Aerial photography from a model plane

Something different this time. My son has always been into planes, he achieved a licence to fly a glider solo at 16 and is now into radio controlled models. A new interest is using a small video camera to video the views from one of these models.

The camerais attached at the moment with sellotape and kept away from the fuselage with a chunk of polystyrene foam. Otherwise the field of vision is spoiled by the propeller. You can see the edge of it in some stills from the video.

These shots were taken in a park just across the road to our house.

Ready for take-off, sitting on the grass in the park

The nearby canal is lined with mature trees

The traffic at the entrance to the park is the sunday footballers

A new development not far away

The other side of the park, we are on the edge of the urbanisation

The sunday footballers and the childrens, play area in the park

I may well be posting more but not really sure, the plane is extremely light and the vibratons from the engine and the buffeting of the wind affect the focusing. But it certainly made a difference from the usual stuff.

Arched Windows and Doorways

Architecture, especially arched windows and doorways is not something that I often consider as subjects for my photography. I have nothing against them or the subject of architecture itself but they don't seem to be high priorities for me. This raises the question of wether a photographer should have priorities but that is another story, and I will leave it for another day.

Anyway, on a recent trip I came across a building, quite a small house really, which had been built in the style of a medieval castle. It was on a quite road to nowhere and seemed quite an anachronistic find. Of course I had my camera with me and thought, "Why not?" The following few photos are the result.

It was quite difficult to get a decent angle to photograph the whole building and so after some contortions I grabbed this shot from the window of our hotel.

 Not well versed in architecture but a quick search showed this to be a Gothic style, some of the more extensive uses of this style can be seen in an article on Wikipedia.

The window here is a Box Bay style and can be seen in the first photo just to the right of the bottom of the telegraph pole. The Rustic (?) door seems to be in a tudor style. Don't you just love the door furniture?

Well who would have thought that taking a couple of photos could lead to so much learning, I can now differentiate between several architectural styles which I did not know before; cor luv-a-duc, you learn something everyday.

Christmas Holly

My wife loves to include sprigs of holly around the house as part of our christmas decorations and luckily we have a holly tree in the garden. Well actually, it is in next doors garden but it is very close to the fence and its branches overhang to a degree. Enough to give us a few small twigs every year.
However the number of berries on each branch is sometimes a little hit and miss.

This year has been a tremendous year for the holly berry harvest, good for us and even better for the garden birds. Before we took too much off for the decorations I took a small series of photos to preserve the memory as it has been such a good year, probably the best I remember.

Here is a sample of the images:-

I also had a new laptop over christmas and in playing around with the new software, I have made one or two adjustments to some of the images, only very minor edits but fun nevertheless. An example is:-

cute little bells, or what?

Sunset From My Back Yard

From time to time we all see fantastic sunsets, and many of us even rush to pick up our cameras to try and record the event. What is it about this natural happening that stirs us so very much?

What ever it is everybody has one or two in their photographic collection. I am no exception, here are a few shots taken in my back garden.

You can see larger versions of three of these photographs

I am also very fond of painting this subject, it usually makes for very dramatic art, I use water colours and pastel mostly but have been known to use other media now and again. I always feel that the real thing can be so much better than the artistic interpretation because as an artist I feel constrained to make the sky seem real. Of course the answer is to claim artistic licence, or that the subject was actually an example of the aurora borealis, or similar. Or just show a photo of a sunset like the above.

Christmas cards from my photographs on Zazzle

This is almost an established way for me now, of making money from the images of photographs I have taken. Hoping for some share of the money flowing around this christmas I have been designing a few christmas cards on Zazzle. Of course most photos taken over the christmas period are of family and friends so I am a little lilmited in using photos from past christmases. One I have made use of though is of the christmas tree, and it makes quite a deccent card tho' I say so myself. Here is the product on Zazzle:-

christmas tree greeting card by ArtyfaxCards
View other Christmas Cards

I have made a promise to myself to take a few more generic christmas themed photographs this year, looking forward to next year's batch. More examples coming soon, so watch this space.

Earning money for my Photos on-line

After a busy end to the summer and  a break in the sun, I have returned to add yet another potential earner to the mu internet profile. Again I thought, "why not try to earn money from my photos". As I have said more than once I take many photos on days out and around the garden, these are basically for fun and I do not have the high end camera which could compete with professionals on the stock photo sites. However, there is Redgage, a site which claims to monetise your existing web content and pays you for your social activity. Sounds good? It does seem to work for some members. However like many of the opportunities for earning money on the internet, it is I believe a case of working to build up a portfolio and looking forward to a small passive income stream in the coming months.

After three weeks including a weeks holiday, I have earnt close on $5. Doesn't sound much I know but I hope that it will build up exponentially as I add content to my Redgage account. Over the past few days I have been adding content ( mainly photos and links to other sites) at a rate of 5-10 items per day. This could be easily sustainable over the next few months. The bulk of this has come from having a photograph featured, but with a current total of 110 items, I have been earning up to 20 cents per day. Over a 12 month period this could be $60 but with more content who knows? Higher rates of earning from the items could double or quadruple this amount and more featured items would considerably add to the amount. Yes, I know this is still small beer but this is for very little effort and no outlay. In other words a passive income stream which may well need little extra effort and produce for a long time to come.

I will try to keep the blog updated regularly with details on how this works out. In the meantime why not check out these links and see for yourself how Redgage works and how my earninigs are coming along.

Putting my "fun" photos to work

As you will have seen in my last post, I have a Zazzle store ( a print-on-demand site) which I had started to use to try and sell my art work. In fact there are at present three stores, which are catering for different ranges of products.

But I thought, "hang on! Why don't I use some of the many photographs to create products and put these onto products." So I have been doing just that. Sure, I take photos for fun, but there is no reason I can think of not to use these to try and make a quick buck. So why not. Here are a couple of examples:-

Standing Stones by ArtyfaxProducts
See other Standing Posters
This is a printed canvas, which would look good on any wall

have a big hug by ArtyfaxCards
A greeting card which you can personalise
or make one of your own on zazzle

Fruity by artyfax
Join Zazzle.com's clothing affiliate program
Lots of styles and colours that you can select with this image.

Ok that's enough advertising for now but I can't promise not to  mention Zazzle again especially if it starts to become profitable. You can read about my early experiences on Zazzle on my Squidoo web page (lens), My First Steps With Zazzle. I also have a new blog which is devoted to this new hobby, making money, LOL.