Sanka… ya dead man? March 2023

Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme, get on up, it’s bobsleigh time.

In March, it was great to see the British Bobsleigh team bringing home gold from the 2023 Cradley Heath Winter Olympics. Sanka survived, unsure about his lucky egg. Never grow up…

The Cradley Heath 2023 winter olympic games

It was nice to have yet another cold few days to round off winter. I’m not sure what’s going on with this climate change stuff, but I reckon winter 22/23 has been unusually cold here in the UK. Weeks on end of dry cold weather and a good few dustings of the white stuff. Shouldn’t complain, it’s great fun.

The weather experts tell me we should expect summer 23 to be the hottest summer since records began. I’ll believe that when I see it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were cold and wet. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, I made a start on chopping up the firewood for winter 23-34, those gas prices are ridiculous, and it gives me something to do between sets. I’m currently still on the wagon, with no alcohol since 2022, and am smashing my way through Wendler 531. It doesn’t list log splitting as accessory work, but it seems ok.

I’m a big fan of Wendler 531, having used it a couple of times before. It’s a great program to just settle down with and follow for many months or even years on end. I’ve written about it before, so I won’t now, but maybe check out the E-Book.

Speaking of books, I decided to re-read George Orwell’s 1984 for the third time, ish. I’m listening to it, (does that even count?), along with the entire George Orwell book collection. It’s available on Audible for just one credit, so that’s about £8 if you use Audible already, or you can get it for free if you’re a new customer. Yep, the George Orwell complete collection for either free, or just 8 quid. Ridiculous. So I'm getting through 1984, Animal Farm, the Road to Wigan Pier, and everything else on my many many miles of driving this month, including a few trips up to Scotland.

The George Orwell complete book collection download for free

I got through those Scottish trips ok. They were eventful, to say the least, but I survived, thanks to a good helping of breakfast haggis and a few gallons of IRN-BRU, obviously.

I got out into Kelso to create some stock footage on a few occasions. The weather was typically Scottish, but it was an interesting place to film. There’s a post here about it, Kelso Stock Footage.

Over at Kelso racecourse, I got not 1, but 4 (yes, FOUR), punctures in the space of just a couple of hours. That must be some kind of record. A record now jointly held by criminals after a police stinger, and tracking vehicle drivers trying to stay ahead of racehorses at Kelso Racecourse?

Nae bother…. it was all ok. We sorted it all out between races and it was even played out live on ITV for our troubles. If you’re going to be unlucky enough to spend the afternoon mucking around with 4 punctures, you may as well do it on live tv…

And for the record, I’ll quote… “That’s Mark on the left there, he should be getting his hands dirty, clearly just barking out orders, Chris doing the hard work”

I made up for it on my next trip to Scotland by staying in the Schloss Roxburghe Hotel and Spa. I spent 5 minutes in the gym, 5 minutes swimming, 5 seconds in the outdoor cold plunge, and then the rest of the evening acting all posh and sophisticated, until I saw the bill.

I’ve swapped my Manfrotto for a tortoise this month….

The old Manfrotto 055 has been a wonderful servant. Unbelievable really. It must have joined me on a few hundred photography outings, including a good 30+ mountain summits. It really has been put through its paces. Bashed off rocks, dropped down slopes, leaned on, used as a belay, used as a shelter pole, used as a very useful big heavy metal bar to hold while wandering the backstreets of English cities at night. Brilliant.

It was time, however, to upgrade to something a little lighter, it took me FAR too long to decide, but I finally went with the tortoise.

It’s a Benro 35C Tortoise tripod with a GX35 ball head.

There’s a blog post HERE, and a video review…

I also recently did a review of my wangle. An ultra wangle to be precise.

It’s the Samyang 12mm f2.8 ED AS NCS Fisheye Lens. Again, there’s a blog post HERE, and a video review…

I captured a few more cool shots of Birmingham this month. Some of these have made their way into the Birmingham section of The Art Locker, and are now available as wall art prints or on thin wall canvas.

THIS LINK, should, hopefully, take you straight to the Birmingham Art Collection, but here’s a quick look…

The Birmingham aerial timelapse project continued, with a load of long nights on the backstreets, with my Manfrotto in hand.

So much work goes into these it’s crazy. Hours and hours staring into the sky at my drone, and then hours on hours of data sorting, RAW editing, de-flickering with LRtimelapse, exporting, building, colour grading, stabilizing, and exporting again. It’s ridiculous really.

Here’s some behind-the-scenes of an incredible aerial timelapse of the Chinese Pagoda roundabout in Birmingham city center, it’s available for purchase HERE.

Hours aside…. it’s a wonderful shot.

March means it’s time for the Cheltenham Festival, so it was back down to Gloucestershire to film some horse racing.

Top tip, when choosing a parking spot in an outside broadcast compound…. think drive-thru.

The 2023 Cheltenham Festival was a great place to test two new tracking vehicles, both Tracker B. Unsure which is best?

Tracker B (Bentley)

or Tracker B (Bratwurst)

Bratwurst comes equipped with a new experimental type of link…

The paperweight that is the Sony 200-600mm lens came out with me a few times recently. Through lack of use, I’ve been trying to put it to use in ways that I really shouldn’t. Up in the mountains on a windy day, in a gimbal, or most recently… in the hills to do some landscape photography.

It was a fun test, and I got some half-decent shots. It would be nice to see it in the hands of a proper landscape photographer. I made a blog post about it HERE, and here’s the YouTube video…

I liked a few of the shots. Take a look at the video or blog post for more info, but I’ll leave you with these. A shot of Birmingham city center with some insane compression, making it look like it’s surrounded by countryside, and then a similar compression shot of one of the summit stones of the Clent Hills, with a Black Country backdrop and the Brierly Hills flats clearly visible. Superb. Cheers all, out.