After an evening of some incredible performances, I’m pleased to be able to say that the scepticism shown in my last post was proved incorrect. One of the most talented acts on the night not only went out on stage and gave a “flawless” performance, they improved so much from their semi final routine that they leap-frogged their main rivals and won the final of Britain’s Got Talent 2009.

Diversity won over the hearts and phone bills of the nation in what I can only describe as a major victory for talent as opposed to popularity. Summing up tonight’s acts:

Flawless – very good but had been better in the semi final.
Shaheen Jafargholi – his best performance so far, a joy to listen to.
Aidan Davis – while impressive had to agree with Simon Cowell that his semi final performance was better.
2 Grand – with John missing his cue and Sally singing her best performance, it was a sweet performance but not show winning.
Hollie Steel – Everyone wondered whether she’d crack up under the pressure and thankfully she didn’t – enjoyable but there were better singers on the night.
Stavros Flatley – Absolutely fantastic – totally should have been in the top 3.
Shaun Smith – Singing Ain’t no Sunshine and to say the least he nailed it – Wouldn’t be surprised to see an album on the shelves.
Susan Boyle – Her best performance so far. Not my favourite person but it looked like the image consultants had convinced her to say as little as possible after her singing, so less annoying than usual – especially as she came a gracious second.
Diversity – Absolute perfection and totally deserving of their win
Julian Smith – You couldn’t have asked for a better closing act. Totally deserving of his top 3 finish. I would have been as happy if he’d won.

So my heartfelt congratulations to my fellow Londoner’s – Diversity, to Julian for his wonderful performances, to Stavros Flatley’s Dimitrios and Lagi for making me laugh for all the right reasons and to Shaun for reminding that sometimes the classic songs are still the best.

Also my thanks to the YouTube user BritainsSoTalented, who not only allowed me catch up with the acts that I’d missed along the way, but also has given me the ability to jazz up this post with his YouTube uploads.

If the viewing figures are to be believed almost a quarter of the UK’s population is wrapped up in the fever of ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent. As I write this the bookies favourite is still Susan Boyle at 8/11. The rest of the final line up are Aidan Davis (4/1), Shaheen Jafargholi (8/1), Stavros Flatley (9/1), Flawless (10/1), Julian Smith (12/1), Diversity (10/1), Hollie Steel (16/1), Shaun Smith (33/1) and 2 Grand (50/1).

Personally I’ve never liked the attitude shown on screen by Susan Boyle and if alleged reports of her ranting and swearing are to be believed, it wouldn’t surprise me – From what I’ve seen it would be in line with the personality I’ve seen so far. In agreement with a comment made yesterday on the BBC Breakfast News, I think she doesn’t have as angelic a voice as everyone was convinced when watching her audition for the first time.

She has a powerful and generally good singing voice, that much is true, but I consider most of the wow factor to come from the fact that she walked out on stage and based on her appearance, everyone assumed she would be bad or mediocre at best. I think it’s somewhat more telling of the western world that only “beautiful” or “normal” people are considered likely to have talent…

Someone like Shaun Smith proves the point, in that he looks the part we’d expect of a professional singer and he has a fantastic voice – his version of U2’s With or Without You was incredible and yet despite singing with far more conviction and talent than Ms Boyle, the bookies have placed him 9th by the odds. There wasn’t so much wow factor as people most likely assumed he could sing.

To his credit Shaun never tried to be Bono when singing his semi final choice of song and it’s probably a good thing too, as Bono can reach and hold those long high notes. However, he brought his own style to the song and as far as this U2 fan is concerned, he nailed it. The same could not be said for Susan’s performance of Memory, which despite the positive finish, was shaky at the start to say the least.

If the first semi final had been voted for on talent alone, then the final would have included both Diversity and Sue Son, who despite her excellent performance had already been branded the villain after some dubious press coverage made her out to be self-serving at the expense of her friendship. Although somewhat harsh, Simon Cowell summed it up in the first semi final when he commented that Sue was talented and her friend wasn’t. She had been put in a difficult position and in all honesty I think most people would have made the decision she did and most likely with less thought to the possible impact on their friendship.

There was at least one other act that should have made the final based on talent, but the judges put through the wrong act and that meant young Callum Francis’ endearing smile and fantastic take on the Jungle Book ended in the semi finals. Sweet as 2 Grand is, I don’t think they were the better act on the night. All being well Callum will be given his chance at the West End/Broadway, as he clearly deserves it.

But the fact remains neither Sue nor Callum made the finals and therefore I have to look at the acts that did go through. Based on the talent and performances in the semi finals, my personal pecking order would be: Julian, Shaheen, Flawless, Shaun, Stavros, Diversity, Aidan, Susan, 2 Grand and Hollie. As you can see Susan wouldn’t even make my top 5.

I know that my considering Stavros more talented than say Diversity or Aidan would be considered controversial, but their talent isn’t in their dancing – it’s in their ability to entertain and that they have done by the Fez load. I can’t deny, but part of me would love it if they won and got to perform in front of the queen.

