So what was the wall for...

... it was for these, exterior lights, packaging shots. The shots with the lights on proved a little troublesome, the large security light created a rainbow glare as the LED bulbs are very bright, so I had to do a two part comp shooting the light off with flash and then with the LED light on, a quick bit of work in layers in Photoshop sorted it.

Set building...

... today, had to knock up a false wall. The wall is made of 12mm mdf 900mm x 900mm with a base and a web piece to keep everything straight. All screwed together, cos that's the way it should be done, also means that with a quick play with the electric screwdriver it can all be broken down and stored easily.

Finally, finally finished...

... installing the drive in the MacPro, the other drive is now wrapped an packed and marked 'Clone HD' it'll be offsite later today. I've also popped in a 500GB Scratch Drive, so now I'm happy with the old girl again. She's back to her old self and running great. Hoping it's going to be a while before I have to muck about inside the big brushed silver box, though it could always do with a tad more memory, say another 4GB...

I've read loads of articles recently about the idea of cloning start-up drives for piece of mind, to be honest for the small extra expense of another hard drive it does make a whole heap of sense. Right now to get back to the real job, so it's off with the IT hat and on with the Photographers hat, I've got product shots to get done and deadlines to meet...

Just popped into...

... Chester for a meeting, police everywhere, didn't pay it to much attention really, went to meeting. After a very successful meeting, picked up a days work, I was feeling a bit peckish so wondered off in the direction of a sandwich shop, stone me, there's the Princes Royal (Ann) in front of a regiment of Marines being presented with their colours right outside the town hall. Still with all the crowds watching the spectacle the sandwich shop was virtually empty, so I got a very nice Italian chicken and sun-dried tomato baguette in double quick time. I've seen countless Royal parades in my time living in London, a good sandwich has more draw to me, when I'm hungry. Now must stop waffling and get on with some invoicing and quotes.

Finally changed the hard drives...

... over on the MacPro, I had to delay the change over because I had a lot of work come in, so can't complain about that. It's really easy to replace a hard drive, the time consuming bit is loading up all the software. I can recommend doing a swap during the day, starting it late evening turned the whole process into a very late night/early morning chore.

My Mac Pro has...

... reached the tender age of 3, the Applecare has now expired (which has been well worth the money as my graphics card took a nose dive 18 months ago) and so I was thinking, replace or keep. Does it still speed along helping me get my work out on time, yes. Has it reached the end of it useful life, no, no it has not. So it's a keeper, though it needs opening up again and treating to a good dusting with some canned air, it's amazing just how much dust they will collect if you let them. I'm also going to replace the main hard drive, in fact I'll be doing two drives, keeping one as a spare, just in case. So that will mean a little down time this week,