Space the Final Frontier

It happens to us all.  Your shiny new PC, that was equipped with masses of disk space when you bought it, has suddenly started to complain about a lack of disk space.  Where has it all gone?  Well those 1000s of photos could well be taking up stacks of space that you could easily free up by deleting them but there must be something less drastic you can do?

Don't worry, help is at hand in the form of some clever free bits of software that can help you manage your drives:

CCleaner

CCleaner (or crap cleaner) is an excellent product, which when run on your machine will get rid of all those temporary files that applications are so keen on leaving all over your hard drive.  It is worth checking the settings before as you may not want it to remove things like your internet browsing history (or maybe you do).  CCleaner also includes a registry repair process which removes junk from your registry.



WinDirStat

WinDirStat will helpfully scan your disk drives and map the files on it and their usage.  The graphical display makes it really easy to see what is hogging your disk space.

WinDirStat maps your disk drives

PCDecrapifier


The PC Decrapifier is for people who have just got a new PC.  running this application will help you get rid of all the junk that PC manufacturers are so keen on hoisting on their customers.  Highly recommended.

If you have any recommendations for useful disk software please add a comment,  I would love to see what people are using.

On Suttton Bank

Last month I spent a fantastic week in North Yorkshire,  staying right near the abbey at Revaux.  As I was not far from the great inland cliff of Sutton Bank and  I managed to get out a few times and this is the result of my evenings spent on the edge of the Yorkshire Moors.

Take A Seat

Sunset at High Barn

Sunset over Boltby

Overlook

Hambleton Down

Windypitt Sunset

Graham Nobles is photographer of the month for June

This month our photographer is Derbyshire based Graham Nobles.  Grahams work covers a wide range of landscape and wildlife photography and his website is well worth a visit.

Barn Owl

by Graham Nobels

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Previous  Photographers of the Month

Black and White in lightroom

2011 so far has been a rubbish year for photography for me.  I was laid up with a really nasty bought of Pneumonia at the beginning of the year  and as soon as I was feeling well the sky became a thick featureless mass of cloud.  I managed to snap my LEE big stopper into 3 bits - even though it has hardly left my bag for months. After managing a decent weeks shooting in Derbyshire I am now suffering with eye problems which make photography difficult and driving anywhere to take shots impossible.

A new collection as virtual copies

In a desperate attempt to produce some pictures, I decided to take a look at last years photos and see if they looked any good in black and white:

In Lightroom I selected every shot I took last year, which is easy enough to do as I have my pictures automatically stored into folders for each year, so it is simply a question of navigating to the correct folder and using ctrl + A to select all the images.

I then decide to create a new collection of these images as virtual copies. Virtual copies are a duplication of your picture but they don’t exist as actual photos, they are simply stored as a new set of settings in the catalog.You can create as many virtual copies of a master photo as you wish so you can have color, sepia, B&W and different crops of the same picture yet all you are storing is a recipy of yur changes to the original file.

So having created my new collection I select all of the images (ctrl+A)  and desaturate them (V).  The I selected Library>Previews>render standard size previews which will speed up the viewing process later.  This takes quite a while with an entire years images, so I left it running overnight.

Now I have a complete collection of last years shots,  so I work my way through them using the arrow key, X to mark as a reject and P for my picks.  I whittled 3,600 images down to 9 I liked in B&W which I then saved as tiffs to give some sort of permanence to the virtual images.

Below are a few of those shots I thought you might like.

Curbar Fence

Down in the Tube Station at Midnight

Dawn in the Meadows

Trebarwith Strand

Nick Walton is photographer of the month for May

Nick Walton has a very varied portfolio of images form landscapes, to wildlife to some well observed candid images.  His website is well worth a visit.

What the feck

by Nick Walton

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Previous  Photographers of the Month

100mm f/2.80 for 40 minutes

On Friday I took my camera out for a well deserved return to my Friday Project.  The light wasn't great but I had my trusty 100mm f2.8 macro lens on so I thought I would give it a go.  here are the shots I managed to grab in a mere 40minutes.

Boris Bikes

Links

Lunchbreak

Pipe & Post

Reflections

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A New years Resolution
In The City
Friday Project Update

Kathy Wright is photographer of the month for April

Kathy Wright was the well deserved winner of Amateur Photographer Of The Year 2009.  She produces stunning images of her native Norfolk and Suffolk and her very obedient dogs, her website is well worth a visit.

Fire in the Sky

by Kathy Wright

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Previous  Photographers of the Month