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.

Day #139

Title: Grazing On A Sunday Afternoon
Location: Walnut Tree Farm, Great Waltham
Camera: Canon EOS 300D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Have been kicking myself that I didn't go out this morning when there was more sun to be had, but I was busy with jobs before lunch. I managed to have a pleasant potter around the village of Pleshey this afternoon, enjoying a cream tea in the churchyard, which they serve every two weeks (proceeds towards the church restoration fund). On the way home, I also stopped for a look around Great Waltham which has a nice church and Elizabethan Manor house. But the sun wasn't really playing ball, so I drove home across the back lanes via Chignall. I noticed these two horses grazing in a field at Walnut Tree Farm, and was taking pictures when the pheasant rather obligingly wandered across the field.

Day #138

Title: (Castor) Oil And Water
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 300D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes : Confession time - this is real lazy photography, I'm afraid. I've been busy all day and it's been raining steadily, so I literally poked my head out the back door for five minutes to see what I could find. My poor, drenched Castor Oil plant (Fatsia Japonica) was looking soggy in the Autumn corner of my garden - quite appropriate, since it's felt like it for most of the day. I hope the sun shines tomorrow.

Day #137

Title: In The Garden
Location: At a friend's house
Camera: Canon Ixus 850IS compact
Notes: Inspiration was just as lacking as the sunshine today. I still hadn't taken a picture by the time I was going out to my photographic club this evening, picking up a friend on the way. I had the compact with me, so took this shot in their garden before we went to our AGM.

Day #136

Title: Gone With The Wind
Location: Piccadilly Circus
Camera: Canon Ixus 850IS compact
Notes: The London OpenCoffee event has been running on a weekly basis for some time, but yesterday was the first time I had been able to go. An interesting mix of people, most of whom I haven't bumped into before in the London web community. It was a dreary, drab day in the West End, but I was lucky not to get the drenching which the weather forecast had promised. Perhaps the rain had Gone With The Wind? Or was it the traffic? I also met up with a friend in the afternoon, then went on to another monthly networking event in the evening. Consequently, I spent rather too long camped in Starbucks, drinking coffee and working on the laptop. Was feeling rather buzzy by the evening - I haven't drunk so much coffee in ages!

Day #135

Title: The Cowparsley Bridge
Location: Good Easter
Camera: Canon EOS 300D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I attended a training course in Margaret Roding for most of the day, but it had finished by 3pm, so I took a detour to Good Easter on the way home and had a potter around the village. There is a pond with bullrushes (and big, splashy fish). The pleasantly cool church was open for visitors. I particularly liked this scene, at the rear of the churchyard, where a footpath crosses a stream on a little wooden bridge. It was surrounded by gently waving Cowparsley and numerous Dandelion clocks.

Day #134

Title: Stinky Bob Is Hairy At Heart
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 300D / 50mm EF f/1.8 + 12mm extension tube
Notes: Stuck at home working all day, I've been listening to some good music but haven't felt very inspired visually today. I took a potter out into the garden to see if I could find a picture, and my nose was assaulted by the wonderful smells of the neighbours' dinner cooking, which drifted out of their open window. So I was distracted for a while. But then I spotted this little plant in one of my herb pots - I'm ashamed to say, it's a weed - Geranium robertianum (Herb Robert, aka Stinky Bob) - which is doing rather better than the actual herbs! But I did like its hairy red stalks backlit by the sun.

Day #133

Title: On The Edge
Location: Ardleigh Reservoir
Camera: Canon EOS 300D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I took a trip over to Colchester this morning to book my EOS 30D in for a sensor clean. It's needed doing for a while, but I've been putting it off until the end of the rugby season, as it could be away for up to two weeks. But having looked closely at some of the shots I took on holiday, I couldn't really delay the inevitable any longer - I've spent ages "spotting" unsightly black blobs of varying severity out of some deep blue Sardinian skies, and enough was enough! Ardleigh Reservoir isn't far from the Canon repair place, but unfortunately there's no public access to most of it, only if you're an angler. I found this tenacious flower blooming on the lichen-ridden side of the reservoir bank, close by the road - where you can get a look at the water. Of course, I'd got the backup DSLR (my old 300D) on hand to take the picture - I'll be using it until the 30D is fit again.

Day #132

Title: Redeye
Location: Maldon
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I spent the afternoon at a friend's house in Witham, and realised it was only a stone's throw from Maldon via the back roads, so I made a detour to the Hythe on my way home. An old Thames barge was coming up the Blackwater to moor and I tracked its progress as the tide brought it upstream. I took plenty of regular pictures, but this one stood out as something a bit different, so that's why I chose it for today.

Day #131

Title: If You Go Down In The Woods Today...
Location: Swan Wood, Stock
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I took a walk in Swan Wood today, looking for Bluebell pictures. Quite a few of them have passed their best by now - I think they would have been lovely while I was away. But I eventually found this patch of flowers in a clearing towards the bottom of the wood. I wanted the contrast between the purplely blue of the blooms and acid green of the leaves. Somehow, the photo doesn't do the scene justice, despite my best efforts at a little bit of dodge and burn with Photoshop. Anyway, it was a lovely cool place to visit in the heat of the day. Didn't see any teddies having a picnic though!

