Dartmoor is one of the most magical places in England. The bleak moors, the endless hills, the mysterious piles of rocks.
The most magical place on Dartmoor is Wistman’s Wood. Trees grow between rocks, all covered in a layer of moss. Photos fail to do it justice, but here are some anyway
You may have heard me talk about letterboxing before. If you haven’t and don’t know what it is, here’s a quick run down (via Wikipedia) –
Letterboxing is an outdoor hobby that combines elements of orienteering, art, and puzzle solving. Letterboxers hide small, weatherproof boxes in publicly accessible places (like parks) and distribute clues to finding the box in printed catalogs, on one of several web sites, or by word of mouth.
Individual letterboxes contain a notebook and a rubber stamp, preferably hand carved or custom made.
Finders make an imprint of the letterbox’s stamp in their personal notebook, and leave an impression of their personal signature stamp on the letterbox’s “visitors’ book” or “logbook” — as proof of having found the box and letting other letterboxers know who has visited. Many letterboxers keep careful track of their “find count”.
We’ve found quite a few Letterboxes, both over here and over there and I even placed one in Kent about 10 years ago.
Gale and I are off to Britannia soon, to Dartmoor (among other places), the birthplace of Letterboxing. We wanted a unique stamp, but carving is tricky and you have to be pretty good to get a decent stamp.
But guess what? Gale has a 30watt laser engraver sitting in our spare bedroom. So she ordered some laser engravable rubber and dumped it on my desk with a “work this out” kind of look.
A few Googles later and a quick read of the laser manual and I powered up Corel Draw and came up with a design.
Sent it to the laser and then sat and watched a rubber stamp appear before my eyes.
We’re pretty pleased with the result and once we’ve finalized the design (Gale wants more stars) we will be ready to go find us some Letterboxes.
If you have any interest in finding Letterboxes near you, check out AtlasQuest which is not great looking, but has a lot of information on how to start.
OK Kids, back in the olden times we didn’t have fancy smart phones that could take panoramic photos. We had to do it the old fashioned way, down a mine, for 16 hours, after a 14 mile hike.
In 2005 we went to Paris and I, of course, took a photo of the Eiffel Tower. But to get it all in frame with the cheap camera I had I had to stand about 5 miles away. So instead I took 4 shots with the intent to stitch them together in Photoshop. 9 years later and I’ve still not done it.
I was looking through my photos and came across them and thought I’d give it ago. Guess what? Photoshop does all the hard work for you. just chuck multiple photos at it and you get a perfectly stitched panoramic image. I know where the joins are and I can’t see them. 
Just got back from our long weekend in Saline to have a big old family get together. I’ve uploaded a few photos I edited on my tablet while I was there, but you can’t really beat Lightroom.
Is FREE right now.
I’ve never heard of these filters, but free is good, right? Worst case, I uninstall it.
So far, I like it. It’s a photo filter and enhancer. I won’t use 80% of the filters, but the photo effects and contrast modifiers are pretty nice.
Here’s an example:
This is the photo right out of the camera. It’s in RAW format, which I would normally tweak in Lightroom. But I sent it over to Perfect Effects and hit one of the high contrast filters and got this:
Sharper, more contrast and more detail. And just one click. Totally worth the FREE price tag.
The app works in Photoshop and Lightroom but if you don’t have either you can use it as a standalone app too. The image management isn’t as good as Lightroom. But, and I say it again, it’s FREE! If you are an avid photographer I really suggest you check it out.
Go get it HERE before the offer runs out.