~haydskies

Fresh and Clean

~ally153 http://ally153.deviantart.com/journal/2060071/ http://ally153.deviantart.com/journal/2060071/ Mon, 22 Mar 2004 04:31:43 PST Welcome

Alright! Enough already! We all know that you lot on DA are a talented bunch so no need to show off some more! You have any idea how demoralizing to sign onto DA for a couple of minutes and being greeted buy 16 or so damned gorgeous pieces of works by some of you lot?

It almost makes me sick!!

*sigh*

How can I keep up with the amazing talent of you lot on here? 6 months and not a little scrap of inspiration. I think I’ve actually liked about 1% of the accumulated library of photos that I’ve taken since I first got into photography. If you look at the talents of such people as *ssilence, ~d0ub7, * creatyves, *dapejn and ~rainman for instance your understand what a horrifyingly dreadful experience it is looking through galleries for someone trying to get into photography like me. And let’s not forget the dedication of ~ lotofire and *bigdavec who have been constantly been submitting great and constantly improving work. Lets not forget all the other deviants that appear at the bottom of this journal and on my friends list either.

Really though. It’s all too easy to pick up on people’s failures – especially your own that you forget just how good you actually are. What you have achieved in life. What you have still to achieve. I’ve never really been happy with anything I have done in life. To me there is always someone who has to be better that me. More than some. I probably wouldn’t mind if it wasn’t so blatantly obvious. There are a lot of things I’m good at – but nothing I’d really consider being great at. I forget that after 11 years of swimming I’ve picked up more than a little bit of knowledge of the sport. Despite there are many younger swimmers out there I’m still fitter and faster in the water than a good few people. I forget that despite the fact I don’t see myself as talented with digital art I’m probably more capable using graphics packages than many. Indeed I forget that compared to many I am actually ok at photography. We all wish we could be the best at what we do. We all get down when we realise we haven’t made it.

Maybe we should look back more often to see how far we have come.

Not just how far we have to go.

Other News

Well… I finally got my new camera. I haven’t really had a chance to use it – just lust over its looks a little. I went for the Sigma SD 9 in the end due to its price and exceptional image quality. Also managed to get a nice selection of lenses for the camera, so I’m all set to go. Now just to upgrade the quality of the photographer.

That may be a little bit more of a challenge…

God I hate university. Been getting bogged down with work and am exhausted during any free time I’ve got these days. I’ve been running a bit behind in my messages lately here. Up to 411 new messages now. Should be fun wading through that lot. This may take a while, so bare with me.

Congrats to *da5id2112, whose photo "Low Hanging Light" became a daily deviation feature on Sunday. Nice one mate!



Also *arumdamour won one of the ongoing competitions over at *onewordphoto for her submission for "set." Congrats!!!!



Told you you were a creative lot. http://ally153.deviantart.com/journal/1902071/ Thu, 26 Feb 2004 14:48:22 PST Welcome

I’m getting old...

My bones creak these days and I even groan as I get up. To make matters worse, about half of the questions in ` honz12 journal entry "Symptoms Of Being Over 25" seem to make sense to me (which would be fine by me if I was over 25 but as I'm 19, presents me with many questions about my current lifestyle). I was training with my squad the other day and in the space of one length I lost 5 places (on my defence they were all going ridiculously fast given our rest plus swim times). To make matters worse I managed to more or less destroy my heel whilst swimming and so fell back to arms only work - to end up completely messing up my shoulder as well. I even seem to have the ability to get cramp in my feet these days - in arms only sets. Encouraging isn't it? My squad have even started the "old man" jokes on me - even my coach.

*sigh*

Such is life.

Featured Deviant

~shapeless-kNt

Having joined DA earlier this month shapeless-kNt has been quick to show a lot of promise, submitting some quality pieces - especially in the realm of graphic design. I have no doubts that very soon he'll surpass my page views as his skills increase ever more. I know I'll be watching his progress very carefully...


Featured Deviation

Jungle out of the Man

Finding a single deviation out of the masses of top quality stuff that litters DA is a tough challenge. I wanted to choose something that wasn't from the "big guys/gals" seeing as they get enough exposure as it is. In the end I decided to go for this photo manipulation piece by ~ninjahamster. As a macro photo the composition is great, cutting off all unnecessary stuff surrounding the eye. I also really love the lighting, retaining much of the detail and although the photo does suffer a little bit of white burn out, the photo has been really well done. The black & white/colour combo may be getting a bit old, but I love how well it's been executed here with no jagged edges etc to give away the game.

Inspired

http://ally153.deviantart.com/journal/1771377/ Sat, 31 Jan 2004 09:25:29 PST Welcome

You wish for snow for months and what happens? You get months of it. All in one day. Having headed to training at 6.30 this morning I had only a slight hint of what I would be greeted with on my journey home. Then it was a light sprinkling. By the time for my journey home it was a blizzard. It gave me a great opportunity to get some “winter” shots in though - even better test out my new lenses…

Sorry I’ve not submitted much, but with my exams only just finished and the new semester having begun this week I’ve not had much opportunity to get out and about with my camera. Hopefully on Monday I’ll be able to get my film processed that I just used up today. I’ve not been commenting other people’s work as much recently either, having only found he odd couple of minutes here and there to lurk in the background looking at other people’s work. If anyone wants me to comment any of there work, please feel free to ask – why anyone would actually want me to comment their stuff is beyond me though.