Personally though, I’d love to see Julian Smith take the night. He’s humble, inspirational, cool and most importantly talented, but I suspect that it won’t be talent that wins in tonight’s final. At the very least, he should get to release an album off the back of this and I’d certainly buy it.

So enjoy the final of “Britain’s Got Popular Voting” and just pray that my scepticism is wrong.

One of the things I like about running my own WordPress Blog, is the ease with which I can customise the functionality and the layout of the site.

I’d recently loaded my Blog and realised that the front page had become ridiculously long. As such my customisation plans included the desire to control the number of posts showing on the front page. A quick Google search of “how do I control the number of posts on front page wordpress” and Voilà I’d found a couple of worthwhile results to explore.

Having settled on Scott Reilly’s Custom Post Limits and installed it, I’ve got to say nothing could have been easier to setup. Unlike the default WordPress setting that is globally applied to all pages, I now have the ability to separately control the number of posts shown on the front page as well as all other sections of my Blog.

For anyone looking for new Plugins for your WordPress Blog, I’d highly recommend taking a look at the WordPress.org Plugin Directory and Coffee 2 Code

Continuing my intention to highlight the more interesting photos taking up space on my hard drive, I’ve created 6 new galleries:

• Fireworks
• Spain
• Florida
• Walt Disney World
• SeaWorld, Orlando
• State Parks, USA

As will be noticeable in a couple of the galleries, there are still plenty of images to be added. I’m about half way through sorting through the photos from my last trip to Florida and as such will update the galleries as often as I can.

Fireworks

I love Fireworks displays and it’s got to be said when photographing fireworks displays is when I get the most “snap happy”. I’ve often taken more than 400 pictures in the space of 15 – 20 minutes. It worse now with the DSLR and at the last 2 trips I took over 600 at each display… This obviously means a large amount of time sitting in front of the computer sifting through the chaff, but it does also give a higher chance of having taken that perfect shot.

At this point in time there are 4 pictures taken at the 2008 Lord Mayor’s Fireworks Display on London’s River Thames. This is a gallery that will continue to grow and will shortly include pictures from the Wishes and IllumiNations: Refelctions of Earth displays at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom and Epcot theme parks respectively.

Spain

In March of 2008 Chrisy and I headed to the Spanish resort of Estepona to chill and celebrate my birthday. Admittedly too short a trip to properly explore the area, we did head up in to the mountains and found the dramatic city of Ronda as well as a day trip to the nearby British territory of Gibraltar.

Still using my old Sony Cybershot P73 digital camera, my ability to photograph what I saw was certainly more limited than my current cameras allow, but the trip highlighted for me how much the city of Ronda has to offer – I certainly intend to return in the future. I found Gibraltar interesting but during the limited time there I found St Michel’s Caves and the Rock Monkeys offered the only decent photo opportunities. We were able to see the North African coast from Europa Point, but photographically it didn’t offer anything for me.

I think my favourite photos are the sunset shots taken from the Estepona beach in front of the bar/restaurant La Vela Azul. Mixing a beautiful Sunset with the memories of sitting in the bar drinking Cacique Rum and Diet Coke with Chrisy – what more could I have asked for…

Florida, Walt Disney World and SeaWorld, Orlando

While it would be fair to say that as both Walt Disney World and SeaWorld Orlando are both in Florida, I maybe should have created a single gallery, as any photographer who has been to the theme parks should be able to attest to, they offer so many photo opportunities that they warrant their own showcases.

The Florida gallery will include pictures taken in the beautiful town of Mount Dora, as well as the vibrant cities of Miami and Orlando, the isolated beauty of the Everglades and the unusual curiosity that is Homestead’s Coral Castle.

The Walt Disney World gallery will concentrate on the varied range of imagery, both natural and “Disney-fied” that can be found in the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios and the Animal Kingdom.
The SeaWorld Orlando gallery covers not only SeaWorld and the magic of its marine enclosures and shows, but also the water park Aquatica and wonderfully luxuriant day out that is Discovery Cove.

State Parks, USA

Despite a reputation for abusing the natural resources of the planet, it cannot be denied that for such an industrial country America has set aside a large amount of land for State and National Parks.

While I haven’t the available lifespan to visit every single State and National Park in the United States, those that I have visited so far have been full of natural beauty and the inspiration for my continued endeavours in improving my photography.  There are more places I’d like to visit such as: Texas’ Big Bend National Park on the border with Mexico; Utah’s Zion National Park; Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park and the multi-state Yellowstone National Park.

For now the gallery consists of a recollection of the Bahia Honda State Park and the Dry Tortugas National Park images from the Florida Keys and Dry Tortugas galleries and will soon include recently taken pictures from Blue Spring and De Leon Springs State Parks, both of which can be found North East of Orlando not far from the Ocala National Forest.