Little Thetford .org

Local artist Jamie ‘Lloyd’ McCullough is showing off his skills in a new video titled “4 Eyes”. The video follows Jamie’s initial surprise at finding himself in his kitchen. Let us know what you think.

Jamie says he purchased a green cloth and shot himself against this background. He composited the shots in Apple iMovie using a technique called Chroma-Key. This is all the more remarkable when you consider Jamie has Usher Syndrome; deaf from birth and now almost totally blind.

(Also published on the Limping Chicken blog)

Comment here

Popular village pastel artist Claire McGinley recently completed her MA in Children’s book illustration at Anglia Ruskin University. We took a look at recent additions to her web site and were mightily impressed.

Comment on this post from here.

Little Thetford entrepreneur Claire Louise has been telling us about her beautiful photography. We first saw Claire Louise’s photographs of Little Thetford on her very active Facebook page. We were very impressed, for example, with the 55 photos in her “Autumn in Little Thetford …” album and the 19 photos in her “Walk to Ely …” album. Claire Louise, 30, moved to Little Thetford from Stuntney in August of 2011 and, inspired by the natural beauty of her surroundings, she clearly loves the photographic opportunities available in her new village. Claire Louise has been taking photographs for many years, keenly following her amateur photographer father, John Bird, as he took photographs. She formed Claire Louise Photography in 2009 and has completed over fifty weddings, travel photography including Scotland and some studio portrait work since that time. She tells us that she always drifts back to the beauty of the countryside.

Claire Louise mainly uses a Canon EOS 550D with 18–55mm lens on manual without flash. She has Adobe Photoshop on her PC though she rarely uses it; preferring not to tweak her photographs except sometimes to artistically crop. Claire Louise also runs the iCanvas web site from the village which was started in August this year. This service turns your own photographs or her stock images into beautiful canvas prints up to 100cm x 50cm or even larger. A nice way to decorate any room.

We welcome Claire Louise to our village and wish her well with her enterprises.

We show below a very small selection of work by Claire Louise. These are some of her personal favourites. Don’t forget to check out more of her work on her Facebook page. Please do tell us what you think from the page here.

The “February in Little Thetford” photo was taken on 5 February 2012 looking across Thetford Field towards Stretham. This photo has proved popular in iCanvas. The “Cherries” were taken that same afternoon. Model Pixie’s favourite person is US singer, songwriter and actress Katy Perry. Can you tell?

Click any image for a larger version.

February in Little Thetford © 2012 Claire Louise

Cherries © 2012 Claire Louise

Model Pixie recreating Katy Perry © 2012 Claire Louise

Model Pixie recreating Katy Perry © 2012 Claire Louise

David Moss of the Round House, Little Thetford told us about his Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) recently. He uses a DroidWorx Hexacopter UAV from his Sky High Imagery business to take both vertical and oblique photographs of land or property. See brief history of aerial photography below and some of David’s images further down.

David previously used a telescopic mast to take aerial views; he now only uses this mast for time-lapse photographs—preferring the convenience and speed of his UAV; subject to weather conditions of course. David has two camera’s which he uses on the gyro-stabilised platform of his UAV, including a Sony Alpha SLT-A77.

To comment on this article, view it from here.

The version of Hexacopter David is using has a nine minute flight time, an 11kg^* capacity, a range of 6km and can be controlled manually or by GPS. In either case, the UAV has an auto-safe facility which will land the vehicle back at its take-off point if it detects any issues such as low battery, loss of GPS or loss of the control signal. It is not necessary to have a UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) accepted license to own and fly a UAV of 20kg or less in the UK unless, like David, you intend to use it for commercial purposes. You must still follow the CAA publish regulations (CAP722)^† such as being aware of controlled airspace and not endangering anyone or anything. David obtained his BNUC-S CAA license in June 2012.

John Parish is also one of our local aerial photographers. He took the aerial view of Little Thetford which is part of our web site page header. See more of John’s aerial views in our gallery. John prefers to use his aircraft rather than a UAV.