Day #130

Title: Montana In May
Location: At home
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 50mm EF f/1.8 + 12mm extension tube
Notes: Since I've been away, the neighbour's Clematis Montana has gone mad flowering with hundreds of blooms, which hang over my side of the fence to face the westerly sun. I was so busy today sorting out my photos from my trip to Sardinia and posting the backlog after an internet-less week, that I nearly forgot to take a picture before going out this evening. But the Montana caught my eye, and I was able to home in on a few blooms which were in different stages of flowering.

Day #129

Title: Martis Falls
Location: Northern Sardinia
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: It was another hot day, my last on the island. So we packed a picnic and headed to Martis and this secluded waterfall. We found a huge fig tree by the banks of the pool and sat in its shade eating lovely local produce - smoked Riccotta, home made potato salad, focaccia, Sardo sausage, cherry tomato and onion salad, home made wine and some lovely little cakes from the bakery down the road. A very peaceful spot to relax before the journey home again - and one which isn't much used by the locals - no idea why! See more pictures taken today.

Day #128

Title: Chiaramonti Sunset
Location: Northern Sardinia
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 75-300mm EF f/4.5-5.6 IS USM
Notes: Went for a quiet walk around the Botanic Gardens in Cagliari this morning, then took a drive out to Capo di Pula to see the sea and palm trees jutting out on a little peninsula. Next it was on to the airport to pick up another friend before the 200 Km drive back north. For my last evening in Chiaramonti, I went up to the castle again and watched the sun set dramatically behind the surrounding hills, with the gentle clanking of bells for accompaniment, as the local sheep grazed the hillside below. See more pictures taken today.

Day #127

Title: Corinthian Columns
Location: Tharros, Western Sardinia
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: We ventured south today to explore a little more of the island. Heading for Cagliari, we took a detour near Oristano to the Capo San Marco where we stopped off at the Phoenician site at Tharros. It had rained heavily on the journey, but the sun eventually came out as we were wandering around the ruins. The thermal baths were nearby, and it must have been quite something to lie in one of them and look out at this view over 2,500 years ago. This was a peaceful part of the day, and a complete contrast to having to negotiate busy Cagliari in the evening rush hour to find our hotel! See more pictures taken today.

Day #126

Title: Harbour Reflections
Location: Alghero, Sardinia
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Spent a lovely day exploring the north west corner of Sardinia today, with stops at a couple of ancient churches, a paddle at Cape del Falcone, drive around Porto Conte and rounding it off with dinner in Alghero. This was after we had eaten and decided to take a walk along the ramparts before heading back to the car. See more pictures taken today.

Day #125

Title: Evening Sparkles
Location: Lago del Coghinas, Sardinia
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: We had a nice tour around the northern coast and inland to some of the hills today, doing about 100 Km in all. That might not sound very much, but it was plenty on the twisty, winding roads we had to negotiate! On the way back from the coastal town of Isola Rossa, we passed through the Valle della Luna and then onto a pretty little church by the side of a lake. This was one view of Lago del Coghinas before we got to the church. I liked the sparkles on the water and thought it made a good monochrome image. See more pictures taken today.

Day #124

Title: Festa di Santa Guista
Location: Chiaramonti, Sardinia
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: Practically the whole town turned out for the Festival of Santa Guista today. A few hundred locals gathered in the shade of the trees next to a church outside the town and spent the afternoon eating, drinking and making merry. We were invited along as guests of the Accorra family (friends of the friends we were visiting) and so we sat down to the feast of pasta, salad, mutton, potatoes, cakes, and home made wine. There were market stalls too, selling local produce, kids running round with waterpistols, men surreptitiously playing Burra (an illegal counting game only played when drunk), and everyone chatting merrily. Some of the more aventurous townsfolk also had a go at paragliding off the nearest big hill. All great for photos! This is Santa Guista herself, installed in the church before being paraded back into town in a convoy of cars and tooting horns. It was a lovely day out, and great to be involved in some real local customs; we were made to feel very welcome. See more pictures taken today.

Day #123

Title: Lago di Casteldoria
Location: Northern Sardinia
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: We spent the first part of the day pottering around the little hilltop town of Chiaramonti, where we are spending the week. It's an ancient settlement which has a ruined castle dating from the 12th Century, and the town is criss-crossed with tiny little backstreets, often very steep. The locals aren't phased by trying to squeeze their Fiats through gaps you would worry about walking into. We were a little more cautious with the hire car! In the afternoon we went for a pleasant drive to the coast, along more winding mountain roads, to Castelsardo. Along the way, we stopped at a viewpoint over the Lago di Casteldoria and were treated to this lovely view of wild flowers growing above the lake. The bank was covered with poppies, daisies, roses and wild fennel, as well as numerous different grasses, which were being blown about in the breeze. See more pictures taken today.

Day #122

Title: Time Flies
Location: Over France
Camera: Canon EOS 30D / 24-105mm EF f/4 L IS USM
Notes: I had a late afternoon flight to Sardinia today, and managed to take a few pictures from my window seat as we flew over France. It was dusk by the time we got to Alghero, and dark by the time we picked up the car and drove to our accommodation. Looking forward to a lovely week away, with lots of local food, views and atmosphere. It's Day 122 - a third of the way through the year and this project! How time flies (as well as me).