Masterchef 2011 is all messed up.

I liked Masterchef in most of it's incarnations. The celeb edition didn't do all that much for me but on the whole I found it nice to watch. The format works and the English edition was shot very well. Attractive lighting, nice colours, it looked like the motion version of a high end cookbook.

As an example, check this clip.



And now this:



Which looks to me like they got a set designed by Gordon Ramsey, sacked the old crew and hired camera and light people that are used to doing gameshows.

I don't know, perhaps it gets better after the first round but this is no longer on my list of excellent food shows. Too bad!

I've started to blog in Dutch as well as in English. My Dutch blog can be found here: http://wijnands.tweakblogs.net/blog/ Apparantly I'm more succesful there, my two posts are rapidly moving towards a 1000 pageviews.

Am I too hard on myself?

Goosander fighting
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Spent sunday morning walking, not the greatest weather. On my way back I decided to take a slight detour and see if there was anything interesting in the canal. Goosanders, a load of them and obviously feeling the spring in their wings already.

I spent at least 15 minutes watching this, started out with 5 males, 3 females but the group got larger.

I like this shot for the composition, the exposure is decent but I see also what's wrong with it, mainly the noise.

Now I wondering.. am I being too hard on myself? Birding is tricky enough and this is as good as it's going to get in a somewhat shaded canal with a solid overcast sky.