[-JERRYCOOKE PHOTOGRAPHY-]

Oh yes, I'm back, back again.

Where I have been is a complicated question, for I am a complicated chap, but back I am once more. Okay, in all seriousness I've just been busy with Uni, some personal projects and far too much facebook to be my old community supporting self.. BAD JERRY!

But I'm back now and I'm going to try my best to get back into active ways!

In other news, I've getting really into YouTube at the moment, so if you're on there PLEASE subscribe, I'm trying to hit 100, because I've got a killer idea for a 'Thankyou 100 subscribers' video that I'm dying to do ;)

You can find me on http://www.youtube.com/jerryhcooke

As you can see, I've uploaded a large series of new studio shots of my good friend Rachel and her fiance Josh, who are getting married in August.

They came down to visit for a couple of days which was lovely, had great weather yesterday, so we went on a long walk round all the old mining stacks, ending up on top of Carn Brea, near the castle. Weather wasn't too nice today, but we headed to my university to use the studio as they want some nice photos for the order of service for the wedding (which I'll be also taking some photos at.. though not as the actualy photographer, which is a great stress relievers, since I don't have to worry about getting perfect photos, cause somebody else is.. hehe).

Anway.. lots of fabulous coupley studio pictures (perfectly lit if I do say so myself)

Ciao,

J x

Today I passed the 4,000 photos mark on here. I had intended to celebrate the 4000th post with a special picture, but I underestimated the amount of pictures I'd take in Exmouth, so have overshot the target.

So, I'll take this moment to celebrate 4,000 memories :)

There was a major factory fire in my town today, only a few hundred meters from my hourse. Needless to say I took a great many photos. I've posted 25 of them on here, so check them out :)

I'm now trying to flog some to the local press ;)

Okay, so on this trip I took about 600 pictures. I culled some on the way home and now have 470 left. I'm expecting to not upload about 75% of these pics, but that still leaves around 100 pictures remaining. Due to this large size, I will not be uploading the bulk of these pictures to buzz, only to my flickr. I will choose ten or so of my faves for here, but most will only be on flickr!

I shot a portrait series today, but can't be arsed to upload the pics to here (cause they're 40mb .TIFF files!)

If you want to see them, head over to my flickr page :)

flickr.com/photos/jerrycooke

I've hit the wall. The final straw has dropped (or cracked, or whatever it is that final straws are supposed to do). Buzznet has been sooo screwy recently and I'm not happy about it. Entire archives of my older pics seem to be shrunk and compressed and the comment system failures over the last two days have REALLY pissed me off.

When I started posting more on flickr a while back, it was mostly for the better archiving capabilities, but now I'm finding myself more and more inclined to post over there.

However, what with buzznets recent mistakes, quite a few of my favorite people have started posting on flickr more as well, which gives me less and less reason to come here. DON'T WORRY - I'm not going to stop entirely, but it's become so hard for me to post and name posts on here, that I've got a feeling that:

A) I'm going to be posting less often (Not until I've got a batch to upload together)
B) The pics are going to be reduced sizes to cope with buzz's slow speeds. (but not smaller than the frame)
C) I won't be bothering to name the pictures on buzznet.

So, if any of you feel a need to see my most recent pictures in all their full size, named glory, then I'm affraid that you're going to have to check out my flickr page at www.flickr.com/photots/jerrycooke

I'm still going to pop back and comment on my favorite people who haven't yet made the move, but I hope that those few might decide to come over and join us on the dark side some time soon. The grass is greener over there :p

Lots and lots of love,

Jerry x

Well, I had my university induction today, which gave me a chance to look aroudn the facilities that are on offer for my photography couse. A quarter of a million pounds has been spend on the department recently :p

We've got a huge studio with brand new equipment including gantry ladders!!

We've got a well stocked suite of macs for our design work!!

I love photograhic technology :)

Well, I finally got round to joing the local library, so I'm back on the net at last.

 

One big glitch however is that my PC died on Thursday, so all the pictures that I had ready to upload to buzz are all locked away on my 3.5" IDE disk, which I can't access because I've not only got access to my laptop, which only takes 2.5" IDE disks, grrrrr!

 

Anyway, apart from that annoyance, everything else is pretty much settled, I'm all moved in at the new place and have started work at my new store. Best of all, I've got my university induction day next Tuesday (the sooner I start my course the better, I'm feeling a little lethargic sitting around the house all the time).

