A New Home!

I have NOT given up on my Project 366 - it's just moved house...

It's always been my ambition to get my various blogs integrated properly with their relevent photographic website. And whilst I've enjoyed the blog being hosted with Blogger for the past six months, now I've finally managed to get everything set up properly on my general photography website.

The main site lives at cazphoto.co.uk and you can now find this blog migrated to the site too, with a properly integrated version of WordPress and a lovely new style to match the rest of the site.

I shall be leaving this site here as a permanent record, but all new posts will now appear at the other site. I hope you follow me there!

Day #188

Title: Best Seat In The House
Location: At my parents’
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Mum is an avid tennis fan, and she’s glued to the box during Wimbledon fortnight. I visited for lunch today, and there’s no prizes for guessing where she was camped out after we had eaten. The Men’s Final was quite a Marathon, and was, of course, accompanied by the obligatory strawberries. At least we didn’t have to don our macs during the interruptions for rain!

Day #187

Title: Saturday Cricket
Location: Mountnessing
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Despite dire predictions for today’s weather, it was actually a lovely day. The big fluffy clouds, against the blue sky would make a perfect backdrop for a picture of Mountnessing Windmill, so that’s where I visited around lunchtime. I took a few pictures just of the mill, and then noticed they were gearing up for a cricket match. I haven’t photographed cricket for ages, so I hung around for a while at the boundary and took some action shots, as well as this wider setting.

Day #186

Title: Stand Out From The Crowd
Location: Ingatestone
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Exploring the fields around Ingatestone for today’s picture, I liked the way this ear of corn did its own thing, and really stood out from its neighbours.

Day #185

Title: Molten Lead
Location: Buttsbury Church
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I deliberately left it late for today’s picture as I wanted to revisit the location of Day #64’s image, which faces west. Despite taking quite a few ordinary sunset pictures there, I wasn’t really very enamoured with any of them when I got home. I much preferred this view of the sunset reflected in a window of Buttsbury Church. It reminded me of some of fellow 366 Flickerite touchingthelight’s images.

Day #184

Title: Red Sky At Night…
Location: Galleywood Common
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 75-300mm EF f/4-5.6 IS USM
Notes: For the most part, it was another grey, miserable day. So I stayed indoors and nursed my poor, bruised knees. However, by about 8pm, there was a chink of light coming through the clouds, and I decided to go to the Common for a hobble round. I got a few fairly mundane shots in the woods and grasslands, and then returned to my favourite spot overlooking the Wid Valley to watch the sunset. I was rewarded with a great Red Sky At Night just over Hylands House, which is lurking in the shadows at the bottom.

Day #183

Title: Half Full Or Half Empty?
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: This week’s 366 theme is “a phrase or saying” - so here we have, The Glass Is Half Full/Half Empty. At the moment, I would have to say it’s half empty. I’ve been having a bad week generally, and just when you think it can’t get any worse… This evening, shortly after I’d taken this, I managed to trip over in the garden. So now I have two sore knees, a slightly fat lip, scratched glasses and a bruised ego. Wonderful. On a slightly more positive note, at least we’ve made it to Half Way today - day 183/366. Congrats to all who have come this far too.

Day #182

Title: Beach Hut Pastels
Location: West Mersea
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: After doing a load of dull jobs at home this morning, including finding my car’s MOT and insurance documents so I could go and renew the tax disc, I took a trip this afternoon to Mersea Island. I haven’t been there for years - I used to have Clarinet lessons in West Mersea when I was at school, but probably haven’t been back since. I had heard about some smart new beach huts in West Mersea, so that was where I headed. The sun was out, there were fluffy clouds in the sky, and the pale pastels of the beach huts didn’t disappoint. I took many shots from lots of different angles, but I thought this view was a bit more unusual than most.

