Mikaids and The French Oven

While out for a wander I came across this great little coffee shop Mikaids for those interested it is at 17 Grainger Street, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 5DQ this is a great little place with nice friendly staff, a great varieties of teas and coffees and good food at very reasonable prices. I had myself a cappuccino and a sandwich the cappuccino was very good and the sandwich was excellent and made with fresh artisan baked bread from the French Oven 27/28 Grainger Market, after finishing my snack I decided to check out The French Oven and found the range of breads and cakes they make daily really good and fab tasting so this is another place I would highly recommend you take a look at the next time you are in Newcastle.

The Jackson Saga Rumbles on

Well once again the Jackson family drag Michaels name into court blaming the tour management company for hiring Murray when they knew he had a drug problem but the one question no one has really bothered addressing is if they knew why were they not there trying to get him off the drugs and why did they wait until he died to come out of the background and claim that everyone but he was to blame for his drug addiction because to be honest while tragic there is no real difference between what happened with Michael than has happened with other superstars for example Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Jim Morrison to name but a few, feel free to disagree if you want.

Another Photography Rant

Yes I am having another rant about photography, I had a nice little debate on twitter yesterday and came to the conclusion everyone has their own ideas what constitutes photography. My view is to try and get as much right in camera so I have very little to do on my computer it was the same when I used film, but some people reckon every photo that comes out of a digital camera has to be edited but I say no yes you may have to resize for printing or with people photos fix red eye, and like I say each to their own my main bug bear is when things are added or taken out just to make the photographer feel they have taken a great photo to me that just shows they are good with computers and editing software so as such anything produced by those means should be represented as digitally enhanced images. That is one reason I stopped entering photo comps as I knew as soon as I saw some of the judges comments complimenting them on the use of their editing skills with my minimalist approach to editing I stood no chance. Well thats all for now and as I said at the start everyone is free to their own opinion so please no sarcastic comments. Oh and by the way I have had photos published so I think I no a little about photos.

The Minions Strike Again

Well the minions have struck again I was getting all set to go for a wander with my camera when guess what happened yep you guessed it Arthur Itis and C. Oldweather ganged up on me to prevent my wandering and roaming with my camera first Arthur struck when I woke in agony from his bone jangling curse in my joints particularly my hands I cursed as I had spent a couple of hours the night before cleaning and checking my camera gear for my treat, even the painkillers were conspiring against me as they only made Arthur recede into a dull throbbing ache and then if that C. Oldweather decided to turn up and snow on my parade and drop the temp to minus six degrees centigrade so instead of going out and about I curled up on the sofa with a nicehot cup of coffee and proceeded to eliminate every creatureand person I came across in Skyrim.

My take on photography

Before anyone goes all huffy and starts spitting their dummy out I would just like to say these are my opinions if you agree or disagree that is entirely in your hands. I very rarily use editing software for anything other than cropping and resizing ready for printing I do however try various tricks in camera to get various effects like changing the white balance using differing shutter speeds and screw on filters and I only use 3 of them U.V., POLARIZER and RED. I also if rarely follow any of the so called rules of photography to the letter as the first thing you notice when you read how some professional photographers get the shot they are talking about they throw them out the window so to speak, my main rules that I have are the photo that I take is good as long as I am happy with the result and if anybody asks me to take photos for them as long as they are happy with the results then so am I, for example my sons wedding anybody who knows me knows I am not confident taking photos of people but when the so called professional dropped them in the proverbial about 4 days before their wedding I reluctantly agreed to take their photos for them as it turned out one or two people were not happy with them but the main people my son and daughter in law were over the moon with them. So my take is you will never please all the people all of the time but as lkng as I am happy that's all that matters.

Blogging

Blogging there are a number of reasons why people blog these include self promotion of their talents such as writing,photography and arts then you have those who use them as a way to get their political and religious views across, those who use it to document their life and then you have the likes of me who do it for fun I write what I think I make up what I think are funny news stories and post photos if people do not like what I blog than the easy solution is do not read my blogs I do not deliberately set out to offend people but if they take offense tough stop being sensitive and taking everything people say or write personally jokes and funny stories about politics and religion have been around as long as man has been alive. These are my own opinions.

Morning out for retail therapy

Well went out for some retail therapy ended up doing food shopping instead came back with 2 bags of food and only 1 second hand 360 game for myself something wrong there, but at least I have extra food in the house now lol but what is it with shops I mean I went out for some trainers went in three shops and not one had a size 6 I mean they had all the sizes around them but none in my size and what is it with coats I tried 4 different ones on in a large now I am not muscle bound and was only wearing a t-shirt but I could not get the sleeves over my biceps is everyone supposed to have skinny arms skinny legs and big feet.