 

Anway, my student finance comes through some point in the next couple of weeks, so I'm going compute shopping when it does (I've got a photographic power-house in mind, a Media Center PC with a 3.2GHz intel duo, 2GB ram, 300GB HD and 512MB graphic accelerator, might even be powerful enough to run Adobe Lightroom. HA!). Then I'll actually be able to get my pictures off of my old HD.

 

Until then, I've got half a dozen new pics up...

 

Hope you're all well!!!

 

J x

I've just oppened my student bank account and am going to use it to buy a EOS 350D today (a DIGITAL REBEL XT, to you american readers), but I can't do it till this afternoon, because I have to wait for my application form to be taken down two sets of stairs from processing to accounts, which (it seems) takes 3 hours...

I WANT MY EOS NOW!!!!! :(

Well, it's getting ever closer to the day of the big move (actually, the term 'big' isn't really merited, since we're moving in slowly over a week). My packing is going fine, with six boxes already stacked in my cupboard, there is still plenty more to get squared away. In other news, it is only ten short days till 20th birthday! I'm having a joint party with my friend Rachel, whose birthday is two days after mine. The only stressfull point at the moment is that my exam results come out on my birthday and I'm going to have to make my university applications the same morning, so I'll either be very happy or pretty down-heartedin the evening.

 

Anway, I'd best get back to my toil, I hope everyone out there in the world of buzznet is fine and dandy :)

Well, it’s a busy, exciting time at the moment. I can divide everything into four equal sections. In date order, they are:

 

Firstly - Skating: Saturday is the national style slalom championships and I’ll be travelling up to London to compete. I’ll be heading up on Friday and coming back on Sunday. I’ve got less than a week to train up and work out my routine, so I’m getting a little stressed out about it. Ho hum, I’m sure that I’ll be fine and I’m not particularly worried about placing highly (though it would be nice to at least equal the 4th place I managed last time).

 

Secondly – Birthday: It’s exactly one month till my 20th birthday. I’ll be having my traditional beach party (I guess it’ll be my last one)!

 

Thirdly – “The Move”: In just over a month, Mum and I  will be moving to our beautiful new house in Cornwall. Most of me is looking forward to the move (the new house is far nicer than this one), but a small part of me is sad to leave this house that has been my home for the last three years. The best part is that I’ve got a brand new room (one that’s a whole 2 foot bigger than my current one), with four shiny bright new white walls which I can cover with photography. I’m also going to have a broadband connection strait into my room, which will be fab! I’m planning to have a “house-cooling” party to say goodbye to this place and then a “house-warming” for the new house when I’m settled!

 

Finally – Photography: I’ve had my new camera set to full manual recently, so that I can improve my knowledge of using apepture/shutter speed/ISO corretly. I’ve also been using my 35mm more and more, in the past two weeks, I’ve shot six rolls of film. The ironic thing is that I wanted a 35mm because I felt like it was cheating, using the cameras auto settings all the time, but now I use the digital in manual mode and the 35mm in auto. Go figure. Anyway, hopefully all this extra practice will do a little to help my university applications in a couple of weeks.

 

That’s all for now! I’ll give some feedback about the IFSA nationals once I get back after the weekend.

On Friday, Mum and I trekked down to Cornall (For Non-UK Users – Cornwall is a peninsula in the extreme South-West of the UK) to check out our new house in Redruth (Midway between the North and South coasts of the region). Redruth is a little town (smaller than Exmouth) and our new house is just off the main street and is placed conveniently between a cinema and a supermarket.

 

It’s a beautiful little house, a renovated cottage. It’s got a lovely modern, yet friendly décor, with new white walls, yet plenty of exposed beams and original stonework. The living room has lovely fire-place with an old railways sleeper as mantle. The bathroom is pretty big with a fab big bath! I’ve got the smaller of the two rooms (mum’s got to fit her gohonzen and piano in hers), but it’s got broadband and TV piped in. It’s got a nice big window with exposed stone-work around the outside. It’s also got a funky little fire-place! The best bit for me is finally having a home internet connection, now I’ll finally be able to chat to my friends at uni in Wales plus I can actually upload pictures from home :p I really like the kitchen, nice worktops! Plus it’s open plan, so that the space feels far bigger.