Day #181

Title: Bottoms Up!
Location: Hanningfield Reservoir
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 100-400mm EF f/4-5.6 L IS USM
Notes: After all the time I’ve had to spend in front of the PC this weekend, restoring numerous websites after the server crash, I thought I’d get out for a bit of fresh air this afternoon. So I went to Hanningfield Reservoir, armed with my longest lens, to see what I could find. Generally the birds were quite a long way off, but this Coot swam nearby and I caught it just as it dived under the surface. Perfect for this week’s 366 Theme, “A Phrase or Saying”. So this is “Bottoms Up”. Cheers…

Day #180

Title: A Bit Of Passion
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 50mm EF f/1.8 + 12mm extension tube
Notes: The passion flower over my back gate is beginning to flower now, and looks quite sculptural in detail. It’s always a devil to get a big enough depth of field to keep all of it sharp, so this time I’ve mainly concentrated on the central portion and petals, and let the stamen go a little bit fuzzy.

Day #179

Title: Elemental: Water
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I intended to go out this morning for a photo or two but didn’t get around to it. By 3pm the rain was hammering down oustide, so I nipped out the back door and took this (from underneath an umbrella!) - heavy raindrops splashing on the top of the neighbour’s fence. Another for this week’s theme, The Four Elements.

Day #178

Title: It’s All Gone Pear-Shaped
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Had a major disaster with my web hosting which began late afternoon yesterday. It still isn’t resolved. The server which hosts all my websites (personal and for clients’ sites) decided to give up the ghost with no warning. The tech folks are having to rebuild it from scratch, and then I have the joy of reinstating nearly 20 sites of varying complexity as soon as it’s fixed. I thank the Gods of the Interwebs that I backed up everyone’s databases just yesterday morning, hours before the system fell over! As I said, the problem is ongoing, and has been occupying my thoughts for much of the day today. So I bought some pears from the shops, intending to photograph them as an illustration. But they looked pretty dreary, so with a bit of fiddling, a cutout filter and some tidying up, this is the end result. It did start off as a photo, honest!

Day #177

Title: Elemental: Air
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Another one for this week’s 366 theme, The Four Elements. I saw a face in the clouds, looking back at me!

Day #176

Title: Enigma IX
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Not much inspiration today, so I present another Enigma; it will have to do.

Day #175

Title: Elemental: Fire
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: This week’s 366 theme is The Four Elements. I was getting a bit pushed for time this evening to take a picture, but I thought of the theme as I was cooking some dinner - and came up with this view of fire.

Day #174

Title: Ally Pally
Location: Alexandra Palace, London
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Day 2 of Mashed, and although we were promised howling gales and heavy rain at midday, this was the scene around lunch time as we ventured outside to watch one of the hacks - a rocket launch in the park! Great fun.

Day #173

Title: Pie & Mashed
Location: Ally Pally
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Spent the day geeking out at Mashed and this was part of the catering provided for dinner - a surprisingly tastey steak and mushroom pie. With Mash, of course.

Day #172

Title: Early Bird
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 75-300mm EF f/4-5.6 IS USM
Notes: I hate early mornings, but had to get up just before five today to answer a call of nature. Whilst looking blearily out of the bathroom window, I noticed a soft, orange glow in the sky to the east. “Could this be what they call dawn?”, I thought to myself. So in a state of half-consciousness, I managed to find the camera, fit my long zoom and take this image out of the back bedroom window. It’s not quite as dramatic as the other dawn I photographed (there have been only two!), but the silhouette of the wood pidgeon sitting on the neighbours’ TV aerial is still quite nice.

Day #171

Title: Windy Whitstable
Location: Whitstable, Kent
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 75-300mm EF f/4-5.6 IS USM
Notes: After a nightmare 4 hour journey to Whitstable, it was eventually worth it for the sunny skies, sea breeze and good lunch which we enjoyed in the town. This adventurous chap was kite surfing on the choppy waters, with the Thames Estuary wind farm in the background. The train journey home was much more comfortable, and I’m able to live-blog this on the move thanks to my new mobile data modem for my laptop. Ah, gotta love technology.

