garylawton.com | gary lawton photography

sea breeze sunday

Submitted by gary on Sun, 25/04/2010 - 13:18

Not much to report but we were in Bournemouth enjoying the sun when the sea breeze tried to pick up. Annoyingly it hovered around the f3/f4 mark and never really got going. Ankle feeling better

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road to recovery

Submitted by gary on Mon, 05/04/2010 - 19:17

There comes a time when recovering from injury that you have accept it's good enough and you can get back on the horse, so to speak. The sea may still be eight degrees and the air similiar, but today was the day. I briefly debated whether boots were required, before acknowledging my feet would probably go numb without them. The conditions weren't great but 140 days after I sprained my ankle, I made back on to a windsurfing board. In the sea, not on dry land. Obviously.

All in all it was better than I'd expected. Sure, there's some stiffness but I now have pretty much full movement. The wind was a little up and down all afternoon, and the small Hayling waves were best before the wind kicked in, but two hours of blasting in the sun during April was very satisfying to say the least. Roll on next time.

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Blurb introduces colour calibration

Submitted by gary on Fri, 12/03/2010 - 06:58

This is great news, about time and a great addition to the Blurb service. from their email

Dear B3 Members and those on our B3 waiting list,

Thank you for participating in our B3 charter program. Because of feedback from customers like you, we've decided to implement a calibrated color management profile across our global print network and to make it available to all customers.

This new quality improvement will be in place on March 18, 2010, at which time we'll discontinue the B3 charter program. We wanted to personally thank you for your participation, whether you simply signed up for the program or took advantage of its services, such as printing a Custom Workflow book.

Effective immediately, all of the printers used in our print network are being routinely monitored and calibrated. You can order your book with images soft proofed using either the original B3 or our new Blurb ICC profile and get the same results. At no additional cost.

* If you want to reprint a book you created using the B3 profile, rest assured that it will continue to be properly calibrated to all of our network print devices.
* If you have a Custom Workflow book in the Blurb Bookstore, no need to do anything. Your book will automatically revert to standard, non-custom workflow prices.
* If you have a book in progress that you were intending for Custom Workflow, no need to worry. Finish it using the B3 profile and order it like you would any other book. Your book will go to our global print network calibrated with our new Blurb ICC Profile. Again, we have verified you should see no discernable differences between these two profiles.

If you'd like more details or to learn more about color management for the Blurb platform, please visit our new Color Management Resource Center on March 18. This work-in-progress resource center will host videos, how-to guides, and more. If there's anything else you'd like to see in this resource center we'd love to hear from you.

While we will be discontinuing B3 phone support on March 18, our first-rate customer support team will be standing by to help you with any questions during this transition. You can reach them at blurb.com/help and they will respond to your email within two business hours if not sooner.

Again, thanks for taking part in the B3 charter program. We couldn't have made this significant, network-wide quality improvement without your participation and feedback.

The Blurberati

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blurb pdf to book review

Submitted by gary on Sun, 07/02/2010 - 14:10

I've liked the concept of a printed photo book for a while. To me it seems a waste of digital to print photos and use a scrapbook approach. There's a whole host of providers around - blurb and photobox appear to be the market leaders here in the UK. I experimented with both suppliers a couple of years ago, but found the template software restrictive. What i wanted was to be able to design my own layout in InDesign and use a printer capable of taking this. Of course, there are plenty of printers capable of providing this kind of service, but it tends to be cost prohibitive for very small print runs. The results have been pretty disappointing, read on for the saga.