Okay, for those bothering to take note.... I did say I was going to list all the cameras and things to be done this year...but as I am  missing one important element, the D750, then what about a bit of garbled video tutorial nonsense. As ever the seat of the pants were ably used instead of a script so please excuse the dodgy bits...but I'm confident you are all grown up enough to follow the plot in a kind of 'Murder she Wrote' on a sunday afternoon slumberfest,rather than some bleak Scandi Noir murder mystery full of twists and turns that only becomes clear after the ninth episode. Okay this is about 15 minutes of your life that sadly will never return and may in fact leave you with deep rooted mental health issues, plough on as it may give you an insight into the workings of joinerpanoramery....well on how they are put together at a basic level

So to clear up a few hiccups shift/control/alt/e for a stamped copy layer...mac users, well you can sort it out for yourselves...surely!!
There is a dobbing big watermark advertising Techsmith, just having a trial with this software so we'll all have to put up with it.
email, message send a note strapped to a pigeons leg if you have any queries...as ever I kiss you all on both cheeks.

Service advisory ... check your serial number...HA no need to..every other shot the mirror locks and ERR appears in the top LCD window... seems like the issues surrounding the D750 continue.. first the lens mount flare and now wonky shutters...but here's a funny thing, if I switched to manual then the problem went away...so maybe there is something else going on under the hood, software perchance??
For those of long memories and what is probably a disturbing ability to recall some of the fluff from this blog..I did mention on my piece about the D750 when I recorded my first impressions that it felt curiously under engineered..tiny usb cable, no prism viewfinder lock a bit wibbly wobbly like the original sets of Dr Who, in a way which is opposite to the 'made from girders' feel that my old D700 still has.
But the process of returning has been well thought out, camera out of warranty...no problem...moved to another country...no problem free return and delivery...no problem..progress updates ...no problem   I hope when the D750 returns there will be ....no problem
​Now as the wind chill outside is hovering around -10 I'm not too bothered about being out there snapping but as the weather is supposed to return to it's late winter norm over night I thought I'd do the next blog piece on what I'm going to do photographically this next year and more importantly...what kit I am going to be using ...which hopefully will include an ERRant D750.

Just in case you need to check your serial number ​http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Service-And-Support/Service-Advisories/ibs1kfdg/Technical-Service-Advisory-for-Users-of-the-Nikon-D750.html

As soon as you get a camera or smartphone it opens up the possibilities of taking photographs. I can't imagine how many unseen images lie around on hard drives or iclouds but I reckon it's many many billions, all moments in our own histories, all relevant to that moment in time when they were taken, most now in latent dormancy, sliding closer to the bin as the 'your icloud is almost full' message appears on your device again. So the relevance to me in all this....well I had a think at the end of last year, probably after the last scramble to try and fill some memory cards with imagery that may or may not be suitable for photographic library inclusion. Looking for negative space in the image, a different angle, time of day....and in doing so I'd stopped thinking about creative image making, I was taking photographs that would be acceptable to the market I was going to place them in, stopped pushing at the edges, curbing any creative instincts for the possibility of selling  through Getty, Alamy of Adobe stock...I had a think
Okay they were all sharp, spotted, treated for any chromatic abberations, the relevant size and color balanced, a few brushing at the envelope of creativity but just photographs...so I did something about it.
First up was to look at Black and White, now at the moment I'm not set up for film developement, it's changing so I looked at the camera, set it up to produce Mono images in the menu system, fine jpegs and the images produced ended up as a wysiwyg sidestepping Lightroom and Photoshop, then I looked at format, the Hasselblad Xpan pano format specifically, produced images digitally that related to Xpan dimensions, got a Polaroid SX 70 and I'm still in the process of wasting Impossible film to get the results I want,,,then there was the joiner imagery ...walking panoramics and then the thought of Joiner panoramics...multi shot layered images that would be a test not only photographically but also for my organisational skills..I'm back on the creative path, purged all thoughts of just taking photos and now bursting with ideas...now the other thing I've done is have a camera made for me, that' right, as I type it's on it's way...a wooden camera, now that will be a challenge but it's all part of my search for uniqueness in an image and film and paper are never going to fill up a hard drive or icloud
Just a note to thank the many thousands of you visitors who have dropped in over the last 5 years just over 400,000 of you unique individuals and as I'm now a token frenchman I kiss you all on both cheeks....... bonne annee mes amis... may your image making be as unique as you are.

Well I hope Santa left what you wanted and that the terrors of going back to work after the festive period are receding now that the weekend is upon us once again. Had just short of 2 weeks back in the UK, lots of motoring about seeing folk, getting the car fixed (almost) and trying out some new imagery techniques as well. Now I say imagery techniques, I'm using a camera to record things in order to create an image as I want to see it, whilst not necessarily being the scene that is in front of me. So not a photo then?? Well technically yes, I can take and present a photo, just look at all the mono stuff I knocked out before christmas, compose click bang let the camera do all the work stick it on the web....simple, maybe the way all photography should be.....maybe the mantra 'get it right in the camera' is the first thing that pops up on the screen when you open Lightroom or Photoshop...anyhow, for those of you who have bravely wrestled with this blog you'll know that I've talked about seeing the image you want before you take it, pre-visualise, bit like the pre-cogs in Minority Report lolling around in that paddling pool with Tom Cruise doing what Tom Cruise always does...well yes. 
It does mean I'm not only set up mentally to capture what I want but I also have the camera gear and settings sorted before I get to press the shutter button. ...F6.7 if I'm using the 20mm in manual or aperture priority, shooting basic quality jpegs (WHAT!!!) for this new imagery yes...and that's it...set up.  F 6.7 as I find it does help you get away with things if you have a dusty sensor and if set to the right focus point, gives you good overall image sharpness and basic jpegs because the Nikon D750 and it's sensor are 'king awesome and these images are made up of between 7 to 30 shots and in multiple layers...enough to stress out any large dollop of RAM... so without further ado here are a couple from my pre-cog, low res jpeg prime shooting hip swivelling shoots from over christmas.....oh and may your new years resolutions be greater than 1000 x 600 at 72ppi