Day #170

Title: Que Pasa Cappuccino
Location: Chelmsford
Camera: Canon Ixus 850IS compact
Notes: Had a couple of meetings in Chelmsford this morning, so spent some time drinking posh coffee. This one from Que Pasa was rather nicely branded.

Day #169

Title: Afterglow
Location: Galleywood Common
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 75-300mm EF f/4-5.6 IS USM
Notes: Another busy day at home, it was about 9:15pm before I realised there was a nice sunset to be seen outside, so I nipped out to my favourite west-facing bit of the common to take today’s image. There’s a saying amongst photographic judges, who often see so many sunsets in the course of their careers they get rather immune to their wonders. So here it is, ABS - “another bl**dy sunset”

Day #168

Title: Cameron House
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Another picture for this week’s theme, My Favourite Things. I love the architecture and designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and this is my homage to his work - Cameron House.

Day #167

Title: Iron Out The Wrinkles
Location: Danubury Park
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 50mm EF f/1.8 + 12mm extension tube
Notes: Years ago, I was made to go on a camping trip with the school to Danbury Park. It hammered with rain non-stop, and we had a thoroughly miserable week. I've been traumatised by camping and have steered clear of Danbury Park ever since! But today, I decided to take a trip out to the Lakes area of the park for some pictures. The sun was in and out, as were the bees on the flowers. I happened to spot this curiousity on my way back to the car - it was a clump of plants growing at the water's edge. Some of the leaves were completely smooth, and others (often belonging to the same plant) were all wrinkled. I wonder why that happens?

Day #166

Title: Surface Tension
Location: Highlands House, Chelmsford
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I was busy on the computer for most of the morning, but then things started going a bit wrong, and I decided to step away from the keyboard before I got too mad with it. The early afternoon was sunny, so I took myself off to Highlands House for a look around the ornamental gardens - I've seen the house and walked in the park, but hadn't been around the formal gardens at all. There were plenty of floral images to be seen, but the one I liked best from the shoot was this one of the base of the fountain in the entrance to the One World Garden. It was built to commemorate the World Scout Jamboree which took place in Highlands Park last summer. Thankfully, with some fresh air in my lungs and photos in the bag, I returned home and sorted out my PC problems quite quickly. Infinitely better than banging my head against the screen for a couple of hours!

Day #165

Title: Anyone For Cocktails?
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I love all things Art Deco. This is a 1/12^th-scale model of an Art Deco cocktail bar. Another shot for this week's theme - A Different Viewpoint - this time, a doll's eye view.

Day #164

Title: Dusk Grasses
Location: Galleywood Common
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I took a few pictures in the garden earlier today, but wasn't really happy with them - they weren't terribly inspiring. I'd almost forgotten about taking any more until about 8:30 when I noticed the evening clouds turning nice colours outside. So I headed out to a favourite spot on Galleywood Common and found some grasses waving in the breeze looking westwards. Crouching down low (another different viewpoint for this week's theme), I managed to get some interesting shapes in silhouette against the setting sun.

Day #163

Title: The Pollinator
Location: Wivenhoe
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 50mm EF f/1.8 + 12mm extension tube
Notes: I stayed at my parents' overnight, and had a quick wander around their garden this morning before heading home. I found this big, fat bee buzzing around their Arum lily under the kitchen window. It very quickly got covered in pollen - just a bee doing it's job!

Day #162

Title: An Evening Swim
Location: Ardleigh Reservoir
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: After an evening meeting in Colchester, I managed to find a tranquil spot to watch some ducks have a swim on Ardleigh Reservior on the way home.

Day #161

Title: Red Stripes
Location: Galleywood Common
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I took a few pictures this morning, but nothing really grabbed me. So I took my camera with me when I went out this evening. My meeting finished around 9:30pm and the sun was just setting low behind a bank of clouds as I stopped on Galleywood Common to bag picture of the day.

