Happy New Year

Well, here we are again on the last day of the current year. This year has seen a lot of ups and downs but in general it has been a good one and I can't believe how quickly it's gone.

The run up to Christmas this year was very hectic with parties, drinks with friends catching up with family etc etc and I've hardly taken any photos at all recently to use on this blog. If I make one New Years resolution then it will be to take more photographs in 2008 and finally sort through the backlog of ones that I've taken in 2007!

I'm sure that by now everyone has had enough turkey but for those that haven't, here's some more.....



Happy new year to everyone and all the best for 2008.

Lightbox Fun

Some pictures courtesy of the homemade light box.

Intel Inside


My Mate Jack!


Laser

The Lions (plus other animals) of Longleat

A month or so a go (still working on that backlog of pics!) a few friends and I decided to go to out for the day to Longleat. Unfortunately the weather was pretty poor but still managed to get a few shots of the various animals from the car as we were driving round.

Mrs Lion



Why the long face Mr Tapir?!



Monkey scratching himself and probably the paintwork on the Range Rover that he was perched on!



Humphrey the Camel!



Monkey mirror!



Wind your neck in Mr Giraffe!

Most Interesting Flickr Photos

With the views of my flickr stream quickly approaching 15,000 I thought I'd have a play with some of my pictures that flickr users find most interesting. Interestingness of a photograph on flickr is calculated by the number of views, number of times added to other users favorites, total comments etc.

Thanks to this post from novemberfive.co.uk I found animoto.com and created some videos featuring my 15 most interesting Flickr pictures.

Remember Remember the Fifth of November

Always find it a bit strange that we celebrate Guy Fawkes trying to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605. I know his attempt was foiled but still celebrating what these days would would be classed as a huge terrorist plot seems a bit strange to me!

Off to the fireworks tonight and am undecided whether to take my camera along so here are some from last year...

Rude Animal Origami

A couple of us at work in the past have had an interest in origami (mainly modular). We spent many a lunchtime folding paper to make various models.

Here are some of our creations...



Jen, our receptionist from New Zealand who sadly (we are missing her smiling face already) left us to return home last week also took a keen interest in this ancient Japanese art form and gave us a really good present when she left.


So we went to work on putting together one of the creations from the book and it had to be the cover shot :-D


Well done Jen, good luck in NZ, keep in touch and make sure you come and see us when you come back.

Data Stack!

Had a big clear out at work yesterday while looking for some CDs. It's amazing how many old floppy disks (both 3.5" and 5.25" varieties) that we used in the old days.

With all the CDs, DVDs and USB disks and drives these days the once useful floppy is well and truly extinct! I'm all for the new age of technology as everything is so very much quicker than it used to be but you can't help slightly reminiscing about these things!

Countdown to Christmas

With the supermarket shelves stocked with festive goodies, it's difficult to miss that Christmas is just around the corner.

I'm finding it hard to believe that's it's nearly a year since last Christmas and how quickly this year has flown by.

Looking forward to getting another real tree this year...you just can't beat the smell of a freshly cut Christmas tree to put you in a festive mood.

Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head

After an extended dry spell the rain has now made an unwelcome return to the south of England. And some said that we were going to have an Indian summer!!

Still, it makes for some interesting raindrop snaps out in the back garden.

Concrete Curry

I Was invited along with a load of others from work to a house warming with a difference yesterday. We were lured with the promise of a free curry and lashings of beer but first we had to move several tonnes of concrete in to a huge skip.

I turned up and with 2 others set to work on filling the skip. For a while it didn't seem as though the pile of concrete was getting any smaller but after an hour or so many others arrived and we soon made light work of it.

Once the manual labour was completed we were treated to a great curry and enough rice to feed a small African nation! The beer and wine then continued to flow in to the small hours and a really good evening was had by all.

I woke up this morning remembering what it feels like to do a lot of heavy lifting which I haven't done since the concrete removal efforts in my back garden last summer.

Digital Hands

Going through some old boxes the other week I came across some old pen and ink drawings that I did when I was back at school.

I took some snaps of them and then had the idea to add a digital touch to colourise them a little.

Here is the original


After some colour was added - I quite like the whole pop art look


After playing with layers and blend modes here in the finished piece with some subtle colouring.

Don't Let the Sun go Down on Me

Haven't taken many photos recently but still working through the backlog...

One evening a few weeks ago I took the camera out for some exercise and walked up to the top of Laverstock Downs. I grew up in the village and spent many a teenage evening up there with friends watching the world go by and engaging in various teenage antics that our parents would not have agreed with!

Once I was up there the sun was starting to set and I thought I'd capture a few shots in both infrared and colour.







I prefer sunsets where there are a few clouds about so that was a perfect evening.

Don't Lose Your Head

More fun with merging images...



[Edit: Back of t-shirt neck added - 18/09/07]

Lofty Wasps

Had the day off work today and spent a fair bit of it installing lighting and boarding out the loft using the newly acquired loft hatch that I got put in the other week - The old hatch was barely big enough to fit through let alone fit all the boxes that I want to store up there to clear out some clutter.

