Matt Debouge Photography Blog
About my photography and other things I get upto.
First time lucky – Kirsts first pike
May 20th
Well Last night I took the better half fishing for pike. She’s not big into fishing but she gives it a try every so often. We went out for a couple hours to a local water, cast out a nice roach dead-bait and set the alarms. While she was watching the rods I set about cleaning out the van as it had been used as a refuge for the last 3 days while I was away for the weekend fishing. She must have had the rod cast out for 10mins at the most when she got a take. I had already prepared her as to what to do when and if a pike took the bait, she did a good job with the rod and proceeded to steadily (amateurishly * Needs more training 
) bring in her first pike. I netted the fish for her and we safely unhooked it and weighed it at just over 9lbs (talk about first time lucky, I think my first fish was about 6lbs and I had to go out at least 3 times before I hooked into a fish). I was buzzing for her and got her to hold the pike while I got some snaps. After a couple quick snaps the pike went back into the water swimming away strongly.
More pike (Esox Lucius) photos from weekend fishing
May 20th
I went down to Essex with a fellow pike angling buddy (Andy) last weekend to meet up with some other guys from a pike forum Andy was on. Started fishing Saturday with a few deadbaits and the odd chuck of a lure, things where very slow we had a fish each. Sunday morning we woke up early for another 1/2 day of fishing before the long drive home, I decided to chuck a few lures that day and my friend Andy went for the lazy dead bait method ;-P .
Well I made the wrong choice with the lures and didn’t hook into anything, Andy had a great haul of 7 fish on the bank and 3 lost, total of 76lbs of pike.
Here are some photos from the trip.
One of the other lads from the forum (Colin ) got a PB of 17lbs, only his second ever pike on the bank
Another capture by Andy
All in all great day over 100lbs of pike on the bank between us.
Pike Fishing photos
May 10th
Time for excuses to why I haven’t posted a blog entry for such a long time, well here goes… I’ve been very busy recently with work, I’ve been covering for a colleague at a company I contract for while he was working away. My web design work has also been very busy. January 2010 started unusually busy with lots of website development work to do and it hasn’t stopped since, from commercial websites to personal blog installs. I have also setup a website / blog site for a organisation helping raise money to send deaf children and families to America to swim with dolphins, the site is due to go live at the end of this month ( I will post the link here soon) .
As I have spent so much time in-front of computers recently every chance I’ve had to get out and go fishing I have jumped at it. Back in March I hadn’t caught a pike since a trip to the fens back in Oct 2009, it was a PB pike but since then pike have avoided me like the plague. I had been out at least 10 times since then and had nothing. Well end of March I went out pike fishing with a friend and finally managed to break my blanking streak with two nice pike caught one on the lure and one on deadbait.
Some photos below.
(Me) Happy to actually catch a fish for once.
Andy below with his pike caught on dead baits.
Not monster fish by any means but good, healthy, hard fighting pike.
All fish went back into the water safely within 2mins of being caught.
Monitor calibration and screen profiling
Feb 11th
Long time since my last blog post, I have upgraded my home / work PC and monitor.
I’m now running
AMD Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition 3GHz Socket AM2+ 6MB L3
4GB RAM
300GB SATA with 16MB Cache as my OS drive, and a load of data drives.
GForce 7050 – I don’t play games on my PC so this does a good enough job for photo processing.
Loads of Fans
I upgraded my monitor to a Iiyama Prolite 24″ TFT, excellent monitor for the money.
Today I calibrated the monitor with a i1Display screen profiler. This screen was already very near the calibrated settings, unlike the unlike the Samsung 23” that I found to be way off the correct colour levels. I sent the Samsung back due to a dead pixel in the end, glad i paid the extra £20 for the Iiyama. Working with profiled monitor is essential for professional photographers and designers, you really do notice the difference when you see someone else’s screen and see all the colours washed out or white as a cream colour.
I have also upgraded my operating system to Windows 7 Pro, seems to run well, I’m impressed so far, maybe windows have managed to release an OS that’s actually OK, touch wood.
Big thanks to Image IT in Daventry for the monitor profiler
Natures perfect design
Jan 27th
Some fairly high speed photography was invloved here to capture how a cat uses its tongue to drink. As you can see the cat uses it backside of its tongue to cup the liquid into its mouth.
The photo was taken with a 50mm macro lens on a tripod on 1/160 @ f7.1
A great example of how natures perfect design allows the most difficult of tasks to be accomplished with ease, you try drinking milk this way
Remember some cats are cats lactose intolerant so go easy on the milk.
African Gray Parrot photo
Jan 18th
Just a quick post today, this shot is one of my favourite from a photo session with an African Gray Parrot called Nancy.
African grays come from the jungle of west and central Africa, they are very talented talking parrots and can mimic speech with a vocabulary of over 900 words.
Nancy the African Gray Parrot is 10 years old, she was reasonably well behaved model for the photo shoot.
for more information on African Grey parrots visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Grey_Parrot
Waterfalls from India trip
Jan 13th
Just a quick update today, had a nightmare with computers, flat tires and snow today , roll on spring .
The last of my India 2009 photos have nearly been processed, sure does take a long time to work on soo many images.
Below are a few photos of waterfalls that we spotted on our trip to India.
More photos from this series on Matt Debouge Photography Flickr account.
Freezing cold…. never too old for computer games
Jan 11th
Our heating packed in last night, the boiler won’t re-light and its currently -1 outside.
It might be cold sitting in the living room but we do have Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2 on a 80 inch wide screen.
I’m not looking forward to giving the projector back, its great playing high-definition games this big.
I haven’t been playing games all week honest, I have the last of my India photos ready to post soon.
Meenakshi Amman Temple – Madurai – Tamil Nadu
Jan 8th
Its very cold in England at the moment, temperatures reaching near -22c, all the lakes are frozen so no fishing for me, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8447023.stm .
As I’ve had some free time I have managed to process some more images from my India trip, I have posted a couple below.
Meenakshi Amman Temple – Madurai – Tamil Nadu
On our trip to India, we decided to make an unplanned visit to Tamil Nadu state.
Our south India driver took us to Meenakshi Amman Temple in Madurai. Madurai city is over 2500 years old, the present temple is believed to have been built in 1600. The detail of the carvings on the outside of the temple are amazing, when you get inside the temple you see some amazing stone work that dates back to 1559. I would definitely recommend visiting the temple with a guide to show you around the different shrines and explain little history about the place, its also nice to walk around and take it in at your own pace.
If you would like to know more information about the temple have a look here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meenakshi_Amman_temple
The main entrance
Inside the temple
Amazing ceilings
If you would like to see some more photos from the temple check my Matt Debouge flickr account
J D Rattar Prints – Shetland Photographer
Jan 7th
I have been scanning some old photographs I found by the photographer John David Ratter otherwise known as J D Rattar. J D Rattar was a photographer from the 1900’s and lived on the Shetlands Islands. I have some beautiful prints by J D Rattar, mostly of sea landscapes and sea birds.
If you would like to know more about J D Ratter photography visit http://shetlopedia.com/J._D._Rattar
Below are a couple scans from my J D Rattar collection.
If you would like to see more prints please visit my Flickr account Matt Debouge Photography