 

We’re going to be moving at the start of September, so I’ve decided I’m gonna have to have a ‘house-cooling’ for when we leave here and a ‘house-warming’ for when we move into the new place. Two excuses for a party :p

 

The only variable next is whether I can get a place at Falmouth Uni to do ‘Photography’ (top of my list) or Truro for ‘Photography and Digital Imaging’ (my back-up option) or Pool for ‘Digital Imaging’ (My back-up back-up). If I don’t get into any of those three (I can’t imagine why I wouldn’t, my portfolio is pretty good and I’m certainly determined) I’ve decided that I’ll spend a year doing normal, contracted work two days a week to make up the rent and spend the rest of the week doing photography (freelance paid work and non-paid ‘self-advancement’ stuff) and then apply for the 2007 cycle when applications open in September.

 

The bad news is that my IXUS was (is) still being repaired when I went down, so I couldn’t take any digital pics of Redruth and Falmouth. The good news is that I managed to find a mint-condition Canon Sureshot Supreme 35mm in a second-hand shop. Was a brilliant find! Only cost me £3 and it was in ‘as-new’ condition with original leather case and fully charged battery. It’s got a nice autofocus and auto-advance, though it’s a little loud. The thing I found funny is that it was produced in 1986, the year I was born. I bought a few rolls of film (unfortunately I managed to ruin one of them, since I’ve not used a 35mm in years) which I’m getting processed onto CD and will be ready by Tuesday (so you’ll have to wait till then to see the shots. The other bad news it that I only found the camera ‘after’ we’d gone to look at the house, so I’ve not any shots of the house itself.

It's being shipped away to be repaired.

14 working days max and I'll have it back... all shiny and new again.

Hopefully.

The last two days of my life have been spent training (and 'team building') with my fabulous new executive committee!

Day One - Morning

The team took part in some fun (and frustrating at times) team-building activities. These ranged from turning 75 foot of rope into a stretcher to playing blanket vollyball blindfolded and being tied to one another and challenged to get free:

Day One - Afternoon

In the afternoon, we had some more structured training from Scott Farmer (our NUS Regional Officer). We also had some fun blowing bubbles and play fighting:Day One - Evening

In the evening, we all went for a couple of games at the bowling alley (I lost spectacularly),which we then followed with a night out clubbing (and dancing, and drinking too much...)

Day Two 

After far too little sleep, Arran, Zoe, Kat and I walked back into the office for 9 (and actually managed to make it on time, miraculously). The rest of the day was spent doing event planning and time-tabbling for the next year (as exciting as it sounds)...

All in all, it was a pretty good event... My new exec are great and I'm really looking forward to working with them next year!

Just got back from a meeting with the 'Head of the Sixth'. Went better than I expected.

I've now dropped my Communication Studies course and my Geology course, but I'm still doing English Language and Critical Thinking. I'll be a 'mature student' (over 21) when I apply to Falmouth College of Art (or University College Falmouth, as it's now known) next year, so should hopefully be able to get in on the basis of my kick-ass portfolio alone!

Academia can be so stressful sometimes...

There's only 5 more weeks of college left until the end of term (finally) and only 3 months left till I take up my term of office as sabatical president of the union.

The next few weeks are going to be jam packed!

• I've got training/teambuilding and handovers to my new executive team next week, as well as meetings with college management.
• After that I've got to help work on the scheduling for the unions callender for 2006/2007, which means working out what events I want to run and when.
• Then I've got a regional NUS conference coming up on the 16th of May.
• The I'll be spending two whole weeks doing my official handover for presidency, getting to grips with proceedure and structure (all the stuff I've not learnt as a humble executive officer)

After that I finally get some rest before officially taking over office on the 1st of August (17 days before my 20th birthday!!)

The stress will be over soon, but there's still a lot to do before then :p

I'm back at college now and so back in business buzz-wise!

I should have plenty of time for commenting on people and hopefully posting plenty of pics (I've only uploaded 2,534 to-date and my target is to post my 3,000th on my birthday in august.

The only downer is that I managed to loose my iPod in a rock-pool at high-tide while taking some wave photos, so my uploading can now only be done via the library using my pda... ho hum... I'll hopefully get a new memory card reader soon, so will be able to upload at college again.

Love you all!

Jerry x

Just a quick appology to all you fab people...

I'm on easter break from college at the moment, and with no net connection, I'm not finding much time to comment on peoples pics!

Sorry! I'll be back on form in a couple'a week! Promise x

Yawn... what which St. Patricks day on Friday, and Rich being home on Saturday, I've been out three nights in the last week....

Me feet are still tired from dancing on Satruday.... and I've got a headache from Becky trying to get me drunk by buying me drinks... mmmm Stoli and Coke...

I need a rest! I'm going to be in Blackpool for the anual NUS conference for a few days next week... so I need to be less tired...