Once the lighting was installed it was easy to see the wasp nest that I got terminated last year.



I noticed that there are around 5 much smaller nests (one can be seen to the left of the big one) dotted throughout the loft space. Apparently these are where the queen has told all her blokes to build the nest and then once work has started she changes her mind - typically woman then!!! You learn something new every day!

Eye See You!

Got a bit of a backlog of photos to go through at the moment and today came across one of my macros of the human eye...well, my eye to be precise.

I've seen loads of good examples on the web and flickr but they are a lot harder to do than I thought. After several failed attempts I managed to snap this one.



You can see the reflection of the lamp in the pupil which I was trying to avoid but I've only tried these at night & I'd imagine you can get better results using natural light so I'll give that a go. Be sure to keep your 'eye' on the blog for future posts !!

Competition Photos Finally Submitted

As mentioned Previously the local rag has been running a photography competition.

I had great ideas about going out and taking lots of shots of various sites around the city but all of a sudden the closing date has crept up and I've not had much time to take any more snaps.

So here are the final 3 that I decided to submit.






It's a shame that they're all of the same subject matter but in my opinion they're not too bad. I especially like the infrared one but not sure that they'll accept photos taken with filters. We'll see.

Top prize is a Panasonic Lumix TZ3 with seven runners up receiving a copy of photographer Steve Day's book, Wiltshire Moods

The Mighty Whites

After 3 evenings of drinking under our belts we thought we'd go and do something healthy (well, watching is the next best thing!) so off to the Ray-Mac to see The Mighty Whites (Salisbury City FC) continue their unbeaten run in the Blue Square Premier, that's the Nationwide Conference to most people.

Was great to see all the home support and a record league fixture attendance of 2093 for the 2:1 win against Woking.

BBQ Bank Holiday

This Bank Holiday weekend finally saw some half decent weather here in the South of England so it was time to dust off the old BBQs and have a weekend of eating & drinking with good friends and family.

Cathedral Gate

Jumped in the car to shoot down the supermarket for some food this evening. As the sun was setting I thought I'd take my camera with a view of may be getting some more shots for the photo competition in the local rag.

Got a few pics of the sun setting but none really suitable for the competition.

Except may be this one.....


The gate and sunset are real but I cheated by inserting the cathedral (playing with merging photos again)!

Identical Twins

I'm not a great fan of self portraits as a rule but after being inspired by the great work of Rebekka, one of my Flickr contacts I thought I'd give it a go.

I need to get better at merging more than one photo but didn't think this was too bad for my first attempt.



Got a few more ideas up my sleeve and I'll give them a go when I get the chance so watch this space....

Photo Appears in Article

Over the weekend I was contacted by someone who wanted to use one of my photos in an online article that they were publishing on www.orato.com this week.

I was happy to let them use it as they said that I would receive credit for the image and also there would be a link from the article to My flickr Photos

The article has now been published and my picture appears on page 2 of www.orato.com/node/3230



It's not the first time that my photographs have appeared on sites but it's the first time that I've actually been asked! Looking on www.technorati.com I found that the same photo was used on someones Blog.



Slow Traffic Lights by Night was also used on another blog. I don't really mind as it's good that people like the photos enough to use them but it's always nice to ask!

Si & Rach's Wedding

After going away to Barcelona for a great weekend on my good friend Si's stag do...

and seeing a bit of culture...

many pubs...

some other stags...

and even more pubs...


Last weekend saw Si and Rach get married. A fantastic weekend was had by all and I'd like to think that if I ever tied the knot then my wedding would be as good and go so well and that I'd be as happy as these two excellent friends of mine.

Before / After - Part 2

Following on from this post (Before / After) I've spent a bit more time putting together photos of the house that I've had kicking around for over a year.

Bedroom 1


Lounge


Lounge

A Lapse in Time

After reading this post from over at Mr Jez's cool blog www.novemberfive.co.uk I was interested and wanted to give it a try.

After browsing through the menu of my camera I found that it's got an intervalometer that can be configured to take a shot every 1-60 minutes with a maximum of 100 shots.

Tried a few from home but am now in search of a good shooting spot.

Before / After

This weekend saw me spending some time clearing out the spare room to make way for my new lodger who is moving in next week.

Faced with a wardrobe crammed with random stuff that I'd shoved in there I started sorting it in to piles of rubbish, things that needed a new home and possible items to sell on eBay.

Whilst doing this I started thinking off all the photos that I took in the house when I was renovating it and how I'd never actually done anything with them let alone even look at them.

With all the countless DIY and property shows loving the before and after shots I thought why not post a few on here for all to see.

Bedroom 2

Drunken photo...Why?

Looking through my phone today I came across this very random photo. From the looks of the date and time it was taken on my way home after some heavy drinking this weekend.

A couple things spring to mind:-
1) Why would I take a picture of a street sign? Possibly because it was very dirty!!!
2) If I was so smashed I can't remember taking it, how did I manage to operate the phone camera at all?

Bring out the men in white coats!!!