Zade Archives.

Creeper.

It’s not been the best of years for me in 2012 and it doesn’t look set to be any better this year either health wise. I’m still alive, even if I don’t train Parkour, workout or even blog that much any more. My time instead has been spent attending to the archives of this blog. Going over, amending the posts from the very beginning, as well as re-uploading photos from that time with up to date colour correction. Many of the images were either blurred, too dark to see anything and in general not up to a good standard of photography, like the present day ones I take. If you start from my #1 blog and work your way through the posts or alternatively you can click the archives button and go to 2004/5 you will see the new and improved posts each numbered.

The biggest annoyance I had with my latest blogs was when Facebook decided to update for the hundredth time? All the photos which I had linked to my Facebook account were now invalid code and so would not show up on my blog unless I amended each post and every single image. This was a major ballache and there was no other way to change it! As time consuming as that was you can image I decided against doing it. So if you come across some posts without images showing that is why. I’ve set most of my posts from the past as pending review, until I get round to amending them. To counter the Facebook annoyance I have since uploaded and link all my images directly from my Devaint Art account which doesn’t change it’s image coding and hasn’t done in all the years I have been with them.

Bulwell Forest – Parkour Park Update.

Many will be aware of a Parkour park being built in Nottingham so I won’t go into too much detail as all can be read upon in a previous post which can be found HERE. There was a voting system of four designs and the one with the most votes would be the one which would be built. The winning design was Park Design C.

Even though it was a close call between design C & D there has been an option to make a few amendments to the design. Some obstacles which were liked in design D had been added to design C. The amendments and final design can be seen below from two different angles.

Other things to note are even though it was first proposed the park to have been built in by the end of March. Work is set to start on May 28th with the June 7th being the proposed completion date, give or take. I’ll have another update with photos of the park as and when work has started and the project is completed.

 

Parkour Park – Final Design.

 

Legends Assemble.

 

Yaz - Tic Tac.

 

Today I decided to get out of my cave and go to town, on my way limping to the bus stop I had second thoughts about going at all. The bus had drove past me before I got to the stop and I waited for the next one to arrive. I got to town and found Pete, Will and a few others already training at Crowne Plaza. A short while later Zain arrived happy to see everyone and surprised to see me out for once and shortly after followed by Yaz arriving. Me, Zain and Will waved in his direction but a woman in front of him on her phone masked our waves to him and so we kept waving even though she looked completely gone out at us. When Yaz got closer he then realized what we were doing.

I explained to Charlie that my ankle is screwed and so no more training for me again. I watched others train, spoke to the guys and felt bored and sick of Plaza and so had Denis who complained about us being there. After a while of being there me, Will and Yaz went up to the houses are where I got a few shots of them doing tic tac cats/cranes and k2ps. We made our way back to the Atrium where the others were now training at and even bumped into Stefano who was passing by as he walked into town. I felt like the day was over for me, with the few people out and others leaving for home. Zain, Will & Yaz were doing some sort of pain challenge where they all did a circuit of movements involving a same level diving kong followed by rolling on concrete and repeated it in single file until the last man was standing.

 

Will - Kong Precision.

 

They did a few more circuits like this one involving a pop wall climb straight into precision across a flowerbed. I took some photos of them during this and also decided to see if I could still climb up,

A Winter Walk.

 

Sign taking a beating from the snow.

 

What with the surprise snowfall in the early hours of the morning, I decided to take a walk the following evening to get a few snow shots. I was tempted to go out when the blizzard first started and it had settled and looked deep, but decided it might not be a wise idea with it being the early hours of the morning. It kept on snowing all night and most of the following day, so by the time I did venture out that evening it was still coming down tenfold and didn’t look set on stopping any time soon.

I got wrapped up in multiple layers knowing it would be bitterly cold once I was outside. I decided to use a small plastic bag to cover my camera, creating a lens hole at the bottom of the bag. I could still put my hands inside of the bag to see and change all my camera settings without it getting snowed on. I didn’t want to take any changes with it getting wet for the amount of time I would be out walking and taking photos. The plastic bag idea worked better than expected and it kept my camera dry as a bone, even if my hands felt like frozen ice poles .

I took one opportunity to take a long exposure shot to how they work and would come out, and I must admit even though I’ve never done that sort of shot before I did enjoy the final result. I do prefer ones which are subtle like the one I took (seen below). A few I took came out too strong with the light beams and didn’t have as good effect. I felt the one I chose works really well and the hexagons add something extra to the shot. I think in the future I may experiment with more long exposure shots as it’s a different path to go with photography.

 

Traffic long exposure shot.

 

I did capture some nice images from the evening’s walk. I was torn between editing the shots in a blue tint as that made them have a very cool and wintery feel, but on the other hand the white with a slight yellow aura from the street lights at night also works just as well. Where as I found if I lightening up the shot so that it was all white like you would see in the daytime took away the shadows and lost it’s overall quality. I did experiment with the colour correcting, with some working better than others, rather than me making them all look the exact same like I had done in the past.