People who follow my blog will have known that I managed to photograph the Aurora Borealis back on the 10 of May this year, it was the most extraordinary night of my life. Anyhow I uploaded some of my shots to flickr and shared them on a few groups, one group was the BBC Sky At Night page, I never thought anything about it until I received this message from them...
"BBC The Sky at Night: Monday 10th June
Hi there,
We have selected one of your fantastic astronomy photos for this month's Gallery on The Sky at Night website, and to show on screen in this month's episode.
The image is of the aurora. You can find it in the "Your images: The Aurora” gallery on our website (or simply follow the link here www.bbc.co.uk/skyatnight and click on ‘Galleries’)
We would like to thank you for uploading and sharing your photo in our official BBC Sky at Night Flickr group. We really appreciate your contribution and support, and without it The Sky at Night wouldn't be same!
We hope you enjoy our upcoming episode "Cosmic Ghosts" on Monday 10th June at 10PM on BBC FOUR -- or you can catch up on iPlayer.
Many thanks,
The Sky at Night Team"
I was over the moon when I received this email, I thought things couldn't get better, until the bad news hit the following day as my Dad has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, I said to my girlfriend that I don't ever want any good news again as there's always bad news to follow which is usually infinitely worse than the good news, we have learned that even though the cancer is advanced, it can still be treated.
I have uploaded an edit of the episode that was on air with my picture on it, it's on my youtube but here is a link:
As I mentioned things are a change, well, I've got rid off all my lenses but one, the reason being was that I have been using Canon lenses on my Sony camera, using the sigma MC11 adaptor, I knew eventually I would be going fully into the Sony ecosystem, but the reason doing so was that when I wanted to shoot portraits with highspeed sync for the flash. Sadly with the adaptor fitted, there was a good two second delay from me pressing the shutter button and the flash and camera triggering and taking the shot, this wasn't useable, so I traded in my Canon L 24-105, Sigma 105mm Macro, Sigma 150-600mm and a Canon 40mm pancake lens for the Sony 24-105mm F4 lens, I've had a little play with the lens and I have to say, it's bloody sharp, I'm looking forward to getting out and giving it a good test, sadly I have a chest infection at the moment and the weather has also changed for the worse again.
I have managed to do a few test shots and I am so impressed with this lens, I really can't wait to put it through it's paces, another bonus is that my camera bag feels so much lighter, so it's much less of a backbreaker than it was before as the bag did weigh over a stone.
I love the sharpness around the eyes on this shot, I really was surprised with just how sharp this lens is. Maybe not the fastest with being an F4, but perfect for landscapes etc. The bokeh isn't too bad either for an F4 lens.
I do love my dogs!!
I love the colours of the above shot too, all shot in natural light, and just quick test shots, I am happy lol.
Well, this blog has been a bit different from the norm, I'm hoping to get some more stuff to post shortly, but I've also found loads of old shots that I will be reprocessing in the near future, but for now, thanks for reading.
All the best & Stay Humble.