Climbing Mount Starbeck

An irate club official (not from the clubs involved in the match reported here) was once heard to say to a referee, "I marked you as 1 [out of 10]. I wanted to give you 0, but I could not, because you had the correct equipment." Having the correct equipment matters for the photographer too, and these pages often mention a forgotten item that makes life more difficult. For a visit to Harrogate Railway Athletic, there is a check list: ropes, crampons...

On arrival in a sunny Harrogate, Richie, our leader in beer and pub choices, led us to the Coach and Horses, at which point the party split, with some heading to Muckle's Sports Bar next door, which was offering a well kept Leeds Pale Ale, amongst other choices, and the chance to watch Everton v Liverpool on the large screen. I was also keeping an eye on Sheffield Wednesday v Huddersfield Town on the smaller screen to see if former Dulwich Hamlet striker Daniel Carr was playing.

The hill towards Harrogate and the houses behind the ground were already casting a full shadow over the pitch by the time of kick off, with just some reflected sunlight on the fencing where the old clubhouse used to stand.

Isaac Kusoloka

The absence of cloud probably gave us half an hour more of natural light than we had on the last couple of Saturdays, with the floodlights coming on towards the end of the first half. Here is James McCulloch in the last image I used from the half: Movember is coming along nicely!

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had a spot of bother with my computer - it turned out more than a spot, to the point the cost of repairs looked like it may not be much less than a new machine, so I replaced it. One welcome change from the last time I bought a computer was that I did not need to buy much software, there is now a good open source option for most of the tasks I use it to perform. The only exception was Photoshop Elements, and had I been making a planned change, or one out of the season, I would have looked around more to see what was available, but I needed to get pictures out without time to learn a new package.

I moved from version 8 on my old computer, to version 12. There are improvements, it is a bit quicker, and the lighting adjustments seem more powerful. The most useful addition is a grid in the crop window, making it easier to adjust where I have not been holding the camera straight. Take this photo of Enzo Benn - this is how it came off the camera, with just the lighting adjusted.

When we crop the picture, the grid is useful for lining up against the corrugated iron fence in the background, which we know is true and vertical.

The end result has the horizon correctly horizontal, and captures the slope that is a feature of the ground.

Something less than an improvement is the position of the tool options, such as the aspect ratio for cropping. In version 8, these were in a narrow bar along the top of the screen. In a time when most new computer screens are 16:9 widescreen, some clever person thought the best place for this was in a large frame at the bottom of the screen, shrinking the area available for the picture you are working on (and the application does not allow you to move it), when there is plenty of room at the side, so it is a lot of extra clicks to keep showing and hiding it.

As for the game, having conceded a penalty, we thought that if we were able to equalise, we could probably build on it and go ahead, but this was not to be, Rob Doran scoring the only Cables goal of the game, with Nathan Cartman putting Harrogate ahead.

Rob Doran

Most of the Train Crew headed home after the game, but I made my usual visit to a rather busy (but still with a corner for me to curl up with my post match refreshment and paper) Blind Jack's in Knaresborough.

The rest of the pictures from the game can be seen here.

Final score: Harrogate Railway Athletic 2 Prescot Cables 1 (Doran)