Dedham Vale - Macmillan Mighty Hike 2021 - now live

 It's been a busy month of July with 5 Macmillan Mighty Hikes - and the last gallery of the season before the Summer break is now live and online.

The most recent has been Dedham Vale - a lovely walk along the flood plains and rolling hills along the edge of the river Stour that makes the border between Suffolk and Essex - ending practically next to the famous pond that Constable painted called the Hay Wain - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hay_Wain

Location of the Hay Wain - the water is a bit deeper now

For Dedham Vale - The free pic2go shareable gallery with the official Macmillan branding can be registered for here: https://pic2go.co.uk/mighty-hike#dedham and the backup gallery with the ability to purchase upgrades to high resolution files is here: http://sspimg.com/DedhamValeMH-2021-Gallery 

We continue to see the event industry pushing towards digital downloads being included in the race package for participants - with the London Landmarks Half Marathon last weekend also providing them - this time taken by Marathon Photos - but it clearly indicates that the good events understand the logic for sponsors, marketing, event value and of course participants !

Soon you will only have to put up with me explaining the joys of a galleries accurate photo search, "good" race photography, and the quantity of images and locations provided as part of a comprehensive image service - suffice to say if you're scrolling through an "official" few albums on an events facebook page taken by one person at a couple of locations - you're not going to be looking at a comprehensive 25,000+ image gallery that has been catalogued accurately or provided for the participants best interests at heart !

Talking of accurate photo search, I've had about three different companies come to me extolling the benefits of their AI number recognition this month and the joys of "selfie search". Great - when nothing else will work, ok I get that face stuff if you don't actually have a number, or after doing the numbers you have the 5% of people who's demographic can't put a number on the front of a shirt properly (yes - leg numbers I'm looking at you). So - I picked one random number (709 in this case) and looked at their sample gallery. Out of 20 images - 4 of them were not them - that's a 20% error for the person I was looking at - but also - for those showing in the wrong gallery - they will never find their images. So remind me again - why should I pay for a more expensive system that is 20% wrong and worse than our current system and doesn't tag my master images ? It doesn't make sense does it ! (And don't start me on the GDPR for selfie searches...) As a competitor I don't want to see pictures of random people, and I trust that you don't either !

So in the meantime - get your entry in for the Southampton Marathon, Half Marathon or 10k - because they have free race photos and it's a great course ! https://sspimg.com/enterSouthamptonMarathon2021

Additionally - we have now introduced a new "upgrade" price point for the High Resolution files for events where there are free downloads (and we have backdated that for all the events we have ever done with free downloads - from 2013) - which means we will only charge the incremental price for the significantly better resolution which is good enough for you to make A3 prints from. Also we have reduced the price of prints - which also use the high resolution file data - to be an incremental price above the screen resolution free downloads. The only thing we can't change is the postage and packing costs of the printing suppliers - so it may be better to just purchase the high resolution upgrade and get them printed at your shop of choice !

Last Mighty Hike of July

Here's a few pictures from Dedham Vale - just checking the map, I didn't realise the source of the Stour was just up from a village I lived in when I was a kid - in a place called Brinkley. Anything north of here goes to the Cam, and the Wash and everything to the south goes to the Stour and the North Sea Suffolk Coast.

all good at the 7miles

views out over the Stour Valley and river plain

They had special water bottles

Excellent Tutus

It's a team effort

Hard work pays off

Cheers for the memories !

Constables house is ok

dragged along the last bit

it seemed all good at the start

off they went !

cheers !

that hill at 6miles

That hill at 13 miles !

long views back over the fields of sugar beet to the river behind at 13 miles

Olympics fun

We have all probably seen a bit of the Olympics. Seb who used to work with us in the office was out there covering the Irish Rowing team for a Dublin based news media agency Sportsfile - https://www.sportsfile.com/more-images/775655566/- he has two weeks trapped in a room or at an event, with only 15 minutes outside time to get food or necessaries - it's a massive challenge - for the photographers as well as the athletes. 

Talking of which - here's a few photos of our fabulous silver medal winning 19 year old 800m runner Keely Hodgkinson. She came 5th at the U17 National Cross Country Championships in 2018 #211 - http://www.englishcrosscountry.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Under-17-Women.pdf - for those of an athletics history bent - have a read of who came third too that year !

Always good to see an olympian in the making ! One of the perks of this job...

Leading from the front at the famous Parliament Hill Start

Grinding up the hill on the return

Into the final corner

Final Sprint in - took that place !

Catching them at the last

So, enjoy the last few days of the Olympics, have a great August off (because nobody is organising events during a Covid summer holiday - because 6 months ago in January/February we were in a pretty awful place nationally and nobody (sensibly) was going to risk it).

Please keep careful out there and safe - a friend who is double jabbed still was bedridden for two weeks with Covid - so goodness knows how bad it might have been otherwise - so please please get your vaccinations and where possible - wear a mask.

I had so so many people ask if I could use their phones to take photos of them at the mighty hike medal shots - and the simple answer is no - because what happens if someone has given me an infected phone, and then I touch all the other phones ? - and why do you think I'm stood here wearing an FFP3 mask ? I don't want to be the super spreader, or the super-vector for this thing - and neither should you. And remember - you don't know that you have it until it's too late... so prevention is better than cure.

So until next time - which is the end of the month - have a great Summer

Anthony