wrecked off Moonlight Head in 1869.
3 December 2009
- Added two zoomable pictures from the top of the Sydney Tower, showing Darling Harbour and Eastern Sydney in great detail.
2 December 2009
- Added a QTVR taken from the top of the Sydney Tower, and three Australian panoramas: an evening Sydney skyline, a cold, misty Great Ocean Road panorama, and a photographer waiting for the right light in King's Canyon.
27 November 2009
- Added a QTVR taken in Otway National Park, Victoria, Australia. Fixed an error which was causing the QTVRs to appear the wrong shape. These should all be around 70% of the width and 70% of the height of your page, and will change size as the page size changes.
29 October 2009
- Added another QTVR taken in Jesmond Dene.
28 October 2009
- Buttons now have a more attractive three-dimensional appearance.
26 October 2009
- The long pages (Contents, and this one) have a new "Top" button, which is always in the bottom right corner, and takes you to the top of the page from wherever you are.
22 October 2009
- The slide show on my main page is now a different set of pictures, in portrait orientation
18 October 2009
- Added a QTVR taken in Jesmond Dene and a high-resolution picture of a bridge over the river in the Dene.
17 October 2009
- Added four new Edinburgh QTVRs to the QTVR Gallery, and a zoomable picture of an Edinburgh skyline (now deleted).
15 October 2009
- Added a Hippo in Gorongosa Game Reserve, and an unidentified motor cycle scrambler near Johannesburg, both taken around 1971.
11 October 2009
- Added a QTVR movie of Worcester Park Station.
4 October 2009
- Added a panorama of the Tyne Bridges, made from five exposures, and a zoomable version from the same viewpoint.
1 October 2009
- Added two motor racing movies to the Movies Gallery, both of rallycross, one at Croft in 1967, and one at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in 2008. Both are on YouTube. My historic Moter Racing movies on YouTube have been viewed more than a quarter of a million times. Beats gathering dust in a cupboard!
30 September 2009
- Added three new "Little Planet" views to the Pictorial Gallery.
27 September 2009
- Added a zoomified panorama of the Tyne Bridges. This picture is a mosaic of thirty exposures in two rows, and is six hundred megabytes in size (20,711 x 5,319 pixels). It would make a print six feet wide at 300 pixels per inch, easily enough for any grain to be invisible to the naked eye.
11 September 2009
- Added a new lion picture taken in Tanzania, and arranged the Wildlife Gallery so that all the lion pictures are together.
10 September 2009
- Changed the stereographic ("Little Planet") projection picture of Bangkok to a new one taken in Newcastle, and added another taken on the Millennium Bridge over the Tyne, and derived from the same source as this QTVR movie .
6 September 2009
- Added some "Little Planet" pictures to the Pictorial Gallery, after finding how easy it is (just pick a suitable picture!). This technique lends itself primarily to 360 x 180 degree panoramic sources, but it can work with non-panoramic images provided that left and right sides are sufficiently similar to stitch together. The Red-Hot Poker picture treated this way made a completely new 'flower'.
5 September 2009
- Minor usability changes: "Click picture to grow/shrink" is now in a corner, leaving more room for the picture, and the "Back" button on pages showing large panoramas now stays in a corner instead of scrolling out of sight.
31 August 2009
30 August 2009
- New zoomable London panorama, showing Canary Wharf, the Tower of London, and HMS Belfast.
5 August 2009
2 August 2009
- New close-up of a Honeysuckle flower, made from eight focus-stacked exposures.
29 July 2009
- The Motor Racing Gallery is now one page instead of three. Some of the footage has recently been professionally digitised, and the quality is outstanding (if I say it myself): the versions on YouTube will be ugraded shortly.
24 July 2009
- The "Galleries" button in the menu bar at the top of the page now has a drop-down menu of available galleries, which are now just one click away from any page with a menu bar, instead of needing a trip back to the Galleries index page. This sadly is no longer used, and forwards you to the Home page. Thanks to Lynne for pointing out the inevitable teething problems (now fixed) with the initial implementation of my new coding. The Motor Racing Galleries (there is one for each year, more or less) already have their own buttons: their menu bar "Galleries" button is now a "Motor" button, leading back to the Motor Racing Home page.
22 July 2009
- New close-up of Hypericum flower heads.
17 July 2009
- New close-up of my Aloe flower head.
16 July 2009
- Several additions today, Noctilucent Clouds in Paris (now deleted), yellow flowers (with aphids) (zoomable), a fly on a daisy, a scaffolder at work demolishing a temporary bamboo bridge over the Tyne, and a large thistle.
10 July 2009
9 July 2009
- Added an Aloe to the Zoomable Gallery, as well as a zoomified version of the Red-Hot Poker. The Aloe is a focus-stacked panorama. It is made up of three pictures, merged into a vertical panorama. Each of the three is made up of three pictures, focus-stacked using Helicon Focus. There is also a new detail of florets of the same Aloe plant.
8 July 2009
- Added a Red-Hot Poker to the Pictorial Gallery.
7 July 2009
- The recent cursor changes might actually work for users of Internet Explorer, finally. Links on external sites referring to pages here which no longer exist, are now redirected automatically to the appropriate index page, thanks to Google Webmaster Tools which make it easy to discover broken links.
5 July 2009
- Added an second flower picture to the Pictorial Gallery, a close-up view of a Lily, made by stacking exposures focussed at differing distances. Fixed cursor changes: when the mouse hovers over an individual picture (on its own page) the cursor changes to a '+' or a '-' where appropriate, to show that the picture can be grown/shrunk by clicking it.
4 July 2009
- Some of the pictures here (and some others) are also in my Gallery on BBC Tyne's web site.
3 July 2009
- A Skywatcher Universal Camera Adapter has finally got my compact Canon 870is connected to my Meade ETX-90 telescope. I am surprised and pleased with the detail that the combination has produced. Here is the first result, showing part of an eight days old moon yesterday. This is part of a larger picture (four exposures merged together) showing the whole of the terminator. Today I cracked flower photography and reached my target standard. Two achievements in one day...
