West Kirby Churches Together had their annual Fun Day Sat 14th Aug.  Always a good family day out and this year was no exception.  Started off a little cloudy but sun did come out and the families came into the Coronation Gardens to enjoy the fun.   Lots of activities with face painting,coconut shies, bouncy castles, puppet shows for the younger ones even free hot dogs and burgers, cakes and cold drinks.  No go-karts this year but the gladiator fights were popular with kids and adults – even a contest between the United Reformed minister and his treasurer – I sure I heard him  say “gimme more money” as he swung the baton!

Looking for alternative transport ideas for your event? How about a monster truck Limo?
We strolled down to the prom at West kirby and up rolls this big red monster truck and alighted some bright young girls dressed up to the nines.

At first thought it was a hen party but then saw the equally dressed up guys in their smart suits. Turned out they were on their way to a school leavers prom and were enjoying a ride around in this unique Limo – the only one of its kind in the world. The limo seats eight passengers and has a bar, six TV’s (one 50” TV), leather seating with strobe and neon lighting. The Limos can be hired from MD-travel and Beverley Hills Limousines, based at Southport, Merseyside. Other styles are available too like Knight Rider and a fire-engine limo – apparently popular with firemen getting married. A real novelty touch and definitely something different. Check out their website for full details.

Below a few quick pictures snapped last night.

monster truck limo

prom girls

The old faithful cube PC, my pride and joy for many a year, had a long lingering death…although it nearly got thrown threw the window on several occassions.  It has been overthrown by a shiny new destop, up to date model with intels latest chip, Core i7, a whopping 6GB Ram and a huge hard drive (twice the size of the external  one now) so plenty of room for all those pictures. OK there are higher spec machines out there but its by far and away a big step up from its predecessor.  The cube didn’t give up lightly though, the new Dell machine, a Studio XPS 8100 for some reason wasn’t compatible with my monitor, so had to get a new widescreen 20 inch LCD  and I must admit the pictures look so much better on it.  Then  after a day or so the internet connection was dropping every time the pc was re-booted and had to repair a network driver.  The Dell support was great though and the other night they took remote control of the pc and tried loads of fixes – its really weird seeing the cursor on screen move when you haven’t touched anything!  Took longer than supposed to  bu really shouldn’t complaian at service recieved and so far so good and internet connection has stayed on with no further problems.

Loving windows 7 too, what with the pc spec everything is running so much faster.  No more lock ups and window freezes when trying to run two applications simultaneously.  Pictures import and render so much quicker in Lightroom now, its a joy to processs the Raw files in this now and really sppeeds up workflow.  This weekend I will be enjoying a Stu Little live screencast, as he dmonstrates tips and techniques with the latest version of Lightroom 3 – one of the topics will be on Noise Reduction.  Stu is a great photographer and Photoshop educator, so why not joing him this Sunday 20th June at 6pm BST.  He will laso be availble on Twitter for a question and answer session.   Its going to be so much better watching this on the new large monitor and pc – it will be much more entertaining than the England game was tonight !

Dell Studio XPS 8100

This weekend we had the pleasure of taking some family photos  after the christening of Holly – the beautiful baby daughter of Jeanette and Peter, whose wedding we covered a few years ago. Holly is a new sisiter for older brother Paddy. It was also a party for the diamond wedding anniversary of Holly’s great grandparents, a marvelous achievement in these days. Just a small family occasion and very informal as requested .  Holly was asleep most of the time and looked angelic.  Hope the family like the pictures  captured for their memories of this special occasion.  Pictures are available on their client gallery we provided for them but below is a little taster

Holly

Holly

Paddy

A warmer afternoon than last years event and a good crowd in attendance cheering on the finalists – last years winners the West Kirby Hawks and the New York team, Extreme. No nail-biting finish this time I’m afraid as in the final best of five dinghy races the New Yorkers were clear winners, winning the first three straight off so no need for the other two races. West Kirby Hawks fell foul of the umpire’s flag twice, spelling disaster for the locals. So well done to Team Extreme. Below some pictures from the final races.  Camera Olympus E-510 with 42-150 mm lens.

despair

jubilation

This weekend see the British Open Dinghy Team Racing Championships Sailing Event, The Wilson Trophy, taking place on West Kirby marina.Its an internatinal event with team competing from around the world.  Its was an exciting occasion last year with a nail biting finish which happily saw the home team of West Kirby win.  Lets hope for more of the same this year but some sunnier weather please.  Pixsmiths will be there whatever the weather to photograph the event.
The sailing boats are ready to go and as always it will be a colourful event with the myriad of sails on the marina.
Uptodate news can be found here…and I see its headed by one of Pixsmiths pictures from last year.