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Greenham Common: former US nuclear airbase, now a public common again
This is a series of my photograph albums about Greenham Common, near Newbury, Berkshire, in central south England. I live in Newbury, and the Common is where I'm often to be found, invariably with one or more of my cameras slung around my neck. It's a wonderful and often quite surprising place, and my intention here is to give you a flavour of what it was, by looking at how it looks today.

Greenham Common used to be an American nuclear airbase, until that closed, roughly at the same time as the Cold War was called off, and they ripped it up with big yellow tractors and things. But they left behind many many enticing clues and photogenic reminders of its past. So this is my acknowledgment and thanks to those who, when ripping up the former airbase, left us those reminders of what it was.

RAW photographs, their many application software packages filtered down to ~~two~~ one, and the use of control surfaces

I talk about how I've reduced the vast number of RAW processing software packages down to just two that work well and work quickly enough that you don't need to go get a coffee every time you click Process. It also happens that these only two worthwhile applications are the only two which can work completely and efficiently with control surfaces.

Read about *proper* RAW software and control surfaces

Some December 2019 news. Anybody visiting my site, and who may understand, use, or read about RAW processing, will be aware of the product called Capture One. ~~It happens to be one of the only two *proper* and worthwhile packages out there,~~ and I talk about it in this section via the above link.

Keen RAW photographers who are familiar with C One may be aware that Phase One has now (4 Dec 2019) released the much-teased version 20 of Capture One. I had previously mentioned here that I had seen a beta pre-release of 20, but was unable to talk about what it featured. Well, as of now, it is in general release. I'm not going into what's new as there's plenty of Youtube material out there. However, as a very early initial personal comment, I must say that, wow, it's become sloooow! In version 10 I could twist a knob or push a button on my control surface and see instant results. No longer. Increase the exposure and watch as the program slowly brightens the picture in little hops and skips. Yawn. Trouble is, you think, oh, it needs a bit more, twist the knob further and bam! You've grossly overshot the mark into an utter washout because your previous twist was still grinding away.

Hence - and I've been patient, tried everything, rebooted the computer, all of that - due it having become as slow as various other RAW products I've trialled and rejected I must change my views on Capture One : There is now only one contender in the RAW processing arena: Adobe Lightroom. I can no longer call Capture One one of my two worthwhile RAW products. Lightroom reigns supreme.

But in the latest news, December 2020: I was musing about the gradual demise of Capture One into the slow thing that is version 20. Its awful slothfulness made it effectively unuseable. Then I recalled how good version 10 - long deleted from my Apps folder - was. I searched forlornly and without much hope for the installer and Bingo! There it is, deep in the dark depths of one of my external drives. After ensuring that there was no remaining trace of version 20 on my Mac I installed version 10. This is unbelievable! All the old well-remembered speed is back. The overshoot is a thing of the past.

So I am promoting Capture One back to being one of my day-to-day RAW working products

Comments and Opinions

In this section I offer my personal opinion and comments about things that are imortant to me or have affected me in some way.

The Taliban. A long time ago there was a movie about rookie policemen in the USA. I can't remember what the movie was called, but in it, somebody called the male reproductive organ a tallywhacker. I had never heard this word, and indeed have never heard it again since. But I do like the word. It struck me that its first two syllables are exactly the same as in Taliban. So perhaps we should call the Taliban the Tallywhackers? They are, after all, a complete and utter bunch of dicks.

Spam by Email. I get no more and no less than probably most people - maybe 20 to 30 per day. Fortunately Gmail on my iPhone does place them all in a special Spam folder, where I can have a quick glance through them, in case a real email was thought by Gmail to be spam. It happens. I do also glance quickly at the subject lines and one thing has struck me: exactly 100% of spam emails are from the USA. Now I'm in the UK, so 100% of this spam is worthless to me, even if I were take in by the claims of cheap car insurance (*) or other astounding offers, and my tallywhacker is already big enough, thanks. So my question is: why are the Yanks such bloody prolific spammers? And why, if it comes to that, is there no methodology or rules-based system in Gmail to filter by subject line? I could virtually eliminate virtually all spam if I could filter out such crap.
(*) Re car insurance: the most prolific spammer of all is a bunch of cretins who claim to offer cheap car insurance. Well listen up morons: I'm paying a LOT less for my car insurance here in the UK than you're offering in your spams! Eat that, you worthless turds.

Spam by Mail. Not only do I receive spam by email. Some time ago some unscrupulous bitches sold my name and address to some other unscrupulous bitches, and accordingly I receive quite a bit of unsolicited advertising mail, addressed to me by correct name and correct address. I seriously object to both the practice of selling the names and addresses of real people, but also to the practice of using said information to send me their utter crap. The most common is from companies offering to insure my life, and so unintersted am I that I never noted who it came from. But just a few days ago I received something new - an exhortation to book a cruise holiday to "Breathtaking Norway, Beautiful Summer". The protagonists here were Hurtigruten, who offered me a 12 day cruise along coastal Norway for the princely sum of £1879. Not only do I not care for spending 12 days on a boat, I have no interest in coastal Norway, or wasting £1879 on it. So, Hurtigruten: you are loathsome spamming bitches.