Steve - I believe the Leeds carnival got favourable reviews by the West Indian community in London last year, so you might be getting your very own "Notting Hill" event up there too!!

I have the WD MyPassport external drives, running WD Smartware on Win8. There are 2 types of back-up available to you - one backs up your entire file system, the other lets you select which file folders to back up (Photos / Videos / Documents / Music), as well as selecting individual files within each folder by ticking/unticking what you want to include in the back-up. The source drive will be blue to indicate which files/folders you have selected, and on the right-hand side, you can watch your data being "poured-in" to the WD drive, which will also turn from grey to blue. back over on the source drive side, you will see a yellow indicator - this basically shows you what's still to be poured in to the external. You will also see over on the RHS once you begin your back-up the magic words "FILES NOT BACKED UP". Don't panic!!.. what's happening is that the files it was trying to write to your WD were being used by other processes, and will go back to "grab" them later.

One final note - when shutting down your computer, remember to click the "safely remove hardware" icon next to your clock on the bottom, right of the taskbar, and unplug the drive before powering down. Likewise, do not plug this external drive in until your machine has safely powered up.

Also - I should have added that this does not "take over" your machine. You can still use Microsoft's own back-up tool, or any other proprietary system, such as Nero BackUp.

This weekend is the annual Notting Hill Carnival, so anybody in the vicinity of London should give this a go. The local Green to me also has a Fun Fair parked on it, so maybe I can try my hand at photographing this too.

Provided the bride has a broken nose and a cauliflower ear, and the groom can do the Haka, you should be okay!!

Why don't you loiter around the local churches near to you, and shoot the photos at a discreet distance (so's not to tread on the official photog's toes) in order to gain some practice with lighting, etc. You have 2 years to hone your skills. Best of luck!

Well... It's either a dead pixel, or a very small fly in the far distance of the horizon that needs to be cloned out, because it's so annoyingly obtrusive!!

Seriously though - I like it!! Perhaps given the overcast sky, the building is "overexposed"..??

If I find anything I don't like in this shot, don't worry - you'll be the first to know, Mike!!

Alan - whereabouts in Hounslow did you see this? I'm only along the road from there, so I don't mind taking a look for you. If it meets your requirements, I can also send it via UPS overnight to you, as I work for a courier company, and can send this at a similar cost to that of Royal Mail.

Adds a whole new meaning to "camera shake", John!!

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Jules - let's hope the guys in Watford aren't going for the cheaper option then!

Louise - the important thing to remember about food is presentation. It has to look appetising! I dunno if you are old enough to remember the pictures of fish'n'chips that they used to hang on the walls of Woolies cafes - there was the obligatory slice of lemon, with some "shrubbery" alongside to make it look yummy!!

Another technique I know of is, when photographing sandwiches, have a little fine-mist spray with water nearby. Apart from stopping the bread from curling up under the heat of the studio lighting, the droplets of water on the skin of a tomato, on the lettuce leaves, etc makes a BLT look delicious!.. Of course, it normally gets thrown away after the photoshoot.

As for ice-cream, 9 times out of 10, it's actually mashed potato, sometimes dyed with food colouring to look like the corresponding flavour of ice-cream (pink for strawberry, yellow for banana, etc).

As Gamka says though - shoot the cook, and try photographing the food without a reflective cover. The chips in shot 1 could do with being laid out a bit more symettrically too! The scones in shot 2 need centred up, and a wee dollop of butter and/or strawberry jam in the shot wouldn't go amiss!!

DrOrloff - I'm guessing you must use the same tape measure us couriers/freight-forwarders use when calculating the volumetric capacity of lightweight and outsized packages then!!

It's known in the trade as the ISH tape measure, as in "it's 38 cm-ISH! x 25 cm-ISH! x 43 cm-ish! That magical word can add a couple of kilos to a shipment, y'know!!