Southampton Water, 30th May 2013

We - my aunt and myself - did a quick trip to the mainland yesterday, to see my sister in Newbury and then go and see some puppies in Basingstoke (we're getting another dog :-) ) so I grabbed a few photos on the way back down Southampton Water late yesterday afternoon. The weather in the morning had been atrocious, with outbreaks of rain, so I'd just stayed inside the ferry on the way over but there wasn't much about, in any case.

A few days ago I bought a second DSLR body to go with my 6D although, this time, it's a cheap 600D, as I don't need another full frame body and couldn't justify the cost of a more expensive camera, as I am a hobbyist and not a professional. So far, I am pleased with it, although it is very basic indeed, and it is a lightweight body which produces good results.

The following are a mix of photos from the 6D, with the 100-400mm lens fitted to it, and the 600D with the 24-105mm on it.

Heritage Leader at Southampton - I think the NYK car carriers would win any silly names competition...

Tankers at Fawley, L-R: Nansen Spirit, Patagonia and Bro Anna

I resorted to photos of the ferries, given that it was a little sparse on the shipping front!

While coastal cargo vessel Huelin Dispatch was on her way out to the Channel Islands, on her usual run. The lower photo was taken with the 600D and 24-105mm.

Some video of Huelin Dispatch, also taken on the 600D (the rattling you can hear is the Red Eagle; those ferries have vibrated something awful since their conversion ten years ago).

<whinge>What the hell have Yahoo done to Flickr? What was an easy-to-use photo sharing site has been turned into a user-unfriendly mess. It's now hard to keep track of comments, likes and uploads from your contacts, is so busy-looking that it's now very hard to navigate, it's hard to edit photo settings, the photo-stream is infinite scrolling which I hate and - worse - as a paying subscriber I now find that those with free accounts are getting the same deal, the only difference is that they have a (small and unobtrusive) advert at the bottom of the page.
I'll give it a chance, of course, and see if it grows on me but so far, ten days after the change, it hasn't; to me, it's software geeks rebuilding things for other software geeks and is a triumph of design over function. If it ain't broke don't fix it...but they did  - and their forum announcing the changes has attracted 30,000 comments, overwhelmingly negative.</whinge>

Legalised copyright theft?

A rather nasty little piece of government legislation has been rushed through and is awaiting royal assent. This effectively enables anyone to take photographers' and artists' work and use it without asking first. This tends to happen a lot anyway, especially with stuff uploaded onto the internet, but is technically illegal - until now. It  allows for so-called 'orphaned works', i.e. those with no identifiable or traceable author, to be used by anybody but, in reality, any image can be taken, metadata stripped out and the image passed off as someone else's.

Ok, for hobbyists such as myself this might not seem such a big problem but for people who make a living from photography, as a few of my friends do, this is a very big deal indeed because their work can now legitimately be taken and used without so much as a 'Please, thank you or kiss my arse' - but, even as a non-professional, why SHOULD anyone's photos be taken without their permission and used by someone else with no acknowledgement and no credit? It's the principle of the thing.
We have to accept that uploading to the internet is fraught with peril, because photos are downloadable with the click of a mouse, but to effectively legitimise it is wrong on every level.

It seems to me that the appalling coalition Government we have here are very keen to stamp out piracy when it is Joe, Jane and Junior Public doing the copying, such as illegally downloading films and music (which, let me add, I absolutely do not condone) but, when it comes to stealing the public's own intellectual property the Government is very happy to let us be screwed over. The last line of The Register's article is right, we have, indeed, been 'royally fucked'.

In the meantime, here is a Petition against the legislation concerned.

Portsmouth, 6th April 2013

Spring partly sprung on Tuesday but then vanished again but, yesterday, Saturday 6th April, it reappeared with blue skies and bright sunshine although the wind was still cold. Fred. Olsen's Boudicca was in Portsmouth and with a couple of Brittany Ferries' ships also on the schedule, I decided to take a rare trip to Portsmouth for some photography.
I don't tend to go to Portsmouth much these days as I am not particularly interested in naval ships and the rest of the traffic is mostly the regular ferries of Wightlink, Brittany Ferries, Condor Ferries and LD Lines (the latter's ship/s tend to arrive and depart in the evening) and also, when I am travelling elsewhere I tend to go via Southampton, especially when driving, but, as it would make a change, I decided to go over for the afternoon.

I had thought about using the vehicle ferry from Fishbourne but parking the car would be an issue, considering spaces at the terminal are limited and there is nowhere else to park in the village so decided on the Wight Ryder service from Ryde Pier. I have not used that service since 2010 when I was travelling up to Heathrow on my way to the States to see friends and go to an amateur astronomy convention in Texas.