^*An 11kg mass initially at rest falling from a height of 120m (400ft) under the influence of gravity hits the ground at about 50 m/s (112 mph) with an impact force of nearly 200KN (20 ton-force)
^†See also CAA publications UK-CAA POLICY FOR LIGHT UAV SYSTEMS (PDF) for a general guide and CAP 658 (PDF) for all non commercial regulations—i.e. for model aircraft

Brief history of aerial photography

Aerial photography has been practised since the mid-nineteenth century. For example, balloonists such as Gaspard-Félix Tournachon (1820–1910), took pictures over Paris in 1858 from his tethered balloon. The aerial photographic record of the UK’s first commercial aerial photography company, Aerofilms Limited of Hendon (1919–), was sold to English Heritage in 2007. This wonderful historic archive of oblique photographs of (mainly) the UK can be found in their Britain from above collection. There is a beautiful oblique view of Ely Cathedral from the air in the collection, taken by Aerofilms in 1920.

Some images from David Moss taken in Little Thetford about two weeks ago

Vertical view of the Round House from 50ft © 2012 David Moss	Vertical view of the Round House from 100ft © 2012 David Moss
Vertical view of the Round House from 200ft © 2012 David Moss	Vertical view of the Round House from 300ft © 2012 David Moss
Vertical view of the Round House from 400ft © 2012 David Moss

On Saturday 24 November, 2012 the Friends of St George’s welcome John Parish from Bedwell Hey who is going to talk about his vineyard as well as the benefits gained from the wildlife friendly policies he adopts on the farm. John has made this presentation elsewhere when it was very well received, so please join us at 7.30pm.

Tickets are just £5 .00 from the same sources. We hope to have a small wine tasting session after the talk.

November 2012 calendar

Robert and Judy Young are proud to announce the birth today of daughter Alison Taylor’s on-line boutique, Tweed Vixen. A beaming Bob said that this is a “very exciting time” whilst Judy is speechless with dignified appreciation. Daniel Taylor, 39, who supports the enterprise by designing the marketing material said that this was “[a long time] in planning followed by a terrifying six-weeks culminating in a launch that went as planned. [I am] nervous but very happy”. Alison said she was “nervous but excited” and went on to explain that they launched the ladies wear today; the men’s wear is in the planning stage and will launch very soon. One of Alison’s Twitter followers @NaomiMc commented “Yay yay yay RT @tweedvixen: British Country Style with an Urban Twist, TweedVixen Boutique is Open!”.

Alison’s long-time interest in British Tweed¹ led her, in August 2010, to create Tweed Vixen’s blog to considerable international acclaim; her writing generating a large and devoted following. Encouraged by her supportive father, Alison submitted a business plan to the bank which was subsequently approved. Alison designs her own Tweed Vixen range of clothing and accessories, such as this 100% Scottish Lambswool Camel Crew Sweater and this Sterling Silver Feather Necklace as well as carefully selecting additional quality products to compliment her own range.

We all wish Alison the success her hard work deserves.

¹ Tweed, n. Etymology. A trade name originating in an accidental misreading of tweel, Scots form of twill n.1 (or a misunderstanding of an abbreviated tweeled twilled adj.1), helped by association with the River Tweed. OED Second edition, 1989; online version June 2012. [subscription required]

See also
Tweed Vixen web site
Tweed Vixen on Twitter
Tweed Vixen on Facebook
Tweed Vixen on Pinterest
Tweed Vixen Blog

Add your own comments at the bottom of the page here.

We all know the advantage of bulk buying. Lower costs. But did you know you could be helping to reduce noise, wear and tear on the road and generally help reduce carbon emissions?

As reported recently in the Ely Standard, the Cambridgeshire ACRE charity has set up a community oil buying scheme in the Cambridgeshire area which can save up to £50 per delivery per customer. For Little Thetford residential customers, the scheme costs £20 per year to join. The membership form can be obtained from our village coordinator, Steve Merrell, or from Cambridgeshire ACRE here.
.
.
.
See this booklet (PDF) for further information or contact us. We will pass your details on to Steve Merrell.

Further reading and comments …

We’ve started a local services page (under ‘Enterprises’). On this page we will list adverts and details of local services provided by people in the village.

So – if you live in the village and can provide a service (whether paid or free) and would like an advert placed there free of charge, do please contact us – we know how much the people of the village like to ‘keep it local’ if they possibly can! Plus we get lots of visitors to the website from outside the village too!

Here’s the first ad we’ve placed there (click to enlarge):

By popular request, and with many thanks to Claire for her permission, we now have many more pictures of Claire McGinleys pastel works on the website. We’ve put together a little gallery of some of her works.

Cathedral Light