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.