Wightlink were hosting a Party-on-the-Pier and, as I walked up the pier, dozy families walking four or five abreast, rather than in twos or single file, walking down meant I had to walk round them because there was no way they could possibly make room. Yeah, thanks, I'll just step into the path of that oncoming taxi, shall I? Dozy adults, dozy kids. It's probably the shock of the bright sunlight...no it isn't, people are always dim like that and it's no wonder some kids grow up with no respect for anyone or anything (Christ, now I sound like my late Nan :p )
At the terminal, an octet playing classical music with a variety of wind instruments (oboes, flutes, that kind of thing) in the boarding/café area and a covers band murdering old pop numbers were trying to outdo each other. It was deafening and there was no escape, made all the worse by the fact I loathe covers bands and don't like classical music.
Rantette over...

I ran into my friends Andrew and Donna Cooke and we went up to the top, outer, deck of Wight Ryder II - the great thing about the new Wight Ryders is that they have an outside deck which is a decent platform for photography and, on a lovely sunny day like yesterday, meant a pleasant trip across an unusually quiet Solent.
Once I got to the Round Tower, I checked the football results and found Southampton had beaten Reading 2-0. Get in! Good result and another step towards safety...I had to keep shouts of joy and rhetoric to a minimum, bearing in mind I was in 'enemy territory' and the Skates were at home (there were a few people in Pompey blue wandering around; they drew 0-0).
The tanker Maersk Rapier was alongside the jetty at Gosport, she'd already been there for more than a week.

I went straight to the Round Tower where I'd later meet up with my friend Dave, another ship enthusiast, and waited for Mont St. Michel to emerge.
While I was waiting for Mont St. Michel, the reefer Star Leader arrived.

Her stern is an interesting shape and I wonder if that is some fuel-saving design?

Once Mont St. Michel had gone, it was time to head to the Still and West pub until 5pm when Boudicca was due to sail. As it as she was 20 minutes late, apparently because some unfortunate person needed to be taken off the ship and away by ambulance. It's always a shame when someone is about to start a cruise or other holiday but end up needing medical treatment instead. Hopefully it's nothing serious.

It was at this point that my new 32Gb SD card decided it didn't want to play any more, meaning I had to do a quick switch. I was not best pleased but have found out that the card I've got isn't quite fast enough for the 6D, itself not the fastest camera on the planet, therefore it created a buffering problem.
Brittany Ferries' Bretagne was on her way in, but quite a way distant and, as time was getting tight for my 1815 ferry back to Ryde I did consider giving her a miss and catching up with her at another date. As it was, I decided I had enough time and waited.

I left the Round Tower a little after 6pm, which didn't give me a lot of time to get to the harbour for the 6.15pm back to Ryde but, luckily Dave gave me a lift and I made it with minutes to spare (how many times have I legged it along the concourse of Portsmouth Harbour Station over the years??!). I went straight up on deck and found Crown Garnet, another reefer, coming in. I thought I would miss her but this was an example of perfect timing.

A small Norwegian car ferry, Sea Horse II, was to be found nestling under the Spinnaker Tower.

And here are the best of the rest from the day...

Cosco Shengshi on her way down the Solent from Southampton. I wouldn't normally bother with a long distance shot like this but I like the sky. I did nothing to the saturation, the sky was this nice golden colour.

And the usual Wightlinks going about their lawful occasions

Plus the Gosport ferries

One of the pilot boats

Portsmouth certainly has done a great job of tarting up the waterfront and I wish Southampton would to the same with Mayflower Park and Town Quay. It's a great place to visit, even if the ferry scene isn't what it was in days gone by. Even the Round Tower has had money spent on it, with new seating and some new railings put in.

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I wasn't planning on travelling much this year, due mainly to costs, but it appears as if things might change a little bit. I already have the four-night trip on Aurora on 24th April (cruise no R302 to Zeebrugge and Amsterdam) lined up but I am also going to be doing a day trip to Cherbourg on Brittany Ferries' Barfleur, on 20th April. Barfleur is a ship I have seen on a number of occasions but not yet travelled on.
She spent last summer along the coast at Dover, operating for DFDS as their Deal Seaways before returning to Brittany Ferries. There are photos of her in that guise over on Dover Ferry Photos.

Mooted with friends are also trips to Oostende from Ramsgate on TEF's Ostend Spirit, a ship I've sailed on just once as Pride of Calais, and possibly a trip to Spain to see, and hopefully sail on, Oleander, one of my faves (the Townsend Thoresen Spirit class were the best ferries of all-time, along with Pride of Dover and Pride of Calais, in my completely unbiased opinion) and a ship that I never actually managed to sail on - surprisingly enough, although my schedule never allowed me to, but I've seen and photographed her a number of times. She's an old ship, guzzles fuel like it's going out of fashion and who knows how much longer she'll be around, although I have heard she is well looked after, so I feel I ought to see her one last time and sail on her before the inevitable one day happens.
The TEF trip from Ramsgate is likely, the one to visit Oleander a bit more in the 50/50 category.

It's looking as if 2013, crap in so many other ways (death of friends, death of pet, other problems), is shaping up to be a great year of photography.