Day #160

Title: What Are You Looking At?
Location: South Bank, London
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I met friends today for a lovely lunch in Roast, a swanky restaurant inside Borough Market. All very civilized. After three courses of gorgeous grub, I decided I needed a bit of a walk! So I took a stroll along the South Bank and caught this chap looking down from the Millennium Bridge.

Day #159

Title: Magic Mushrooms
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Spent some time tidying the garden again today. This week's 366 theme is "A Different Viepoint" so I got down low to photograph the ceramic fungi in the autumn corner of the back garden.

Day #158

Title: Copper Fittings
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Having had my boiler condemned on Tuesday (don't ask), I managed to get someone in to fit a new one at short notice - a relief since I've had to manage without hot water at home in the meantime. I've been boiling kettles furiously and going to a friend's to have a shower. This is a box of copper bits the heating engineer left in the kitchen while he went for lunch.

Day #157

Title: Sisyrinchium In Bloom
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 50mm EF f/1.8 + 12mm extension tube
Notes: Having had some folks wondering what yesterday's flower looked like fully out, I took another image this morning when the sun was shining and the blooms were showing their faces.

Day #156

Title: Sisyrinchium Striatum
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 50mm EF f/1.8 + 12mm extension tube
Notes: A quick grab shot in the garden today. It took me ages to look up the spelling!

Day #155

Title: Bokeh²
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 50mm EF f/1.8 + 12mm extension tube
Notes: Another miserable day outside. As this week's 366 theme is bokeh, I thought I would use the dictionary definition and take a shallow depth of field image. However, my dictionary is too old to have an entry for it (the term has only been in use for photography since about 1996). So I found the definition on the internet and mocked up a dictionary entry in the same style as the real thing.

Day #154

Title: Rainbow Puddle
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 50mm EF f/1.8 + 12mm extension tube
Notes: Distinct lack of inspiration today, not helped by the miserable June weather. I use old CDs as coasters at home, and spilled some water on one this evening - which then caught my eye with the distortion of the rainbow pattern.

Day #153

Title: Fancy That
Location: Leicester Square
Camera: Canon EOS 300D / 17-85mm EF f/4-5.6 IS USM
Notes: Part of the lunch menu provided at BarCampLondon4 by eBay.

Day #152

Title: Enigma VIII
Location: Leicester Square
Camera: Canon EOS 300D / 17-85mm EF f/4-5.6 IS USM
Notes: Another enigma for you today. No Photoshop, just some naturally swirly patterns I found.

Day #151

Title: Dusk Over The Thames
Location: Westminster
Camera: Canon EOS 300D / 17-85mm EF f/4-5.6 IS USM
Notes: Another day at @media, plenty of interesting things to listen to. Plus I got to hang out with some delegates and a couple of the speakers afterwards, which was really nice - just chilling out watching the light fade from Hungerford Bridge, then enjoying a beer or two by the Thames. Great way to wind down after the conference.

Day #150

Title: Big Wheel
Location: South Bank, London
Camera: Canon EOS 300D / 17-85mm EF f/4-5.6 IS USM
Notes: Time for the annual @media web conference, one of the main events of London Web Week. So I spent most of the day (and a good chunk of the evening) on the South Bank with some old mates and making some new ones too. The London Eye towers over the top of the South Bank Centre, with Big Ben poking his face over the rooves.

Day #149

Title: Bricklayers Lampshades
Location: Bricklayers Arms, Fitzrovia, London
Camera: Canon EOS 300D / 17-85mm EF f/4-5.6 IS USM
Notes: Another London Web Week event this evening, this time the Web Standards Group meeting about Findability. All interesting geek stuff. Afterwards, most of us repaired to the Bricklayers for a pint or two. Since none of the other pictures I took today have any photographic merit (!), this is the one you've got as Picture Of The Day.

