A Monkey's Revenge - My Blog
GDPR- The Privacy fiasco
GDPR- what an absolute fiasco!
Now here is a piece of legislation made and imposed with the best of intentions, but the worst of results. No proper consultation, not enough thought and the end result approaches this.....
https://www.mrscruff.com/gdpr
I published my own privacy policy on my website, and also an article approaching the silliness of the above. My thoughts on the debacle. But of course I removed it on 25th May because that was the deadline date for GDPR and it is now THE LAW!
If you set yourself up as a target then you will eventually likely become one!
It's already cost me money, time and I've already experienced much of the public and business confusion over GDPR. Hopefully things will work out eventually and we will all carry on as normal. My email inboxes will also return to normal and I will still get all those marketing calls and ppi and insurance/accident claim phonecalls I love so much ;-(
Trout and about
I've been very busy just lately with both commercial and editorial work, as well as quite a bit of personal work. My latest personal project has also kicked off, sponsored by both InterfitPhotoUK and Lastolite. Interfit have loaned me two of their latest S1 lights and Lastolite/Manfrotto one of their Washington Easycare fabric backdrops.
So far it's mostly all good. The S1 lights are a revelation on the battery life. I'm used to things like my Fuji X-Pro camera having a really crappy battery life. Absolutely not the case at all with the Interfit S1 lights. I'm extremely impressed with the battery life on these and also at how quickly the batteries recharge. PLUS you can use their lights on mains power while the batteries recharge OFF the flash units. Now THAT is a great idea!
If I have a criticism, it is the resulting compromise. Which is the 4 seconds recharge time between shots. My Elinchroms take a second. Even that is often annoying. But 4 seconds for me is a LONG time. Too long. I hope that Interfit will address this issue in the near future because so far it is the only issue I have with their excellent lights.
More to follow on this as time marches on. I shall be using the S1's again tomorrow on a commercial job for Waitrose. It's a great test of these lights in the real world.
A nice tribute
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Lovely to get a call from Earl Spencer's estate at Althorp today. All the portraits taken of him and he likes my humble efforts best 
;-)
My first ever wired photo was of the 9th Earl's first wedding to model Victoria. It didn't last sadly, but i still remember the call I got from Bild am Sonntag in Hamburg. "Hello, Bild in Hamburg here. Zank you. Ze picture qualidee ist excellent!!'. It was raining cats and dogs here and I'd been completely soaked at the wedding. But that international call made me skip all the way home ;-)
Gearhead
My blog post this week is fittingly from Birmingham, where I passed this advert on the way to a job for The Daily Telegraph.
It's not the greatest quality because it was shot on my iPhone 5s in the early hours. I liked the irony of photographing an advert for the latest iphone on one of their older products. I'm not sure if the advert actually proves that much as it seems to imply that if you shoot with the latest iPhone your photos will be good enough to use at billboard size. The truth is that even when digital first came out, the small file sizes could still be upsized with software and used for billboards.
Many years ago I had a billboard made from a 5mp Nikon D1X file, although it's fair to say that even the sensor on that camera was bigger than the one in most mobile phone cameras.
I don't think I could ever be described as a 'gearhead'. Which is also ironic because tomorrow I will be heading to the 'gearhead's' favourite annual show-The Photography Show at the NEC in Birmingham. I haven't been in years and confess to being quite excited to be not only attending, but also writing about what I find there for the Manfrotto blog.
Last time I went the Fuji X100 was on display for the first time and I got a quick hands on with it. History repeats itself and this time the must-see Fuji GFX50S will be there. I've heard good things and bad things about it but at over £6K for the body only it would need to justify that price by blowing away the competition and cheaper cameras like Canon's EOS 5Ds which I have used and was very impressed with.
I'm also looking forward to meeting several members of my photographers' group who will also be at the show. These days photographers can be 'electronically isolated' and so it's a great thing to be able to meet up in person and have a chat. I don't fancy being one of those photographers at the show humping around all their gear in a rucksack, so like in my previous blog post-I will be travelling light!