Oh, and I can’t help but mention that on the 28th this month *dapejn announced to the DA community in the form of two photos that he became an uncle! Congratulations mate, I wish you all the best of luck and good health in the future!

I’ve really had a great time the past couple of weeks on DeviantART being added by many extremely talented artists – including one or two artists that I’ve really looked up to since I joined DA not that long ago and even a few fellow Scots! Thank you so much everyone for your support, it’s really great to see that people do enjoy my work and you all have been a motivation for me to keep on going.

Featured Deviant

*kernos

I’ve been following this talented deviant soon after I first joined DA. He has enormous flare with a camera and also is a very talented artists – whether on paper or on the computer. Recently though he has started to support the community much more actively via his journal. Indeed many of the ideas for “featured” stuff were concepts I initially got from kernos. With 3,774,928 deviations quoted by DA at time of writing and god knows how many deviants there are out there this site needs more people like kernos to help highlight some of the great talent that can easily be missed by others. I hope many follow in his example.

Featured Deviation

.invisible.

I’ve seen ~lotofire’s talents developing for some time now and I have to say – she really does have talent. Recently she has been experimenting with macro photography to great effect. It’s by far my favourite work from her to date. Indeed I had a hard time selecting one deviation from the many she has posted recently on macros. In the end I went for this excellent piece that looks as though it would be quite at home in a fairy tale. To me the lighting and composition are astounding, seemingly (to me) departing from the more “traditional” tried and tested composure normally employed in such a photograph. You would do well to have a good look through her gallery – past and present. There are plenty of gems to find in there. I know I can be very critical about your work at times lotofire, hopefully this highlights how much I actually do love your stuff really…

Inspired

http://ally153.deviantart.com/journal/1721986/ Thu, 22 Jan 2004 04:58:44 PST

My exams are finally over! At last. I'm trying my very best to return the favour and comment on other people's works too, but it doesn't always work out that way . If there is anything that anyone would like me to comment (as if anyone would) then just give me a shout. Hopefully I'l be submitting more of my own work sometime soon - I'm really desperate to test out the two new lenses I bought for my ageing camera so hopefully my chance will come sometime during the weekend...

Featured Deviation

Ok, so I probably don't have much of a pull to help anyone else out but what the hell... It's my journal!!

Medusa's Lament



A lot of thought went into the creation of this photo and I just love it for that. The composition is absolutely fantastic and the description really does compliment the photo amazingly. Between the description and the excellent photo itself I find myself looking and discovering new parts of the photo everytime! Wis all deviations were like this...

Inspired



Respect

http://ally153.deviantart.com/journal/1699316/ Sun, 18 Jan 2004 06:57:10 PST detest them. I've spent the last couple of days studying for my electrical enginering exam on Tuesday - the last day of the January exams for me... All I can say now is I hate electrical circuits. I've enjoyed the other modules in electrical engineering, but this particular one is driving me insane. Take this quote from my textbook for example:

"We use the term irreducible to indicate that all parallel or series connections or other reducible storage combinations of like storage elements have been reduced to their irreducable form."

Taking out all the crap in the middle out and we get:

"We use the term irreducible to indicate that the circuit is irreducible."

Go figure.

So they used the word irreducible as their means of explaining to us what irreducible means. I'm just glad that these people didn't publish a bloody english dictionary!! Not only do I have to deal with frankly obvious and pointless crap whilst studying but the circuits module is basically 2nd year maths disguised in a different name.

I hate maths.

I took 1st year maths last year (as a requirement of my course). And I failed it. Hopefully having suffered through the exact 1/2 a year of material again I'll have realised that I really don't want to suffer an additional 1/2 a year next year and bothered my arse actually revising for it this time round. And maybe even passing it...

Regardless, 1st year maths isn't going to help me solve second order differential equations and my textbook seems too pre-occupied stating the obvious in the most irrelevant of places to help me either. Tuesday is going to be a LOOOONG day...

A bit like today and tomorrow actually... ]]> ~ally153 http://ally153.deviantart.com/journal/1622359/ http://ally153.deviantart.com/journal/1622359/ Sat, 03 Jan 2004 03:06:35 PST
Oh well...

That's life.

On another front I'm desperately running out of inspiration, having come up with nothing worth mentioning website, graphics or photography wise for a good few months. Maybe 2004 will be a better year for me? Then again considering that the end of the world has apparently been prophesied for this year - which will probably be the low point of the year for me.

Nothing like a bit of Armageddon to spoil the year. ]]> ~ally153 http://ally153.deviantart.com/journal/1580497/ http://ally153.deviantart.com/journal/1580497/ Thu, 25 Dec 2003 03:21:44 PST
Well guess that's it. Short journal entry I know.

Merry Christmas everyone!! ]]> ~ally153 http://ally153.deviantart.com/journal/1563456/ http://ally153.deviantart.com/journal/1563456/ Sun, 21 Dec 2003 09:01:37 PST
Being a swimmer I'm going to start by dipping my toes in the water before taking the plunge. So here is my favourite shot so far. Keep an eye out.

You never know.

There may be more to come... ]]> ~ally153