Over the past few months, I’ve spent a not too small an amount of money on parking and entrance fees to various National Trust properties.  Seeing as though I plan to visit many more, it makes sense to take advantage of the benefits offered to NT members such as:

• Free entry and parking at over 300 historic sites
• Free parking at countryside and coastline locations
• A members guide book to all NT sites
• Newsletters about special events
• 3 editions of the NT magazine
• Free access to National Trust for Scotland sites as well as others around the world.

If you’re not yet a member of the National Trust and considering signing up then you might like to know that you can currently get a free pair of binoculars by using one of the many promotional links scattered around the web. To find one of these links just (more…)

Lens hoods serve a very useful function in that they shade lenses from unwanted light that can cause flaring and a drop in contrast. They’re usually made from high-impact plastic which as well as being light also provides some level of protection for the front element of your lens.

Lens hoods can be awkward to carry around, if they’re not in active use. Some allow you store them still attached to your lenses, but reversed. Whilst it saves some space, it can mean you have to remove the hood before you can get full access to the lens controls.

Many photographers consider lens hoods to be an essential piece of kit and yet they aren’t always supplied with new lenses. They can be bought as accessories, but form some reason that’s beyond me they can cost anything from tens to hundreds of pounds.

Thankfully, there is an alternative to shelling out £20+ for some shade (more…)

Flickr makes it very easy to save on bandwidth when it comes to displaying your photos on other websites. Not only do Flickr provide a robust hosting platform allowing your images to be served quickly and reliably to users all over the world, but there’s no charge for doing so even if it’s viewed a massive number of times.

In return for allowing people to do this, Flickr state, very clearly, that any images hosted by Flickr (regardless of whether it’s your image or not - that’s not relevant) and posted elsewhere should be linked back to the Flickr photo page just like this one,

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