Day #148

Title: hBeer!
Location: Yorkshire Grey, Grey's Inn Road, London
Camera: Canon Ixus 850IS compact
Notes: London Web Week has begun, and tonight was the Microformats vEvent meeting at the Yorkshire Grey. There were a couple of speakers, free beer and giveaway sticker schwag. Some bright spark had the idea of shoving a logo on their pint - does this mean we need a new microformat - hBeer? RFC to follow :-)

Day #147

Title: Zen Ripples
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Typical Bank Holiday weather - it's been hissing down all day. I ventured out into the garden briefly before lunch - under the cover of a brolly - to photograph the rain landing in the Tsukubai bowl in the Japanese (Winter) corner of my garden. This had been empty on Saturday but was almost overflowing after two days' rain. It's quite diffucult trying to hang on to an umbrella in the wind with one hand while trying to zoom, compose and hit the shutter with the other! Japan gets quite a lot of rain, so their traditional garden philosophy is that things should look beautiful in all weather. I liked the ripples on the surface of the water as the raindrops fell - plus that wonderful rich caramel colour of wet bamboo.

Day #146

Title: Singin' In The Rain
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 17-85mm EF-S f/4-5.6 IS USM
Notes: This week's 366 theme is Song Titles, so I thought I would take advantage of the beautiful Bank Holiday weather to present you with a one-off, exclusive performance of "Singin' In The Rain". It was hammering down at the time - I hope you all appreciate how I suffer for my art! I haven't attempted any self-portraits before, so please be kind to me...

Day #145

Title: Layers Of Shadow
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Spent the morning doing chores around the house, and the afternoon mowing the lawn and tidying the garden before the impending deluge we are promised tomorrow. Late in the afternoon, I was sitting pulling weeds and throwing them into the plastic canvas collection bag when I noticed how nice their shadows were against the side of the material. This is just as seen, I haven't done any Photoshop fiddling, apart from Levels and a slight crop. I find these sort of pictures out of nothing to be quite satisfying, as is having a tidy garden again!

Day #144

Title: Project 366 Breeds Success!
Location: Ingatestone
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: My Camera Club's season finished this evening with the annual Print Of the Year competition. During the regular season, we have six competitions and any print which has been placed 1st-4th in any of these previous competitions is eligible to enter Print Of The Year. All the prints are put out on display and the club members are asked to judge the pictures via a ballot - the one with the most points wins Mono Print, Colour Print or Slide Of The Year. Since I joined in 1992, I've won the Jack Oswell Memorial Trophy for Mono Print of the Year three times - 1994, 2006 and tonight! The print was a black and white version of Day #71, called "Boredom", and was previously placed 3rd in a set subject competition "Emotions". So if I hadn't been taking a photo a day for 366, I wouldn't have been in Thaxted to see the cat and get this picture!

Day #143

Title: Buried Under Paperwork
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Been busy with wireframes and a quote for the first stage of a new project all day. This is my desk - not sure where the laptop and keyboard have gone!

Day #142

Title: Arachnophobia!
Location: Stock, Essex
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 50mm EF f/1.8 + 12mm extension tube
Notes: After a meeting in Stock first thing this morning, I decided to stop off at the Church in the village to take a few shots inside. However, I found they were just gearing up for 10am Mass, so I had a look around the churchyard instead - there is a memorial garden with some pretty flowers which are just coming into bloom. There I spied a spider, crawling on a rather attractive-looking flower head. This was as close as I was prepared to get! I know it was only a tiddler, but me no like spiders...

Day #141

Title: The Cowparsley Path
Location: Galleywood
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Spent all day working hard finishing off client work, as well as putting the finishing touches to my own revamped photo website. As the light was fading, I went out to get a takeaway - making a detour via this scene - a reprise of Easter Sunday, a rather different view this time.

Day #140

Title: Parking Is Scarce
Location: Dedham, Essex
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Having been away for a week for a sensor clean, the 30D was ready to pick up today. Dedham is a short hop from Colchester, so I met my parents in the pretty village for lunch and a quick picture or two, before returning home to get on with some work. It's always murder trying to park in the High Street as it's a very popular destination for visitors. I love the old buildings, but it's a pity there are so many cars in the way, preventing you getting a proper, uncluttered view from any angle.